the sporting club a break from smog congested streets
Yesterday I went running for the first time all summer. I went down to the Gezira Club, a private sports club that occupies pretty much the entire southern half of the island which is home to Zamalek, and ran for about an hour.
Sounds posh. It wasn’t.
According to a map which had a history of the island, the Gezira Sporting Club was founded at the turn of the centry. Membership in it consisted mostly of Cairo’s old rich – French and British, and a few Egyptians who had become wealthy through the colonial system. It was home to polo and cricket teams, one of the first swimming pools in Egypt, and chic post-polo match parties, hosted by the socialista wives of the colonial masters. However, by the 1950s, a movement had been started to remove the club from the control of British Cairenes, and by the early 1960s the club’s membership was about 75% Egyptian. Without the patronage of wealthy expats, the club fell into disrepair.
Forty years later, the large track which circles the park is simply a dirt path; trees grow in the middle of it, pools of water block some sections, and horses regularly use it as a litter. Most of the grass on the sports fields is overgrown and weed-filled, and the fences aren’t maintained. There’s even a hotel or apartment-building at one end of the club, abandoned and occupied by squatters. Although we saw several beautiful horses being ridden for sport, they seemed out of place in what was basically a large overgrown backyard. Even the club buildings were old and in need of repair. The nicest thing may have been the olympic-size swimming pool and diving well, but I wasn’t able to enter the pool area and see it up close. (I did see a swim team finishing practice – that’s good news if I ever want to come back here and play sports. Apparently there are several youth water polo clubs in Cairo, although it’s taken a summer of asking around to find out where.) But the club was actually a bit depressing to be in, knowing that it had once been a large and beautiful club.
It would be nice to invest some money in the club, and bring it back to the days when it was the hippest place to be seen in Cairo. The sports clubs are the only places in the city where one can enjoy (somewhat) fresh air (i.e. breathe air, which while dirty, hasn’t come straight from an emissions-unregulated exhaust pipe), and be among some greenery and away from the cacophony of car noises in the streets. An effort should be made to make these clubs become real oases in the middle of Cairo.
abdication day and other events
Its been two days since Abdication Day (26 July 1952, when King Farouk officially was forced to abdicate and was sent into exile), but I have yet to see any Egyptian celebrating, or even any remarks on television or in the papers. On Thursday, it seemed that the only people commemorating the 26th were us Americans. We wore fez hats around all night and loudly toasted “to Abdication!” All the Egyptians looked at us, mentally sighing and thinking “you foreigners!” Even thought the government may have had some kind of ceremony, the holiday just isn’t in the public’s mind the way Independence Day is in America. Maybe October 6, Egypt’s “vctory” in the Yom Kippur War is a bigger public holiday. I won’t be here to evaluate it though, but one would think that independence from Farouk’s ‘corrupt’ regime would be the equivalent of our independence from Britain. Just a thought.
Anyways, I have exactly one week remaining. The summer has really flown by: of course we all know the cliché – I think that at the end of our journeys we start to think about and focus on the things that we haven’t done or places we haven’t been. So I’ve been saying to myself “I should have gone to Luxor!” instead of “man, I travelled 300 kilometers into the largest desert in Egypt!” But then when I think about it, I never actually had an interest in going to Luxor, which is why I didn’t go. Honestly, the only regrets I’ll have about being here are that I didn’t get around to eating at all the interesting restaurants at which I wanted to eat. I know I’ll be coming back to Egypt, though, I just don’t know when. Soon, I hope, because I really can’t stand not being fluent in Arabic for much longer.
I just hope that I don’t forget what I’ve learned in colloquial Egyptian when I’m in the States. I’ll practice with it somehow – maybe I can join some kind of radical, trouble-causing Arab political organization. Maybe I shouldn’t say that on a blog…
My cousin Mahmoud from Libya completely surprised me the other day by being in Egypt. I got a call from my uncle’s apartment phone – which doesn’t make sense since he’s in Libya – so I answered it excitedly. Mahmoud didn’t introduce himself, and he has the exact same accent as my uncle (apparently the whole family has the same accent), so I thought it was my uncle. I was conversing with him in a very confused manner, until he finally said “its your cousin Mahmoud!” Ohh. Why didn’t you say that earlier? Anyway, I had no idea that he was coming to Egypt. It was great to see him – he showed me many pictures of Libya and the family, and we talked a lot about the daily life in Benghazi. I was very pleased that I was able to understand a lot of his Arabic. Although he was probably speaking as simply as he could, I can see that I’ve made some progress in the language. I also learned that my father, since he hasn’t lived in Libya for more than twenty years, uses a really old form of Libyan Arabic because he hasn’t been around to pick up the new slang. Mahmoud was telling me that when he and my other cousins greet my father on the phone, he always get confused with the ever-changing colloquial greetings. What an old man. ;)
Check out the newest picture album when you’ve got time:
Oh, and you know what else? Mahmoud and I asked a waiter last night to take a picture of us, and the waiter didn’t even know how to use the camera. He wanted to point the view screen at us. It was a bit shocking. I’ll admit, not everybody has used a camera, especially in a city of 5 million unemployed, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a situation before. It definitely made my “culture-shock” list, which I’ll post on once I’ve left Egypt.
