Lawrence Wright, Author of The Looming Tower

Today after our Listening class (I take five Arabic classes: Grammar, Writing, Media, Speaking, and Listening) a friend and I were lamenting the 5 minute presentations we are supposed to give tomorrow. I seriously doubt my ability to deliver a 5-minute monologue entirely in Arabic (or at least one that is mildly coherent), but I suppose this is how one learns. They say the intermediate stage is the hardest stage in learning any language, right?

Anywho, she mentioned that Lawrence Wright was coming to speak on campus later that afternoon, so instead of heading home to start figuring out wtf I could say for 5 whole minutes, we decided to head to a cafe in an alley about two blocks from school to meet some friends and have shisha and mango juice.

A few games of backgammon later, we ended up in Oriental Hall, the largest (or at least the nicest) lecture hall on AUC's main campus. The place filled quickly, and Wright (who taught ESL at AUC for two years to fulfill his "conscientious objector" service during the Vietnam War) proceeded to lecture about what I understood to be roughly the same content as his New York Times bestselling book.


Perhaps trying to condense a book into a lecture was his problem. The narrative history that Wright wove together was definitely interesting. Unfortunately, the Q&A section at the end concluded before I was able to ask him about his assertion that "The War on Terror had ended prior to the beginning of the war in Iraq." Wright proceeded to explain Al-Qaeda's reorganization from a vertical business model to a horizontal cell model, which he then credited as the reason for its ability to continue to grow and operate despite initial US/coalition successes in Afghanistan. The Iraq connection was never established or mentioned again. I wondered how the present need for US troops in Afghanistan and the apparently insurmountable lawlessness that continues to allow the northern tribal areas of Pakistan to be a safe haven and training ground for terrorists jived with his theory that the War on Terror was over prior to Iraq. I don't think the situation in Iraq has done much to prevent terrorism, but how Al-Qaeda owes its continued existence to the Iraq War remained unclear.

Additionally, I had serious doubts about some of his facts, such as that Al-Qaeda, at 20 years old, is the second-oldest terrorist organization remaining in existence--the other being the IRA. What about Hezbollah and FARC? Moreover, I found his claim that "There are more Muslims than Catholics in northern Europe and more Muslims than Protestants in southern Europe" equally objectionable. Those things may be true, but stated as facts to show how overrun European nations are becoming with foreigners (so much so that they are losing their sense of national identity) they are misleading. Southern Europe is predominantly Catholic and northern Europe is predominantly Protestant--not the other way around-- so it isn't all that shocking that Muslims aren't the smallest religious minority in those places, which is really all that those statements mean.

To his credit, Wright handled himself well under pretty heated questions after the lecture, and maintained his position that most terrorists are motivated by a variety of sociological and political causes that are not really the fault of the USA even in front of his Egyptian audience. His presentation was captivating, but could have been stronger if he had omitted the things that cast doubt on his credibility. However, if nothing else, it was a thought-provoking way to spend the afternoon.

Masr! Masr! Masr!

While walking from a party to a friend's apartment last weekend, we happened upon a huge gathering of people dancing in the streets and shouting. Cars everywhere were honking in the pattern: beep (pause) beep (pause) beep beep beep. I started to get nervous when people began setting things on fire, and thought for sure we were about to witness a riot, but it turns out that everyone was just celebrating Egypt's unexpected victory in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations. Check it out:

For whatever reason, the United States hasn't gotten on board the global soccer obsession. Someone told me that it is because soccer is played in two continuous halves without ever stopping the clock, so it hasn't caught on with the big networks because they can't have as many commercial breaks. Nevertheless, for most of the rest of the world, soccer is a BIG DEAL. Two examples: (1) during the World Cup last summer, Cote D'Ivoire temporarily suspended their civil war so people could watch the games, and (2) according to a recent article in the New York Times, universal support for the Iraqi national team has made headway in bridging sectarian enmity in the country.

While I can't tell you the name of a single player on the USA national team, I couldn't help but get caught up in the enthusiasm that absolutely permeates every corner of Cairo for Team Egypt. People tape Egyptian flags to everything, wear them around, and cover their cars with black, white and read banners--all to demonstrate their support for the team.


