Warm feelings

So last night sitting at a cafe after church, my friend described his first visit to church as "warm feelings."

I love this. Warm, fuzzy feelings but without all the annoying, confusing fuzz. Just warm.

A friend of mine who is also abroad said she heard that November is the hardest month in a year abroad. But as the weather is getting genuinely cold at night, and a winter cozyness is somewhat in the air, I'm feeling some lovely warm feelings.

You all know I love this city, but this city isn't just a city anymore. This city has embraced me, folded me up in her arms. I have found a belonging and a contentment as part of this world that I haven't felt in awhile. But its not the city, its not the crisp air or adorable skinny Egyptian men in their adorable little turtleneck and cable knit sweaters. Its not the smell of roasting carmelized sweet potatoes on the street carts or sitting in a patch of sunlight in Al-Azhar park overlooking a man-made lake, thousands of years of mosques and a crusader fortress before you.

Indeed the warmest feelings that I have felt in awhile was walking to the metro, kicking myself for not having a jacket tonight, shivering and eating ice cream. After six hours straight of pouring my heart and mind as thoroughly as possible into my current seven total amazingly wonderful students, my oldest student, an extremely hard-working mother of two / computer programming teacher wanted to buy me dessert. I got nescafe (mmm fake Egyptian coffee) icecream. Wow.

As she turned into her alleyway to go up to her apartment she of course invited me in even though she had just complained about how she could barely keep her eyes open one more minute. I of course declined, fondly smiled and shook her hand, I'll see her in three days, and I am supremely happy about that. As I freeze to death walking to the metro eating nescafe watered down ice cream with chunks of ice in it, I can't help but think this is the best, happiest ice cream I have ever had. None of this thermostat heated strip mall Golden Spoon crap. I am thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying this, the group of teenage boys attempting to block my path and follow me doesn't even phase me today.

And I am beginning to experience how little contentment has to do with comfort. Or maybe that it does have something to do with it but (forgive my Soc language) its an inverse relationship. The harder that it is for me to get coffee ice cream, true the more I appreciate the coffee ice cream when I get it. But not only that, the anticipation of someday having coffee ice cream is also much more sweet. And not only that, but coffee ice cream has no sweetness in itself.

Here is where the sweetness and the warmth of my life comes from: people. I now have my people. I have old friends, all over the world and here in Cairo. I have students that I haven't seen in months showing up in my life. I actually kissed my male friend on the cheek in the middle of the street in downtown Cairo (talk about scandal) I was so happy to see him when he showed up unexpectedly as a "surprise."

I was sitting in church with my Egyptian "brothers" to my left, they are completely out of their comfort zone but wanting to see how and where we worship, my American "sisters" to my right and in front of me, and our whole congregation singing hymns together in the soft yellow light. I have memories here, I have continuity, I have people here, right here in the pew next to me. And I love them all to death. And we know each other. The hardest part of moving here was feeling like I couldn't trust anyone because I didn't know anyone, and that no one really knew me. But now, over the stretched out minutes of laughter and annoyance and mosque and church and traveling and working, we have built something that I can stand on, that I trust to hold my weight. Warm feelings, not really fuzzy at all, very clear and very warm.

Like the collection of pashminaish scarves I now wear every day. They're not fuzzy and itchy, just warm. But they are the warmest when I just get them back from my friend A borrowing them, or when I somehow manage to wrap them around both my and my roommate's neck in a very awkward two headed scarf monster huddled for warmth kind of way.

Walking around Al-Azhar park with my friend F. She asks me, "how can American people be unhappy? To tell you the truth we think they took all the money, all the beauty, all the power, and even all the ability to help other people. Egypt said they chose religion instead of these things, but we don't even have that, we are getting worse in morals. We -- what's the verb again? -- envy America. The whole country envies the whole country. So how can Americans be unhappy? They have money and food and an easy life." I tell her I think they're lonely, they can be surrounded by people and wealth and still be lonely. She asks why the government doesn't make a law that children stay with their parents when they grow up, then people wouldn't be lonely. I say its not that easy. Its a matter of tradition, not of law, and those things don't change so quickly. Besides, its not about people being there, its an attitude, an attitude of independence and needing to be on your own, even when surrounded by people.

