Maasalaama Masr

I'm nearing the end of my painful week of goodbyes. My roommate commented that more always happens in the first and last week. This is true emotionally, mentally and literally.

I am thinking and feeling and doing more in this last week than probably a normal month here. This is saying a lot.

Last weekend was the last time I saw M. We went to a wedding hall that was super fancy and way out of his price range. I felt ridiculously out of place, but pretty fancy, esp cause I'm sure it looked like I was the fiance instead of the dumpy friend tagging along, that and foreigners are always fancy, no matter who they are.

Early in the week I met my friend F. This involved an unwanted trip to the Cairo University police station because of some punk guys who were annoying me. F insisted I "take my rights" while yelling furiously in Arabic. Evidently the conversation was something about the guys being rich and living in a villa, and F telling them she was poor and that doesn't make any difference, they're still acting wrongly. I kept saying, "there's no problem!" and finally got to say I didn't want them to go to prison or anything to happen except them to stop talking to foreigners forever (or something like that in Arabic). They promised. Everyone left intact.

F told me a conversion story of a girl who read the Song of Songs loudly in the streets and then was convinced that it was inappropriate because a man propositioned her for sex right there. She went to her roof in a rain storm to ask God for an answer and received only the call to prayer at dawn saying, "God is the greatest" three times. She became a Muslim. This led to a discussion of how a holy book could discuss sex in such detail... ya not sure the Christian theologians have a great answer for that yet, but at the same time, y shouldn't it?

After eating pizza, and chocolate cake, and ice-cream, and her offering me money in case I needed it to travel, we said our goodbyes. Sucks.

Thursday involved work goodbyes. I got a nice certificate and engraved decorative bowl. We had a nice faluca ride and I gave all my interns a hug and walked away quickly so they couldn't see the tears coming. I got quite attached to them, esp my Danish guys.

Then Thursday night involved my last night hanging out with A, my best guy friend now that M is engaged. This involved his favorite expression: "O Kirsten, you're going to hell" HAHAHHAAA, with further description of the fire that will be all over my body and how I need to fear hell. Strangely, that actually did make me think about what it would be like in hell and because I am mortal I should stop taking the joys of life so much for granted, like sitting on a bench with a friend, not surrounded by fire, but a cool breeze, that is nice.

Friday involved shopping and then goodbyes to the guys I used to work with when I was a teacher. This is A and O and T (the new friend I met through them). We went to the outdoor cafe we went to like every week at least last summer. I like this going full circle thing, the weather was perfect for it again, the same people, but we've all changed in ten months. The end of an era.

Saturday it was foreigner time. We sat in Al-Azhar park. My roommates and our guy friends. We all were here together two years ago, and we're all back. In that circle sitting in the grass perched above old Islamic Cairo I saw a glimpse of what I think Christian community should be. Sharing questions and answers, listening and talking and enjoying just being together. I will miss them all.

And as I've been nervous these last two weeks, not really sleeping, I go today to say the worst goodbye of all, my family here. Guilt inducing tears have been flowing for at least a month, and this will just be the most horrible day of my life I somehow anticipate. I want to see them, but not if they're being miserable on my account.

SO Maasalaaama Masr (goodbye Egypt) and I hope to see you again soon. I'm tired of being elbowed out of the metro, of being assessed up and down by vicious teenage girls and sketchy old men, being separated from nature or any sense of calm and quiet, but at the same time I do love you, and you are still beautiful. I will miss you.

Jerusalem

So Jerusalem, we went. The things that this city has meant are innumerable and mind-boggling. I took a five day weekend and trekked across endless unpaved desert to reach this place for about two and a half days.

Twenty four hours after departing, we arrived. After four bus rides and a five hour layover in an Israeli beach town which seemed surprisingly similar to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but with Hebrew, conversations with various Jewish young people from the 13 year old Canadian and British girls going to the mall to the helpful college graduates to the "free-spirit" on the path to self-discovery through meeting people infinitely shallower than him at bars, we arrived at the Jaffa gate to the old walled city of Jerusalem.

In the slightly hazy, rainy early evening we found our way to our hostels. C and I were staying on top of a fruit market at the "Palm Hostel." This place involved no keys, no towels, and no clean sheets, but free tea with mint and endless rotations of cool dormmates. C developed a fancy for an Australian reading an anthology of American literature ("The Scawlet Letta kinna drags awn a bit.") while I myself fell for the German with partially bleached dreadlocks from the moment he woke up and hit his head on the bunk above him. C and I made a pact that if either of us ended up like the thirty-year-old married couple staying in the hostel dorms, there needed to be an intervention.

So Good Friday in Jerusalem dawned on us intrepid travelers and we decided to start out with some shopping in case the Sabbath cramped our style. After that was handled we headed out to the Mt of Olives, stupid "City of David" look out platform, Garden of Gethsemane (where an African man was briskly making his way through with a cane and staff, making xs over everything while pushing pilgrims out of the way and saying, "he's still alive, he's not dead"), and the church where Jesus wept, overlooking the city.

We still had daylight and the excitement of Good Friday left and the three of us decided to do the stations of the cross in order. Cool. These stations culminate in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. On the roof the Ethiopian Orthodox are out in full force celebrating good Friday. We waited in a line wrapping around the shrine around the place where Jesus was supposedly crucified. I almost was trampled and fainted. Voices around us were unrecognizable languages with one Egyptian arabic voice and one clear English voice in the mob stating, "God damn it, I just want to see the place where Jesus died!" We finally made it to the entrance where an Orthodox black-robed priest grabbed my arm, shoved me through a doorway, another priest shoved me to my knees shouting "kiss and go! kiss and go! quickly!!" I hurried to obey, another priest pulled me from the ground and shoved me out the door muttering to the priest in front of me in line something about faith being pain. While this is probably one of my best and most hilarious Easter memories of my life, I can only imagine what might have been the effect on someone who was expecting a somber religious experience, someone who had paid their life savings to kiss that ground and pray at that site.

The next day C and I headed out of the old city, which I'd never done before. We made our way to Independence Park to lay in the sun without being heckled for the whole morning. On our way we passed "George W. Bush plaza" dedicated in his honor for his friendship towards Israel, last year. Wow. We walked around until we were lost in a very conservative Jewish neighborhood. Signs were on every shop and corner saying, "PLEASE DO NOT WEAR IMMODEST CLOTHING" and explaining in smaller print how not covering your arms, etc. was harmful for their way of life. While we're contemplating directions two nice middle aged Orthodox men ask if they can help us, one in Hebrew and then one in English. About fifteen minutes later they show up beside us again, saying they thought we might need a baby sitter to get back safely to the Old City, we deny it. Then English speaking 40ish year old Orthodox Jewish man in conservative neighborhood proceeds to ask if we can meet him sometime next week... I proceed to ask C if he was hitting on us as my hitting on radar has been totally shot by being in Egypt, she confirms it. Wow.

