Long live Ameryka!

When haggled into a touristic perfume shop...what does one do?

I entered a mosque near Ta'alat Haarb, which was great...but of course there was the kind gentleman who was explaining the history of the mosque, and that he has a sister in Minnesota (I stopped counting how many times I've heard that) and wants to show me his shop.

Alright. It's a big perfume shop, lots of German tourists already inside (there's another thing, all the taxi drivers think I'm German. "Allemania?!?!" every time I hop in a cab). He excitedly displays photos of his father with Muhammed Ali striking a pugilistic pose. Their validity is, well...Then he shows me "letters from his friends" stored in a binder. These letters are primarily from various banks in the US, seeking to straighten out with this perfume shop some credit card transaction made by one of their clients gone awry. I didn't want to burst his prideful bubble.

And I can't bear the pungent aromas of this shop. He proceeds to flip through a tour book with pictures of his "sisters" picking the flowers used in the perfumes. I tell him I have to go. Go and study. He explains his desire to chat is out of "Bedouin hospitality" but his partner in crime is similarly luring the Germans in box sets of perfume.

I manage to convince him I'll return some day. He then requests I take his picture. The product is above. I notified him of the fact he would be on the internet as of this evening. I don't know he understood.

But I quickly left. Out the door I hear "Long live Ameryka! Ameryka forever!"

How to translate this (figuratively, conversation was in English), I don't know, do you?

And, random question to the HHS people...when's the last real day before exams? Exam schedule?

Poshlost

Around an area of prayer within the AUC. In order to fill the void that is Friday in the Middle East, I proceeded with the 80 minute walk from the dormitories to the campus in the morning.

So little to blog of. My life is relatively exciting, and yet, literarily stagnant at times. But, it is more than likely my own delusional standards.

I sat for 30 minutes before the TV as al-Jazeera broadcast purely prayer before a plain screen. That was interesting.

Then I continued in my mission for clothing. I need simple, J. Crew/Gap staple items. No such luck in the Arab Republic of Egypt. I ultimately settled upon a Marshall's kind of store, the best available, since I refuse to spend what is 85 USD after the exchange rate at Quicksilver on a tee-shirt. The store was filled with middle-aged women, hovering over articles...eagerly fondling fabric, flipping price tags. I figured I'd do the same. After quite some time, I managed to find a few tops. Cheap, in price and production. I feel terribly spoiled. But how proud I was with my bright yellow bag and cheap shirts...what a bargain, and now a few more options.

Then I studied. For a long time.

Then Ally came. And we talked Turkey, Egypt, college, travels for about two hours, wallowing in our collective boredom.

We concluded we'd break this by heading to Metro Market (big happening hang-out) for something to eat, or, as she put it "to buy stuff we don't need for the sake of buying."

And so on my second shopping venture, Ally and I purchased exorbitant quantities of cheap Middle Eastern chocolate and skin products.

Back door Cairo

I know it's blurred. It's a city instrinsically in a blur.

Same goes for Egyptian customs. Blur in the sense of ambiguity, not alacrity.

On account of the relative calm of school, and unavoidably flat blog post, I could bring to light shipping in and out of the civilized third world, as some of you have coined Egypt. Egypt is highly contained, foreign products purchased primarily by foreigners. Trade and commerce appear non-existent to the naked and jaded eyes of myself and my comrades here. We often joke and wonder in the midafternoon when we take the shuttle back into Zamalek, at exactly "what Egyptians do. For a living?" There are just globs of people, loitering, or, more often than not, confidently and quickly walking the streets. Everywhere. All day. And, there is no business quarter, no corporate parks. Service industries via tourism, cab driving, house cleaning, account for a decent percentage. Security as well, as military service is a requisite for all Egyptian males. Still, I can't seem to understand how the economy functions here. There are so many disconnects. So little arable land. Some manufacturing I suppose.

Off track. Back to the story. I had some medications and my iPod recharger shipped via DHL, best in the world in Third World shipping. To make a long story short, I landed the mobile number of the head of customs at Cairo International Airport ((+002) 010 14 88 718), and had an International Student Services manager at the AUC screaming on the phone this afternoon. The package, with full and accurate documentation has been sitting in the airport for four days. They thought I was smuggling drugs for commercial purposes. Packages don't come to one's doorstep. You have to work for your shipment. Practically bending regulations, twisting arms here to get a package through. When I guess you shouldn't have to. It's all in the air, no certainty or reason at times. And this happens all the time. All the time. No wonder trade is ailing. Paperwork mania.

Back to Egypt. A high percentage are below the poverty line, as is evidenced by the sprawling "slums" of uncompleted apartments on the outskirts of the city. People contract their own workers, paying in cash, to lay a new story of brick to a building. But, these buildings are never completed finished, since, a completed building would require they pay taxes. So, you evade taxes by not completing it. Makes sense...

