launch of Genesis
Well, the end of our week-long break is nearing. I have mixed feelings about classes starting again – one on hand it means that I’ll be learning some more Arabic in a structured environment, but on the other it means that I’ll have to wake up early and then spend the afternoon napping. Right now its been nice sleeping in, studying at the Coffee Bean (which is cozy, but expensive – about L.E. 20 for a frappuccino(!) ), and not walking back and forth from school. Uncle Mohammed left for Benghazi this morning, and I don’t know if he’ll be back to Cairo or not. Another of my uncles may be here to visit, but if not then it’ll just be a big reunion in Libya this winter.
In other news, Bigelow Aerospace (a private “space-habitat” company) successfully launched into orbit their second space module, known as Genesis II. The module inflates itself using compressed air, and carries a bunch of imaging devices, solar panels, and other items. The first link leads to Space.com’s coverage of the launch, very informative. The launch and successful powering-up of the module is a big step, as the company is planning on launching larger (100-300 inhabitable cubic meter) modules by 2011. Those modules will be occupied by multiple-person crews. The intention is to launch several large nodes and dock them together, creating an orbital complex that could be used commercially for private and government firms. A complex such as this would be a crucial step in setting up inexpensive, launch-from-orbit flights to the moon.
In other other news….Hunter is picking up more vocab than I am right now, so I’ll need to catch up. I’ve been reading Orientalism – Edward Said pulled together so much information from previous studies of the “Orient” that it’s astounding. I recently bought a copy of Bayn al-Qasrayn by the Egyptian Nobel-prize winning author Naguib Mahfouz. It’s written in Fusha – Modern Standard Arabic – so hopefully within the next year I’ll be able to read it without a hitch. That’s the goal, so now I’m going to hit the flashcards.
Update: Hunter is now reading The Yacobian Building, so maybe I can catch up quickly. Hope he doesn’t read this and go back to studying…
i want to hold your hand…
Intergender relationships in Egypt are simultaneously complicated and simple. Complicated in that there are many social “rules” to worry about. Simple in that those with money can date and marry and those without money can’t. Even that explanation, though, doesn’t really do the system justice – the whole dating/relationship/marriage system is so nuanced that I don’t think I could ever successfully be a part of it. Even many Egyptian males can’t, often marrying (or wishing to marry) outside of the system; i.e. European or American women.
Admittedly, my experience is extremely limited. The upscale coffee shops of Zamalek and Mohandeseen see many male/female social outings. I can’t tell those who are dating apart from those who are ‘just friends’ or study partners, though, since part of Egyptian courtship involves no or limited physical contact. One will see couples holding hands, or arm-in-arm, from time to time, and although I think the old-fashioned rules are being loosened a little, its still a fairly infrequent sight. It’s a nearly de facto rule. The upper classes seem to get the privilege of dating, because they’re the ones that can afford the marriage requirements. Typically, the male will provide the flat, appliances, furniture, and sometimes a car, if he doesn’t possess those already. My Arabic teacher was complaining about that to us recently. Although, according to Hazim, perhaps 10 percent of women already are working on their own and have a flat, and the husband will just move into that. He said requirements such as those are why most Egyptian males don’t marry until what we would consider ‘late’ – early to mid 30’s; they can’t afford a marriage until after working and saving for several years.
It also seems that the upper classes are the ones who have been fading out of the system – the girls are free-er to dress in a “Western” style, sans hijab, go to coffee shops (the Western kind, not sheesha-packed ahwas), and socialize in what we socially unrestrictive Americans would consider a typical mixed-gender environment. One rarely sees upper class females alone in such places – girls usually hang out in groups, and if there are males, they’re outnumbered by females. The middle class Egyptian males are still pretty misogynistic, though, or at least less “understanding.” All the ones I’ve talked to describe any girl who does anything – from dating (if you can call it that) on up – before marriage with any number of those terms referring to loose or for-hire women. I think they just feel locked-in by the system (these are the same guys who want to marry outside of it) and are trying to create reasons that make Egyptian girls unavailable to them.
I don’t think it’s completely the males’ fault, though. In a culture that still requires proof of female virginity at marriage and in which the majority of males can’t afford marriage, ever, there is a vast amount of pressure on both sexes.
