Spring Break

We're on Spring Break. I will write more details later, as we have thus far been to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and are now in Israel before making our way back to Cairo. All is well here in Jerusalem. We just had the most interesting shisha chat with three Palestinians who are also Israeli citizens. Did you know that Jewish and Palestinian children, even if they are all Israeli, still go to separate public schools? Possibly changing this policy would do wonders for the future of the country...

More to come when I am back at home with my own internet and not borrowing wi-fi here and there from various hostels and kind strangers.

Two articles from the NY Times

featuring Cairo. One on the political situation and the significance of the recent riots (not only are the people afraid of the government...these days the government is also afraid of the people)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/world/middleeast/07egypt.html

And an article about the wonderful absurdity of living in Cairo, and the way that this city, as I have written before, manages improbably to function in spite of itself:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/world/middleeast/14cairo.html

I have somehow, through my postings, made my father doubt whether he wants to vist Egypt. I have made a note to myself to write more about all the things that I love in this city. I suppose, just like a newspaper, the annoying and disturbing seem more worthy of comment than "things still good."

While, in similar fashion, neither of these articles is a particularly glowing review of Cairo, both, I think, demonstrate the triumphantly dogged pragmatism of Cairenes. Cairo is loud, and dirty, and vexing in many ways, but this is what makes it such a real place to spend time. To live here is to live a gloriously unsterile existence, where one is confronted by beggars and crippled people and trash and weddings and funerals and barbers and car accidents and noise and all other components of human existence every minute of every day. There is no fluid infrastructure to sweep the unpalatable, the unsanitary, the raucous, out of the way.

This is precisely why ex-pats can come from England and America and fall in love with something that seems, in its differentness, to be less desirable--to be almost unliveable. When you have been confronted by life in all its terrible, wonderful, difficult, thrilling realness, the street-cleaned suburbs of America start to seem a snow globe by comparison. These very difficulties, and the lifestyle and worldview that Egyptians have formed in response, are what give Cairo its ability to indelibly impact all those who have the intrepid lucidity to come.

The only places in Egypt that aren't crowded

are the polls. Local elections were held yesterday, but almost no one bothers to vote in a country that has elected the same president in a landslide victory for over 25 years.

A friend who works at the US Embassy went to several polling sites to "observe." Observers were not allowed into many of the sites, but were still able to see NDP (the ruling "National Democratic Party") workers literally "cramming" the ballot boxes.

The NDP hands voters a card that allows them to match the faces of candidates with a symbol to represent them so that persons who can't read can still vote. Then people show a handwritten ID card, check the symbols they wish to support, and place their ballots in a central collection box.

The whole thing is really a ridiculous farce, as the NDP announced before the voting occurred that they had received 70% of the votes. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the elections, and my observing friend said that she only saw 3 actual people cast ballots all day. Below is a photo of an elections worker; you can see that it is deserted, and in the foreground you can see the empty glass ballot box:

This is an excellent article that recaps all of the recent unrest both within Cairo and in the textile factories outside of it, and gives the shortest accurate summary that I have seen of the political situation: An excerpt:

Thousands of people, including factory workers, junior office clerks, young people skipping school and political activists, marched through the streets of Mahalla al-Kobra on Sunday evening. Their numbers included those who had always been poor, and those who had watched the rising cost of living in Egypt eat into their modest prosperity.

They wanted to protest against the rising price of bread and demand an increase in their salaries. However hundreds of uniformed policemen and thugs in civilian clothes put paid to the dream of a peaceful protest. Police used tear gas and there were reports of shots being fired. The demonstrators responded by throwing bricks. Some took advantage of the chaos to carry out looting -- two schools went up in flames and computers and air-conditioning units were stolen.

The death toll at the end was at least two people, who were killed when a tear-gas grenade exploded next to them. Around 80 demonstrators were injured, some of them seriously, and police made around 150 arrests.