gandhi-ing class
So I spent the morning protesting my Egyptian class by sleeping through it. The protest was non-violent, and went well; after about twenty minutes I realized that both Hunter and Elliott had joined me in our peaceful demonstration (which was only peaceful because we weren’t awake – otherwise we would have stormed the school). Happily, the teachers didn’t open fire on us. However, the morning had an odd unfulfilling and purposeless feeling to it. Luckily that didn’t last long, since I then went to MSA class, learned a bunch of stuff, ate some ful (!), and then exchanged. Great. I hope the school got the message.
Actually now I’m slightly worried – a couple of days ago Elliott came down with illness, and yesterday it hit Hunter. Maybe it’s the avian flu, from Luke’s duck, or maybe its the black plague. Either way, I hope it doesn’t hit me next, because I really don’t feel like being sick. Seriously, there are more important things to do. Like napping. Which isn’t the same if you’re sick. Also, there is the Asian Cup to watch on television, coffee shops to go to, and school. I’m not going to pretend my attitude has changed since the previous paragraph, though. Grrr. Hopefully that attitude wears off soon, or at least before USC starts; can’t be thinking that my classes aren’t good for anything then.
So now I’m in a coffee shop watching an Egyptian couple have a chat. People here have this interesting way of talking: they put their faces really close together, stare at each other’s eyes really intensely, and talk really loudly. Its fun to watch. Egyptian people are also really animated in their conversations, but nuanced in their gestures. Which means that I can never tell what people are talking about just by watching them. But sometimes I make up conversations that people are having to match their gestures.
Anyways, after Jamila’s nice post about porters, I’ve got to do a piece on Egyptian doormen, known as bowabs. It’ll be great, if not a little awkward trying to get the pictures.
learn me please
After sitting through Egyptian class today, I’ve decided that it is quite worthless. We’re being taught (not learning, as certain people don’t do that very well) the exact same things we were taught in the previous level of Egyptian. For example, today simply duplicated a lesson from the last level: same verbs, even the same exercises. A bit frustrating, yes? I pay the school money for a reason, but that reason really isn’t apparent when I’m sitting in Egyptian class. Maybe its just hiding.
On the other hand, my Modern Standard Arabic course is brilliant and the level covers a wide range of grammar and language topics. I think that the difference between the two isn’t based on my perspective alone, because the teacher is the same in both courses. So the quality of teaching isn’t an independent variable here; my ability to learn doesn’t change from course to course either, so the problem must be the course itself. Shucks.
I guess it leaves me time to work on my new words from exchanging, drink too much coffee, and wander around the city.
harry potter, copts, and cigars
Just woke up from a nice long sleep. We got up early yesterday so Hunter and Elliott could get to the Diwan bookstore around 10am to pick up their copies of Harry Potter. Yes, they have books in Egypt. But before going over to the bookstore in Zamalek, we stopped to grab some shwarma and some fruit-and-yoghurt drinks at a café on the border of Imbaba. It was really an amazing breakfast. Anyways, we got to the bookstore, and after some confusion over which of the two different covers to buy, they each picked a different one. Hunter managed to get interviewed by a reporter who was covering the “grand opening” of the Harry Potter book. Although it was kind of funny, because I think they might have been the first people to buy the book that morning. Anyways, after reading the first six books, I just have got to see what happens in the last one…I managed to steal Elliott’s copy for a while last night and read a little bit.
After the bookstore, we caught a cab over to Tahrir Square, where we hopped on the Metro subway for the first time. The station is actually really nice – no smoking allowed – and tickets are only 1 pound. The train system is VERY efficient, and has stops all over the east bank side of the city. Unfortunately, it hasn’t made it over to the west bank yet. So after a 10 minute or so train ride, we got off at Mar Girgis station, in the heart of Coptic Cairo. This area is actually a square kilometer or so consisting of about six coptic churches, one synagogue (the oldest one in Cairo), and one mosque (the oldest mosque in Africa). We visited two of the churches: the Hanging Church of the Virgin Mary, and St. George’s church and convent. The artwork was quite beautiful; it had a Byzantine flavor to it, with many mosaics and generous use of gold. There was also a lot of writing in the Coptic script as well as the Arabic script. It was interesting to see the graveyard next to St. George’s; nearly all of the graves were large marble tombs with Coptic and Arabic inscriptions. The inside of both churches was very elaborate, and neither seemed anything churches that we see today.