Don’t confuse the class-permeating, slow-to-”modernize,” part ancient and cultural, part religious, part economical system with the Egyptians themselves, though. Its just too hard to initiate change in something so complicated, widespread, and poorly understood (even by the egyptians themselves).
street sweepers
I think my tourist obligations are finished. Monday night I went to the Pyramids for the Sound and Light show with Hazim, Adhem, and Hunter. Although the narration was a little 80’s British Orientalist and slightly cheesy, it was fun seeing the Pyramids at night. Oh, I should mention that we were VIPs to the show; basically honored guests at the Pyramids. Somehow Hazim has connections everywhere – I think its because his father was a high ranking general in Egypt’s secret police. Yesterday, we finally managed to pull ourselves out of bed and get over to the Egyptian Museum. Although it looks impressive from the outside, it’s a bit underimpressive on the inside. They’ve crammed hundreds of thousands of artifacts into a rather small space (there were literally sarcophagi thrown into corners), and left everything except the most major pieces unlabeled. The highlight was seeing the gold sarcophagi and mask of King Tut – it’s immensely impressive in person. I’ve been thinking about getting something like that for myself. Fortunately the museum is planning to move to a much larger, $500 million building in Giza by 2009. It’s currently in a sad state: everyone touches the objects, wearing them down, there’s no air conditioning to speak of, and at some points one can’t even move through the massive tour groups. It was a fascinating place, though, and I got to see some objects I’d only ever seen in my art history textbook.
Last night I was showing Hazim some pictures of my stay in London, and his only comment, repeated several times, was about the cleanliness of the streets. Even though there’s a huge difference in street quality and cleanliness between those here and in the US, I’d never really thought about it. The streets in Houston, although constructed well, are still fairly dirty – but nobody really notices because we drive everywhere. Here in Cairo…not only are the streets typically of poor quality, but they are littered and dirty. An army of orange-clad sweepers is supposed to maintain the streets, and one can be seen anywhere, but they have little effect on the torrent of dirt, trash, paper, and food waste that floods the roads. Unclean streets are more common in districts where there are a large number of apartment buildings, like Mohandeseen where I live. For example, in Zamalek (where I am right now), there are very few alley-like streets, and so most of the roads aren’t too dirty. I don’t really mind not having shiny streets, and most Cairenes don’t even notice; but Hazim’s comment just got me thinking. Apparently the government doesn’t invest any money in road maintenance – yet another reason for the people to complain about Hosni.
I’m in this coffee shop (sadly, its an American one in Zamalek- Coffee Bean) frequented by AUC students and other wealthy-looking young Egyptians. Comfortable and air conditioning…and girls not wearing hijabs. But I came here to work on some Arabic and read Edward Said’s Orientalism, so I’ll get back on the topic of Egyptian girls later.
finally i’ll be a tourist…
After a month in Egypt, I’ll finally be going to see the Pyramids. Hazim invited Hunter and I to the sound-and-light show tonight. After he and his friend Adhem come over for some studying, we’ll taxi over to Giza to catch the show about 7pm. So I’ll be finally participating in some tourist activities.
Speaking of tourism, Hunter and I tried valiantly this morning to get up early (about 9am) to visit the Egyptian Museum, but it didn’t happen. Maybe tomorrow we’ll make it over there. The thing is, it opens at 10am and closes at 4pm, so only foreigners who haven’t adjusted to Cairo’s daily life can visit it. So we’ll just have to take a hit on sleep for a night and go to the museum.
Yesterday was a busy day. Kicked off the day by getting a haircut at a barber down the street. Interesting experience – as soon as I walked in, they sat me down for a shampooing, then cut my hair, then shampooed again, then loaded up on gel. Very fast haircut. Studied some with Hazim (which is actually getting to be a little bit of a grind – he doesn’t know enough English to explain any of the verb tenses), then headed over to Talaat Harb Square with him and Hunter to do some shopping. Came away with some jeans and a dress shirt for L.E. 170. Let me just say Egyptian shopping is very high-pressure – the American method of browsing around without anything particular in mind doesn’t make sense to anybody. Ate at an Italian pasta joint which I’ve come to frequent and then went to a coffee shop with Hazim and Adhem. Got a call from my Mom, and as soon as I said goodbye to her, I got a call from cousin Annas in London. We were getting into a nice chat when my bloody cell phone cut off. I guess the only solution is to go to Libya when he’s there….