This, is rooted in a corrupted at best bureaucracy. One the US continues to support. Mubarek is often disregarded in the US, and reading the press here, he is operating off a grimy agenda daily, with heavy censorship, strange 'disappearances' of government personnel, protests viciously toppled, and a budget shrouded in mystery. Like most world dictators, if they have something to offer, the US embraces them, fingers wrapped. If they have something we want that's another story. Sorry, sloppy foreign policy. Disregard that. I hate sloppy/black and white foreign policy...big pet peeve. Laura Bush was in Egypt in late May, heckled and criticized while attending a Women's Rights Conference, like, serious breaches in security occured not presented in US press at conference location. Egypt is a useful mediating buffer. Although it's wizening up, and is resistant in aiding the Gaza pull-out. Elections are this fall for Mubarek. The victor need not do anything where he currently sits. An area, might I add, which was shut down today. All of Tahrir Square where government offices are located. I still don't know why. Big green trucks and armored soldiers. Apparently it happens a lot. But that's Egypt.

Looking back, on a side note, apologies to comments way back when I may have neglected to reply to.

Papyrus por favor!

The kids here have a succint vocabulary of purely the most financially advantageous of words: "please" in most languages of the Western Hemisphere, Mastercard, Visa and American Express, good exchange rate, I'm starving (most Romantic languages too), high quality, cheapest price around, and so on.

I saw a boy wrapped in what appeared a white bed sheet sitting in a wheelchair backed by his mother outside a market yesterday in an ostensible proclamation of dire poverty, but who knew. He was barely exposed, only emaciated fingers and feet visible. Anyone's compunction, including my own, following such a sight, transgresses the bubble of arrogantly shattered ignorance concerning legitimate poverty. It's still there.

Now that classes have begun, security of the university milieu is that much more stringent. We are now under the tutelage of three guards on our shuttle bus. And a female guard on every floor, not just groundfloor entrances. I've had the opportunity to build a mutually beneficial rapport with the 3rd floor guard. Although I made the mistake of walking into a scene of her on a mat praying, which, she, unlike many, faithfully does five times a day. I am always uncomfortable, and feel I am interrupting when I pass by. Anyhow, she's currently learning English, and reading Huckleberry Finn (a pre-emptive apology to those who took pleasure in this novel, and all English teachers), a novel I hate with a passion. I like Mark Twain, and that preternatural quirk I can only find in quotes...real life nonfictional commentaries, but I detest his novels. I have been assisting her with vocabulary, grammer, and, of course, a southern dialect I can barely comprehend. And she teaches me new colloquial phrases.

My elective is Quranic Readings, and this is the first time I've had a Muslim professor in this area, which is very interesting. My background knowledge has been immensely helpful, although her personal slant is cumbersome. It's a class of semantics at times...the leap between "gather" and "collect" is enormous in the initial production of the Quran as I found. And she bears a didactic punch I can't refute, but find myself squeaking around. It's going to be an awesome class though. Inchallah.

Bang Bang

There is a really rather pathetic gathering transpiring every night around 7 in the main lounge. Students from ALI, the international law program, and CASA, all stagger forth from a day of classes, travels, and street haggling, before a 72 inch plasma screen television.

To watch Seinfeld, and the Simpsons, with Arabic subtitles. Then Bollywood videos on MTV India. We get a ridiculous number of channels off satellite.

And laugh. Like it's the funniest thing they've ever seen.

But it didn't start that way. We meekly huddled before the television, exhausted of episodes of shows we'd seen a million times, now merely regurgitated before us via satellite TV in the Middle East. But one night, someone began laughing. And then we all did. There was no talking, just forty plus people, in hysterics. And then turning to one another, "this is totally not funny, at all...I can't believe I am laughing at the Simpsons...we are such losers right now." But, now it's tradition, to wallow in our American sorrows, inhaling what English media we may discover.

I find the gym situation highly amusing. The AUC is a remarkably well-equipped in regards to gyms, with four different gyms on different parts of the campus. I typically find myself at the dormitory gym. It is however, the average, non-American work out area you find throughout the, well, non-American world, with four walls of mirrors, hardwood floor, surround sound speaker systems, and a very simple television. Instead of heart pounding, in the grind action which flows with your after school acitivities, as the Y in Hanover is, which many of you have membership at, this gym is a surreal warp. For example, this evening. Hassan, the gym supervisor, is the midst of a wrenching argument with his Russian girlfriend standing, well, right beside him as three others and myself observe through the mirrors. I am on the treadmill (elliptical machines aren't widespread) and my iPod recharger still hasn't arrived by mail, so Nile FM 104.2 is blasting at the highest decibel level an Arabic song on the top 10. Then this song, which is number 1 right now in Egypt, I don't know about there, "Bang Bang" by Nancy Sinatra, from the Kill Bill soundtrack (great movie) comes on. Let's just say, here are the lyrics:

I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
He wore black and I wore white
He would always win the fight
Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, my baby shot me down.