We make it back home and then meet my other friend and head out on the town. I splurge for a New York like piece of pizza on the point of starvation and we walk around the main entertainment street. Its mini America, complete with college-age kids singing Christian praise music, a group of performance street fighters, a woman setting up her own karaoke, and fro-yo. I like it. We watch the middle school kids, some little boys with cool hair locks framing their face, the families, and the couples go by. It still weirds me out every time I hear Hebrew because English seems to be the only language that would make sense in this context. I understand this context completely I feel, but then the language not at all, its jarring, and its frustrating to be somewhere where I understand nothing that is said and can say nothing, I forgot that. It seems like Hebrew is even more prevalent, and English less prevalent, than two years ago.

We wake up Easter morning at 5:30 with intentions of making the 6:30 Latin mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Unfortunately, because the "Armenians have something" (something meaning a chanting parade through the church), the mass was cancelled. No prob, we head up to the roof to listen to some birds and see the sun rise further over the dome. Communion is just not happening in a church for us so we purchase some supermarket "grape drink" and take it on down to the basement of the Austrian Hospice, take some of the breakfast buffet bread. Julianna breaks it and distributes, "this is my body broken for you," we drink from the grape drink bottle, "this is my blood poured out for you." Best communion ever.

Off to the bus. This time we think we've got it down, we know what we're doing, then get slammed with a surprise 94.5 sheckel border crossing tax. I have 1.5 sheckels at this point. Luckily between J and C they can get me out of the country. We angrily mutter about this ridiculousness until the IDF border patrol woman raises the gate and we step into Egypt, greeted by an old wrinkly man drinking tea and saying, "welcome to Egypt." O we missed it! However, after waiting an hour I get through passport control and C and J are cut in line by some rich diplomat, at which time I try to chat up the border patrol to get my girls through. It didn't really work. We finally get on the bus, perfect timing, we're cool so we take the back seat, and get slammed by another 35 pounds border tax, which somehow only two of us had to pay, which we also had barely enough for between the three of us. About half way through the ride we are awakened by the smell and feel of burning sand in our lungs. I wrap my new Kufaya around my face to block out the sandstorm that has somehow ended up occurring inside the bus.

O Egypt.

Since I've come back I have talked to several Egyptians about Jerusalem, this holy city for everyone. Reactions have gone from, "you are so lucky you could go" to "I want to drop a nuclear bomb on that whole country because I'm a psychopathic person" to "we need dialogue between cultures, we don't know each other. Jewish women dress like Muslim women?"

I still can't quite grasp the concept of Israel. This country seems like it should be a theme park. How can there be a state really based on a religion like this? So late? How long can this last? There's this constant tension bearing down, like a tangible hard plastic bubble. When will it finally crack? In what way? What will be lost when it does crack? Is there any other way?

Stuff White People Like

So in case you haven't seen this website, take a look.

I am devoting this post to stuff white people like.

White people like being surrounded by non-white people.

Although being the only white person in the room, in the office, in the house, in the town might make white people a little uncomfortable (after all, minority status isn't really what they're used to), being able to tell other white people in the rare occasion that they come in contact, that they spend most of their time surrounded by non-white people is well worth any awkwardness and feeling out of place.

For example, when white people gather at a dinner party in Egypt, the white community evaluates each white person present on a point system of being surrounded by non-white people.

Being in another country at the moment + 1 point

Number of months you have been there + 1 point each

Multiply points by percentage of non-white people in area where you live

Multiply points by percentage of non-white people in your place of employment / study

Language study +10 points

Studying something in English + 5 points

Working teaching English +5 points

Working not teaching English +10 points

Working for a native company / organization +20 points

Multiply points by distance in kilometers from the next major white people area

Level of language proficiency in native language (Beg +1 point, Int + 5 points, Adv +10 points)

Living with white people = 0 points

Living with non-white people = 5 points

Number of non-white friends + 1 for each friend

Living with people from host country = 10 points

Living with people from host country who don't speak English = 20 points.


Its painfully clear to any group of white people together, the hierarchy of coolness based on this point system. Unfortunately non-white people can't really compete in this system, sorry. You should take encouragement from the fact that you are automatically adding a point to any white person's record just by hanging around.

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Other stuff white people like....

White people like gender ambiguous language. Well maybe not all white people, but I definitely do. Have you ever noticed that in English you can say, "I'm meeting a friend" and leave it at that. Friend means friend, and no one knows, unless they ask, their gender, but no one would ask because that's just weird.

In Egyptian Arabic, every single verb and noun seems to have a masculine and feminine form. Add this to a society that looks very discouragingly on interaction between people of the opposite sex, and its almost impossible to utter an honest sentence without having either hellfire or prayers for your soul called down on you. This makes me worry for hours how I can avoid the extreme concern and prayers for my soul from my Egyptian family, who see my spending time with an Egyptian boy as probably the worst sin I could commit, while still avoiding lying to them, which I see as a much worse sin I could commit. Its a lot of unneeded stress that English and American culture have easily disposed of.

I imagine that Egyptian Arabic has developed this way because of Egyptian parents' needing to know who their children were spending time with. Gender relations are something so central to proper Muslim behavior, that language must have preserved this importance, or the importance must have preserved the language to reflect it. If no one cared if the friend was male or female, then gender ambiguity would be fine in language. Because everyone seemingly cares every minute of every day which males and females are together, gender ambiguity cannot stand.

This sucks.

New Life

The weather has unexpectedly taken a leap into the 90s (farenheit) and it leaves me remembering summer, when I first got here, thinking of the "circle of life" as my roommate put it, things coming back to the beginning, working in cycles.

For example, M, my best friend here, is getting married. I have been with him through his tears and heart ache and depressive episodes over this girl, since they had just broken up right before I arrived in Cairo this time, and now he got her back! It was like the happiest day of my life to hear this, it restored my faith in miracles and happy endings, but that means there's no space in Egyptian culture, and probably universally, for another girl that he's close to. I have gotten to have him in my life for this brief cycle, but now its over, and we all move on to the next cycles.

I have seen my baby Egyptian niece come from in my friend's womb to alien like tiny creature to fat baby that makes noises and facial expressions (she can say dada, but that isn't a word here so they try to pretend its tata, which means gramma), all with me as part of her life, part of her family. All of this is one of the most miraculous things I have ever experienced. Today she was baptized.

I have never seen anything like Coptic baptism. Last night the women of the family planned their outfits, hair, and make-up. This morning they woke up early and in a flurry of color and hair curlers, they prepared themselves amid (loving) shouts of, "why do you care how you look, you're not the mother" and "I want a BLACK shirt, why aren't you listening to me!" We made it the monastery and there were probably over a hundred babies there, all with multiple family members, crowding the baptism room, the church hall, the church, the patio, and overflowing through the monastery. The largest concentration was outside the door and windows of the baptismal chamber. The grandfather of our baby (father refused to come) politely worked his way to the table to get a ticket. He clutched and waved that ticket until he could shove his way into the sacred room through the mob. We made our way in for a little bit, it was stiflingly hot today and church officials kicked us out, so I walked around the monastery with my 16 year old sister.