We then walked over to the mosque of Amr Ibn Al-’As, which was the first mosque built in Africa, when Muslim armies came west from the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century. Of course its been expanded and renovated several times since then; it was very large, with simple architecture, but quite impressive. We were there during prayertime, though, so we were limited to only talking pictures of areas where people weren’t praying. After seeing the mosque, we decided just to head back home, so we walked back to Mar Girgis station, and caught the train back to Tahrir. Its interesting to note that the train has segregated cars: every other car is reserved specifically for women, and no men are allowed, while the cars in between can be used by men or women. We almost made the mistake of climbing into the women-only car the first time around.
Here’s a link to my photos from Coptic Cairo.
After lunch, a shower, and some refreshing mango juice, I headed over to the Coffee Bean with Elliott for some studying with Hazim. The exchange went really well; his level of conversational English has improved drastically, and I feel that I can speak and understand Arabic at a much higher level than before. I just need to build a bigger vocabulary and practice more, but unfortunately I’m going back to the States soon. After studying, I borrowed Elliott’s copy of HP for a little bit, but I couldn’t really read it, as there was a group of really attractive Egyptian girls gossiping with each other in the cluster of seats next to me.
So the day had seemed like it had gone pretty well at this point. So Luke, Elliott, and I decided to go and find some food at a place that Elliott had been to, but didn’t remember the location. So after asking around and stumbling around Zamalek for a while, we finally found it. Its a restaurant that serves fiteer, a kind of Egyptian pancake that they stuff with all kinds of delicious food. I ordered mine with spinach and egyptian cheese. The highlight of the dinner was the paper tablecloth and the colored pencils that they gave us. So we just had fun drawing artwork all over the table. It was a really nice place, and our waiter was really funny. It seemed like the interior had been designed by Ikea, though. After dinner, we headed back to Luke’s place, climbed to the roof and had some cigars. I don’t know what happened, but we were stooled like crazy. We just lay down on the roof, looked at the few stars we could see through the pollution, and wished we could fly. Fortunately we didn’t actually try to fly. It was serene though, the noise from the streets barely reaches up there, the air was cold, and there was a great wind blowing. So we stayed there for an hour and a half looking out over the city.
And now I’m back in reality, with school tomorrow – I’m only here for two more weeks! Man, I don’t want to leave, although I could definitely go for some comfortable beds, not cooking my own food, air conditioning everywhere, and friends. Oh yeah, and not having my lungs decay due to air pollution. But everything else is great here and I don’t want to leave.
hypnosis by Sufi dance (and other news)
So apologies for the absence of updates the past days. This week has been quite busy, as per my previous post, I am trying to cram as much sightseeing and shopping into my schedule as possible. So at the end of the school-week (honestly, I’ve never looked forward to weekends as much as I have here in Cairo – something about living here makes you extremely tired), I’m looking forward to a few days of sleeping-in. But I’ll get on to talking about the week!
Unfortunately, no forays into Paris or anything like that (see Jamila’s blog for those stories…). Did I mention that I am simultaneously unspeakably jealous and upset that she went to France before I did? ARGH. Really, its not fair. But being there on Bastille Day must have been incredible. Hopefully 26th July here in Egypt will be comparable, although I really don’t know how people feel about national holidays here. It seems there’s more ethnic pride than national pride. All I know is that we at school are planning on some kind of celebration. Fireworks off the 26th July Bridge, maybe?
Ok, now I’ll get to my adventures. Tuesday night a couple friends from school got together for dinner, but after growing restless we wandered over to a disco near Sphinx Square (which is officially named Naguib Mahfouz square, after the writer, but I’ve never heard anyone call it that). After sitting awkwardly for a while, we all got up and danced the night away. I actually had never realized the mental health benefits of dancing – after about 3 hours I had let off a lot of steam and felt surprisingly relaxed and satisfied. After leaving the disco, Hunter, Luke and I dropped into Trianon, where we had some really perfect banana juice to finish off a long night. I decided to sacrifice morning class on Wednesday in order to snag a few more hours of sleep. After noon class, we language exchanged. Hazim says my level has really improved, but I still don’t feel happy with it. I feel so frustrated when I’m not able to express a thought. At least I’m finally learning Arabic, though. At night, I taxied over to the Khan el-Khalili area, grabbed some shwarma from Gad, a well-known and high-quality restaurant, and headed over to the Mausoleum and caravansary of al-Ghouri, a Mamluk sultan who died resisting the Ottomans. At about 9pm, a bunch of tourists and I crowded through an alley into the caravansary and sat down for about an hour to watch some Sufi dancing. The dancers weren’t actually Sufis performing a ritual or anything, just a dance troupe.
