shoe intifada!
The shoe-throwing incident that took place recently at “President” Bush’s press conference in Iraq is undoubtedly fairly well-known now. I don’t really like to say “incident,” because the word has a negative connotation and I don’t intend to comment negatively on the event (but I lack a better term at the moment).
Of course, throwing shoes is a fairly grave insult in Arab culture (and I am not quite sure that this is not lost on Bush), and several Iraqis that I have talked are not happy with the actions of Muntazer al-Zaidi, the shoe-casting Iraqi reporter. They are not happy with the fact that he felt he could insult a foreign head of state, thus giving Iraqis and reporters a bad reputation and adding to the American perception that all Arabs hate Bush (and by extension Americans) which then increases American hate of Arabs. I mean this is not quite true in my opinion, but nevertheless the point is that some Iraqis do not quite support al-Zaidi’s actions.
I, on the other hand, think the “incident” and reactions to it are absolutely hilarious. It is true, though, that one person believing he can insult or attack a foreign dignitary (though again that’s not a good word, because Bush has no dignity) opens the way for others to think the same thing. Maybe future reporters will think they can get away with similar actions which would lead to a bad general trend. But I argue that this is a different, and highly special case, that of an Iraqi reacting angrily to the man who invaded, colonized, and occupied his country. Not to mention the thousands of other Iraqis that died as a result. That is to say, as a result of the decisions that Bush made.
Meanwhile, around the Arab world, the reaction has been very positive. According to the Guardian:
Yesterday, an Egyptian man offered his 20-year-old daughter to Zaidi as a bride. Cobblers from Turkey to Lebanon have claimed the shoes were made in their factories.
Hundreds of protesters in Iraq have rallied to the journalist’s cause and demanded his release.
An Iranian Ayatollah praised a shoe intifada, while reporters in Lebanon demonstrated by holding aloft a shoe as they chanted things.
But here is an interesting statement released by the White House:
The US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, suggested that the attention to the incident was overblown. “We would hope that the fact of a US president standing next to a freely elected prime minister of Iraq who just happens to be Shia, who is governing in a multi-confessional, multiethnic democracy in the heart of the Middle East, is not overshadowed by one incident like this,” McCormack told reporters in Washington.
McCormack said he believed that in the coming years “the fact of the president making that visit under those circumstances will probably overshadow any memory of this particular gentleman and what he did.”
Let’s think about this. Attention to the “incident,” first of all, is not overblown, because this is a highly pertinent act. Pertinent because of the US military’s presence in Iraq, because it indicates the sentiments of at least some Iraqis regarding that military presence, and it because it is a manifestation of the general international dislike of George W. Bush.
Then McCormack doesn’t want the “incident” to overshadow what he seems to think an important occasion. The US president is only standing next to the Iraqi president because the US conquered Iraq and set up elections to elect candidates set up by political parties set up by the US (so do away with that “freely elected” part).
He then refers to Iraq as “multi-confessional, multi-ethnic.” This is true, at least in the fact that people of different ethnicities and religions live in the political entity known as Iraq. This does not, however, mean that there are no problems between these groups, something that McCormack conveniently does not address. Calling Iraq “multi-confessional, multi-ethnic” without qualifying the statement is like calling 1960’s Alabama “multi-racial;” it completely ignores any problems, any anything really, and refers only to a statistical reality.
Finally, McCormack thinks that Bush’s visit under those circumstances, which are not all that unusual (after all, Bush can stand next to any head of state that he wants) will be remembered more than Muntazer al-Zaidi’s actions will be. This is false, as nobody but McCormack has commented on the “circumstances” yet, while the shoe-throwing itself has already generated multiple events around the world, thus ensuring that there are sufficient events related to the shoe-throwing to cause people to remember it.
Please see this good video and article at the Guardian.
Below is the YouTube version, a close up.