She agrees this might be it but then she has her own idea. "I heard this story that this boy who got all the money in the world, got the girl that he wanted to marry and did everything he wanted with her whenever he wanted, he got everything that he wanted but then he had nothing to look forward to so he committed suicide. He had nothing else to want or work for and so had no point to live. I think Allah knows we need the rules to keep us from taking everything we think we want."

If you gain everything but forfeit your soul, what have you gained? I realize that not getting what I want when I want it has been one of the greatest blessings of my life, as cheesy at it sounds. But its not just that God knows what's best for me, its that God knows that not being able to have exactly what you want sets you free to pursue other things that matter more, and set you free to really see what is around you without always thinking how you can get more, because its not an option. Kudos to those who can moderate themselves, but for me it seems I must put myself somewhere that forces this from me. Here, the lies of needing to be completely self-sufficient and of materialism and taking the easy path can fade away because they aren't possible.

And the ice cream was delicious because, and the unusually warm fall day and the sunlight reflecting off the water was so beautiful because, and the murmuring voices of three girls with the wafting smell of burnt grilled cheese filling up the apartment was the warmest, most amazing sound and smell I could hope for because I know these people. Because I am no longer indifferent to my surroundings, because I have been folded into my life here in an embrace that I love almost just for the reason that its stifling and smelly and awkward, a too familiar strange relative. Because I know that there is not a thing I can do to escape this Egyptian mother bear hug short of my own volition. I nestled myself in here, and materialism and self-sufficiency and self-consciousness and fear of rejection have no place in an Egyptian mother's bear hug.

And I know I go through these ups and downs, feeling like Cairo is giving me a massive bear hug and feeling like Cairo would just give me the boot if I didn't speak such a damn useful language and distract their men from harassing their own women. But for now I am content. I am content being me, with all the privileges and disadvantages that come with being a white girl in this city. Yes people stare at me and yell at me and make judgments based on my every move, but on the bright side there's no way to bring more attention to myself than I already have and I can't control wrong assumptions of those who aren't willing to see or hear me as I truly am, might as well run around in the street, might as well wear bright orange pajama pants with fish on them around the neighborhood, might as well ask random merchants how to cook their crispy bread, might as well show off how much I suck at Arabic. Yes I'm a foreigner, yes I do have some moral standards despite that fact, yes I'm odd, yes I'm a 22 years old girl living in a strange country without her family, yes I'm human, yes I'm happy.

Ilhamdulilah

Genie in a Bottle

I'm listening to Genie in a Bottle while driving through the streets of Cairo in my severely-jaded-from-love friend's new car. The layers of hilarity and irony wash over me and I start uncontrollably giggling in fits and starts. Do you know what a genie is? Its an English corruption of the word jinn, according to Islam, a spirit made of fire by God. These spirits can be good or bad (some are on God's side, some on Satan's, some still neutral). They can shape-shift, tempt and trap good humans, or sometimes they can help. They are invisible spirits, or ghosts as the word is sometimes translated. I think back through the layers of years of my life... (I remember reading a story once, one that's stuck with me, about how people are like onions (this is not Shrek), they have layers of the years of life that they've been through, and all those younger stages of each person are in there a little deeper, but can come out in certain circumstances.)

I'm at the mall with my seventh grade best friend. We're in Claire's, judging each others' choices of hair and jewelry accesories (I would never wear something that clunky), picking out yet another set of matching BFF necklaces (butterflies, half of a broken heart, or flowers this time?) and watching a Britney Spears music video, while discussing the merits of Christina Aguilera vs. Britney Spears. O Christina totally has a better voice! You have to agree!

