The Red Sea: Ain Sokhna and St. Anthony's Monastery

 

One Month

My international student's handbook explained to me that "Cairo is not a place to go to 'get away.'" It's true, especially for me and my low level of street smarts and my inability to even remotely blend in. It's very easy here to get in survival mode, to walk straight ahead, one hand on my bag, not making eye contact. To an extent, I follow the rules I've been given; I sit in the back seat of cabs behind the passenger seat when I'm alone, I don't make eye contact with men on the street, I know that people who yell "Welcome to Egypt!" are not welcoming by any sense of the word, and I never, ever, trust that things are "the best price." 

It wears on me sometimes, the hisses and catcalls, the tourist harassment, the man who ran across the street to the museum with us through multiple lanes of traffic and told us about his daughter's wedding only to tell us that the museum was closed for prayers (it wasn't) and try to persuade us to step into his shop down the street (we didn't), the clear reminders, again and again, that this is not where I am from. The hardest part of it all, I think, is to walk down the street without the basic assumption that I can trust anyone.

But there are times when I get into survival mode, not smiling and not starting conversation, when I'm struck by moments of tenderness; not anything out of the common way, they stop me in my tracks when I'm focusing on just walking straight ahead. There is the man who said "Salaam aleikum" to us in the market the other day, amid all of the catcalls and sales pitches. There is my taxi driver the other day who spoke to me in Arabic that was too rapid for me to fully understand--though punctuated occasionally by "no problem!"--about the revolution. There was the couple sitting on a bench on the Nile last week, heads bent together, her feet not touching the ground, a few feet away from laughing groups of friends taking pictures of themselves as the wind  and the sound of the city blew around them. There was the father and his son at the market last week choosing cheerios, the girl asleep in her father's lap in a passing car. 

It's hearing the call to prayer when I'm wandering around lost; it's a cab driver who raises my window when we're going through Tahrir Square, it's a faltering conversation in Arabic that ultimately makes at least some sense to both of us, it's "salaam aleikum." It's remembering that I don't have to be afraid. 

Islamic Cairo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giza

Today

In the first picture of the lecture hall, you can't see me, but I'm at the back.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/34369.aspx

edit: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/34505/Egypt/Politics-/AUC-SCAFs-latest-scapegoat.aspx

"Egypt's Feminists Prepare for a Long Battle"

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/2012117113758961894.html

Two Weeks in Egypt in Twelve Objects

I figured it was time for a more quintessentially Study Abroad post, so I took this picture of some things that I use a lot--hopefully some things that you haven't seen before, even if you were one of the people who watched me pack. 

The news has been hard to read the past few days for so many reasons; I know it's much easier for me to say being here, but I promise, the last thing that you should worry about in terms of Egypt's situation right now is me being safe. I'm part of a hyper-vigilant university apparatus, I know enough of the limitations of my street-smarts to avoid doing anything silly, and I am never at a loss for safety advice by the various people that I meet. I think about you all every day, and I very much hope not to worry you too much.

But anyway, the things: 

1) My journal with pictures and letters and a few rambling entries that are far less eloquent than the letters. It lives right next to my bed along with Orientalism. 

2) Egyptian snack cakes for only one pound (about eighteen cents)! This particular cake is a central part of my afternoon plans.

3) My AUC ID card, which also doubles as a bus pas. Product of two very long days of wandering cluelessly around the AUC campus and standing in various lines. As you can't quite see in this photo, the smile in my ID photo is somewhat strained. But it gets me on my 45-minute to 2-hour commute through downtown to campus every day, for which I am very thankful.

4) A cross from Mexico in 2006--when you put your eye really close, you can see a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe inside. I remember the program leaders saying when they gave them to us that they were a very Catholic gift for a bunch of Lutherans, but it reminds me of travel (and also of liberation theology, which is always a good thing!).

5) Approximately one-dollar boxes of off-brand corn flakes and frosted flakes, which are actually quite good! Also, I can feel somewhat morally superior in choosing them over Cheerios for eight times the price.

6) Apple juice. I don't know how to explain it, but all juice is better here. There's a kind at campus that is literally called "Best Juice"--I'll try to take a picture of mango nectar next time.

7) The program from Aida at the Cairo Opera House. 35 pounds (almost seven dollars) for center seats within the first few rows to hear an Italian opera with Arabic lyrics on the side-screens (before going home to read Edward Said). Fascinating.

8) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Arabic, which I bought from a used book stand at the Cairo Book Fair yesterday. The fulfillment of a long dream...

9) Fig bars, the Egyptian fig newtons, which has made me regret mocking our consumption of fig newtons on every family trip in the history of time.

10) My Arabic book, Al Kitaab (literally, "The Book") 3. I really like being in a place where having the third Arabic textbook is a status symbol. The big swoop on the cover is the number 3.

11) Egyptian money--a five pound bill, two one pound coins, and a half-pound coin. A basic conversion is six pounds to the dollar, though it's easier to just divide by five (also, it makes me thriftier in purchasing decisions). Exceptions to that rule include bragging about thriftiness, when one should always divide by six.

12) My four pound ($0.67--see?) shower gel. "Lemon and mint," it smells a whole lot like Lemon Pledge and helps me wake up when I smell it!

Good afternoon!

Sleep

This is a tweet that I've seen a lot today:

"This is becoming the worst tradition: Wake up, check on previous night's events, find out people were getting killed while you slept. #Egypt"

Arabic has a system of words in which each word has three base letters, the combination of which has a certain meaning, even within different words. For example, root ن و م (n, o, m)* indicates sleep.

Verb, Form One: نام (nam): to sleep, also--to be listless, to be numb
Verb, Form Four: انام (anam): to anesthetize
Verb, Form Six: تنآم (tanam): to pretend to be asleep
Verb, Form Ten: استنام (astanam): to let oneself be lulled to sleep, to trust, to acquiesce
Noun: منام (manam): dream

It's a sad day here, and I'm not sure what to do. So I conjugated verbs.

Good night!

*In case you were looking at the Arabic letters really closely and wondered why I told you the letter و was important to the meaning of all of these words but you couldn't find it in any of the words I listed, vowel ا (a) is substituted for vowel  و (o) for conjugation reasons.