Caitlin's in Cairo!

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Jun. 1st, 2008

Muhammad and things I've forgotten

I'm almost packed. I'm about to explode. This is so weird. I'm about to not live in Egypt. How did this happen?

Today, the best thing happened to me and Ariela. Muhammad's mother (Muda) invited us into their home and gave us fruit and tea. Ariela is having dinner there tomorrow. Muhammad showed us all his toys.

We had just gotten back from a market, and Ariela had bought a drum. Muhammad had to play with it for a very long time. And then, when Ariela said, "Careful, Muhammad," he began urgently putting it back in its case, saying, "Careful, careful! We have to be careful!"

He blew me kisses today when we left.

What have I forgotten to tell you about Egypt?

It's ok to ask strangers on the street for a sip of their beverage (or a cigarrette, or a light, or a piece of gum, etc). I've never done this, but I see people do it all the time, to me and to others.

It's not ok to eat while you're walking around. People will say things like, "Oh, you're that hungry, are you?"

It's never ok to refuse tea. I'm pretty sure you can get kicked out of the country for that.

It's ok to discipline other people's children. Again, something I've only witnessed.

Reading is not cool, unless you're very religious.

Coptic priests wear funny hats.

You're feet get so dirty if you wear sandals/flip-flops. After one day, they're totally black on the sole, and the tops have a noticeable line from the straps. Cairo's floor is dusty.

Mimosa blossoms are sometimes orangey-red instead of pink.

House music (techno mixed by "the house") is the only cool kind of music.

Men are often inclined to wear unacceptably pointy loafers.

I'll think of more later.

I'll be in Alabama in 30ish hours. Crazy.

-C

May. 30th, 2008

Picture post

Muhammad with his new bear, which he named "Dog."

A little leery of the camera, perhaps. Also, ignoring Ariela.

Getting distracted

With his brother Mahmoud

Mahmoud trying to direct Muhammad toward the camera

From Dahab:

What every restaurant in Dahab looks like: Pillows on the floor with the ocean four feet away.

Little girls who gave us hair wraps

Maddie and Nadia

The finished product

Also, Ariela and Maddie threw a party for their refugee English class that they taught. Pictures:

Zuhair's from Iraq, and he brought his wife, four daughters, and grandbaby to the party

Maddie being a good hostess

The baby was not amused by our bubbles

The first few arrivals...

Shahad and Rand -- good thing my parents sent me crayons!

Most people in the class are from Mali and Sudan

Showing us a Malian dance

Her grandmother sewed her whole outfit by hand!

The Iraqi flag

It's hard not to get excited about coloring

A picture of me!

Giving the students their certificates of completion

We borrowed the baby.

That's all for now!

-C

May. 28th, 2008

wildlife, nikab, dahab, wrap-up

Yesterday, for the first time ever in Egypt, I saw a bat. Which is encouraging, because I was very seriously considering releasing a dozen or so feral bats into Cairo. There is a slight bug problem.

I don’t know where I would’ve gotten the bats, though.

A friend of mine named Sarah purchased a nikab a few weeks ago. The nikab (nih KAHB) is the full face veil that covers everything but the eyes. There’s a little string between the eyes to help hold it up. Nikabi women also wear long black cloaks, gloves, and stockings.

So Sarah goes to the market with her good friend Waleed, who is Egyptian. Waleed says to the shopkeeper, “This is my new American wife who has just converted to Islam, and she would like to wear the nikab.”

The shopkeepers showered her with praise, “Oh God bless her! Welcome to Islam, sister!”

Then they went on to say, “But sister, you know the nikab is not required. You could wear the hegab and be perfectly modest.”

But Sarah (via Waleed) insisted.

After choosing the desired nikab, Sarah almost blew her cover. She reached into her backpack (which Waleed was wearing), took out her wallet, and handed the shopkeeper the money.

The vendors were speechless. A pious, traditional man is going to let his wife handle his money?