Seasons came and changed the time
When I grew up, I called him mine
He would always laugh and say
"Remember when we used to play?"

Bang bang, I shot you down
Bang bang, you hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, I used to shoot you down.

Music played, and people sang
Just for me, the church bells rang.

Now he's gone, I don't know why
And till this day, sometimes I cry
He didn't even say goodbye
He didn't take the time to lie.

Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, my baby shot me down...

And a woman in a full burka, not a hijab, a burka, walks in. I don't know why. But she just sits down at one of the chairs. Hassan's bickering continues. Drenched in sweat I get off the treadmill, standing there. This curly blonded haired guy glances over at me through the mirror with a dreadul look in his eyes as we connect for ten seconds. A look of sheer fright.

I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I feel I am dreaming sometimes here.

Workouts are bizarre events you never do forget when traveling. I recall every single workout in the basement of the Great Southern in Galway for a week one summer. Ireland was damned with rain for nearly the entire week, and I was alone in this gym. Or those of the Seven Hills, Ohio Marriott during Christmas visiting relatives. Or the mixed and matched mess of a gym of the Holiday Inn in outside Trieste. I don't know what I am saying, but it's an routine of home life which transcends location, but manifests itself in unforgettable ways.

But working out is an integral aspect the Cairo routine now. Staying "healthy" here is a paradoxical adventure. Let's begin by saying when you blow your nose is Cairo, which is often for most, the mucus produced in your tissue is black and sooty. But we all must be walking six or more miles a day, in sweltering heat, which is great exercise. But food is tricky, with many resorting to Pizza Hut delivery, and others going to street vendors to find themselves vomitting for a week. There is a middle ground of going to the market, preparing your own food, but it's much more time consuming. But an adventure no less.

All an adventure.

"Soldiers, 40 centuries of history look down upon you from these Pyramids"

That's Napoleon, preparing for battle at Giza 21 July 1798. And apparently he didn't blow off the face of the Sphinx during target practice. Urban...desert legend.

The abridged collection of photos has now been posted.

You know those shows on the Discovery Channel, or History Channel, which bear promos exaggerating the exhausting quest to solve how the pyramids were constructed? I do. But after viewing one, I tend to switch them off after 55 minutes, full-well knowing the final lines of narration will conclude with a setting sun over the desert and the narrator's voice waxing poetic as he says something along the lines of "that, we will never know." So disappointing! However, from what I supposedly learned on Saturday, the building of the pyramids was not a divine feat. Here's the abbreviated story: most of downtown Cairo was a lake, flooded through 1870. Much of Giza, where the pyramids are located, was also a giant lake, there are great photographs in the hallways of the AUC of people in canoes not far from the pyramids in the background. This, apparently, lays the ground for a long history of the presence of water around the pyramids. Which concomitantly invites silt from the Nile. This slick and slippery silt allowed ancient Egyptians to literally slide the great big blocks into place from the limestone quarries just a few hundred meters away. Then, levers and pulleys to stack.

Climbing through Khafre was spectacular. There are no guards, no guides, just you running through a three foot by three and a half foot tunnel for ten minutes in each direction. Not for the faint of heart. There these fluorescent light boxes along the perimeter of the area for the nightly light show, broadcast in different languages on different evenings. While the entire area is tourist centric, and, we were one of "them" in our tour bus, the lack of rhyme or reason to the area endows a trip to the pyramids some renegade enchantment. The bus was nice however, I learned about the "purchasing power parity" and other such economic theories on the ride back into Cairo from Ryan, the double physics and economics major beside me. I hate to say it, but I think I might like economics...

And Arabic classes finally began! I have a class of five people, all of whom very committed and a pleasure to be in the company of. Here's the roster:

• Will, a political science grad from Yale, now working at a newspaper in Singapore.
• Heather, who is in the process of obtaining a PhD in art history, and is studying Coptic art in Egypt next year hoping to work with medieval texts.
• Miriam, in grad school at Johns Hopkins phenomenal IR program in Bologna, who intends on working as a journalist in the Middle East. A great coincidence.
• Ahrem, a middle aged German financier who came on holiday to Egypt and doesn't want to leave. He cracks me up.

And then Sasha, the high schooler. I claim a special position as the youngest. Coddled on a pedestal.

We're progressing nicely and the teaching is excellent. Alright, lots of homework tonight, I must be off, and my blog is back in action.

I told you, those high resolution posters and calenders are deceiving. Look at the guy!

Full suspension felucca.

Stairmaster on the advanced setting.

Camels abound.