We came back into the hall to see a shouting/screaming match arise after someone being trampled near the door to the baptismal chamber. My sister almost makes her way inside the chamber when her father pokes his head out the door for her. "I'm coming" she yells, and bravely pushes her way to the front. She doesn't make it, eventually, being too sweet, she just bounces off the crowd. This crowd reminds me of what someone wise observed about Egypt, that lines don't work because the society is always worried that there won't be enough, so they fight to get there's first, as fast as possible, in case whatever it is runs out. Its like they are all subconsciously conditioned to worry that maybe the priest will get tired and stop baptizing. We have to be first. Then my little Egyptian sister, after not making it through this crowd, spends the rest of the day disappointed saying, "I want to see [her]! I should've gone to school instead, school is better than this." But then, the baby and its mother and grandfather and grandmother all emerge, baby in her huge white dress and bonnet, cranky and tired. The dresses and some freakin adorable mini priest outfits are popping up everywhere (only to be put on after the priest dunks them in water three times) and small family groups cluster everywhere for pictures.

Baptism, all these babies in white dresses, surrounded by their families, is the craziest picture of new life and hope, but a clear one. My cycle here is drawing to an end and these babies I hope are all beginning their walk of faith. Will she remember me if I come back in a couple years? If Idon't? Will her family show her pictures and talk about me? Will she vaguely recollect how I smell or sang to her in English or pretended she was flying or took pictures of her? Probably not. I hope I get to see more of her life somehow.

Beni Suef

I just had one of the best weekends and best vacations of my life. Now, you might say this is strange considering I'm living in Egypt, and considering all travel books and resources will inform you that the only reason to be in Beni Suef is to be en route to somewhere more interesting, but this weekend feels like the first adventure I've had in a long time. It was also the first time I've felt completely taken care of and relaxed in that knowledge since I came to this country. Independence has its joys, but dependence does as well, especially when you've been running on independence for months.

My roommate J and I discovered that to get to Beni Suef to visit our friends we could catch a bus from Moneeb, the end of the Giza metro line. We get there and find a bus station, which evidently is not what we want, we walk up and down a line of about 50 microbuses yelling at us and finally find out we need to walk all the way down the street to the station under the bridge. We get there and ask about tickets from a smart-ass ticket man who tells us tickets are 7, except for us its 10. I guess at least he's honest that he's overcharging the foreigner, but then, in response to our inquiries as to why, he answers the Egyptian equivalent of "because I said so," multiple times. Ick. 2 hours later, after finally paying the foreigner price and waiting for the bus to fill up, we make our way to Beni Suef, past green field after green field that J is begging to roll in, trucks stacked full of garlic and water buffalo.

We disembark one stop too early at the Beni Suef zoo and the guys come pick us up. We head to the best restaurant in town, and then the club on the Nile (where the taxi driver argues with our friend M about him wanting to be dropped off in front of a hospital). We sit next to the Nile and look across at the green fields and the monastery where we're gonna be staying, and we just sit and talk for hours, far away from all our stressers.

Next we head to a youth meeting at the new, beautiful, gigantic church. Youth meaning our age. We face the wall with everyone as they pray, they sing chanting hymns while we try to read the hymnal in arabic, and then we come to a bible lesson and then the real lesson, the title is "sexual culture." I'm excited. The woman presenting really mostly just describes child development through adolescence. There is a brief detour into sex changes and homosexuality and people who feel like they were born the wrong gender. Evidently all these things are the same problem, and the fault of parents who don't indoctrinate their children with quite enough gender stereotypes. And now that the newest science has discovered that homosexuality is a mental disease... Wow, so I did not agree with most of what was being said (with the exception of giving ur adolescent children some privacy is a good idea), but it was freakin interesting, and I loved how these women were free to challenge the authority and discuss these issues at this meeting. They voted to continue the sexual culture topic and I really want to go back.

Then we got to look around the new cathedral. Its half built, with only stained glass windows and the dome in place, but standing in the middle of it in the dark was beautiful, and exciting. Maybe partly because this amazing church is in the process of being built, and maybe because I was in this half built church in this random Egyptian town with good friends.

We then made our way to the monastery where we were staying. We are driving literally through the middle of nowhere where our taxi driver is telling our friend about how he loves a Christian girl but her church father told her that she needs to move to America to marry him. Then we get out, M asks taxi driver to wait (and God preserve you, you are honey!), we go in, finally get the father to approve a room for us, and we find our room with a balcony overlooking green fields, crickets, palm trees swaying in the breeze, and lit up mosques in the distance. The most beautiful sight I've seen in a long time. I sit for probably an hour writing and just taking it in. I sleep as close to the window as possible to hear the crickets. Unfortunately that meant that when the deafening dawn prayer was called throughout all of Beni Suef, I was definitely awake, although so was J. Evidently this is why M wears ear plugs every night.

In the morning I spent some more time on the balcony, this time watching the farmers and their donkey carts and buffaloes go by. J and I head out for a walk, we walk down through the fields and buffaloes and farmers and donkey carts, and mudbrick farming sheds, the sound of birds having replaced the crickets. I can breath real air here, and people here seem much more polite here, they don't stare and they don't yell at us, even though foreigners are completely non-existent in Beni Suef (except for M and his two colleagues, due to aforementioned lack of travel destinations). After coming back to observe the sniper tower and mote that give this monastery a sort of fortress feel, we have a nice breakfast, pay, and head out to the middle school where M teaches. The kids all rush to greet him and we as the visitors are treated to tea and a sit in the school admin office. We also get to observe a collection of posters, art, a ribbon dancing ceremony, and a talent show, on this, special visitor day. We get to see first graders do a skit about stealing money from parents, a skit about women being able to work alongside men, a story reading, and a collection of English songs. My personal favorite was when ten kids with monkey pictures on their chests stand in front of their class as the whole group sings, "ten little monkeys jumbing on the bed, one fell of and bumb-ed his head" in heavy Egyptian accent. I'm a little tea pot was a close second.

We head off for Kosheri and then concluded our wonderful time waiting in the bus station. After being told at the office the bus for Cairo will be leaving in ten minutes, twice (we all know what ten minutes means in Egypt: anytime today) we meet some people headed there too. After a while we've been waiting and we don't see our fellow Cairo passengers. We head over to the office and ask again when the bus is leaving. The same guy who told us ten minutes now looks at us seriously and tells us no buses are going to Cairo today. We all question how he can tell us this after he said ten minutes not so long ago, he acts like he has no idea what we're talking about. He asks random other people, they all confirm no buses to Cairo today. Now, we are in Beni Suef, there is really nothing here as we acknowledge, and Cairo is nearby. Where the heck are buses going if not Cairo? So M tries to look angry and tell them he's very angry and will never ride a bus again! Unfortunately M just emanates pacifism and goodwill, and anger just does not really work for him. So we find a shared taxi and make it back to wait on a bridge, catch another taxi, and find our way to see our fam in Maasara, where I listen to the fears and jealousies of a 16 year old girl trapped in an unfair society (as are all societies), nursing a love interest for a man she hasn't seen in eight months and has been rejected by her parents, and feeling alone. I wish I could help, but even I am leaving, and even I am not around all the time.