After some nice drum and horn music, some “Sufis” came out and started dancing. There wasn’t any spinning, just some nice coordinated movements, and skillful drumming. Then another “Sufi” dressed in green with a colorful skirt, came out and started spinning. The whole audience was entranced by the twirling colors of his costume. He spun for a full twenty-five minutes while accompanied by drummers and rababa (a kind of stringed instrument) players. After he exited the stage, three more dancer, dressed colorfully, came on stage and started spinning. They were wearing brightly patterned skirts, and at certain points during the dance would remove a skirt (turned out they had several skirts on) and pull them up above their heads to twirl like a disk above them. At this point, the act was no longer Sufi, but was an engaging and mesmerizing performance. The spinning skirts were a little hypnotizing. In fact, they were quite hypnotizing – I just sat in the same position at stared at them for any hour. It may even have given me a headache. The only bad thing was the absolute stuffy and humid air inside the caravansary (which is a place where caravans would stop and rest during a journey), so after the dance we were all drenched in sweat. It was alright, though, since we had all been mass mesmerized for free.
Then today after class, I studied some more with Hazim, and headed over to Trianon again for some cappuccino and croque monsieurs with Hunter, Ahmed, and Luke. Trianon is a really high-class ‘patisserie,’ with excellent coffee, but it feels a little odd without my uncles and a bunch of Libyans there. After coffee, we tried to catch a film at the Ramses Hilton Mall, but they weren’t showing anything in English, so we left. We had wanted a short break from struggling through Arabic all the time, but we didn’t get it. So we wandered around downtown looking for juice and cheap fake name-brand clothing. At around midnight Thursday, it seems the floodgates of humanity open up and let out thousands upon thousands of human beings into downtown. The streets are crowded with people walking among the traffic-jammed cars because the sidewalks are overflowing with people. One can take the al-Azhar bridge over the area known as al-Husseineyya, and looking down at the plazas below, wouldn’t be able to see the ground because of the sheer mass of people. Honestly, if you’ve ever been somewhere and thought that there were a lot of people, its nothing compared with Cairo. People are crammed in everywhere. In the slums of Cairo (which aren’t too far from where I live), the population density exceeds 30,000 people per square mile. Now imagine like hundreds of square miles exactly like this. The buzz-word when walking in the streets here is zahma, which means crowded. Pick any place in Cairo, say it is zahma and you would be describing it accurately. The taxi drivers also use when trying to get more money from a fare. Unfortunately for them, its crowded every single day: as most Cairenes say, rush hour in Cairo starts at 8am and doesn’t end till 2am. And since that’s true no matter where you are, the taxi drivers can’t use it as a good argument.
And after looking at my sister’s blog, I realize that my blog is in fact devoid of pictures and I haven’t uploaded any photo albums or such. That’ll be remedied by tonight, because I can’t be outdone by my sister. And its as if I don’t have any documentation of my stay here in Cairo – although I’ve taken thousands of pictures, no one has seen them. So proof that I’m actually here is forthcoming.
so little time….
So its hits me. The fact that I’ll only be in Egypt three weeks longer. It seemed I had an innumerable amount of afternoons and nights left in which to explore this megalopolis (is there a term that describes something more “city” than that? because Cairo is megalopolis plus). After school this afternoon an Egyptian friend showed us around his home area of Imbaba, a large and densely populated district just north of where I live. I’m just south of Sudan Street, which separates Mohandseen (my district) from Imbaba, which is known as more of a slum than anything else. It doesn’t have paved roads or cars – just microbuses and weird gas-powered tricycles – and it is said that the government has no control over the people there. We only went into ‘outer’ Imbaba today, but as soon as we crossed Sudan, the changes started to become evident. The apartment buildings are more shoddily put together, the streets aren’t as clean, and there are no police officers in sight. We didn’t really do too much there, just eat some koshari and walk around a bit, but it just got me thinking.
I mean, Imbaba is literally 200 meters away from where I live, and I hadn’t been there until today. The closest I’d ever been was a fruit market on Sudan Street. So what about all the other parts of Cairo I haven’t yet seen? Of course, this city is so massive that people live here a lifetime without seeing all of it, but I haven’t even been to some of the typical, tourist-Egypty sites. Like “Coptic Cairo,” home of like twenty coptic churches packed into only a single square kilometer. Or many of the historic mosques of Cairo, including the first mosque in Africa – the Mosque of Amr Ibn Al-’As. I actually haven’t felucca’ed on the Nile yet.
So I’m packing my next weeks full of trips everywhere. I also think I’ve been getting restless with the repetition of school and language exchange. So maybe minimizing sleep to only the necessary amount, and getting rid of screw-around time. There’s also many crafts shops and markets that I haven’t visited. You can see that my to-do list is quite huge. And shopping for souvenirs – aaaa!!!
But I’m not leaving Egypt yet, so I shouldn’t get all teleological about everything. (Can I say that?) To end this post on a less, like, depressed note – I had the best Nescafé with milk that I’ve ever had in my life. It didn’t even taste like Nescafé, or milk, or anything. Just pure liquidy amazingness. Yes.
language barrier? i think not.