The street battle in Mahalla al-Kobra, located one and a half hours by car from Cairo, on Sunday evening might be considered normal in other parts of the Middle East. However such scenes are rare in the tightly run regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The government well remembers the bloody bread riots in the 1970s. Then, too, crowds gathered because food prices were rocketing. Hundreds of people died in the unrest. (Emphasis added).

It has been business as usual around Cairo, though, and you would never know that anything is happening elsewhere in the country.

Not much occurred

Aside from a small gathering that quickly dispersed under police pressure in the morning, the hoopla was largely for naught. The only things gathering in Midan Tahrir around noon on Sunday were scores of Egyptian policemen, hopeful foreign would-be journalists, and windy swirls of warm amber khamseen dust.

Interested parties can read more about the strike in the links that follow. The first details what has actually been quite an issue up north, in the Nile Delta, whereas the latter two focus on different strikes occurring now in Cairo:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6333251.stm
http://libcom.org/news/university-strike-egypt-24032008
http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1161673〈=EN

It was a nice excuse for staying home, it seems, as almost none of the Egyptian students came to school. Traffic was also noticably lighter, as the fifteen to forty-five minute ride to school took me only seven.


Here is a picture of AUC's main administrative building from across Midan Tahrir. You can see a Metro sign and the typically heavy traffic and smoggy air. Rumor has it that just breathing in Cairo has the same ill effects as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

Pregnant with anticipation...

I'm not sure if the air is actually abuzz with tension or if it just seems that way because I live in a dorm full of 80 girls, making it easy for us to run from room to room and across the lobby to pass on the latest tidbit or repeat the same story yet again. The top of the list today: today's expected strike in Cairo.

Planned for today is what I have been told will be the largest organized strike in Egypt, ever. Since I arrived at the end of January, the price of food has been steadily increasing. There have been outbreaks of violence in government bread lines because it is so profitable to resell flour (due to the national shortage of wheat) that bakeries often sell what should be feeding Egypt's poor on the black market, meaning that there's usually not enough for those who aren't in the front of the lines.

From what I can gather, today's strike began with the doctors, who are public sector employees in Egypt, and who generally earn around 400 to 700 pounds per month, which is between $80 and $140. Some prices for comparison:

Basket of bread: 3-5 pounds
Can of Coca-Cola: 6 pounds
Taxi ride across Cairo: 25 pounds
Stella, the standard Egyptian Beer: 20-25 pounds per bottle
A pair of ladies' boots: 110 pounds
Cup of coffee: 10 pounds

The primary complaint is not just that salaries are absurdly low--although they are--but rather that the public sector salaries have not been increased despite the government having raised food prices. (Why the price of food, and the price of other neccessities, like cooking oil, has been skyrocketing is a whole other can of worms that has to do with Egypt selling essentials to Israel despite the domestic shortage because it's more profitable for the government).

The strike began with doctors, and now includes the professors at Cairo University (and other public universities), transit workers (the Metro is supposed to be closed) and other public authorities. People have been encouraged not to do anything that the government generally profits from--including using mobile phones (many of the revenues go to state-owned Mobinil).

The dorm has generally been in a tizzy because we aren't sure whether to go to class. While AUC is not participating in the strike, many individual professors have cancelled classes in solidarity and others have said they will not count students absent today if they skip for moral or safety reasons. I say safety reasons because the demonstration and main strike is expected to occur in front of the largest government building--the behemoth Mugamma--in the largest downtown square--Midan Tahrir ("Liberation"). AUC's campus is across the street.

AUC is generally very concerned about our safety. There are at least 6 security guards at our dorm entrance at any given time, we must fill out forms informing them of our whereabouts at all times, etc. We received e-mails from AUC letting us know that school will be open as usual on Sunday, and the school-sponsored shuttle that runs between campus and our dorm is still operating, so it's quite likely that all the worry is unnecessary. Jillian has to give a presentation today and I have to meet with the ALI director, so both of us are obliged to go. Jillian's close friend, who is Egyptian, said he expected things to be peaceful because the demonstration was organized by white-collar employees and is registered with the authorities, but we will nevertheless heed his advice: "Don't get curious." I will let you know what, if anything, goes down.