Anyways, I’ve been having trouble finding stuff to do during the hot part of the day. Since I’m sleeping a decent amount at night because of the break, I don’t need to nap during the afternoon. So I study some Arabic, but it’s still kind of hard not being bored. For example, today I was passing the time playing with matches….then I burned myself.
like a dozen people in an elevator
So, some news to report.
On Friday, Hunter and I went the ‘Friday Market’ (Souq al-Gomaa) that I mentioned before. Nothing special…in fact quite the opposite of special. It was dirty to the point that we were walking on a garbage dump. Nothing interesting to buy, either – just animals and stolen clothes. So we walked around and left rather quickly, heading over to Khan el-Khalili to wander through the alley markets and make fun of clueless tourists. We can do that because we are in fact not clueless tourists but classy and well informed Egyptian residents. Exemplifying our classiness, we had some strawberry juice at El Fishawy’s, the café frequented by Naguib Mahfouz himself. Then we headed back home and out of the heat to our flat for a nap. We spent the night with my Uncles and Shokri.
Today we headed over to Heliopolis, a development about 15 kilometers away to visit CityStars mall – a 550 store shopping center. Very American in style and filled with stores that you’d find in an American shopping mall. Apparently Heliopolis was nothing but desert only 10 years ago. That’s how fast Cairo expands – the population of Heliopolis is now in the millions. I was reading an article on Wikipedia the other day about the largest cities in the world; it reported the population density of Cairo to be around 28,000 people per square mile. That’s a lot of people crammed into a small space. Compare that to Houston, which has about 600 people per square mile. What about Tokyo metropolitan area, whose population is over 30 million? Its population density is much lower, since geographically, there is room for expansion. The city of Cairo can’t really expand outside of the region fertilized by the Nile, so the only direction to go is up. Which is why there is no such thing as a house here. Only high-rise apartment buildings, which give Cairo a skyline that never ends.
I bought some figs the other day and discovered that I don’t really like the taste of fresh figs. I prefer the dried variety. So I’m trying to figure out what to do with my half kilo of figs. I stuck one in the freezer, but I’m not sure what the next step will be….any ideas? Anyone know how to make fig jam?
Uncle Omar is heading back to Libya tomorrow in the early morning. Hopefully I’ll see him again this summer – he might come back to Cairo for a short while, and maybe with his family. That would be nice. If not, I’ll just see him in Libya when I make my first visit – hopefully this December. Anyways, it’s not the time for sleep yet here, but I’ll save more blogging for the “morning”…..about 4pm.
karma is real, folks
Wednesday night was interesting. Hazim, Luke, and I were supposed to go to a disco named ‘Hard Rock’ (it turned out to be just the Hard Rock Café – apparently a very expensive ‘club’ here) because his uncle had reportedly set up a credit for us. The HRC is super pricey – like over L.E. 100 for an appetizer, so we wouldn’t have wanted to go any other way. After some confusion though, mostly due to the language barrier, we found out that his uncle had just pulled some strings to get us in to the café but didn’t actually pay for anything. So we bounced. We decided to take a taxi over to Zamalek and search for a café there. After paying the taxi and wandering around for 15 minutes, a taxi pulled up beside us and started to talk about something. I didn’t understand, but all of a sudden he held up my camera! It turns out that he drove all around the area he dropped us off at in order to return the camera. A very honest man – he could have likely sold it for much more than the tip I gave him as a thank you.
I still can’t figure out why he tried so hard to return the camera to me. It has to be due to karma. Earlier in the day, I went grocery shopping at Metro and paid with a 50 pound note. But the cashier thought I paid with a 100 pound note and gave me change accordingly. But I noticed and gave him back the extra. Maybe the cashier was the taxi driver and recognized me. Or maybe not. But karma is real, folks.
life begins again
Last day of the first summer session at school today. Had my MSA exam yesterday, and got grades back today. Made an A in both courses. I wasn’t sure how I should celebrate…maybe overload on some sheesha? Actually even the smell of that stuff makes me slightly nauseous for some reason. So I decided to consider my other options: coffee at any of a hundred places within walking distance, hashish (to find some just ask the nearest police officer), juice at a café….ok not really hashish. Went over to Dar al-Qamar, a Lebanese place known for its hummus, for a (slightly) expensive dinner. L.E. 40 for some beef koufta, kebab, and kabbeh. Lots of k’s. After that we hiked over to Kit-Kat Square (don’t know how it got that name) and headed to our produce market from last week to pick up some apricots, figs, and grapes. Maybe L.E. 11 for more than 4 pounds of fruit. Also picked up some kind of cracker/chip thing from a bakery.