So yesterday was actually a busier day than i expected. After waking up early to go to the Souq al-Gomaa (a market that is open only on Fridays and is absolutely huge and very dirty), several friends from school and I taxied over there and spent several hours walking around with Yehya, an Egyptian friend. Nothing really exciting happened for a while, but when we were leaving Luke bought a pet duck. For 5 pounds (that’s less than a dollar). So now he has a little duck in his apartment that he’s been feeding nonstop. We went over there to watch Pulp Fiction last night, and the duck just ran around his little pen all night.
Anyways, after visiting the Souq, I just came back and crashed for a couple hours. Then I met a Japanese friend from school for some koshari(!) and coffee. Did I mention I love koshari? Eating it actually presents a bit of a problem for me, because I always want to get a second serving. But if I do, then I would just pack my stomach and leave no room for rice pudding. So usually I’ll order a large bowl and try to eat it slowly. Anyways, the evening was actually quite an interesting experience because this Japanese guy barely speaks English, of course I don’t speak any Japanese, and so the only language we have in common is Arabic. We had a good time trying to communicate in the language that we are both learning. Neat way to get around what would otherwise be an impenetrable language barrier. Actually it was nice, because even though he knew a few (like 10 maybe) words in English, it seemed that he only wanted to speak Arabic anyways, so we just kind of settled into a nice conversation. There were definitely several ideas that neither of us could get across to the other though, so we just kinda had to sit there and laugh. After hanging, I went back to my flat, chatted with my Dad for a while, and then headed over to Luke’s. I spend practically as much time there as I do my own flat – mostly because he has some great air conditioning and a really nice balcony.
Like I’ve said earlier, the Asia Cup is all over the television, so I’ve been having a good time watching some good matches. Iraq played Australia yesterday, and after their 3-1 victory the Iraqi people rioted in Baghdad. I don’t think it caused any problems, though. I hope that this Asia Cup will be similar to the 2004 Olympics, when the Iraqi football team played some really inspired football and finished 4th, doing a lot of good for the nation’s morale in the process. The success of the national football squad is a good place for the people to rally around together. In other Asia cup news, the UAE squad has been playing terribly, losing to Vietnam and Japan; it looks like they’re headed for another first-round exit. Really, I talk about them too much, but if they didn’t have so much propaganda then it wouldn’t be such a problem.
So what’s the plan for this weekend? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go and be a tourist in Cairo’s Coptic district or something like that. There’s actually quite a bit of this city that I haven’t seen yet, namely most of the historic mosques and churches, and even most of downtown and its many squares and shops. Hm, I think I’ll get to work on that urban wandering as soon as possible – meaning after I finish this delicious pot of Libyan red tea.
no koshari today = :(
Ooops. I was about to start writing when I realized that my tea had boiled over and flooded the entire apartment with burning hot tea leaves.
I’ve been super tired recently…its not lack of sleep; I bet it has something to do with the large amounts of carbohydrates that I eat. I feel like meat is hard to come by, but that can’t be the case, since butcher shops are everywhere. So I was tired and didn’t feel like writing.
Anyways, I’ve been waiting to describe this amazing day I had yesterday. Well, the day wasn’t amazing so much as the food that was eaten during the day. After class some friends and I hopped over to a koshari shop that Elliott and I had found the day before after wandering through our school’s neighborhood for a while. The koshari is excellent and is served in LE 1.5, 2, and 2.5 sizes. The biggest size is even bigger than the LE 3 size that I’ve had at another place. To top it off, we all ordered cold rice pudding, which in addition to being absolutely scrumptious as rice pudding in the first place, was made even better by the fact that it was cold. And it was only LE 1. After that we wandered down the street, which soon turned into a twisting alley packed with shops and handicrafts stalls. We stopped at a shop packed full of sugarcanes to drink some fresh sugarcane juice – the shopkeeper ground up the canes right in front of us. I hadn’t tasted sugarcane juice until yesterday, actually, and it was fabulous. So after spending a grand total of LE 4 on lunch, dessert, and dessert-juice, my day wasn’t going to get any better.
Later in the evening, I went over to Zamalek to study with Hazim for a short time, and then worked on deciphering a newspaper article with his brother Ahmed. Then Elliott and I hopped over to the Coffee Bean (again!) to check out the really good looking, rich Egyptian girls. I mean study. Yes. We were very focused on our studies while at the Coffee Bean. Actually, it’s quite nice there, because you can just walk in and sit down in the really comfortable chairs and just kind of ignore the “please order at counter” sign. Which is what I did on Sunday. Sometimes the waiters – they’re not really waiters, since they don’t “wait,” though – come over and take an order, so then we order. But their drinks are overpriced anyways, and not nearly as high quality as Trianon’s. But I wouldn’t think of doing homework in Trianon. So its a dilemma. And since I skipped koshari/rice pudding/sugarcane juice today in order to go downtown and cash traveler’s cheques, I have quite a craving for it right now. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any koshari shops nearby. Wherever I live after college must have koshari – you can see that I’m obsessed with it. In fact, any day I eat koshari is a good day. So today was a bad day.