[Edit] I just read an opinion piece over at the Guardian remarking that Bush should, in the 11th-hour pardoning fest that most Presidents have, pardon Muntazer al-Zaidi, in addition to Cheney, Rumsfeld, and himself. It went like this:
And while I’m thinking about it, it might be advisable to pardon yourself before you leave office for any possible war crimes, such as your involvement in killing and maiming over a million Iraqi civilians over the last few years, destroying their country’s infrastructure, destabilising the place and creating chaos in the Middle East.
Did I say thousands of Iraqis killed a few paragraphs ago? I meant hundreds of thousands, incidentally more Iraqis than died under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
seats on the metro
As I rode the Metro today, I watched someone get up from his seat and descend at some station. There were two men, one over 50 years and one about 30-ish (judging by looks) standing next to the now vacant seat. A woman about my age then got on the Metro, and both men invited her to seat in the vacant seat. She refused multiple times, saying she was fine standing.
I wondered who was going to sit down at that point, but the younger man insisted until the older man took the seat. It seems that women come first, then the elderly (or older), then yourself or people your age (in which case I suppose you would offer to be nice).
Nothing unexpected here, just an observation.
Of course, at the busiest hours, nobody gets up for anybody, because they simply can’t. You can gather in the crowd waiting for the subway to pull up and stop, stand completely still, and the crowd will push you on to the subway; an easy way to ascend without doing any work.
I think I had complained about the slowness of the Metro some time ago, but it is actually a great system, and Cairo desperately needs more Metro lines. It would ease pedestrian crowding, traffic crowding, help in ameliorating pollution, and increase the transport of humans from place to place. The government is working on building a third line (there currently exist only two), but it, as with many bureaucratic things in Egypt, is taking forever.
please wear your safety belt, according to traffic laws
Sometimes you do things habitually, without thinking about others’ perception of your habitual action. Then, for some reason, you reflect on that action.
I, for example, usually say as-salamu ‘alaykum when I get into a taxi, because, if someone is Muslim, then that is the polite thing to do. Egyptian Christians do not greet each other that way, but I never thought about it, and as most taxi drivers are Muslim, it is generally fine. One time I salaam‘ed a taxi driver who mumbled masaa al-khayr, good evening, back at me. It then struck me, although I knew not to greet a Christian that way, that I had developed a habitual action based on an assumption. I can go on about such things, but suffice it to say that now I look at the cab driver’s interior decoration (for nearly all taxis have stickers, beads, dolls, and other stuff decorating the dashboard) for indication if he is Muslim or not, because many put Islamic phrases like allahu akbar and so forth. I had a taxi driver today who had nothing but a tiny stuffed white dove hanging from his mirror. I guess he could be any religion….peace is a good thing to believe in.
Anyways, riding a taxi today, a glanced around for some Islamic things to see how I should greet the driver. There was a handwritten sign on a piece of paper taped to the dashboard; I usually have a difficult time trying to read people’s arabic handwriting, but I could figure this one out. It read
“please wear your safety-belt, according to the traffic laws”
Ridiculous, no? I mean, it actually is the law to wear a seat belt in Cairo. But I never wear one in a taxi (half the time they don’t exist anyway) and I only wear one when I’m riding with my uncle, who makes me wear one. Is that stupid, am I risking my life? Well not really, the roads, traffic patterns, and people’s driving is such that I don’t believe traffic to be very dangerous. (Despite the fact that I’ve actually been in an accident here, and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, but somehow was not thrown through the huge autobus windshield even though I was sitting in the front row and we were going about 65 mph before crashing into a tractor on the highway). Nevermind that.