So we have a week off from classes before the second summer session begins. Not really sure what to do with that time….any ideas? Hunter and I kind of want to get out of Cairo for a couple of days. We were thinking about going over to the West Bank or Gaza Strip, but those options aren’t really available any more, with Israel rolling tanks around everywhere all of a sudden. Jerusalem might still be a possibility, though. If not, there’s the al-Fayoum oasis about an hour south of Cairo, as well as Sakkara. If we don’t leave Cairo, then I think the plan will be to see something new here every day. We’ll see what happens, but for the next few days, I’m just going to catch up on some sleep.
Tomorrow, the plan is to head over near the citadel of Salah al-Din and roam the Souq al-Gomaa (Friday market). Its a market that is open every Friday, from sunup to sundown, selling anything and everything imaginable. It’s essentially the black market of Cairo, and according to everyone we’ve talked to, is extremely unsafe and filled with thieves. All the more reason to go. If my wallet gets stolen, I’ll just buy it back at the next vendor down. (No, I don’t keep my money in my wallet – in this cash intensive economy, there’s just not enough room in a wallet). Anyways, I’ll report on that later…maybe I’ll pick up something interesting.
Spent a long night last night roaming around Zamalek, so I’m pretty wiped out. I took a 4 hour nap earlier, but that’s not quite cutting it. So I’m probably off to sleep early tonight. Looking forward to some cold apricots for breakfast. Although I’ll still be practicing my Arabic this week, it’ll be nice not to have to wake up at 7am and then walk back from school during the hottest part of the day. Nice not to have homework, too. Been kind of bogged down in the “wake up early, drink coffee, sleepwalk through class,” kind of day, so this break will be refreshing.
I’m actually in the Middle East?
Recently the Askari shrine in Baghdad was pretty much destroyed. It’s the second time the 100-year old Shia mosque has been bombed, the first time being in early 2006. Al-Ahram and al-Jazeera say that infiltrators in the Ministry of the Interior were responsible, but that doesn’t matter much. It’s just going to lead to more attacks against Sunni mosques in reprisal. Its terrible how the people don’t have any respect for holy sites of other sects. And say the M.I. was responsible….do they just want violence in Iraq to continue? Apparently. I do hope something good happens there soon – its a much different feeling when you’re actually in a Middle Eastern country. We seem to be much more emotionally and psychologically linked to everyone in the region. Imagine hearing that Hamas had taken over the Gaza Strip – only a few hundred kilometers away. I didn’t really feel like I was in or a part of this world until recently.
Anyway, I have serious need to study for my ‘final’ exam in Modern Standard Arabic class. I can’t believe they think they can give us a test. And MSA is almost an artificial language…the grammar is very structured and regularized, and there’s no room for deterioration of the language or anything like that. Its really strict. Egyptian Colloquial is so much nicer – a much faster language to converse in, and nicer sounding, too. No glottal ‘q’ sounds. Although everyone would understand if I spoke in Fusha (spoken MSA), it would probably take me 5 minutes to say a sentence that would take my only 15 seconds in ECA. That’s not much of an exaggeration, either.
Hunter just finished up his exchange with Muhammad. I’m thinking I won’t go out tonight…I really do need to catch up in both MSA and sleep. Let me finish my dinner first, though.
Much of the food here is very simple. But really, it is very satisfying every time. Right now I’m munching on sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers with some feta cheese. Tastes really good, and best of all, took maybe 2 minutes to prepare. Having a fully stocked fridge feels nice. Looking forward to some more shopping at a fruit vendor later this week….we’ve been learning fruits and vegetables in ECA this week – and now that I know how to handle myself in a produce market, I’m ready to take them by storm.