And so, this weekend was a ridiculously lovely balance between independent adventure and allowing myself to be dependent on others. It was great to be on the easy end of that situation, and it was great to see where my friend spends his life and has somehow fit himself into the most unlikely of places as a beloved member of the community. It makes me feel hopeful.

MABRUUUK!!!!

My Egyptian best friend is getting MARRIED!!! This is a big deal for Egypt! He's not even thirty yet, and he's getting married THIS SUMMER!!! To the love of his life, after a long, tragic love affair! O my heart cannot hold this much happiness! Just when I was getting jaded and cynical....something as AMAZING and joyful as this happens.

Colonialism

I think I have finally found a word for a collection of uglinesses I find around me. Colonialism.

Supposedly the UK declared Egypt’s independence in 1922. Egypt didn’t even get to declare it itself. And Wikipedia says, “British influence, however, continued to dominate Egypt's political life and fostered fiscal, administrative, and governmental reforms.”

As my roommate started talking about this "colonialism" concept the other day I started to thinking and since then I’ve been feeling sicker and sicker about it all to the extent that I even want to leave this country just to stop being a part of it. But it still has a hold on the world, no matter which part of it I sit in. And while I’m seeing it so clearly here from where I’m sitting, which makes me exceedingly uncomfortable, maybe my uncomfortable situation here is making colonialism a tad bit uncomfortable as well. I hope so.

Every word that I utter in Arabic seems to be fighting a little for the home team, every conversation in English seems to be another point for the colonial power. My friend told me that people here respect foreigners more than they respect each other. He told me this because I was complaining about how no matter how stupid and poor and young and ugly and inexperienced and unskilled I am I will always be pampered and paid attention to and catered to, just because I’m a foreigner. I have been more and more happy about the fact that I can speak English to so many people, but then I’m getting more and more sick to hear the stories of my friends who say that they can’t get a job without good English, and they can’t get English without money, and this is for a job that pays an average 800 Egyptian pounds / month. If you want the real good jobs, you’re gonna need flawless English, the kind that comes from private foreign schools (American, Canadian, British) for your whole life (=uber rich). And as A reminded us, there are millions of people with flawless native English in the world, those with any flaws need not apply.

My roommate J works in a world of people who have learned English, but at the expense of their Arabic. The top of society is being trained to be dysfunctional and illiterate in their own language. Oftentimes they are dysfunctional in Arabic and English, in a kind of limbo between the two languages, this is the system. Me and two of my roommates have procured jobs here which are expressly for foreigners. Foreigners here are paid more and respected more in the work place. With absolute abysmal Arabic and no qualifications or knowledge of me beyond my foreigner status I’ve been asked to work in marketing a few times. This preferential treatment makes a little more sense in a country like America where I am the WASP majority. Here though, we are very much the minority, and yet, we walk in a room and we’re automatically important. We are an accessory for our friends to show off, kinda like a designer bag, foreigners classy. It will be an adjustment to go back to the U.S. where I am frumpy and normal.

People just ask us questions, we are assumed to be knowledgeable on any subject, even as scrubby just out of college kids on an extended year of travelling. Where is the justice? This world has been set up for us by our ancestors. They wanted a world where they were always able to feel smart and have an easy time navigating and ordering people around wherever they went. Heck who doesn’t? It’s easy, and I’m not gonna lie, if I felt only the utter inferiority and stupidity that comes with being in a strange country with a strange language and never felt the trust in my abilities and respect of my status that comes with being a foreigner here, I might not have made it so long.

But this superiority is cheap, it rings so hollow and painful. You can almost hear it in the voices of the men yelling at you: “Talk to me! Why won’t you talk to me?!” “F*** you!” It’s not just a sexual thing, it’s a fascination with the exotic and maybe a subconscious way to bring you back down to the level you should be at, an anger at the unjust distribution of power. I see it in the way that the police and security service here let the foreigners get away with whatever they want with a smile, while harrassing their Egyptian friends. I hear it in ex-pats telling me that Egyptians are just lazy and unreliable. I hear it in my friend F explaining to me that Egyptian are actually envious of the U.S. because it took all the power and beauty and morality even, and left Egypt with nothing. There's a hopeless sense here among so many, a sense that leaving the country or leaving the culture is the only way to move up in life. Some reject these ideas, some chase them vigorously, but Colonialism is living.

Mt. Sinai

Mt. Sinai. Gabel Moosa (Moses' mountain). This is supposedly the mountain that Moses climbed to get the commandments. The mountain covered in cloud where God stayed and talked to Moses, told him what to write. Its in a beautiful red mountain range. Usually people climb it at sunrise or sunset. At the top sits a mosque and a church next to each other. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe that Moses was a prophet. This mountain is one of the top religious tourism destinations in the world. The bedouins in the area have set up quite a business with hotels, guides, selling overpriced chocolate bars, camel rides, charging for tiny huts to go to the bathroom in on the mountain face, books and souvenirs.

I've climbed this mountain three times. It has meaning, that is sure for anyone who climbs it. The meaning can be so many different things. The first time I climbed it was two and a half years ago as a study abroad student. Like everything the whole semester I was thinking to myself, "This is so freakin cool! I'm walking where Moses walked maybe! I have to tell my friends, my family, random strangers about this!" As I walked through several switchbacks I started to mellow and truly tried to feel what Moses felt as he climbed. How scared did he feel? How special did he feel? How excited? Did he ever succumb to pride that he was the one hanging out with God? Or is that why he was chosen, because he was entirely humble?

The second time I climbed was a couple months ago with my family. This time the meaning faded into the sociologist, academic part of me. I was thinking, all the way up and all the way down, about how this felt to religious tourists. Interesting I don't consider myself one of them although I probably am. I started trying to empathize with the hymn singing, horn blowing crowd, started thinking how they would remember this place when they went back home. What will it mean to them?

This third time, this weekend, I was used to this mountain. I know how long it takes, how hard it is, how dark it is, generally how to avoid getting run over by a camel, and I just wanted to climb the mountain. I started thinking, the beauty, the meaning of this mountain is that its a metaphor. The endlessly climbing up to meet God, the knowledge that God is there to meet us. The call to "rejoice my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything," has an experience to match it when you think of this mountain as life. We are always climbing, climbing, but why? Because we meet God at the top, and because we are on holy ground. We know that climbing the mountain is tough, but somehow enjoyable. We know, without seeing, that what we see at the top will be more beautiful than we can imagine. And then, we get there, and it is.