But Waleed was smooth. He said, “Listen, she has only just converted, and there are many cultural differences that are hard for her to understand. She is an American after all. We must be patient with her. I don’t want to embarrass her, so I will speak with her when we get home.”

To which the vendors responded, “Oh of course! Cultural differences! Oh, yes, she really is trying very hard. You are right to be patient with her. Hamdulillah!”

It was a close call.

Now she wears her nikab out occasionally and records her treatment. Everywhere she goes people treat her with deference and kindness. She once went to a crowded souq, and men would clear a path for her, saying “Make room for the lady.”

Sarah doesn’t speak great Arabic, but she’s never been called out, because nikabis almost never speak in public.

She has even had Waleed “introduce” her to people she already knows, so she can see how they treat her as a nikabi.

They act the way you might act around a nun or a priest, guarding their language, sitting up a little straighter, adjusting their clothing to make sure they’re being modest enough.

Once she was trying to hail a cab, and a car with a man, a nikabi, and a little girl (about two, but fully hegabbed) pulled over and told her to get in. The man explained that he was an off-duty cab driver going out with his family, but his wife insisted that he pull over for her nikabi sister.

Then he explained that he didn’t usually dress his daughter that way. “I even let her wear a bikini at the beach!” he said. But the family was going out, and she wanted to look like her mother. He realized it looked silly (sort of like a two-year-old in lipstick and pumps), but she was so insistent on looking like Mom, and they didn’t go out very often, so the parents obliged and let her wear the hegab.

When Sarah goes home to Las Vegas, she’s going to wear the nikab and record people’s reactions there. She’s gonna send me her conclusions.

Last weekend we went to Dahab, a beach town on the eastern edge of the Sinai peninsula. Ariela took some great pictures, which I will soon steal.

As a consequence of Dahab, there is a lot of skin on my body that is the wrong color. I have always been pink, but this is all wrong. There will be no pictures of that.

My dad says I need to do a wrap-up what-did-I-learn post once I’m home. I’ll do some sort of concluding entry, but I don’t know that I can really sum up a semester. It’d be kind of gross to try to smush it all into one entry. I’ll figure something out.

-C

May. 19th, 2008

Muhammad, guards, Arabic, home, and grumpy people

There is a three-year-old boy that lives across the street from our apartment. His name is Muhammad, and we love him. He wears a little baby-sized galibeyya, and he gives us high-fives when we see him.

Yesterday, Lindsey gave him a little hand puppet. He loved it. But his hands were too small to work it. He kept saying, “How? How?” in Arabic, because he couldn’t figure out how to get his arm all the way in.

A couple of people have sent me stuffed animals in the mail. Do you think they would approve if I gave them to Muhammad? I think Muhammad would be excited about them.

I mean, they’re not especially feminine stuffed animals. There’s a bear and a bright yellow dog. Those are manly enough for little Muhammad, right?

And he’s three; what does he care about gender stereotypes?

I don’t know if I’ve told you, but we have guards in our building. We pretty much live in the Mountain Brooke of Cairo, but having guards everywhere is Egypt’s answer to unemployment. Every floor of every building has guards.

Our guards happen to love us, but sometimes the cultural difference is a little hard to overcome.

They try to be sensitive, but it tears them up that sometimes we hang out with boys. And it kills them to know that some people drink. I mean, it’s legal, but it breaks their hearts.

And one time, the apartment across the hall thought there was a fire in their suite (there wasn’t). But the guard wouldn’t come in and help, because he couldn’t bring himself to enter a women’s apartment.

Oh Egypt.

Arabic lesson: A phrase you hear a lot is “mish MUSHkellah.” It means, “not a problem.”

Everywhere you go, “mish mushkellah, mish mushkellah.”

And “MESHee” means “ok” or “fine” or “all right.” Sometimes it’s shortened to “mesh.” Or at least, it sounds like it is.

And if something is not ok, you might say “mish mesh,” which might be one of my favorite phrases of all time. Mishmeshmishmesh.