‘Twas a Feast of Feasts
The first large dinner the majority of which I’ve cooked myself…..
I’ll start at the beginning, though. Missed a get together at the Egyptian Museum because I got home about 4am from hanging at the coffee shop with my Uncles and Libyan friends. So woke up about 12:30pm, took a cold shower because the pilot light is broken, and then studied a little Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic; it really sucks – very standardized, and a ton of grammatical rules). Then Hazim and Mohammed (Hunter’s friend, not the Uncle) came over. We basically told them that they were going to take us shopping at a produce market (note the indefinite article ‘a’: we had no clue where we would go) and then cook a marvelous Egyptian dinner for us. We walked a couple blocks north of our flat and then down Sudan street (which we didn’t know was there) on the border of Mohandeseen with Imbaba (apparently a very unsafe and poor district: Mohammed said that if President Mubarak wanted to go to war without using his army, he could just get the people of Imbaba). Anyways, there was a nice produce market sitting in an alley. We rushed the place. After a blur of money-fruit/vegetable exchanges we were back on Sudan street loaded with bags of apricots, tomatoes, grapes, lettuce, beets, and several vegetables, the names of which I only know in Arabic. The maybe 6+ kilos of produce cost less then LE 10. We then bought some cumin, black pepper, and mango juice, upping the bill for the day to about LE 30. Boy, those spices really kill the wallet…..
The uncles had dropped off some groceries earlier in the day, so we had some whole chickens in the freezer. Dragged our Egyptian friends back to the flat and had Hazim orchestrate while Hunter and I chopped everything, stirred, mixed, washed, and re-chopped. After a little over an hour, we had the most gorgeous
dinner I’ve ever seen. Potato and tomato stew, with rice, whole chickens, a really fresh salad, and fruit salad with mange juice for desert. We invited another friend from school over, and then all the food teleported somehow from table to our stomachs. Left a lot of dishes to clean, too.
Satisfied and not really able to walk, we grabbed a taxi over to Zamalek and joined Luke and Ahmed for some sheesha. I don’t really like smoking that stuff though, it seems to make me sick, so I didn’t have any. Stefan (a swedish friend from school) joined us – he’s a sheesha pro, smokes some maybe three times a day. Spent maybe 2-3 hours just sitting by the street, watching cars, and chatting. It seems like my Arabic improving, and I hope it actually is. I’m not fluent, so I’m not satisfied with my Arabic yet. But step by step, it’s getting there.
Anyways, a real nice night in Cairo city.
well, whats happening over there?
Just a quick post to ask for some news from friends back in the US. Leave some comments and let me know your summer work is going. Or how your not-work is going (Namit..). We have a poor wireless connection in our flat, so the only thing I can really do is check email and update the blog – so I don’t get on Facebook or AIM much. So tell me whats up! I’m curious to see what you with the internships (Jason, Rupesh…) are doing with all that money you’re rolling in. Maybe buying me some Jolin Tsai posters for the room…….
Anyways, my lazy flatmate (Hunter) is napping so I think I’ll go bother him. Oh, and heres a little bit of information to help explain the lifestyle in Cairo (information taken from the website of the Cairo Jazz Club):
“We are open from late breakfast until dinner”
Hours: 5pm – 3am
No joke, thats how the day goes here. Most people don’t go to sleep until after the dawn prayer (~5am) and wake up until after 12pm. The only thing open in the morning are museums, and thats because they know that only foreigners visit them.
So anyway, tell me whats up with you!
The Taxi Legend Continues….
Last night the legend came alive. First time ever that a taxi driver got out of his cab because he wanted more money from us. It was pretty unexpected too, because we hadn’t really underpaid him. I think it was the fact that we’re foreigners – people here always raise prices for foreigners. But that honestly doesn’t mean that we should be paying more. Money-laden foreigners are frequently overpaying anyway. But let me quit moaning; here’s the story:
Hunter, Elliott, and I had gone to Luke’s place in Zamalek to hang out. One can expect to pay anywhere from L.E. 3-5 to go from our flat in Mohandeseen to his place. Its a few kilometers in distance, but people usually consider how bad traffic is when they pay a taxi. We came back around 1:30am – the streets are at their worst this time of the evening, this is RUSH HOUR like you’ve never seen it. However, the way back from Zamalek was really empty for some reason, and it took us barely 5 minutes to make the trip. So when we got out we paid the driver L.E. 4.25. I mean, all he’s doing is going over the bridge. I’ve gotten away with L.E. 2 before, although that is being pretty stingy.