Traffic police have been giving more and more tickets for not wearing seatbelts, but as far as I can tell, they have never pulled over a taxi, only private vehicles. Once, about three months ago, a taxi driver asked me to put on my seat belt, confusing me greatly. I didn’t give it second thought, to be honest. So I search for a seat belt to buckle on. And there wasn’t one!! I don’t know what that is…ironic? funny? So, obviously, I could not wear my safety-belt, per traffic laws, thus being obliged to both break the law and disobey the driver’s clear preference.
sacrifice of camels
Riding down the bumpy dirt road back into Cairo after our adventures early that morning, I’m sure we amused the butcher team with our funny Arabic and odd questions about the sacrifices. The truck squeezed down some narrow roads (as there are not really paved roads in Imbaba), and we arrived at a biggish house, in the courtyard of which there were three camels, brightly spray painted with the phrases “there is no god but God” and “God is great.”
We greeted the house’s inhabitants, who I think got a kick out of the fact that we, obviously not from Imbaba, had arrived at this location deep in Imbaba with, of all things, a team of butchers, with whom we seemed to be friends. It must have been quite odd. Anyways, they directed us towards a nice window overlooking the patio where the camels were to be slaughtered. After a short prayer, a butcher cried “in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate!” walked calmly over to the first two camels, and drew his foot-long knife across its long neck. He did the same to the second camel. They crumpled to the ground, blood spraying everywhere. Good thing we were above it all, in the window.
Skinning and gutting the camels was quite an enterprise, but they died much faster than did the cow at Yehya’s place. I wondered what they would do with the fat stored up in its hump, but I did not stick around to find out, as my presence was required back at Yehya’s place for lunch with his family. So I hopped on a minibus back out to the farmland and lunched on fresh beef soup, liver stew, and fetta. Tasty.
The bloody handprint wards off envy. After the animals are killed, little kids gather around the butcher to get a bloody handprint, called al-khamsa (“the five”) in Arabic.
eid al-adha, festival of sacrifice
(or, there was blood instead of dirt in the streets of Cairo)…either way the streets weren’t clean.
I woke up early this morning and met Yehya after the dawn prayer. He had invited another American friend and I to his house in a village called Barageel just outside of Cairo to watch the morning’s ritual sacrifice of animals. As we rode minibuses to the west, we could see street-side butcher shops with freshly slaughtered goats and lambs being cleaned and skinned, hanging from hooks. We disembarked and were greeted by his father, who welcomed us into a room that Yehya told us was used only a few times a year, for slaughtering animals.
We arrived just after, seconds after, a big bull had been killed. Yehya’s family had hired a team of butchers (and let me tell you, killing and butchering a cow takes a whole team), one of whom had just slit the cows throat, releasing a torrent of thick, gelatinous blood onto the floor and out the door. We arrived just as a butcher was squeegeeing the first gush out of the room. They directed us to a corner where we could stand safely and take pictures, and we made the most of our up-close opportunity to get some deliciously gruesome pictures of the dying bull.
I had never actually seen a bull die in this way before, and it was quite fascinating. Firstly, bulls have a lot of blood, which takes more than few minutes to pour out of their bodies. Though its throat was cut, the animal thrashed about on the floor for about ten minutes, with various butchers trying to hold its legs in place, before they picked up a huge knife and sawed off its head, which, nevertheless, did not prevent the bull from emitting several further bellowing noises. Nor did the bull’s body stop thrashing about. A butcher went to slice open its stomach to being gutting it, and as soon as he began to slice the skin from below its tail, the bull started kicking wildly. This was about three minutes after its head was removed and being passed about the room for us to photograph, and about fifteen after its throat had been cut.
In the meantime, thick bull blood was all over the place, constantly being squeegee’d away. The butchers enjoyed our presence, I think, because they then invited us to go with them later to slaughter four camels in Imbaba. After consulting Yehya, with whom we were to eat later on, we hopped in the back of their truck (after they finished gutting the bull and chopping up its meat, all of which happened with great speed).
[The story continues with the next post: Sacrifice of Camels]
on my deliciousness
After spending most of the day rather bored in the house, cooking to amuse myself, reading Dante’s Inferno, and watching television, Yehya saved me from dire boredom by calling and inviting me over to our local café (which I will photograph soon) to hang out. So I walked over there, passing a number of goats and troughs on the way.