I'm at a highschool dance. I love dances. I don't usually have a date, but that is definitely not the point. If you have a date, you don't have that kind of nervous anticipation at the beginning of the slow songs, and you don't get to make an idiot of yourself dancing with all your social outcast friends during all the other songs. And they're playing Genie in a bottle! I look to whoever of my best friends is next to me, our eyes light up in mutual recognition of the importance of this song to our young lives, we run as quickly as possible in our heels and miniskirts off the courtyard into the gym, or the cafeteria, the room shaking with Christina's voice. We scream at each other two feet away, "Come, come, come on and let me out!"

Two years ago in Cairo, I'm staring, literally staring at my friend Mohamed's computer screen background. A scantily clad Christina poses for the camera wearing a low cut, tight fitting white dress (the color of innocence, right?), heavy make up, and a giant cross necklace nestled in her bosom. Here we see the picture of Western Christianity, stunning and jarring and appalling to me after a few weeks in this city of newly awakened conservative Islam. I despair a little after seemingly fighting a battle every day to be seen as something different.

I'm sitting in a classroom at Calvin College. Three hours a day of creative writing class. I'm hearing critiques about my story. My story is about a minibus haunted by a jinn in the streets of Cairo. Comments of my colleagues range from, "you need to tone down the "god willing," it gets repetitive" to "this seems completely implausible" to "this is very interesting."

And now, here I am. Mohamed and I have just turned off the bridge into Shara Sitta w Eishreen Julio, and his stereo is pumping a somewhat more raspy and loud version of her voice than I would prefer. He turns to me with that little grin and says, "I love this song so much." He then proceeds to sing along.

So I am riding around in my friend's car on an island in the middle of the Nile, while he quietly sings, "my body's saying let's go, but my heart is saying no! If you want to be with me, baby there's a price to pay. I'm a genie in a bottle, gotta rub me the right way." And while my roommates here are writing their statements of purpose for International Relations and Middle East Studies graduate programs, I know that I am seeing East-West, Muslim-Christian relations all right here within the three minutes of Christina's vocal gymnastics, and I divulge in giggles over the irony, the complexity and the simplicity of it all.

The Islamic religious concept of Jinn has morphed through Arab folklore of thousands of years ago into the concept of a genie (see 1001 Nights). This concept, popularized in America through weird television shows (I Dream of Jeanie) and Disneyizations (Aladdin), comes to Christina's consciousness as a song. And she sings her little Latina-American heart out about how her body (as a supernatural spirit in Islamic belief) is saying lets go, but her heart is saying no.

And my buddy Mohamed (named after the prophet, like at least half of Cairo) grins and says he loves this song! And I love this song! And we both have a lifetime of memories built around this song. Ahh globalization. Sometimes I just love you.

My First Arabic Poem

An Arabic Haiku --

Dedicated to watching the sun sinking over the water, sitting on a bench overlooking the Nile on a fall afternoon --

Il shams agouza khadra
heyya boosy min ilshagara
aynha maful abadan

Translation:

The sun a yellow old woman
she looks at me from the tree
her eyes are closed never

Approximately third grade level haiku (and probably even incorrect arabic), but I am extremely overly proud of this my first forey into arabic literature. Yet another way that my extreme distate for traditional educational methods has led to some creative deviations.

Internal monologue:

Procrastinator Kirsten - but I don't want to study!
Motivator Kirsten - But you want to learn Arabic, you can't learn without even trying.
Procrastinator Kirsten - O yes I can, eventually, and besides I'm finished with school, and its a beautiful day.
Motivator Kirsten - Yes its a beautiful day, perfect for studying.
Procrastinator Kirsten - I want to write a poem about it instead of studying, and there are too many words to study I'l forget them all anyway.
Motivator Kirsten - Ok fine, write a poem in Arabic.

I'm in Love

"Nobody in his right mind would've left her.
I had to be crazy to say goodbye.
Nobody in his right mind would've left her.
Even my heart was smart enough to stay behind."

-George Strait

So I think I'm in love.

Why do I love her you may ask? Her faults and annoyances are overwhelming, and yet that's what love is right? I can't really help it, I love her despite it all.

I'm sitting in Al-Azhar park with my Egyptian 16 year old sister and my roommate. The group of veiled woman near us send a two year old boy over to give me a raw onion, complete with plant.