Anyways, he followed us around the corner in his car and called to us. When we turned around, he held up the cash, saying ‘this isn’t enough’ in Arabic. Hunter replied ‘yeah its enough.’ Then the driver stopped his car, turned it off, and got out. He got out! We had heard legends about drivers getting out of their taxis….was he going to fight us? Curse our families? I was afraid for my life! I think we were all getting our fists ready…..
Fortunately he just stood there and yelled rather anticlimactically. So we chucked him 50 more piastres and got the heck out of there with our lives hanging by a thread. So he made L.E. 4.75 for the trip…I would definitely say thats fair.
The people always want to get more money from foreigners. Its understandable – foreigners typically have tons of money – but at the same time, some things just aren’t worth overpaying for. Like taxis. With hundred thousand taxis in this city, the supply really isn’t low. So the price can’t be jacked up justifiably. Anyway, maybe next time the driver will try to fight or something. I’ve learned plenty of insults in Arabic from Hazim, so I could probably fend him off verbally (?).
For now, some studying, language exchange later, and a night at Trianon (haven’t seen my uncles in a whole day and a half – in Cairo, that is a looooong time). And a note to Hunter: learn from the mistakes of others and use a blanket next time you nap.
I Slept! I Dreamt! I Woke Up!
At long last we learnt some verbs in Arabic class. It was getting pretty bad, noun after noun after noun. When I’d do language exchange with Hazim, I could hardly even put together a sentence; any verb that I knew before today I learned from him.
Now though, I’m loaded with verbs! I can take a shower, put clothes on, eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner (3 separate words in Arabic), or even sleep.
But we haven’t actually learned any form of past tense yet, so the title of this post is a bit inaccurate.
I’m rather looking forward to Hazim’s visit tonight…I hope that I’ll finally be able to put together a decent conversation. Mostly he’s just been teaching me nouns and various other parts of speech, since his English isn’t good enough yet to explain the slightly complicated Arabic verb system. But by the end of the summer, I hope that he is close to his older brother Ahmed’s level. His older brother did a language exchange with one of my friends from school last summer, and now he is really really good in English. I went and saw him last night…he lives with Luke in that gorgeous 16th-floor apartment in Zamalek (which is the cleaner, more trendy and upperclass island in the Nile). Knowing that I’m extremely jealous of the view off their balcony, Ahmed invited me to sit with him out there and check out the Cairo skyline. After that, Luke and I had a little tutorial in Egyptian swear words and insults. So now we can go pick a fight on the street anytime we feel like one. Let me just that Egyptian insults are really creative….
The city is so big that you can’t see the end of it. In any direction. If we go to the roof of the identical apartment building next door (via a small bridge with only one railing…..) then we can see straight to the Pyramids. They’re surrounded by urban sprawl nowadays….even though they’re something like 10km away from us, the skyline doesn’t change. Thousands of high-rise apartment buildings. Cairo must be the densest city in the world, population-wise. Something like 16 million people in only 20 square miles (the so-called city limits). Maybe about 500,000 taxis in those 20 sq miles too, which may be an under-exaggeration.
As per typical afternoon routine, I just woke up from a nap. If I get some productive studying in now, it’ll mean my exchange with Hazim later will be good, and I might even have time afterward to visit Ahmed and Luke again.
On another note, the Nescafé I’m drinking isn’t sweet enough, so I’ll go put some sugar in it…..
Remainder of the Weekend
Just got back from an early night at Trianon. Talked a bit with Idris, Shokri and Uncles Mohammed and Omar, then headed back to the flat with Hunter, picking up some chicken shwarma on the way home. An early dinner. Anyways, I’ll pick up the description of the weekend with Saturday’s events (don’t forget to read the previous post to get caught up)…..
I think also I forgot to mention in the previous post that there were billions of donkeys in Siwa. Maybe 5 cars total (and for some reason, a car wash) but donkeys everywhere..plowing, ferrying people, eating, sleeping, fighting each other, getting in the way….