So anyway, I’m supposed to be increasing my amount of Arabic study so off I go. Friday, I’m looking forward to a guided tour of the Souq al-Gomaa (which I blogged about earlier) from an Egyptian friend of ours who actually works there. I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d ever get to know someone who worked there. But seriously, don’t go there on your own unless you are Egyptian. It’s absolutely crazy, and really dirty. The guidebook says something to the effect of “its a fun place to browse random trinkets.” That’s not the case, unless by “trinkets” you mean lizards, monkeys, stolen clothes, and trash. You can buy trash there for cheap.
can’t escape the reach of american culture
It’s just everywhere. Practically every fast-food chain known to man has a branch in Cairo. It’s not really considered fast-food, though, because every food in Cairo is fast. Places like Little Caesar’s and Pizza Hut are considered nice to fine-dining establishments. It seems that only middle and upper class Cairenes eat at “western” “fast-food” places. So much the better, that leaves the cheap, traditional places uncrowded – where I can eat ful and koshari as much as I like. I’m thinking about this as I people-watch in a Coffee Bean – there are definitely only upper class AUC students, European expats who live in Cairo, and upper class Egyptian adults. It’s the place to be seen. I hope nobody sees me yet, though, because I haven’t yet ordered one of their overpriced drinks…
Anyways, after a nice sleep last night, I woke up this morning and did nothing for about 6 hours. I watched the UAE v. Vietnam Asia Cup game, but that counts as nothing since both teams are in shambles. The UAE lost, 0-2, and seemed egotistically frustrated, as if they were supposed to win or something. Maybe they should have, after all they are ranked 48 places above Vietnam in FIFA’s world rankings (94th to 142nd). Sorry if the latest posts have turned into “rag on the UAE’s football team,” since there’s always a match on television, I get to see their propaganda (see previous posts) and ensuing failures to live up to it quite frequently. I am excited to the Asia Cup, though, and with the Copa América just ending, that means I’ll get a month more of daily football games.
So I guess my daily schedule has actually been quite cluttered: class, nap, football match, study, eat, exchange. I don’t feel too comfortable with my nap time getting pushed around.
Well, I came here to study a little bit before class tomorrow – studying is the one thing I haven’t done any of this weekend. I’ve been lazy, and I’m paying the price – I can’t remember the Arabic word for announcer and that screws up the entire pick-up line I was going to use on the nice-looking Egyptian girl next to me. Argh. I’ll have to completely rethink the witty introduction I had planned for myself.
i think i’d like a step pyramid as my tomb
A couple of friends mentioned they were thinking of going to Saqqara site of a bunch of 3rd dynasty (about 2600 BC) pyramids and tomb complex about 30km south of Cairo. I said I’d be interested in going, so I got a text message late last night indicating the meeting place this morning. So Hunter, Elliott, and I taxied over there completely unsure of how we were going to get to Saqqara. Turned out that one of our friends had procured an air-conditioned van with driver for the entire day for LE 300. Also turns out that 10 of us were going, so we hopped in, drove out of crowded Cairo and down a date-palm lined street for about half an hour until we reached the first complex. We paid LE 25 for tickets to the site. After walking through a rather unimpressive colonnade while being hounded by people selling souvenirs, we walked out right in front of one of the oldest pyramids in Egypt – the Step Pyramid of King Djoser, designed by the famous architect Imhotep. It was like a scene right out of my art history book!! 
In fact, I walked around for a while, trying to get an art history book-worthy picture (Parker I know you’re jealous). We tried climbing on it, but the tourist police waved us down. Hunter went down too fast and took a nice tumble, replete with scratches and bruises and possibly a concussion. Immediately after he claimed he was “110%.”
Then our group walked over to another pyramid nearby, going about 10m down to see the monolithic sarcophagus inside. We also saw a couple tombs, which still had many intact, colorful hieroglyphic inscriptions and drawings. We then had our driver take us south about 7km to the ‘Bent Pyramid’ and ‘Red Pyramid’ at Dahshur. The Red Pyramid is actually a sandy color, like everything else in Egypt, including the sand. If it weren’t for the fact that it is really ginormous, it would completely blend in, I swear. Unfortunately, the Bent Pyramid is in a militarized zone, along with the ‘Black Pyramid’ (which is actually a dark sandy color), so we couldn’t visit them. Although we were able to go into the Red Pyramid…we hunched over and descended about 50m diagonally down into a humid and smelly interior, passing through three megalithic burial chambers. That’s bigger than monolithic. The architecture was really simple in the burial rooms, just a bunch of huge blocks cantilevered to create triangular arches which were probably supporting thousands of tons. I’m thinking about starting construction on something like that for my own mausoleum.