The café is across one of Mohandiseen’s busiest streets from one of Cairo’s major courthouses, the Northern Giza Courts, and is a fun place to sit on the sidewalk and people-watch. Yehya and I usually just gather and talk about whatever questions come to mind about each other’s culture, switching in and out of Arabic and English as our vocabularies require. He is an excellent person for cultural inquiries, not just because his English is fair, but because he is very intelligent, observant, and often dislikes certain Egyptian behaviors. The perceptive distance required to dislike things about one’s own culture, I think, makes for a more profound understanding.
After a bit, he told me some of his friends would be coming by. I emitted a mental groan, because usually when that happens the friends either want me to teach them English and insist on speaking it, or ignore me because my Arabic is not speedy and just talk amongst themselves. So two Egyptians, local guys from Imbaba, came. Yehya introduced us, then I waited to see what they would do conversationally. They started asking me questions, then became confused because they noticed that my Arabic is not that of a native speaker. “But your face is Egyptian,” Ali insisted. “Yes, but my tongue isn’t,” I replied, “or else I would speak better Arabic!”
Then Ali said to me, “you’re delicious, Adam.” Nice of him to say such a thing…”thanks…?…” I probably looked both confused and pleased (after all, who doesn’t want to be delicious?), until Yehya explained that the word which means delicious is also used to mean nice or funny. Yehya also explained to me that most people in the street probably think that I am Egyptian, or at least Arab (which is not wrong, of course), but are thrown off by my hair, because no Egyptian has hair like mine. Anyways, the four of us talked for a bit about random things and I noticed that they, though both of them spoke some English but not very well, did not really care to have me instruct or practice with them. It was rather refreshing to meet Egyptians that, not speaking English already, were more interested in talking to me about all sorts of things than in using me as a conversation practice partner. Rather refreshing indeed, and a good opportunity to learn.
I was getting tired, though, and thinking of leaving, when one of them asked if I knew a certain Egyptian word. I had never heard it before. He told me that it was only used by young men, and explained about something he called the “young people’s language,” saying that nobody except men our age understands these words. Of course I was instantly re-invigorated by the opportunity for linguistic exploration and asked him to tell me more about it. I wrote down a few words, like nafad, (“I don’t care”), and du’iya (“bad, not well”). I asked him if by young men’s language, he meant slang, but he responded that it is not quite slang, that it is different completely. I need to inquire more about this. It seems like something similar (in being a jargon, that is, not in composition) to the French verlan, though both adults and young people use and understand verlan.
Then I bought some bananas from my old lady Bedouin banana seller and ate them as I walked through more goat-pastures, I mean sidewalks back to my home.
eid vacation news
Well tomorrow is the beginning of Eid al-Adha, which celebrates the near-sacrafici of Abraham’s son Ishmael to god. There is a lot of meat eaten during this week, and so killing a lot of animals is necessary. In fact, the slaughter is a big part of the festival. In many areas of Cairo I can see animals being gathered in preparation for tomorrow. About a week ago animals started coming in to the city, butchers set up huge troughs and tied goats and cows to them for some last-minute fattening before they will be ritually killed and eaten. The streets will probably be flowing with blood, literally, because the slaughtering takes place outside on the sidewalk.
I wish I was in Libya at this time, though, because my family always has a huge feast and it would be a great time to see everyone all in one place. But I haven’t yet got a Libyan visa, so not this year.
We have a week off for school this week, which is poorly-timed on one hand, and well-timed on the other. We get a week to catch up on reading and paper-writing and study for finals which start next week, but itis also a week to screw around, go eat and explore Cairo. Anyways, I have only 3 finals, two in classes that I really am not worried about putting much effort into, and the third in my Coptic course, which is a joke and an open-textbook exam. Who ever heard of open-book language exams?
Hopefully I’ll have lots of good pictures up…tomorrow I will be out and about trying to get pictures of the slaughtering and other madness.