Lots. of. Donkeys. It was practically the theme of the weekend.
After a decent sleeping in, we wandered over to a handicraft store to check on prices for a desert safari (most such shops double as safari organizers). Our guide book said L.E. 50 -70 should be a decent price for a half day drive through the desert. After some tea and negotiation, we managed to agree with Fami – a 19 year old who had probably worked in the shop for most of his life – on an overnight safari with dinner for L.E. 360 for the three of us. We checked with Salama, our friend from the day before; he told us that we were getting a decent deal. So around 4pm we hopped in a Toyota 4×4 with all our gear and headed out of town. Our driver Nasser was quite skilled, he took us about 20km into the Great Sand Sea before really turning it on and launching up and down the sand dunes. Some of the dunes we went over were more than 50 meters high. I’ll have to get the photos uploaded soon. He then found a nice medium height dune for us to sandboard on: like snowboarding, you just put your feet on the board and glide down the dune. The hard part is bringing the board back up the dune though…quite a workout! We then drove over to a cold spring – which appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the desert, for a refreshing swim. It was actually quite large…maybe more than a million gallons of cold, clean and rather sweet tasting water. After a nice dip, we headed about half a kilo north to a hot spring. Although the water wasn’t as clean, it still felt nice. We drove over some more sand dunes, then headed a bit closer to Siwa to our cabin (reed-walled hut) where we would have dinner cooked for us. The hut had its own natural cold spring (they’re everywhere), so we sat in it a bit, then built a fire off in the sands and slept there. In the middle of the Great Sand Sea. So we’re pretty hardcore.
After waking up early, we caught a bus back to Marsa Matruh, then another one straight to Cairo. Looong day. The shower felt really nice. Took a nap, then went shopping at some huge hypermarket outside of Cairo with Uncles Omar and Mohammed and their friend Mohsan. Somehow they ended up buying me a lot of groceries, I’m not really sure how that happened. But its really nice to have a fridge full of cheese and fruit and such.
Although most Cairenes are clothes-shopping or eating dinner right now, I’ll be hitting the sack early, as I’m still working on catching up on the weekend. The English/Arabic lessons with Hazim went well earlier…only problem is that in school we’re still not learning verbs and conjugations, so I still can pretty much only point to things and name them. Apparently we’ll be learning verbs (gasp) tomorrow in class, so maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to sit in the chair instead of I chair now. We’ll see.
Where Donkeys Abound
Well, the reason for the lack of recent updates is the fact that I spent the weekend wandering around the Western Egyptian Desert.
But let me first preface everything by just saying that I don’t and won’t smoke, nobody worry. Was a bit of a joke on the earlier post.
So on to the trip. Hunter, David (a friend from school), and I left Cairo Thursday afternoon for the oasis town of Siwa in the middle of a desert known as the Great Sand Sea. The oasis is populated by about 20,000 Berbers and a few hundred Arabs, about 600km from Cairo and 300km south of the Mediterranean coast. We hopped on a bus to Alexandria first (about 3 hours and L.E. 25), then over to a coastal town named Marsa Matruh (another 3 or so hours and L.E. 15), where we stayed the night. Let me just say that the guide book was right, Marsa was a very unattractive and dirty little town. Our hotel was really terrible quality too, the beds were more like floors than beds. We then got the 7am bus over to Siwa for L.E. 12. Although another 3 hour bus ride started to get rather painful on the sitter, the we finally got to see some real desert. Just as suddenly, though the scenery changed again: thousands of palm and date trees just popped out of nowhere when we entered the oasis. It was quite beautiful to see such a large amount of greenery; even in Cairo there aren’t very many trees.
