Sunset

I am poised here in the middle of my month long vacation. I have never had a vacation in Egypt before. Studying and working have been my life here, so breathing in the extremely polluted air of Cairo has never tasted so sweet as now, when I have no obligations but enjoying her and showing off her charms to people I love.

Instead of feeling restless or out of place like I half-expected taking such a long break from my obligations and routine, I feel a sort of deep contentment and sense of belonging. It seems like I'm existing in a long exhalation, a sunset moment of my life.


This month, but more importantly, this world, seem to be a sunset, the boundary between light and dark, wakefulness and sleep, the sun and the stars, productiveness and rest, this world and the next, reality and dreams. In that moment when the sun goes down, when you look for that green flash that is the fleetingness of our life, maybe seen, maybe not, here and then gone, withered like the green grass, things just seem to make sense, the world seems to just shimmer in the beauty of its transience, a transient beauty which somehow points to eternity. But you can't take up residence, or stay or belong in the instant of the sunset, as much as it seems to promise a beautiful eternity.

We pull up into the "new desert" in our converted jeep/van just in time for the sunset. It is complete silence out here, except for what noise we can make and maybe hear from the other campsites. The instinct of our new friend, like most Cairenes, is to blast music. That idea is abandoned. We look around us, the pink-red-orange sky is in the background, white, ridiculous looking rock formations that have survived the intense erosion of the desert wind. Most of them look like mushrooms or fake clouds or snow. This is really weird, let me tell you. The Christmas in the desert picture to the right pictures us pretending we were in snow (kind of convincing right). But anyway, suffice to say, watching the sunset while peeing behind white mushroomy rock formations and gathering other people's discarded firewood and chasing desert lizzards was a pretty weird vacation, but once again it amazed me with the variety and beauty but also transient nature of this world. My friend asked, "I wonder if in thousands of years the rock that we are now walking on will be new mushroom things?"

And even the pyramids. Yes they've been here thousands of years, but they're run down and empty and they couldn't keep anyone alive for eternity. Khufu's barge was left under the pyramids, ready to assemble for the passage to the afterlife. A mere fifty years ago or so, archeaologists finally assembled it to show to tourists, it never made it to the afterlife.

We climb the minaret of Ibn Tulun mosque at sunset and we see the whole brightly colored city of Cairo fading fast in front of us in contrast to the bright orange sunset clouds. Flocks of pigeons and doves are circling among the hundreds of other minarets and highrise apartment buildings with children dangling power cords off the roofs and schools and restaurants that make up life here. Here on top of this city, in the middle of this city, in this moment of sunset, I feel a continuity and a contentment. Somehow an acceptance of the fleeting nature of life, and the inability to repeat a single instant, and the utter unpredictability of the colors of this sunset that is life, but still trusting that you will be taken care of even more so than those pigeons, gives you a deep feeling of rootedness.

I ride a train to Alexandria watching the sunset over the rich Nile fields, going to the Christmas concert of one of my former students. I'm having an approximately ten hour conversation with one of my good friends who's visiting here. The concepts of hope and faith and the uncomfortable, unsafeness of the gospel are resurfacing just when I need to hear them.

I've said goodbye to so many people in the last year or so and yet these people seem to resurface. Visiting me in Cairo during this month are my family, one friend from home, one friend from college, and three friends from studying abroad. How could I know this?

My whole life, as a sunset, seems to be reflecting and refracting colors of eternity, but it is all existing in one moment, and in a green flash, like the grass, it will be gone. I can hope in only something more permanent than this sunset world.

"All men are like the grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord stands forever."

1 Peter 1:24-5

What is the meaning of the word 'random'?

Its approximately 2:30 in the morning. Its freezing. I have just taken a joyride through Cairo with my friend A and his friend. We are now ascending the stairs to said friend's house. I turn to A and say, "do you know the word random?"
"What is the meaning of the word random?" he asks
Alissa chimes in, "like without plan."
"No organization, everything is just crazy. My life is very random."
He kinda laughs nervously...(as he should have given the fact we were about to be force fed date desserts and basically held hostage in a suburban apartment belonging to a sketchy police officer armed with a fishing knife, far from home in the middle of the night).

So in case you can't tell from my blogs so far, life in Cairo, particularly my life in Cairo, is freakin RANDOM. For instance, just this minute, I found out that probably the most famous contemporary Egyptian author (wrote The Yacoubian Building, Chicago) is running a dentist office with a window directly across from our window. His office staff has seen me and my roommate doing Bollywood Burn exercise videos half naked. We have wondered about him keeping his office hours around 1 AM.

This randomness of my life in Cairo to the point of irony has come out more during this long Aeed weekend since I am free from any kind of my regular routine, and holidays are always just weird.

