Earthquake!

I woke up early this morning to do some homework before class, and as I was sitting in my bed squinting, sleepy-eyed, into the morning sun that was streaming through my sliding glass doors, I noticed that Cairo was refusing to stay in one place. I put on my glasses and peered out, and everything was still shaking a bit, and then I felt the whole tower (I live on the 20th floor) swaying. For a moment, I thought perhaps it was the people who live above us moving around in unison, as we have concluded through highly scientific comparative analyses of the way they walk that at least two of them are quite large. But no, I thought, that wouldn't make the whole building sway--would it?

It wasn't until I peered into my open closet and saw all the clothes on hangers swaying in unison in the reverse direction of the rest of the building that we really were having an earthquake. My internet is being spotty so I haven't been able to identify a news source for confirmation, but my teacher confirmed it at school today. She told me that it was announced on the radio but unable to be covered in print due to a government ba on printing articles about earthquakes. Apparently after the disastrous earthquake in 1992 much of the population slept outside, filling the streets with pallets and bodies and bringing all traffic to a standstill as well as causing safety and sanitation problems. Afraid of a repeat, the government forbade covering earthquakes in the media -- or so my teacher said.

Insha'allah!

You can't go 10 minutes in Cairo without hearing the phrase "Insha'allah" or "God-willing." (It literally means "if it is the will of God"). If you mention anything in the future, or with an uncertain outcome, Insha'allah better trail that answer or you run the risk of jinxing yourself, a bit like refusing to knock on wood.

This article from the International Herald Tribune writes about the ubiquitous word and its cultural significance. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/20inshallah.php?page=1

My favorite excerpts are:

Egyptians have always been religious, from Pharaonic times to the present. Any guidebook to Egypt alerts tourists to Egyptians' frequent use of inshallah in discussing future events, a signal of their deep faith and belief that all events occur, or don't occur, at God's will. "See you tomorrow," is almost always followed by a smile and, "inshallah."

But there has been inshallah creep, to the extreme. It is now attached to the answer for any question, past, present and future. What's your name, for example, might be answered, "Muhammad, inshallah."

"I say to them, 'You are already Muhammad or you are going to be Muhammad?' " said Attiat el-Abnoudy, a documentary filmmaker in Cairo.

... (The article goes on to explain the rising importance of religious symbols to both the pious and the secularized people, as Islam becomes ever-more the cornerstone of cultural identity)...

But it is not just about faith in the celestial, that has people invoking God. It is also, at least for some, a lack of faith in the earthbound rulers who run the place. People here are tired — of the rising prices and the eroding wages, of the traffic, of the corruption, of the sense that it is every man for himself.

"In this place, when something works, or you want something to work, you thank God, because it's certainly not the government who is going to help you," said Sherif Issa, 48, a taxi driver in Cairo with a nicotine-stained mustache and a fair size belly. "It's because everything is going in the wrong direction — who can we look up to except God?"

The Vagina Monologues--for Egypt

The Christian Science Monitor recently spotlighted a project put on by a club at AUC to highlight some of the challenges women in Egypt face. Over the past two years, The Bussy Project

"has collected stories from Egyptian women about some of the country's most taboo topics, including street harassment, sexual abuse, divorce, female circumcision, and the confusion that arises in a culture that discourages male-female interaction but makes women's primary social responsibilities marriage and childbearing."

I have mentioned street harassment in previous postings. It is virtually impossible to walk anywhere without having men mumble comments into your ear as you walk past or shout things at you from the other side of the street. These range from "Wow! Wow! Wow! Niiiice!""and "You come with me? I give you 100 pound." I have been told by native speakers that some of the Arabic comments are quite a bit dirtier--I suppose that is one instance in which the language barrier is quite welcome.

I know that foreign women are subject to a bit more harassment than average as we don't blend in and therefore attract more attention, but this problem is by no means limited to ex-pats. However, I was surprised to see it listed here as most Egyptians pretend that it does not exist, or that wearing a head-scarf proves your respectability and eliminates the harrasment. This is not the case, and I'm impressed that this project calls a spade a spade in the face of a lot of cultural pressure to ignore the situation or blame women for creating the problem by being sexually tempting.

The article states:

Project participants say they are tired of women's issues being ignored or pushed aside in Egypt, but are also upset at the way that many in the West think about Arab and Muslim women.

"I'm passive, weak, uneducated, veiled from head to toe, one of his four wives, work in the kitchen all day," says "Muslim Woman." "That's what you think, right?"