I'm waiting in the metro station. A father, his young daughter, and very young son are discussing the word water very loudly and close to me. I smile, the daughter smiles shyly back. The little son looks at me expectantly. I ask if he wants water, they say yes, he drinks some, they thank me. They leave. A woman draped in a beautiful red scarf walks up to me and asks me a question I don't understand. We talk a little in Arabic, she's Sudanese and squeezes my hand saying something about how America and Sudan are together and she leaves. I wait a little longer...

I'm sitting in a cafe and my friend F peers earnestly out from under her higab into my eyes and asks,"why did God have to die, I still don't understand?"

I'm walking along the Nile, and tiny white puffy clouds are everywhere, the water is sparkling, the men sit on the benches reading newspapers, families are strolling, and so am I, strolling home.

I'm eating a ridiculously sweet tiny banana that G bought in the suq while I held the baby. I am sitting on the floor of my family's home, G next to me, baby M on the bed, Grandmother and her son on the couch, Arabic swirling around my head that I can half understand now, and I can't even imagine how amazing the whole concept of this banana is, let alone the tiniest atom of the existence of these my mother and brother and sisters and this baby, a tiny, growing human soul, or the fact that I belong here in this home despite all factors that say I don't.

I am leaning against a cement column in the El-Maasara metro station. My muscles are slightly sore and twitchy after carrying an infant through the entire neighborhood. I can see one star through the wires above the tracks. I can feel a genuinely cold breeze through my hair, and I can hear crickets. I love crickets. I close my eyes and imagine I'm in a forest, in my backyard in Grand Rapids, or a summer night camping in the Californian desert, but then all of a sudden I don't want to be any of those places. I want to be here with my beloved, leaning against a cement column, looking at the smoky factory, enfolded in the murmuring voices of some 20 million people belonging to her.

I hear the metro pull up to the station, this sound is a murmuring, rumbling, screeching brakes, no longer grating on my nerves, its deep in my bones.

I step onto the metro. We lurch forward and the murmuring, rumbling, screeching brakes is right below me, even deeper down inside me. I get up to give up my seat for one of the old women that get on about half way through, as all good Cairenes do. The train lurches forward and I fall against this niqabi (eyes showing only)woman. We grab each other's hands, she pushes me back up, and I'm on my way.

I love her spontaneity, I love her helping hands reaching out to catch me, give me a seat, welcome me, show me, I love her secret passageways and ruined buildings, I love her gaudy lights plastered over mosques and churches, I love her bananas and figs and pomegranates, I love her overdone sense of fashion. But really I just love her.

I am in love with this city. And I start singing George Strait knowing that my heart will be staying behind.

America the Beautiful

Remarks of President Elect Barack Obama
Tuesday Nov 4, 2008

"And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."


Obama is the new president of America.

The first black man, and the first American politician I, along with most of America and the world, have been excited about in a long time. I don't know much about politics, and frankly I don't really care most of the time, but something about this man just drives the cynicism and apathy right out of you, just hearing him speak and hearing about him.

My roommate Alissa made an Obama cake (this was a multi-racial cake - chocolate cake with half cinnamon and half coconut frosting), and we all stayed up for good portions of the night (although me probably the smallest portion, I knew Obama would win anyway). So I woke up to the sound of the TV at 6 AM and he won!!!!

Since the first time I have come to Egypt I have wished to God that I was capable of white lies and could just say I was Canadian, every time I utter "Amreeka" as my country, feeling ashamed and wincing a little in anticipation of the reaction. Very few people outright condemn me for being American, but its always kinda like, "O ok, we can like you as a person, but your country sucks, and because you have real elections there, its kinda your fault an idiot is in charge of your nation and has screwed the world over."

But then, the day Obama won I dressed in Red, White and Blue (subconsciously, I didn't realize until I was leaving), I picked up an Obama sticker at my Arabic class and wore it proudly. Every inquiry about my nationality I now relish the opportunity to proudly state that I'm American and discuss Obama. I received congratulations from my entire non-profit office, I was like the celebrity of the day, with a constant cycle of people coming through to tell me how happy they were. I attempted to make my students listen to his speech in class, gave the printout for homework, and read it myself on the metro.