So Friday night I headed to Old Islamic Cairo (somewhat near our apartment) with my roommate to the engagement party of the sister of our first friend from our second time in Cairo (the driver who picked us up at the airport). So we drive around these crazy alleyways, observing sheep tied to the roof of a taxi, my roommate pretty much so sick she's dead. We end up sitting in some chairs belonging to a coffee shop against the boundary wall of the Ibn Tulun mosque (one of the oldest mosques in Cairo) and wait for random 13ish year old cousin of our friend to come fetch us. We end up going up to their house (our friend is actually at the coiffeur) and after seeing some sort of pornographic materials on TV with the women and children and one man, we are escorted into a bedroom to eat (while they are all fasting). We then make our way to the party hall, where we proceed to wait a couple hours, killing our time trying to name Egyptian pop singers, talking to the surprisingly very respectful little boys of the family about school and the random pictures of this old fat man plastered on all the walls, while Alissa looks the color of leben sukhen (hot milk) and is staring at a tile on the floor. The beautiful bride finally gets there amongst much ululation, then we are ushered out to see our friend, he realizes Alissa's sick, and takes us down the winding road past the ancient mosque to get a cab. Random.

Saturday morning I spent seeing the Nilometer (an ancient roman Nile level measurer) and laying on a patch of grass with my friend F and her sister. I somehow sort of half-successfully explained 9-11 and the consequent American change in opinion towards Arabs in Arabic to someone who had never heard of it. I also taught two Egyptian women how to duck-call with pieces of grass, that finding a four-leaf clover was lucky, what a roly-poly was, and how to play "down by the banks." They taught me the Egyptian version of "down by the banks" and heads up seven up, and that I should NEVER EVER EVER touch a roly-poly or ANY kind of insect.

After this, I head to church in Maadi, where I watch the lighting of the advent calendar and sing some Christmasy songs, and discuss the angel tree. Then we head to our family in Maasara. We end up watching Beauty and the Beast dubbed over in Arabic, then this weird Egyptian soap opera set in southern California with some sort of prison escape plot. We learn that part of our Egyptian family is leaving for America on Wednesday. WEDNESDAY!

My friend M calls because he NEEDS to talk to me. I rush home in the morning to meet him, and hear his story of woe. His ex-fiance called him (they haven't talked in months) and told him that she was on her lesser pilgrimage to Mecca and she prayed for him the whole time, and she dreamed about him and she knows they will always love each other but she now wears Niqab (the thing that covers everything but the eyes) and wants to be with God all the time, so she knows they can't be together. He wants to tell her everything, all the suffering I've seen him go through these last months being depressed without her, but doesn't know if he should, and he can't ever be with a woman wearing Niq'ab, even if she is the best in the world. He also informs me that tonight is "Hash Feast."

Then back to Maasara to translate between our Egyptian family and my roommate's family where we are urged to eat more and more chicken and sweet potatoes with sugar. Among the constant mentionings of Mama Egyptian and Mama American and Baba Egyptian and Baba American all being together, our translation skills were not that necessary.

Then Alissa and I head downtown to meet my friend A who appears to not actually be coming. So we do a little shopping, make some friends with some sweet girls in the shops, get creeped out by the men in the shops, and head to the cafe where we had tea the first week we were in Cairo and have gone back to ever since. There is a sense of coming full circle as she orders Sahlab (a traditional winter drink involving coconut) and I get warm tea with milk. Its cold. We're about to leave, A finally comes, and the joy ride around Cairo begins, Madonna and the Eagles on the stereo. This culminates in the weird parking lot and suburban apartment as well as a strange car chase involving mistaken identity, then an excuse about picking a mother up from the airport at 3:30 AM (at which time Cairo is still completely awake) which allowed us to escape to a taxi.

I get home and its time for morning prayer. Today is Aeed al-Adha. The slaughter day. This means at sunrise there is a huge community prayer. My roommate, her family, and I, head to a mosque far from our house, fully Islamically veiled, although clearly not convincing anyone that we're Egyptian. We end up early, so we go into a donut shop! Haha. We then situate ourselves multiple times around the mosque of Mustafa Mahmoud. Thousands and thousands of people flood the street in greater and greater numbers as the sky pinkens and lightens. Balloons and plastic to kneel on are the sales items of the day. After an hour of call to prayer, one cycle through the stations of prayer with a collective murmur of Allahu Akbar is simultaneously made by thousands at this mosque alone (on this day gender separation is too difficult, so families can all stay together). And then its over, a collective shout of celebration is issued, and the feast has begun! Candies fly in the air, we flee to a side street and catch a taxi.

Ten minutes later I'm in a 5 star resort hotel with my friend's parents, munching on the open buffet, being offered coffee or tea from a young man named Mohamed in a black vest and name tag. I'm looking out the panoramic windows over the Nile, and discussing social research and non-profit organizations, slipping into the comfort of what feels like a past life in another world.