After the Dahshur site, we headed back to Cairo. I came away with about 100 pictures before my camera died, but Elliott and my other friends probably have pictures totaling maybe 400+. Excellent. I’m hoping some people got some pictures of Hunter’s tumble, though. If you’re his mother and you’re reading this, don’t worry he is, in fact, 110%. Had some more koshari today too – I can’t believe that I hadn’t tasted it before Thursday….it’s the national food of Egypt along with ful. Anyways, the itinerary for the rest of the weekend involves sleep, eating, and studying. I lead an extremely boring life. In order to liven things up, I’m thinking about getting caught for smoking hashish, then bribing the police out of my death by hanging sentence. I’ll keep you posted.
where’s a chinatown when I need one
The first week of courses for this session is finished and I’ll just say that I’m very satisfied with the way they’ve been going. I have the same teacher for both my ECA and MSA courses, and she is definitely quite good looking. But that’s not the only reason that I like my classes. She moves at a fast pace, explains grammar, and we don’t spend tons of class time reviewing basics that we already know. Especially in my ECA class; the students in there are pretty sharp, too, so nobody asks really dumb questions or such like that.
We had a bit of an Independence Day celebration on Wednesday night. Went over to a friends flat near the school, and was amazed by her flat. I think she pays (with her 2 flatmates) slightly more than we do, and their apartment is bigger than my house back in Houston, and ridiculously nice with tons of really high-quality furniture. Aaaa! And later we went to another friends flat….she pays a ton of money (she’s actually getting ripped off I think), but their flat is super nice as well. And another friend’s flat is not super nice, but air conditioned, decently sized, and comfortable, and has an incredible view of the cement-satellite-dish skyline. Kinda makes me wish we had searched a little better for our flat. Its not that bad, though..convenient to everything, really cheap, and I now know how to live the cheap-and-low-quality apartment lifestyle. May come in handy someday.
Yesterday also some friends took us to a koshari joint after school. Koshari is a type of Egyptian dish made with different types of noodles, spices, chick peas, and flakes of unknown origin, with tomato sauce. I had never had it before yesterday, and it is GOOD. I really didn’t anything could be better than ful/taamiyya, but something definitely is. I got their card, too, and joked with the guy that his restaurant was called “Hammem” instead of “Hamem” (the former means ‘bathroom,’ while the latter means ‘pigeon’). I’m going to go there again as soon as possible. Hunter and I also went to Trianon last night in the hopes of being able to sit there by ourselves and enjoy some drinks that we would pay for (instead of my uncles or various friends) but (not) surprisingly, Idris was there and so we had to sit with him.
Have a busy schedule today…supposed to go to Luke’s and study a bit with Hazim – apparently tonight is salt-fish party night there as well. Then a couple friends from school and I are going to play football (real football, not the retarded American kind) against some Egyptian friends who think they can take us on. We’ve recruited two Britishers and a Frenchman, so that should help us out some. After that though, I’m supposed to meet Idris at Trianon and then go to a movie. So a busy night coming up.
I also haven’t really studied for class at all, because the Copa América is on television, so I’ve really got to do some of that as well. The Asia Cup is starting too, tomorrow, so I’ve got to watch it and study. It’ll be tough, I know. Anyways, I’ve got to eat breakfast, and maybe make some milk tea – you know if you just boil the tea leaves with half water and half milk, and put the sugar in the pot as well, it comes out much better. Now I just need to procure some tapioca balls and I’ll be set. Too bad those probably don’t exist here, and there isn’t any sort of Asian district I can go to and get tapioca. Grr.
classes begin again..
So two days of class have passed. I feel a little bit like I’m just going to say the same things I said about class last session, so I won’t say much. It’s going well, much faster paced than the previous session, and my Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) course is much much better…loads of grammar. Let me just say that MSA grammar is overload-edly ridiculous. Any given verb has 18 conjugations: singular, dual, plural – male, female – 1st/2nd/3rd person. Necessary? Not really. Egyptian only has 8 conjugations; it differentiates male/female only for the 2nd/3rd persons, and duals only for nouns and adjectives. Much better.
So enough about class for now. I got a little sick yesterday, possibly…possibly as a result of some weird ful/taameyya that I ate in Zamalek, but I think it was just from not sleeping (yeah, screw you Hazim). Had a little language exchange today, then Hazim kinda rushed out of the flat to go to Coffee Bean to meet some hot Turkish girl. Very sketchy. Sounds a little like something my roommate Jason would do; I don’t know why he just can’t marry some nice Cantonese girl and make his family happy.
Oh, and several of our appliances have stopped functioning at some point this summer. Most recently, the rubber seal on our fridge door broke. So we had to defrost the entire fridge and wait for the seal to expand, then refrost it. Let’s see, thats the toilet, washing machine, shower, refrigerator, and water heater that are all ghetto. At least our internet connection works, if only slowly. Who knows kind of crazy things we’d do without the Internet? Very crazy things. We pay too much for our flat…we should at least get some servants or something.