Having seen the ruckus the victory on the quarterfinals caused (see video above), you can bet we--me, Jillian (my roommate), Rafaela, and Tanisha--decided to do it up big time for the finals. We bought flags the night before the game (after bargaining down the price since we wanted to get four at once) and as we walked home with them people yelled "Egypt!" and "Misr!" (which is the Egyptian word for Egypt) at us from stores and car windows, while cars greeted us with the celebratory pattern of honks.

One of our dorm mates is a really fun Egyptian girl named Dina, and she offered to take us to watch the game at a place where locals go to watch games (as opposed to a hotel bar or somewhere similarly upscale, which is where most expats hang out but would be too pricey for the average Egyptian.) We eagerly accepted and joined her downtown, where many local coffee shops and small shisha bars had moved all of their furniture outdoors into the alley. The place was packed with people--we had to sit on tables or stand--and we watched the game from the crowded alley on an outdoor projection screen. For this the store owner charged us 3 Egyptian pounds--the equivalent of about 75 cents--well worth being able to chant "Masr" with a rowdy Egyptian mob. Two of our upper-class Egyptian friends, Omar and Ahmed, met us downtown and marveled that we were showing them around Egypt - having spent all of their time with the upper crust, they had never before seen how the average Egyptian watched a game.

For a long time the game was zero to zero. Halfway through the chicken shwarma sandwich that I purchased from the stand around the corner at half time, Egypt scored. The bedlam that ensued gave a whole new meaning to the concept of a crowd "erupting." Not only did a roar and the sound of drums reverberate through the alley, but people were shooting fireworks and lighting hairspray (and other things of unknown identity) on fire everywhere.

When the game ended and Egypt won, the energy went through the roof. It really felt like the population of the city had been on hold watching the game and then turned out into the streets simultaneously. People were blasting plumes of hairspray ignited with cigarette lighters into the air, beating drums, and chanting "misr!" It was completely amazing. Tanisha noted that the only time we had ever seen anything like it are when American news plays clips of crowds cheering, shouting, and dancing after something like the American Embassy is bombed--but that's misleading, because it appears that this happens all the time!

After the game the 4 of us went with Omar and Ahmed to an underpass in Heliopolis (their neighborhood in Cairo) where crowds often gather on occasions such as this. We watched the pulsating throng from the slightly less crowded street above until Omar and Ahmed got nervous about the number of guys who had stopped chanting cheers and gathered around to take our picture instead. I am sure that four obviously American girls with Egyptian flags was an unusual sight; however, due to the prevalence of verbal harassment and unwanted touching on the Egyptian streets, staying any longer wouldn't have been prudent. We gave our flags a final wave and headed to a nearby cafe for some fresh mango juice. It was a thoroughly memorable night.

Settled In

My first two weeks in Egypt have been so full of things to do that I've hardly had a chance to look around and be fully cognizant of the fact that I am in Egypt, the land of King Tut and mummies and oases and hieroglyphics.

My flight landed at 3:00 in the morning, and even at that odd hour the airport was crammed full of people. I had to walk through a gauntlet of them in order to make it past baggage claim, and I imagined as I walked through the rows of jostling, curious faces craning their necks for a glimpse of the disembarking passengers that this must be something like what it would be like to be a celebrity on the red carpet.

School registration happened, slowly and inefficiently (in true Egyptian fashion), over the course of several days. In order to obtain my student visa, for example, I had to:

(1) go to registration and obtain instruction sheet
(2) go to the Business Support office to see if the forms that I sent in to the New York office had actually been passed along to the office here in Cairo
(3) I then had to leave my passport for a few days
(4 )then come pick it up
(5) take additional form to the Visa Services office to have someone sign and verify that I am registered for class
(6) take said form to a third office for verification that I have paid
(7) return all red tape to Business Support Office
(8) wait for visa ~ 2 weeks
(9) go pick it up.

Step 9 is yet to be completed. But I must say it seemed like it would have been simpler for everyone if the necessary people had come to the registration fair and sat at the tables the students had to circle around anyway rather then requiring several hundred students to run the Indy 500 around the campus!

Nonetheless, like the rest of this wonderfully Eastern and Western city, bursting at the seams with activity and relentlessly developing even amidst rubble and general decay, the system somehow manages to function in spite of itself.