Twenty minutes after this meal I'm watching the clean up of the blood in front of a garage on our street following the animal sacrifice. Twenty minutes after this, I'm warm in my bed contemplating what meaning I can take from the utter lack of continuity that is my life.

Aeed el Adha vs. American Christmas

The sheep, and occasional massive cows have taken over the streets.

The makeshift pens full of docile furry, animals with pink spray-painted stripes have been erected in almost every alleyway. Anyone will tell you, the smell of Cairo has gotten much worse this month, for this reason and because its black cloud of air pollution season (the smog literally rolls over and coats the city with this weird yellow dry fog).

A few days ago, in one of these pens in the middle of a major street, I saw a sheep sneeze, twice (this is probably the most adorable thing I have ever seen an animal do, and I felt the need to utter, "bless you" under my breath as I let out a little laugh, causing more people to think foreigners are nuts). Tonight I saw three live sheep tied to the top of the fully occupied moving taxi in front of my taxi, driving down a major street. One little kharoof (sheep in arabic) was looking straight back into my eyes, I swear.

These sheep are remarkably calm for their impending bloody mass slaughter. If they had any wits about them they would probably notice that every year sheep are taken; Maybe because none ever return, the sheep all believe their comrades have gone somewhere much more wonderful. Maybe the sheep consider it an honor to be chosen for the sacrifice of Aeed el-Adha.

Aeed el-Adha is the holiday commemorating Abraham's almost-sacrifice of his son. In the Judeo-Christian story, the son is Isaac. In the Islamic story, the son is Ishmael. The story is almost exactly the same. The tortured father climbs the mountain with his son, and is about to sacrifice him as God has requested, when God provides a sheep instead. In commemoration, every year, Muslims who can afford to should slaughter an animal. I haven't seen this day in Egypt yet, this is coming up on Monday supposedly...

As sheep and cows and their smell are ubiquitous throughout Egyptian society right now, the rich foreigner Island of Zamalak is a different story (literal Island, in the middle of the Nile, with a huge proportion of ex-pats). The smell and sight of animals hasn't quite reached this place, no one wants that there. Instead, the Christmas stores have opened. You know those creepy stores that somehow make a living only selling Christmas paraphernalia? Those actually exist in Egypt, in Zamalek. They have Christmas trees sitting out on the sidewalks. My roommate and I, perhaps a little guiltily, kinda really wanted a Christmas tree. So we took a taxi, got a fake collapsible scrawny little tree and lights for around $15, and then headed back home. We made three trips to the paper man to get green paper, then pink and blue and yellow paper and markers, then white paper. Then we decorated. We listened to Christmas music and cut out colored shapes for our tree and for our Christmas cards.

I now walk into our apartment to the sight of twinkling lights among convincing dark green plastic branches, and pomegranate like construction paper ornaments.

Being in Egypt has brought out a lot of feelings about holidays almost more than anything. Maybe this is because holidays are such a visible expression of culture and so socially engrained into our understanding of the passing of time. I have celebrated holidays here with more excitement and passion and thoughtfulness than I have had regarding them in a long time. Now as I see these two holidays, Aeed el Adha and Christmas, coinciding with each other, I can't help but be intrigued by the images.

While walking through Maasara at night, we encountered a block of the city near our family's house where the power was completely out. This meant that on the eve of Aeed al-Adha, the streets were plunged in pitch-darkness. We could hear the sounds of people and animals crowding and moving around us, but couldn't see them until they were practically in our face. This whole feeling of a living, breathing unseen city around us on the eve of a holiday was amazing. As we walked down the main street, we saw about one candle in each shop lining the road. The pharmacy, the supermarket, the cafe (where the backgammon game had been centered around this tiny candle). The tiny lights in the dark, and the coldest night I've had in Egypt yet, made sure that al-Adha eve and Christmas eve were now further tangled up in my mind.

Merriness and jolliness and excessive amounts of light and cookies and construction paper crafts don't really make any sense for Christmas if you think about it. What makes more sense to me are these pens of sheep, dwelling in their filth, stinking up the streets, about to be slaughtered, and the few solitary candles in the pitch-black darkness.

On Christmas day the trinity had decided it was best that Jesus squeeze himself through a birth canal, come out squirming, bloody and screaming into a pile of hay or some manure perhaps amid a bunch of stinky animals and the woman's terrified new husband.

My Egyptian sister asked me, on the eve of the sacrifice, "Do you know why the Muslims kill the animals?"
It told her, "yes because of Abraham and his son."
She tells me, "yes, you're clever! But do you know what else?"
"What else?" I ask.
"Its because of Jesus. Because he died, like a sheep also, to give us all life." And once again I am more surprised than I probably should be that she sees the same connections that I do.

And so, 'tis the season... for the adorable stinky sheep of Cairo.