"My liberation won't come from the one who has oppressed me – bringing me democracy?" retorts her companion on the stage. "You think you're really gonna send Condi to tell me how to be free?"

While the directors cite The Vagina Monologues as their inspiration, the use of character names like "Muslim Woman" reminds me a lot of the concept behind the Broadway show Avenue Q, with it's confrontation of stereotypes in character names like "Christmas Eve" and "Princeton," and songs with titles like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist."

Most importantly, though, in a country where 44 percent of the women are illiterate and 90 percent of married women have experienced some form of female circumcision/genital mutilation, feminists still have a lot of progress to make. It's good to see them finding a voice, and great to see international coverage of that fact.

The original article is here.

Sandstorm!

We are having a sandstorm! I would like to post a picture of it but you can't really see anything because it is at night. The wind is blowing so hard that it blew the door of Sarah's bedroom open and wind came gusting through the house, producing a high-pitched screaming through all the cracks--it's still whistling eerily through all the windows. The entire apartment is shaking and vibrating and we keep hearing things knock around outside. Visibility is terrible--normally I can see almost to the edge of Cairo, but today I can barely see across the Nile, which is only about 200 meters from our building!

If it is still going on in the morning, which I think is unlikely (although I am not intimately familiar with sandstorms) I will take a photo!

Interesting slant on the Lebanese peace deal

When we were in Lebanon over spring break, the country was clearly not at ease. The downtown area was breathtakingly beautiful--but disconcertingly deserted because of Hezbollah protests outside of the nearby Parliament buildings. The protests had become merely empty tents as they had been going on for 16 months, and the actual people had returned to their lives. The country had been without a president for some time, and when the next one would be elected was unclear.

The recent wave of violence began about one week after we returned to Egypt. No one could have predicted if, or when, it would occur; hence the country's anxiety for the past 16 months. The political standoff was resolved by a recent agreement in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

A continuing bone of contention between Hezbollah, which began as a resistance organization/militia during the civil war, and the Lebanese government is Hezbollah's continued refusal to disarm despite the conclusion of the civil war in 1990.

The stipulations of the Doha agreement underscore just how tightly the Lebanese government's hands are tied when it comes to controlling Hezbollah, the largest Shiite Muslim political party. Hezbollah has been given the power to veto acts that would even suggest that they disarm, among other concessions.

Hezbollah (see photo of flag) riles against its classification as "terrorist group" by the US, Australian, and UK governments (though, interestingly, not by the European Union), claiming itself to be a legitimate political party. But they will never be legitimate, and Lebanon will continue hurting from their influence, for as long as they use violence as a trump card for enforcing their agenda, even when some policies are fairly and democratically thwarted through an accountable political process.

For a sign of the way US global influence is eroding, skim this article from Lebanon's Daily Star on the peace deal and its lament for Egypt's declining status--which it credits directly to Egypt's close ties to the US.

The discouragingly visionary word of the day

My Gmail has a small bar at the top that shows headlines and other trivia. Occasionally it displays a "Word of the Day." Today's word:

Potemkin village | An impressive facade or display that hides an undesirable fact or state; a false front.

As in:

Unless U.S. imperial overstretch is acknowledged and corrected, the United States may someday soon find that it has become a Potemkin village superpower -- with a facade of military strength concealing a core of economic weakness.

-- Christopher Layne
"Why the Gulf War Was Not in the National Interest"
The Atlantic, July 1991

If only we learned from the past.

On the Bright Side

I recently affirmed that I won't be able to return to Princeton for Reunions, a huge celebratory weekend when all alumni classes hold a reunion on campus at the same time. While the multiples of 5 are still the "biggest" reunions, every class holds a well-attended reunion every year--it's one of the best things about being a Princeton alumnus. (Note to inquiring minds: Rotary asks its scholars not to go home during the scholarship period; plus, the plane ticket alone would take a substantial chunk of the money I'm planning to use for the remainder of my stay. Mish momken, not possible, as we say in Arabic.)

Last week, I was consoling myself about my imminent absence by the fact that I had gained roughly in the neighborhood of 10 pounds due to my inability to cook for myself and the nullibicity of the concepts of "diet" "light" "low-fat," etc. in Egypt. In fact, the motto here is more like: If the dish is already sweet, add 1 tablespoon sugar; if it's not sweet, add a cup. (For a while I was thrilled to discover something called "Frapaccino Light" at a cafe and got one every day...until I realized that it's opposite was "Frapaccino Strong" and I was just getting a low-caffeine version of the beverage.)