Here I am reminded of a conversation I had with two good friends the other day in which we discussed miracles. Miracles, what are they? Why do they seem not to really happen for us anymore? At least us Western Christians seem to have accepted that the age of miracles is over. We say that this saddens us, we say that if we just all saw miracles all the time we would be so much more able to believe, like during the early days. But what's to say we aren't all seeing miracles? What's to say just because something is common in our lives, something is ordinary in that it happens all the time to all kinds of people, that it isn't a miracle. Birth, sunrises, singing, flowers, acts of mercy, floating on water, mountains. And what's to say that seeing God makes life easier? The burning bush ruined Moses' life. But he ended up on top of Mt. Sinai, where his life no longer mattered.

On the ledge

Tonight, after a lovely night of sipping a massive yogurt, fruit tower beverage with my roommate in the romantically lit hookah / coffee shop, I made my way home feeling a little adventurous, a little sick of my routine. So my first few steps into the house I immediately have the idea to climb the rickety winding staircase only used by the garbage man up to the roof. The roof is covered in old cement and wiring and a giant satellite dish.

I ducked under a wire to sit on the ledge at the edge of this roof. Its quiet up here. By this I mean, the horns and shouting are muffled because I'm several stories above it all. I lay down on this ledge, somewhat carefully. To my right, one of the giant mosques of Cairo is visible a few miles away through the gap between the other high rise buildings next to ours, a Christian family with religious art posted all over their room visible through a window, the satellite dish looming over my head. If I roll or fall over to this side, I would land on the roof, safe.

To my left, a much larger portion of the skyline is visible. The trees on the side of the Nile, the medical school, a lit up building that looks like something important in Washington D.C., and the Islamic moon (a crescent that looks kinda like a boat) above it all. If I roll or fall over to this side, I fall at least a couple stories before I hit a balcony, potentially to the ground.

I try to keep my weight shifted to the right side as I lay balanced on this narrow ledge, one shoulder blade on each side, my hood beneath my head, my legs crossed. I feel a little precarious here as I look up at the few visible stars and shift my head slightly to see the Islamic moon.

But I stay on this ledge, and I think about the whole concept of ledges. My life feels this way at the moment. With two months left, I am balanced here between Egypt and America, belonging and being an outsider, investing in friends and pushing them away.

But the stars are still there.

And then, I walk down the rickety, winding, garbage man staircase, push open the door, and its like the Wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I see the kettle on the stove in our lighted kitchen, and its a different world, my world here, opening up before me. Its still there, somehow completely separate from the world above that I've been visiting.

And everything comes down to these ledges, these boundaries between worlds again, but what is it that pervades all these worlds? And what is it about laying balanced on a ledge that's so exciting and stressful at the same time?

A sinking feeling

It's a sinking feeling to know that your home has been attacked. I was about to head from a restaurant to Hurreya (the bar I mentioned in my previous post) not to drink but to socialize and people watch, when my roommate R gets a call, she puts her head down and starts saying, "O my gosh."

She looks up and tells us. "A bomb went off in the Khan el Khalili."

Bombs don't happen here. Not in a long time. Look through my pictures on facebook, the Khan el Khalili features prominently. We went after work almost every week the first few months I was here, I've gone there to personally shop, got lost in the alleyways, taken all my friends who have visited to see it, see the huge, old beautiful mosque there.

My stomach starts sinking and we start walking faster and faster home. Suddenly the streets that have absorbed me as a member of this society seem a bit hostile and scary, as they never have before.

We get home and read a little more. It turns out that two people in full woman's Islamic dress threw something like a hand grenade near a hotel and mosque and the market. 1 French woman is dead, French, Germans, and Egyptians are wounded (around 17 people I think). Check out NY Times, its on there.

Anyway, I went down to get ice cream to calm all our nerves and had a talk with my buddy the supermarket man. He was watching the news on TV. I could hear certain words like "bomb", "mosque", "hotel" and "America", "Iraq." The screen alternated between the throngs of people and the cordoned off areas next to Hussein mosque and ambulance lights, and the political analysts in a well-furnished room talking about why. Who the hell knows why? Evidently something about America and Iraq.

Grocery store man has a very rare stony expression. He tells me, "I'm sorry," informs me how it happened and draws me a diagram, makes sure I've called my mother to tell her I'm ok. He says he's very upset. We talked about how it was next to a mosque, how can they do that?

And the jittery feeling is starting to ware off (maybe the ice cream helped) but I am angry and I'm sad. How could people do something like that? It helps no one. People are dead, the economy (about 75% based on tourism) of Egypt will be severely hurt, and a kind of depressive fear has settled over this city, and now how will I convince all the already prejudiced people that Egypt and the Middle East are full of nice, welcoming, non-violent people. Although ya, as my friend M pointed out, much more people die in drive by shootings in Chicago probably in a month than have ever died in terrorist attacks in Egypt, that is not going to matter to the majority of people. A bomb is a bomb and somehow much scarier and much worse and much more memorable. And we have to keep on living as if it doesn't matter, kicking at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Hurreya

Hurreya means freedom. It is the name of one of the only Egyptian bars here in Cairo (cheap Egyptian beer, tea with crusty spoons, moldy-looking walls and open windows and always crowded). Hurreya is something I have thought and talked about a lot here. Its somehow probably the thing I love the most and miss the most here. I have the freedom that comes with being so far from home and not even knowing how to conform even if I wanted to, but I also have less freedom that comes with the society in general and my own very visible place as a representative of my country and religion.

------------------------

My friend O asks me, "Its true that everyone in the U.S. must have sex by the time they're 15 right?"

Me: "Um no O, you don't have to, its your choice. That's the idea in the U.S., you have freedom."

O: "O FREEdom, yes, haha" (evidently its a funny idea of us Americans)

--------------------------

My friend F: "Its ok for girls and boys to do really anything in America right?"

me: "well it depends, but usually yes, its the choice of the boy and girl what they do."

F: "So the society doesn't have morals. There are no morals. What do you think is better, Egypt or America?"

me: "well, I think ya maybe the morals of America are bad, but I think if you choose to be good, and its not because you have to do something, that means you're really good. I think this is good, to have the choice."

F: "Hmm I think maybe you're right, if you choose to be good when you have freedom, you are better, but still, many people don't choose good if they don't have to."

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Me: "I can't believe that woman on the beach! She was practically naked and that random guy was giving her a massage and they were like making out in public. She ruined right there any progress I've made in convincing people foreigners aren't all sluts."

My brother: "Kirsten, you can't judge her like that, she should be able to do whatever she wants to do without people passing judgment on her."

My mom: "Kirsten, what happened to you? You never would have said that when you were in highschool."

-----------------------

My Egyptian mama: "Egypt is better than America because here boys and girls can't just walk around together. If they want to be together they love each other and they get married. This is right."