It freaks me out that I’ll be home in a couple of weeks. I miss everybody, and I am ready to be home, but it’s going to be so weird.

I just know I’m gonna be buying groceries and I’ll say, “shokran,” to the cashier or something.

Weird, weird.

I’m ready to be done with school this semester. I'm totally over AUC. I'm ready to be back at BSC where I know how to find the information I need. AUC is more than a little disorganized. And when you ask a receptionist for help/directions/etc, he/she gets really annoyed.

I think, though, that Egypt is just a land of grumpy receptionists. That has been my experience.

It's not a bad system, I guess: Just relegate all the grumpy people to one profession, so we can know who they are and avoid them.

Maybe we could put them all in advertising. How do you feel about this? ;)

-C

May. 13th, 2008

What Egypt looks like

A few weeks ago, Dad asked me to put up some mundane pictures of Cairo -- not special sites, just walking-down-the-street type pictures.

And then my camera got sick.

Fortunately for Dad, a friend of mine had the same idea. She also happens to be a good photographer. Here are some pictures I've stolen from her:

More soon.

-C

May. 7th, 2008

last week and a few Jerusalem stories

In Egypt, you don’t walk ever with/beside someone without holding hands. Everybody does it. And my flatmates and I have adopted it.

So I’m gonna have to wean myself off hand-holding once I get home. It’ll be hard. So don’t be alarmed if I try to hold your hand.

Last Wednesday, Ariela and I tried to go see an Egyptian movie called The President’s Chef. It’s supposed to be a charming comedy about a street vendor who one day serves the president (who is traveling in disguise), and the president loves his food so much that he hires the guy to be his personal chef. Hilarity ensues, I’m sure.

However, we arrived at the Grand Hyatt (no really, it has a movie theater in it) only to find that we’d gotten the times wrong. It wasn’t showing then.

So we went downstairs and ordered cheesecake as we watched the Barcelona/Manchester United game. Best way to spend the evening EVER.

Jerusalem was full of tourists/pilgrims. I have never seen so many different types of nuns/monks/priests/pastors in my life. Most of them were Europeans and Americans traveling with church groups.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen exactly two priests in Egypt. Both were inside churches. But in Jerusalem, they just let them loose on the streets.

On the bus from Eilat to Jerusalem, we were stopped at a station, picking up more passengers, when suddenly we heard what sounded like a small explosion. All the Israeli soldiers on the bus (there were about a dozen) stood up and froze for about 30 seconds. Nobody moved. Then, after 30 seconds, everyone sat down and went back to reading/talking/napping/etc as if nothing had happened.

Had we known that it was a Holocaust memorial day, and that this was how one observed it, we might not have been so confused.

Well, Ana was confused. I was still half asleep. But I would’ve been confused.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was our first tourist stop. It made me feel like a dumb religion major because I couldn’t answer any of Ana's questions. When we entered, we saw a large marble slab on the floor, with dozens of men and women kneeling to kiss it and to rub their prayer beads on it. (A couple of women were really scrubbing that thing. But I guess you’ve gotta rub hard to get the holy out.)

We learned that this was considered to be the slab on which Christ was anointed for burial. Cool.

The actual sepulcher had police barriers around it, with pilgrims packed against the sides, pushing each other and cutting in line. You’d think Jesus was in there signing autographs or something.

The church also claims that Christ was crucified on that site. I feel like they shouldn’t have dibs on all three. Pick one, Church of the Holy Sepulcher. You can either have the crucifixion, the anointing, or the burial, but don’t get greedy. Especially when you lack biblical/archaeological evidence.

Nah, I guess they probably do have some evidence. But we found a really persuasive tomb site a little ways outside the city, which led me to discredit a lot of CHS’s claims. But that comes later.

In the basement of the church there’s an ugly chapel. And it’s not just less pretty than the rest of the church – it’s undeniably ugly. Moldy and dark with a half-rotten icon on the altar. The floor was a little wet. We probably weren’t supposed to go down there.