However, I was quite pleased to note today that I have probably lost about 5 of those pounds. Unfortunately that is because I have had some nasty combination of food poisoning and the flu for the past 5 days and today is the first day I've been able to retain nourishment. Every cloud has a silver lining though, right?

Teetotaling at the Hyatt

...and tipsy fish in the Nile?

This article offers a glimpse into some of the Islamic-Western tensions at play in many of Egypt's political decisions and social fabric. To really understand the significance of this decision, you need to know that most Cairenes who can afford to do so socialize--at least some of the time--in hotel bars and restaurants. So it isn't just Western tourists who are affected--it's also the (mostly upper-class and Westernized) Cairenes who have a culture of going out and socializing in ways similar to those in the United States.

Particularly important is the way conservative (some might say "Fundamentalist" Islam is spread by wealthy Saudi Arabians whose money gives them undue influence in other countries--it works the same way in Southeast Asia (where fundamentalist Islam is growing the fastest) because Saudis fund schools there where there might otherwise be none, and use them as ways to convert/expose the public to their radical (though rapidly becoming mainstream) version of Islam.

The (succinct) article is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7415495.stm

Otherwise, I'm taking spring final exams and preparing to move out of the dorm and into my new apartment!

Egypt moments

Tonight, we decided to be good students and do homework...so we decided to order in food, because going out to dinner takes a lot of time (and we can't cook because our dorms don't have kitchens). Jillian called McDonald's.

Jillian: I'd like a chicken sandwich
McD: I'm sorry, chicken sandwich finished
Jillian: You don't have chicken sandwiches?
McD: No not tonight, only double chicken sandwich.
Jillian: Isn't a double chicken sandwich just two chicken sandwiches together?
McD: Yes.
Jillian: So can you just make it with one chicken instead of two?
McD: I'm sorry, this is not possible.
Jillian: But I just want a chicken sandwich.
McD: Chicken sandwich not available.
Jillian: Ok, I'll have the double chicken sandwich.
McD: You are welcome to McDonalds.

My friend Alex wanted to see a movie recommended to him by a friend. He called the cinema to find out what times the movie was playing. They told him it was playing that night at 9:00 and 10:30, but when he arrived at the cinema to purchase tickets, they told him that it hadn't been showing for a week!

We were headed to the British club for an ex-pat meet and greet. We knew that the British club was about 5 minutes away in Mohandiseen, but we didn't know its exact location. We asked a taxi driver whether he knew the location of the British club; he said yes, so we got in. After 20 minutes of driving around, he turned around to inform us that the British Club is not, in fact, in Mohandiseen, and that he was very sorry but he did not know where it was.

Tonight I was having shisha at a cafe with Alex, and I needed new coals, so I said "Excuse me" in Arabic to a man inside the cafe. He told me that he did not deal with Americans and that we were not welcome here. Alex asked him why, and he said "Because they are devils!" I am pretty sure, though, that he was wearing Nike shoes and a polo shirt. We weren't really sure how to respond since we had been sitting ther efor a while and would have needed to pay before walking off, so we just asked someone else and it wasn't an issue. Still, though, that is the most blatant anti-Americanism I've run into yet. (NB: That is atypical...most Egyptians, while usually game for a good round of Bush-bashing, are very friendly to Americans.)

In America, people find a way to trace most problems to the usual scapegoats like the Catholic church. Here, it is "The Jew" and "The Bush." A man who we met during our first two weeks told us over the course of our dinner conversation that "Israel and the Jews orchestrated 9/11. They want to reflect on the Muslims badness. I tell you, not a single Jewish person died in 9/11. They knew! They planned it!" I tried to tell him that you can't throw a penny in the financial district without hitting a Jewish person, but he was unconvinced.

We noted with excitement on the bus home from school that a Starbucks is opening in our neighborhood soon (although probably not soon enough for us to enjoy it--much to the benefit of our pocketbooks and waistlines.) One of our Egyptian friends on the bus exclaimed "No! You should never go to Starbucks!" Puzzled, we asked why. "It is owned by the Jews! It is from Israel!" I don't think she found Jillian's explanation that it originated in Seattle persuasive!

Funny things like this happen all the time. The perfume salesman doesn't carry my brand "but might if I come back next week." The cell phone store doesn't sell pink phones but "will try to get one if I come back tomorrow." They mean it, too! In a lot of places if they don't have what you're looking for, all you need to do is ask and then wait a day. And you can get everything, I mean everything delivered.

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.