Me: "they can't be just friends?"

mama: "no, not close friends. Maybe see each other in church or something, but you can't just go around together. In America this is normal right?"

me: "yes its normal."

mama: "boys and girls can do anything without marriage."

me: "well it depends. People who are very religious say no. But it has to be inside your heart, not the government or people in the street telling you what to do. There is more freedom (feeh hurreya akhtar)."

mama: "America is unlike Egypt completely."

me: "yes, very different."

mama: "Egypt is much better, people are good here."

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This weekend started off with a foggy Thursday morning. You know those days when everyone's a little subdued, everything's a little quieter because this kind of dense cloud has descended, and its kinda exciting almost. Especially here where every day is sun in the desert, fog is cause for celebration.

So anyway, I'm walking down the alleyway to the metro, past the duck cages and kleenex vending women with their babies and the vegetable stands and the house where the crazy man sometimes yells as me in Italian in this foggy calm and I come to the major cross street and I look up at the foggy sky above the buildings and I suddenly feel that I am not being pushed around by rushing time and circumstances, but that this world is open. I'm not trapped underground but free to wander or march or walk where I please at whatever speed under an endless universe.

Its strange that this sense of freedom comes along with my current state of having absolutely no money and the restrictions that that brings. Now I've always been bad with money, but I've always been rich at the same time. In that sense I mean I have never really felt like I missed out on anything because of money. Yes, I'm kinda spoiled. Now, however, with no daddy to call when I mess up and a struggling non-profit salary that really does not provide for luxuries, I don't have these options. If I buy a coat, I don't get to go out for dinner. If I go out to dinner, I don't get to go out next week, things like this.

Currently I have budgeted for myself less than $1 / day to get me through the month. This means I am taking up the Egyptian practice of sneaking two people out of the metro on one ticket (to save 15 cents or so), not being able to drink anything but water, I am not even able to help anyone who asks me for money, and waiting for two hours for my friend so that she can pay for our taxi home.

During these two hours of waiting I sat along a wall alongside the Nile because paying for a drink in a cafe was definitely out of the question. I watched the rich Egyptians on the sunset dinner cruise yachts go by. I was thinking, hey I used to be like that, private yacht parties, private beaches, things of this nature that go along with prep schools in southern california. However, with all these "opportunities" and conveniences that seem to be taken from me now that I don't have money flying around me, there comes a certain freedom. I am free to sit in the sun on the edge of the Nile and not worry about what people are thinking, because really I don't have a choice. And really, the sun and the Nile with my feet dangling over the wall, listening to the mingling music from the falucas makes me happier than the stuffy cafes with overpriced cappucinos and elevator music any day. Even when teenagers somehow managed to dangle over the bridge directly above me to hiss and yell at me about what I'm writing, even then.

So anyway, hurreya, its a great word, and these are my thoughts.

amusing

I was crossing the crowded Qasr el Aini highway near my house with my roommates, on the way to church. We sort of gaged the fact that a horse cart was crossing the highway behind us and the cars rushing towards us, picked up the pace a little and my roommate A barely missed being hit by the cart. While we emerge safely on the other side of the road, we hear a "BABOOMP BABOOM BOOM!", followed by collective sounds of surprise from the hundreds of men sitting around on the street. We all turn to look behind us only to see a horse, legs flailing in the air, on top of the hood of a car. We collectively draw in a shocked breath, before we can exhale, the horse is on its feet and cantering the rest of the way across the street... And the whole street breaths a sigh of relief and laughs at the same time. Yep, that is my first witnessing of a horse-car collision.

Humanity

I spent my first few months here observing the differences between America and Egypt, being amazed at things I would absolutely never see back home. I was particularly prone to thinking of all the ways that Egypt was better than America, partly because it really is an amazing place, but also partly because I was trying to remind myself why I traded home for this craziness.

Now that I've been here awhile, I guess that I'm not seeing things as strange anymore, as I said in my last blog, the romanticism is gone, everything seems so freakin' normal now. I guess this is good. One thing that it has allowed is my finer perceptions to come out. Another thing it has allowed is me getting the urge that its time to move on again. When things start to get boring or difficult and I start putting down roots, my instinct is to leave. Fortunately, I don't have the money for that to be an option, for once in my life. So I'm here for another three months, despite my instincts to cut and run.

Another thing that this has allowed is me to start to see the similarities, the universals, that pervade cultures and places on this earth. Seeing these similarities has sometimes made me so ridiculously happy to be a human being at times, and at other times, particularly recently, made me angry and depressed.

For instance:

1. All human societies set up some sort of hierarchy, some sort of way that certain groups are higher than others (in America and even more so in Egypt, its all about class, with other hierarchies thrown in). Everyone fights for the top positions (to stay or to get there) and everyone avoids getting to know people in other groups too well because then it would be more and more impossible to keep fighting without sullying your conscience. Every society has rich people and poor people ghettos, so that rich people can keep themselves and those under them believing that they are normal, that there is nothing else to see in life but how they live.

Today I left Maasara, a crowded, noisy, lower class area with trash mountains in the dirt streets and I entered Maadi, the rich, foreign enclave suburb of Cairo. It was beautiful, green trees, mansions, sprinklers, birds chirping, quiet. I loved it. The occassional begger broke my seemingly heavenly world outside of Cairo and I was glad I left my wallet behind so that I had nothing to give and therefore didn't have to feel guilty about refusing. When I started to walk to the edge or caught a taxi out of this area, I sighed in sadness that the trash and poverty and face of normal Cairo were showing once again. I say that I hate the class system, the isolation of the rich from the rest of the world, and yet this is how I think, how I act, what I appreciate. How depressing.

2. People are afraid so they protect themselves and those they love from exploring. Why does this so often seem to be the overtly religious people too? Is it that these people are scared that they are wrong, that God really doesn't exist the way they think he does, that he's really not that powerful and true and so therefore they make a big show to convince themselves and others of the truth of their statements, and then go about protecting themselves and others they love from anything that might challenge their fragile faith?

My sister here burst into tears spontaneously today and I could only figure that it had something to do with being trapped in her house, not allowed to walk to streets, have any communication with the opposite gender, ever oppose her family or disobey an order. I wanted to cry with her. Then I tell my Egyptian mother and father that I can't come next week because I'm going to the Cinema with friends from work. Father says: "who, are they girls or boys?" in such an insistent way that I just say girls, even though I'm really not sure of the gender make-up of the group. He nods his head and says yes. Mother says: "Jesus will be angry at you for going to the cinema."
WHAT?! I ask,"why?" She says, "because." I inquire, "because of the film or the cinema?" She tells me both. At this point I just am itching to fight. But at least I can fight, and I don't have to listen to these things, for my sister, this kind of thinking is her reality, and I can see her not liking it.

Why is it that my Muslim friend here is told by several of her friends that she should stay away from me because I'm a Christian and I'll try to convert her. I won't, but even if I was trying, so what? If you really believe your faith, people with other ideas and opening yourself up to see the world can only strengthen it. A pursuit of the truth will unveil truth. God's truths should be stronger than the worlds' lies.