But it was definitely my favorite part of the church. And I’m pretty sure you would’ve felt the same way. The rest of the church gave off an air of entitlement and snobbishness, but this little chapel had no gold lamps or colorful mosaics to dress it up, and it just sat humbly in the basement, away from the elbowing and shoving upstairs.

Maybe I only loved it because there was nobody else trying to prove that they loved it more by fighting to kiss the altar or to rub their new prayer beads on it (only 13 shekels at the church gift shop).

Forgive my cynicism, but it was hard not to come away from the church without feeling that a lot of it was a little bit silly. Really, you would’ve thought so too, I bet.

I’ll have to finish this later. Arabic time. (Didn't mean to leave on a downer.)

-C

May. 6th, 2008

PS

Also, I went to Jerusalem this weekend. Surprize!

When our original plans (Petra) fell apart, Ana and I scrambled to put another trip together.

Lots of stories. Let's do pictures first:

Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher:

Did you know that you have to push/elbow/trip people in order to get into the the Sepulcher? Apparently, it's mandatory.

In the Church courtyard

A Jerusalem street

The Wall

The Wall

Views:

At the traditional site of the last supper

Dome of the Rock from beside the city wall

St. Anne's Cathedral

Ruins at Bethesda

The Pool of Bethesda

The biggest dandelion I have ever SEEN!

Bye, Bethesda.

The site most archaeologists believe to be Golgotha (see the skull in the rocks?), complete with a classy parking lot in front.

Gethsemene

The token I-was-really-there shot, taken outside the city walls

From a chapel on the Mount of Olives

Look familiar, Mom and Dad? Are the same ones falling at our house?

Stories soon.

-C

Istanbul Pictures

The grounds in Topkapi Palace, near our hostel

more Topkapi grounds

Istanbul University

The Blue Mosque, with Alison helpfully gesturing

That's a real Egyptian obelisk from Karnak (Luxor). Egypt follows us.

Inside the Blue Mosque:

Sheep on the street?

The Hagia Sofia:

(Patriotic edition?)

Inside the Hagia Sofia:

We had come just after the tulip festival:

That's Asia. Right there. On the other side of that brigde. We went there.

-C

Apr. 27th, 2008

Istanbul and Luxor pictures

Istanbul: It’s like Europe and the Middle East had a baby. A cute baby, not a weird one, like you’d think. Alison called it "Middle East Lite."

They’d just had their tulip festival, and the whole city was covered in huge Dutch-looking tulips.

Our first evening, we were walking around, looking for a cheap restaurant, when we heard the call to prayer.

And we freaked out.

What were these crazy Turks doing to the call to prayer? We couldn’t understand a word of it! Why were the Turks so terrible at Arabic?

At this point, Alison enlightened us regarding Ataturk. I knew he secularized Turkey, but I had no known this:

Because of Ataturk, calls to prayer (and Qurans) are in Turkish, not Arabic.

I don’t know if I can communicate to you how weird that is. They took out the Arabic! From the call to prayer!

It’s not like celebrating the Mass in something other than Latin. It’s a much bigger deal.

So we had a little freak-out five times a day.

Turkish baths are called Hamams, and they are amazing. It’s like a sauna, massage, and exfoliating treatment in one.

I recommend them.

The Hagia Sofia is another example of something that should have been a strange and ugly hybrid, but it’s actually really organic and beautiful. The mosaics of Christ and the Virgin don’t clash with the huge Arabic calligraphy of “Bismillah,” and “Allah w’Akbar.”

And you’d think they would. Or I thought they would, anyway.

The most entertaining thing about the Blue Mosque was the two toddlers playing on the carpets. Tourist-y mosques are not my favorite. I usually leave frustrated because of all the American and European women who take off the robes/scarves issued by the mosque, so they’re just beboppin’ around in shorts with their hair uncovered.

So disrespectful.

We took a day trip to the Asian side of Istanbul. We went to Baghdad Street, where the high-end shopping is. Too high-end for me.