I cried... in the metro, in Cairo... about a political speech....

And I am beginning to see America, somehow more clearly from the outside (this was called the exo-something view in Anthropology). When all the people, none of which are American, in my office, had to tell me how excited they were about Obama as the new American president. When I picked up an Egyptian newspaper with Obama as the cover story (translation of headline: "Obama improves the book of American history"). When I miss all the little things I used to be able to do and get and experience in America. When I hear Obama tell us, "we as a people will get there."

And last night, I went to stay with my adoptive Egyptian family for the night only to be shown the one year immigration visas that a brother, his wife, and their two year old daughter have for the U.S. They are almost bouncing around with excitement, while the mother cries. This Visa means hope. The hope that Obama talks about really is what we are. America is a symbol. It is a chance, an opportunity, an ambition, and and undying hope. We are a child of a country made of immigrants, and we are still hopeful, after how many stories of failure.

This country is still the reason why two Egyptian women in this family sold their personal gold so that they could try this opportunity. The economy in the U.S. sucks, these people know approximately three words of English, they will have no money to start with, and America is not so kind to Middle Easterners, or immigrants at all, but maybe now, things will change, anything seems possible now,and God goes with them.

But then I have hope, and I try to stay excited with them because no one would turn this opportunity down. Money and work and a new life. The American Dream is tugging on them, and this is our strength, "that while we breath, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can."

And tonight I watched American Beauty, about the overwhelming beauty that overflows the most mundane of lives. How we push each other away and live in misery, but I have often thought this as well, there is too much beauty for us to really even see, we would be blinded if we opened up our eyes enough to take in all the light. Our hearts would burst from the beauty of a single moment if we truly comprehended, so we must protect ourselves. And the pain and the beauty of our nation, in all the tiny little details that I miss, its there.

America the Beautiful.

All Hallows and All Saints

So I love Halloween. You don’t have to worry about presents or religious differences or some kind of deep significance to the day. As we learned in anthropology class, this is a ritual of reversal. You purge yourself of the stress of a whole year of working on being a consistent, good person. Every society has this and needs this. Halloween comes along and the children get to be in control for once, demanding “trick or treat” from the adults. Everyone gets to be something completely different from them self. You can wear ridiculous amounts of gaudy make up and the sluttiest clothes you can find, that you would never wear otherwise because that’s obviously not who you are, but hey it might look good.

While the whole year I’m trapped inside this one human existence, its Halloween and you can suddenly free yourself from that a little tiny bit, suddenly there are endless possibilities – seen and unseen. Endless windows to other worlds are opening up before you, like two mirrors facing each other – you can look into one and see reflections smaller and smaller and smaller, and you know that they keep going for an eternity, it is your sight that is the limit. While the whole year I’m supposed to be striving to be good and saintly, this eve before all saints day, I’m supposed to embrace the complete opposite, be demonic and unpredictable. The paradox of human existence is tied up in this holiday: You have this imagination, you can conceive of things you’ve never seen or experienced, you can think of abstract ideas, supernatural and fantastic ideas even, you have empathy and therefore think you can feel what another person is feeling, and yet you have one body, one soul, one mind and one life on earth. It seems a little unfair, but at the same time perfect irony. And this is Halloween.

This holiday is not at all explainable, especially to people who haven’t seen it before (i.e. most Egyptians). It wraps up fall, harvest, rituals of reversal, pagan, Christian, American, fear, the supernatural, empathy, imagination, demonic, angelic, debauchery, excitement, anticipation, childhood, and so many things that can’t be named. And there’s candy, lots and lots of candy.

So Halloween in Egypt has actually been one of my favorite Halloweens of my life, although it only involved a little candy. There’s something almost glowing about your country’s holidays when you’re outside your country. You have all these ideas about what this holiday is like “back home” when you’ve probably actually never experienced it. This has to do with movies, childhood associations, smells, all rolled into this one day. Full moons, cinnamon, pumpkins, windy nights.