3. People judge people artificially. We look at a person's skin, the sound of their voice, the place that they live, the tightness of their clothes, the group they belong to, and the money they make and we categorize them. We fit things into boxes, that's how our brain works, so we fit people into boxes for reality to make sense.

4. Injustice. Life just isn't fair. Life is fraught with double standards, hypocrisy, betrayal, prejudice, inequalities and the like. I, as an upper class, well-educated American citizen, have seemingly everything. I have freedom to go almost anywhere in the world, get a good job, be respected and well-fed, live according to the moral standards and faith that I choose. These things are categorically denied to most of the world, for example.

But then I look at this and see the other side of the coin. Humanity, along with acting and thinking and living unjustly, also shares a sense of justice, and an idea that it should be pursued, that its the way things should be. We share love, we share humor, and we share beauty and the acknowledgment of beauty in a deeper way, and although we are often selfish, we also sometimes act with self-sacrifice. And so perhaps there's hope for us that we can someday live not like this.

getting gutsier or getting tired? Settling in or settling?

I have a little over three months left here. I've been here about seven months. I've just been appointed Intern Coordinator at my NGO, which is probably the perfect job for me (in Cairo, hanging out with and mentoring college students, emailing people, working at an NGO dedicated to understanding between Arab and Western societies, in an office with great people, and getting paid for it!). I love this new job, even though I haven't technically started yet, but at the same time I am stepping back to look at my life.

While I am uncontrollably excited about this job I have to wonder, who am I becoming? The pieces of my life seem to be falling into place more and more but I would never want to be one who just goes with the flow. I feel like I'm at a crossroads in my life and am choosing who I want to be. Along with the responsibility of this job comes the ability for me to quit my teaching job. I have been told before (by co-workers back in college) that my spiritual sin is sloth (haha). The lazy part of me is all about having one job, being able to have absolutely no responsibilites outside of 9-5, and the lazy part of me also is now kind of burrowing away, spending days and nights in comfort instead of forcing myself to look at and do things that make me uncomfortable.

I believe that discomfort and risk are the ways that people grow. I also believe that living to be safe and comfortable is a grievous sin and waste of a life. For these reasons (among others) I came to Egypt, and I've told myself that I will never settle for an easy life, never give up on my ideals and pursuit of righteousness. I tell myself that I refuse to become a coward, because the cowardly life is not worth it.

When I first came here, surviving and absorbing the world around me seemed like an endless task. Now I am getting tired... I am tired of seeing essentially the same multi-colored higab coordinated outfits ever day. I am tired of hearing and seeing the same lude things from young men and boys and occasionally old men. I'm tired of always being self conscious of my body and where it could be grabbed or commented on. I am tired of people laughing at me for no conceivable reason. I am tired of not being able to understand, of people thinking I understand everything or nothing of what's happening around me, usually the latter. I am tired of having to bumble through a second language that I'm nowhere near fluent in. I'm tired of being judged by Egyptians, foreigners, and mostly myself for my degree of integration into the culture. I'm tired of constantly feeling incompetent. I'm tired of being away from my best friends and family and not being able to call them. I'm tired of eating greasy food or paying too much for it. I'm tired of being cold because there's no heating. Most of all though, I'm tired of being tired.

I kinda hate myself because I'm hear to push my limits and my comfort zone, avoid a life of easiness and isolation. I am not a person that really likes routines, predictability, cleanliness, staying at home, and yet I find myself turning into an old lady now. I like going to work and coming home every day around the same time, stopping in the morning to buy a water and a snack, swiping my metro pass, listening to music while I ride and walk to work, sitting at my same desk, talking to the same people, in English, going to the same sandwich stand with the same people every day for lunch, talking on gchat with my friends back home in the afternoon, walking back to the metro, riding it home, hanging out with my American roommates, going to bed. Occasionally my days will include hanging out with friends, but I don't want to stay out late (even though I don't have to get up early for work I just don't like being out late anymore). Ocassionally I'll go see my Egyptian family and love the routine of eating, drinking tea a half hour later, talking, watching Egyptian Christian television, sleeping, eating, talking, and going home. I love Saturday mornings going to the orphanage where I can play with babies who demand absolutely nothing from you.

I'm trying to decide if all this old-people-like routine is a good thing or not. On the one hand, yes I've made a comfortable life and community for myself here. My roommate says this is an accomplishment in itself. On the other hand, I really am not here to make myself comfortable, that's in fact the exact opposite of what I want. However, I am also realizing the value of making life sustainable and feeling like I have meaning in it. In my new job and in my life with the people I already have relationships with I feel like I am able to contribute something, which I need to feel. On the other hand, vulnerability and humility I value deeply, but I also think are two of the hardest things in the world. I am starting to realize that its so much easier to forge a life for yourself where you are "doing something" than a life where you are vulnerable and humble to what God wants from you and to the people and world around you. I want the latter, but I grasp at the former. We all want to do something, we all want to make our mark on the world, that is not in itself a difference.

I also have noticed that along with myself feeling comfortable has come more confidence in being my own individual within this society. Gone are the days of swallowing my host culture completely in an attempt to impossibly fit in. For those of you who have known me as a pushover I think that things will be a little different when I get back. I have somehow found my inner strength to push back on things I don't like. I have decided I can give people dirty looks if they're being dirty, and I can say no if I don't want to do something, confront people on their prejudices, challenge people to think about Egyptian societal conventions. For example, today I argued with my Egyptian mother about which was better - Egyptian society which doesn't allow boys and girls to interact at all outside of engagement and a little in church, or American culture which lets anything go. She maintains that here there are no bad girls. I said she just doesn't see them, because I do know they exist. And I mean, are guy friends really that bad of an idea? As one of my roommates said, maybe if more guys had friends that were girls they wouldn't roam around in packs harassing girls, and they would think about the fact that girls are human beings and don't like being treated that way.

So anyway, I am at a crossroads and a paradox. I have settled in, but have I settled? I'm getting more able to assert myself and call people out, but am I less humble and vulnerable about my place here? I'm getting really used to and comfortable with my surroundings, but does that mean they're getting boring and my eyes aren't open to new possibilities? Hmmm

Kolena Gaza (we are all Gaza)

This slogan (Kolena Gaza) has popped up all over facebook, the news, the streets, the internet. I think its a pretty good one honestly, reminding us that these are human beings who are being killed, their lives being ruined, people just like us but extremely unfortunate, living in fear and squalor and deprivation and injustice under normal conditions and now, its unimaginable, that is if they aren't one of the over 1000 Palestinians who are already dead.

I am actually surprised how normal life has been here, despite this crisis. I expected perhaps more angry glares instead of friendly smiles and welcomes, especially when it comes out that I'm American (therefore my tax dollars are funding the bombs falling on Gaza, and I'm doing nothing to stop it). However, while I have been looking for hostile reactions, I really haven't found them, or any real differences in the rhythym of life here.