Apparently yesterday was the Egyptian Football League championship between the Zamalek and al-Ahly clubs. Its the seventh consecutive year that the two clubs have faced each other in the championship match, and the seventh consecutive year that Zamalek has lost. At least Zamalek saved some dignity and took the match into overtime. After it was finished, though, the entire neighborhood erupted in fireworks and shouting. Some friends downtown said the various squares were mobbed with riotous (literally) crowds. People ask why football isn’t big in the United States – that’s the answer. There aren’t hundreds of thousands of people rioting in the streets anytime a match is played. Maybe someday. Several cities certainly have the large populations that could lead to some quality riots.
if you talk the talk…..
Well, it’s a new month. What does that mean? Nothing exciting. Just got back from an extensive trip to the grocery store; it feels rather fulfilling going from a completely empty fridge to a completely stocked one. Although I can’t really look at food right now. Last night after studying with Hazim we gorged ourself on some food that his brother Ahmed whipped up. And when I say gorged, I mean that I couldn’t get up in the morning because every possible part of my digestive system was completely packed. So I spent the day lazing around, watching football and listening to some new Francis Cabrel albums that I recently got my hands on. Also took several lengthy naps (not really that much different from any other day, right?).
The other night Hunter and I went to see Ocean’s 13 in a rather small cinema at the Ramses Hilton hotel. We had been craving some Western culture, and thankfully the film was in English (with Arabic subtitles), so we were able to enjoy a bit of Hollywood. The film wasn’t bad. The interesting thing is that Arabic cinema etiquette is a bit different: it seems to be perfectly acceptable to hold a conversation, let your 3-year olds run amok, and answer your cell phone (or let it keep ringing). At first Hunter and I were getting ticked off, as we wanted to watch the film, but then my uncle Mohammed called, and so we were able to wade right in to the sea of noise coming from the audience. There was also an intermission. And a gang of really tall sub-Saharan males looking like they were about to take on the first marathon that crossed their path. They weren’t speaking Arabic, which was interesting to listen to.
So classes tomorrow. I’ll finally be learning some actual MSA grammar and vocab, instead of just learning the script and its various complexities, which is what I did for the previous 4 weeks in MSA class. I’ll be in the 2nd level of ECA, and hopefully we learn like overwhelming amounts of grammar and vocab. I mean, if they’re going to call it intensive, then they should make it intensive. I was a bit frustrated with that last session. But I’ll have Hazim to keep working with, so that’ll make up for any deficiencies in the program. I’m thinking about cutting our practice times down to the weekend and maybe once or twice during the school week. The schedule is just too difficult to keep up…get back from class, nap (absolutely required), homework, eat dinner, etc. So maybe twice from Monday-Thursday and then on weekends or something.
Also, I finished reading The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany. It was a decent read…the author has some skill with character descriptions, but it was a bit perverted at points, and it ended rather suddenly. I was expecting all the different threads to tie together at the end, and maybe only 2 of them did. I also thought he could have written more about the Yacoubian Building itself…most of the character’s lives begin in the building, but all the action takes place away from it. So if you’re looking for a good, literature read, then I wouldn’t really recommend it. Instead, read the new Lord of the Rings book that was published recently, The Children of Hurin, written by Christopher Tolkien, based off of his father’s notes. I sadly haven’t been able to read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it very much.
I think I’ll try to study a little vocab tonight to refresh for class tomorrow, and then…….more sleeping. By the way, the UAE is really terrible at football. They have all this propaganda that they play at every possible commercial break about how great they are, but in reality they have poor ball control, an overabundance of primacy per player, and not much talent. But all the propaganda makes it seem like their team is god or something. It’s a classic example of someone who simply cannot back up their bragging. If you have a choice between UAE v. North Korea and Vietnam v. Indonesia games on television, then pick the latter. Or better yet, watch Al-Jazeera International (its in English): it has great reporting from all around the world, focuses on events that actually matter (which means no celebrity interviews or pointless talk shows), and broadcasts one-on-one interviews with important people like Qaddafi, Olmert, and Ahmedinejad. And they broadcast live from places such as Darfurian refugee camps in eastern Chad.
some photos.
20 July 2007 at 4:48 pm (asides and comments)
Well finally I’ve made use of the nice internet connection here at Coffee Bean in Zamalek and uploaded some photos to my facebook account. So I’m posting the links here – you don’t actually need a facebook account to view them, though.
The Citadel of Salah el-Din and the Egyptian Museum
Those pictures are from some sightseeing I did at Saladin’s citadel complex way out near the original settlement of Cairo, called Fustat.
Trip to Siwa Oasis
Photos from my weekend in the oasis town of Siwa, in the desert near the Libyan border. See this post and this post for my stories from that trip.
Photos from the first week that I was in Cairo.
That’s when I was a clueless tourist and didn’t speak any Arabic. I like to think of myself as a street-wise denizen of the city now. I won’t appreciate any suggestions to the contrary, either.
Anyways, check those out and let me know what you think! I’ll be posting even more later.
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