Arriving in Siwa about 1130am, we hopped in a taxi (actually a donkey cart – the only form of transportation available there) to one of the hotels which our guidebook recommended, Yousef Hotel. Located in the city square, there was easy access to several decent restaurants and handicraft shops. After paying L.E. 10 each for the room, we had the hotel owner find us some bikes for the day. After a few kilos ride to the east through some palm and date groves, we came to some Egyptian ruins known as the temple of Umm Ubayda, which was dedicated to the cult of Amun several thousand years ago. All that was still standing was part of a wall, but that part had Egyptian hieroglyphics and drawings still intact. It was quite spectacular, and we took plenty of photos. (Still working on finding a place to upload them). After that, we followed the path to more ruins, known as the Temple of the Oracle, a famous oracle about two thousand years ago – apparently where Alexander the Great was crowned pharoah of Egypt. These ruins were quite large but in terrible shape – we still managed to find some hieroglyphics in what appeared to be the main temple room. So basically we walked in the same place Alexander did! After that, we biked over to a natural cold spring known as Cleopatra’s Bath – many of the local men were swimming there. It was refreshing and clean water…both Alexander and Herodotus have bathed there. We then biked back to the main Siwa settlement and climbed the ruins known as Shali (the main fortress and housing of Siwa from the 13th to 19th centuries) to watch the sunset from the highest point.
The shower that night was clean and hot…surprising given our location, but welcome nonetheless. We found a small restaurant for dinner, checked out a couple handicraft shops, and then wandered back to the hotel for some rest….
Well, the story is going to have to be picked up in the subsequent post – I don’t want this one to get of unreadable length. More studying, language exchange with Hazim, probably go to Uncle Mohammed’s to show pictures of the trip in between this post and the next.
Language Exchange
Just finished my second exchange session with Hazim al-Khatarey. He is the brother of Ahmed, who is the Egyptian living with Luke in that amazing apartment. Ah, I don’t think I wrote about that apartment yet….well, its amazing, so I’ll have to digress and blog about it. 16th floor of a building in Zamalek, the aristocratic expat district on one of the Nile islands. The rooms all have floor-to-ceiling windows with west-facing views of the Nile and the entire city. That means the sun sets right into the apartment! I’m extremely jealous of Luke, and even more jealous because Hunter will be living there in the fall when he’s at AUC. He’s been trying to peer pressure me into staying also….its hard to find reasons to leave (!). Anyways, its a nice place, and really cheap too (they’re only paying about L.E. 3600 a month…what a steal!).
Anyways, I’m sitting on our balcony right now, the one with the view of the street and a water fountain. The weather’s been nice lately, though…cool nights and mornings, and even the days are back down to around 30something C. Hunter is finishing up his exchange with Muhammed (yes, everybody is named that around here) and Elliott is getting some homework help from Hazim. We exchange for 2 hours: the first hour we do as much English conversation as possible, with as little Arabic as possible (sometimes we have to look up words that I can’t describe too well), and the second hour we do as much Arabic as possible (limited by my small vocabulary….you know, we haven’t learned any verbs at school yet, so all I can do pretty much is point at things and name them…..). Hazim is a pretty chill guy, he was pretty nervous yesterday, but today he was more relaxed and able to converse much more smoothly. His English vocabulary really isn’t bad at all, and he picks up nuances in phrasing fairly quickly. He can even make the “p” sound….even his older brother Ahmed, whose English is strong, has some trouble with that. I taught him what ghetto meant yesterday; let me just say it took a while to explain, but fortunately our apartment is full of broken applicances and things like that, so I could just point at our toilet and say “ghetto!”
This’ll probably work out nicely…Hazim and Muhammed are great guys, and best of all, they know how to cook! So we plan on taking them grocery shopping and then having them teach us how to prepare some decent food. The only thing I can make right now is ful, and I’m getting tired of it (nearly every day for lunch – albeit at various shops and stands, not just my own cooking).
I’m betting by the end of summer I’ll have picked up smoking, though. Not that I want to, but every single person here smokes. Hunter and I wondered about non-smoking campagins in Egypt the other day, then decided quickly that one would fail miserably. Every male smokes, starting from around 14-15, I’m guessing. So its all around me, and a social thing to do. I don’t accept cigarettes offered to me, but its probably creeping into my subconcious. Both my uncles are trying to quit, but Ihmaeda goes through at least a pack, probably two per day while Omar probably smokes nearly a pack. Inshallah, they’ll be able to drop smoking soon.
Back to some vocab flash cards for me…The Egyptian Colloquial class at school is very useful, while MSA isn’t too exciting. But I am getting a strong foundation in the writing system, which I’ll be thankful for later. Some Trianon later tonight, too, without a doubt.