However, here are some things I've seen / heard.

Taxi Driver #1, driving me and my family to my apartment (day 2 of attacks): "Did you hear about Gaza?"
Me: "O ya I did hear"
TD1: "this is very bad."
Me: "Worse than before, right?"
TD1: "yes. Why is America doing this?"
Me: "I don't know, but we have a new president soon, maybe it will be better."
(he seems unconvinced)


Taxi Driver #2 (my favorite, driving De and I to dinner): "Where are you from?"
Me: "I'm from America, she's Canadian."
(long silence)
TD2: "Everyone in the world hates America right now."
Me: Hmm, ya, because of Gaza?"
TD2: "yes."
Me: "and you do also?"
TD2: "for sure."
De: "what's your opinion on Hamas?"
TD2: "It doesn't matter about Hamas, it matters that any people are dead. For example, if you have children, and they do something bad, you don't kill them. Do you understand?"
De and me: "yes I understand." (while really thinking this is sort of a weird analogy for the situation)
TD2: "For example if I marry you, and then you do something bad, I wouldn't kill you. I shouldn't do that. I would raise my voice maybe, but not kill you...."
Me: "hmmm ok, I understand."
TD2: "In sickness and in strength, hot and cold. I shouldn't kill you."
(I think on these odd analogies and wonder, is he saying that Israel is the parent and the husband? Or America, or Egypt, the army? or all humanity? Do these analogies extend to all human interactions which should not end in murder? Was my Arabic comprehension just completely off? Interesting...)

Me: What do you think of Gaza?
My friend A: "I don't care. Palestinians here in Egypt, they don't care about Gaza, so I don't care."
Me: "What, Palestinians don't care?"
A: "No, they don't care about Gaza."
Me: "But they are people, lots of people dying, they don't care?
A: "Oh but I care."
Me: "Really?"
A: "no not really. And they keep asking why Egypt doesn't make a war with Israel." (shakes his head)
Me: Ok

Article I read at work from an Egyptian newspaper summarizing the opinions of one Sheik:

If Israel heard the shouts of the Egyptian people at an Ehely (the most popular Egyptian club team) football match, they would leave Palestine. Palestine will always be occupied as long as football exists in Egypt because people care more about football than their suffering brothers and sisters in Palestine.

We drive past hundreds of people spilling out of the Medical Union building on the main street by our house, surrounded by 4 rows of riot police. (This same Medical Union apparently is heavily tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and sympathetic to Hamas. They have recently held many meetings about Gaza, plastered the main street with approximately 50 feet of giant blown up pictures of bloody, crying men, women and children and metro cars with posters about Gaza and collected aid donations to send there.)
Taxi Driver #3: "That's because of Gaza"
J: "There were people in the street before"
TD3: "Ya but there aren't now."
Me: "Because the police are everywhere."
TD3: "Because of the government, if you say anything, they will take you."


News I heard from my roommate: Progress is being made in negotiating a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel here in Cairo. As my roommate said, "YA Egypt!!"

Coming Home

My family has been here for the last approximately three weeks. I can't really describe it all, but it went really well. We went ALL OVER Egypt and had some good bonding time. Here are some memorable moments:

- Seeing my American mama crying with my Egyptian mama over her son having emigrated to America.

-going to Christmas Eve service with my whole family and all of my MESP friends, trying to reenact our Palestinian dance lessons in the church courtyard, then realizing the metro was closed so having to walk in a crowd of approximately 10 foreigners to catch a micro-bus.

-watching my 4 ft 8 in 14 year old host brother guide my 6 ft tall father through a massive, crowded Egyptian market

- discussing with my brother theories of morality, God, and humanity in our cruise ship bunker at 3AM.

-Cuddling in bed with my parents in the morning for the first time in approximately 15 years because it was so flippin cold in St Katherine's!

-Discussing with a stranger at 7 AM on the shore of the red sea why he should attempt not to be hung over every day like he has for the last eight years and his future as a body guard or gym proprietor in Dubai and agreeing to be his life coach over e-mail.

- receiving as presents from my Egyptian family to my American family: one purple be-jeweled bow (for me), one large purple headband that induced my mother to a massive head ache (for my mother), one letter B keychain (stands for Patrick, obviously, there isn't a P in Arabic), one letter M keychain (they couldn't remember my Dad's name so took an unlucky guess).

- Watching in horror as bombs fall over Gaza for the 15th day on TV in the supermarket with mom and my two favorite shopkeepers.

-watching my brother carry a giant blanket on his head through the streets of Cairo, looking for all the world like a very clever Egyptian woman.

-listening to 10 stanzas of my father's improvised rhythmic poetry composed to my best friend's car, nicknamed "little red chicken."

BUT the best part of all the traveling, as I'm realizing each time I do it, is coming home. And realizing that I have a home to come home to. I almost burst into tears when after two weeks of new places and faces I saw the back of my favorite supermarket guy's head, and I recognized it. I breathed in breath after breath of disgustingly polluted air of the city I love (for some reason leaving Cairo gives me respiratory problems). I called my friends, I ran along the Nile. I know this city, and I have a life here, I have a community.

I went back to work today as my family was heading to the airport. I caught up on the office drama, the new favorite lunch sandwich stands, met some new people.

I don't really care about seeing the temples and the bedouins and the camels and the sea and the mountains. But its beautiful and its worth it to leave if you can come back to something and someones, and to realize that you missed them, and they missed you. A rolling stone collects no moss, but maybe I really like the moss, moss is natural, moss is green and squishy and beautiful actually, rocks are meant to have moss. But real relationships are way better than moss, and I'm a lot less tough than a rock. I have been ridiculously blessed, I love my moss, but its not gonna wipe off so easily.

I've been having a lot of good thinks and good talks (particularly with my Dad), about what I'm gonna do when my plane leaves here. I have the ticket, I leave May 5 back to LAX. My mind refuses to picture or contemplate that day, and more still, I can't conceive of ever leaving here without knowing I'll be back soon and for a long time. However, I can't conceive of not going back to the part of me that is still in America. The part of me that is my relationships there but also my culture and language and roots. The way that several Americans I think are scared of the Middle East, I now feel scared, almost terrified of America. Its maybe even more terrifying because its my own country. What if I can never fit in there or live there again? Will I ever be content there? Or anywhere? I should be content with my life, but does that mean being content with everything around me? I want to keep growing the way that I grow here, but I think maybe I need to come home again, that larger homecoming, to realize what has changed, where I've been, who I am now. But what will I do? Will I be able to hold onto the life and hope that I want to? Will it all be a disappointment? Will I be able to relate to anyone? Will everyone have moved on without me?

And Gaza, over 900 dead, these are civilians. Do these things even register in the U.S.? If you're in the U.S. I would be curious to hear what you know about it and what you feel about it.

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.

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