University Life

I spent yesterday at Cairo University. I had a lunch date with my new friend from the metro who's a teaching assistant there, and was hoping to run into my other friend who was supposedly working there for the week. I walk over a couple bridges, and start down the long major street which ends with the main door of Gamaa al-Qahirah, the best University in Egypt.

As I start down the street, I notice about three of the armored police trucks. These trucks are slowly spitting out low-level police in black uniforms. As I continue down the street past this massive garden I think, geeze, maybe they're making the police clean up the garden because there's no other work, as I can see another legion or so meandering inside and outside the garden's fences.

As I continue farther down the street the trucks and the people inside the trucks are increasing in density. Its a little uncomfortable being the foreigner walking through what appears to be a military zone. However, I continue. I am about to cross the street to the University's main door and a block of police in full, black riot gear is right in front of me, and oh look, there's another. I walk between the two, find myself a place on a planter's wall, and wait.

I look up at the giant old archways and dome that is an institution of learning, I watch the colorfully clothed young people coming and going, laughing and scowling, alone and in groups, walking and in taxis and in minibuses. Ya there are probably 300 riot police across the street but hey, we're in college, and what do you expect in a police state.

My friend finds me (the only white person, and standing directly under a giant statue). The security demands of me "where are you going?" My escort says I'm her friend, we both smile, and we make it inside. I soak in the impressive architecture and the clean, paved paths and the groomed garden and the English and Arabic labeled direction signs This is a University. You can feel the newness of the school year in a little tiny crispness to the hot air, the eagerness of the students, and the beauty of the campus (evidently its not always this beautiful).

I ask my friend why all the police are here. She explains, "O there is a college here. All the men have what's the word again? (while motioning a pull on her chin) beards yes. And the women all cover themselves. They might make a problem."

I ask, "so the police are here every day?"

"No just at the beginning of the year. And they cannot come inside the University, absolutely not."

OK this seems strange even for Egypt. I learn later that the day before there had been a huge Muslim Brotherhood demonstration at the University. My other friend had been there that day, and booked it out of there ASAP.

So we make our way to the cafeteria, my friend is hungry. On the way, she points out all the booths for the student organizations who are recruiting for the new year. We make it to the cafeteria, order shistawook (chicken kabab) and batatas (potatoes), each of which come in a sandwich. I watch the old potato frier man joke around with some students. We get our food and sit on a bench in front of the tiny university mosque. My friend, I'll call her F, almost forgets to pray, again. Evidently I am a bad influence in the praying department, although this is the last thing I want.

We make our way up through the narrow hallways of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, this is her faculty, and the best department in the best university in Egypt. We make it to her office, she prays, she helps some evidently very confused students (that actually weren't even studying her field), then we make our way to a meeting. This meeting is a panel discussion of the Financial Crisis in America, which is now evidently the Global Financial Crisis, in Arabic. F wishes I knew more about this, or economics in general. I sit through two and a half hours, listening to an Economics lecture, in Arabic, in a very comfortable chair, close to falling asleep several times, but never quite there. I am in a University. The intellectual vibes are just seeping out of the walls. All the bright, motivated students. Young women in beautifully coordinated higabs and outfits, young men in glasses and high-waisted pants. All the ideas and theories floating around. F laments the fact that for the question and answer session they must listen to all the questions and then pretend to answer some instead of doing 1 question, then 1 answer like in America. She asks her own question, which even I can tell is extremely well-informed, detailed, and brilliant, and is so excited that someone answers, although she thinks their answer doesn't help at all.

After the meeting she apologizes for it being so boring, she gets me some nescafe and bake rolls, and we talk a while longer. Eventually I must leave, she walks me to the door. Now even more students are out, most of them sitting on the lawn. I think about how we used to study people in groups on the lawn in high school and middle school. She tells me about how she used to sit on the grass eating kosheri with her friends but now that she's a teacher she absolutely cannot eat kosheri or sit on the grass, everything must be sophisticated and serious, usually she doesn't eat at all. I see the young man sitting cross-legged strumming the guitar that you must see at every University, surrounded by his circle of admirers. And the sun is going down over the giant dome of Cairo University, and I leave this island of academics and hopeful youth. The University seems to be a universal. This is not where I belong anymore though, although sometimes I can fool myself for a few hours. I walk out the gate and make my way home. The police seem to have dissipated.