So we had a Halloween party, at the insistence of one of my roommates’ (J) coworker’s insistence. This party ended up with me, my three roommates, our family from Maasara, and one of J’s coworkers. So I made spiced cider and chai and bought a massive pumpkin from the market (yes we found a massive pumpkin). Three of us dressed up – as a flight attendant, jazzercise girl, and I was a sort of asian woman. We did well with what we had, although all night my Egyptian sisters were making references to me being dressed like a sheep with little horns because of my hair chopsticks, haha. With our guests there we listened to jazz music, ate a great meal, tried to force them to try the weird drinks we made even though they hate cinnamon, and forced food down their throats for once (talk about a ritual of reversal, we got to be the overbearing, force-feeding hosts for once).

Then we carved the pumpkin! I’m not sure the last time I’ve done that. In the middle of our bedroom we laid down plastic bags , took out our kitchen knife, opened it up, us Americans scooped out the guts, and made a very happy Jafar the Jack O’Lantern while four very confused Egyptian women, and one baby, watched and took pictures. N, J’s co-worker remarks, “no I’ve never seen anything like this before.” It was evidently a very fascinating cultural experience, but no one actually wanted to help with the gut scooping, and that’s the best part. The class divide between the guests was extremely clear, but we all came together, and somehow it worked. We roasted the pumpkin seeds and I realized that I felt the most at home and the most truly festive I have felt about a holiday in a long time. I understand now why ex-pats tend to cling to their culture even more than at home.

So then we had made plans to hang out with my American buddy B from work after this party, so A and I head over to his place down the street. We end up taking a taxi to a French party with a guy from Niger who worked for a French division of a company (still don’t know how to say from Niger in English cause he only knew how to say it in French) and a Canadian girl dressed as a pregnant Egyptian door woman. So evidently they don’t have Halloween in France, but these people knew how to do it. We take the elevator up to the French double doors, behind which salsa music is unmistakable. There were two Bedouins (complete with authentic knives and swords), two girls and a boy draped in silky stuff, we think they were supposed to be a harem of some sort, a Minnie mouse, the son of King Farouk (that was our friend), and then a lot of cool not costumed people (Egyptian fashion designer who was still wearing the gloves from his mother’s full Muslim dress that he was wearing earlier, French guy who followed his girlfriend here, British guy studying Arabic who’s visiting his brother in Qatar soon, the old French man at the party with a kitten in his trench coat).

At the end of the night, looking at my ridiculous “Asian” black liquid eyeliner in the elevator mirror going back up to our apartment I tell A, “my life is just weird. When I get back to America, how am I going to explain this place to myself, let alone other people? What stories am I gonna tell my grandchildren?” (hey do you want to hear about the Halloween I was in Cairo? ) haha. Will I be here for another Halloween some day? Will my grandchildren be living in Cairo for that matter? Will I be sitting in a flat in Cairo and have to teach them about Halloween, as their crazy American emigrant grandmother? Or will I be sitting on a farm in Wisconsin and have to teach them about Halloween in Egypt and how when I was there back in the day, people had never seen a jack o’lantern before? Or will the world even have pumpkins by the time I’m a grandmother? Strange to think about. But this Halloween was one of the best.

And then we come into All Saints’ Day, ready for it. We’ve gotten all that out of our systems and now we want to be like Mother Theresa, caring for the poorest of the poor, glowing with the spirit of God or St. George, slaying the devil with his foot on his throat, or St. Joan of Arc, dressing in armor and leading the armies of France, then bravely roasted to death. As our pastor narrated these stories tonight, I wanted to be among them, not actually have their life, but I want to be myself, following in their footsteps. And I want to be living out the joy and hope and promise that I believe in, grounded in the reality and the personhood that I’ve been given.

So we have a night of possibilities of demonic and supernatural and other worlds opening up before us, and then morning comes and that possibility of truth and goodness and other worlds opening up before us, but now its deeply personal and deeply grounded in our own self, our own relationship with God, our own reality.