Another day, we took a ferry to one of the Prince’s Islands where we rented a bike and rode around to a beach. And by “beach” I mean, flat section of dirt next to the water. Which was all we wanted.

That was the best thing we did in Istanbul – just biking through the green hills.

Another day, Maddie and I just spent the whole day at a park, reading and napping and watching little kids pretending to be big-shot soccer players.

That was the second best thing we did in Istanbul.

But the bad news is that my camera was sick the whole time. I’m going to steal pictures from my friends, though. It’ll be ok.

I have more Luxor pictures to share:

Felucca

I don't know if I told you, but Flat Stanley accompanied me to Luxor. This is Stanley on the streets of Luxor.

Flat Stanley at the tombs in the Valley of the Kings

Still in Valley of the Kings

Stanley at the Temple of Hatshepsut

Temple of Hatshepsut

Stanley inside Hatshepsut's Temple

Still at H's temple

Another temple called Medinat Habu

Outside Medinat Habu

That's all for now.

-C

Apr. 16th, 2008

Luxor, Arabic, Turkey

I'm still here. Promise.

I've spent about 109873456 hours trying to upload my Luxor pictures to Facebook, so I can copy and paste them here.

But it's making me put them up one at a time. It's slow goings.

Luxor is near the ancient capital of Thebes. It's got a bunch of huge temples and tombs. I like it much better than the pyramids.

We got to see the Valley of the Kings and go into some tombs. I thought this would be boring -- not because tombs and pharoanic stuff is boring, but because I expected just to see empty caves.

And apparently, that is what you'll see if you choose to go into Tutankamen's tomb.

But the one's we explored were of Ramses II, Ramses I and somebody else whom I've forgotten. Maybe Tutmosis I.

In order to give you an idea of what it was like to go into these tombs, I need to tell you that it is presently 100 degrees in Cairo. Luxor, is a 10-hour train ride south of Cairo.

So it is much hotter.

And tombs are even hotter than outside. And they smell awful. I thought maybe it was the sweat of all the tourists coming through, but I'm pretty sure it was much worse than that could've been.

And somehow, they are humid.

We would emerge from the tombs into the 100+ sunshine, and breathe a sigh of relief.

But it was worth it. The walls were covered in impossibly brightly colored murals and hyrogliphics. It was hard to believe they were real and unaltered.

The Valley of the Queens was the same.

We also went to the temple of Hatshepsut, the only female Pharoah. (She's the one from the Discovery Channel special that they aired a million times a couple of years ago.)

But Luxor is annoying because everyone is trying to sell you something.

See, if you aren't Egyptian, and you're walking around Cairo, you might be working/studying there. (i. e. not necessarily a tourist)

But if you aren't Egyptian and you're in Luxor, you're almost definitely a tourist.

And if you're a tourist, then you (apparently) want to buy a lot cheesy souvenirs and take a lot of carriage rides. And you want to spend ridiculous amounts on them.

You can't sit on a bench for ten minutes without having a dozen different people approach you offering to sell you a carriage ride, a taxi, a felucca ride, or some cheaply-made jewelry.

It got on my nerves.

There was a good side to this, though. Since most Luxor natives assume that these visitors are tourists who speak no Arabic, we got so much praise for being able to speak even the little bit that we do.

I left feeling like I was pretty much fluent.

Which is inaccurate.

Have I told you that there are two types of Arabic? Fooss-ha and Ameya? (I don't know the traditional English transliterations.) The former is fancy Arabic, referring either to Quranic/classical Arabic or to Modern Standard Arabic, which is what they speak on international news networks. The latter is colloquial, and it's very different.

My Arabic class is Modern Standard. So when I try to speak Arabic to Egyptians, I always try to start in colloquial, but I tend to end in MSA, like in class.

They usually understand, but it must sound really weird.

Like, "You go straight for a little bit, and then thou takest a right."

Ok. So maybe it doesn't sound quite that weird.

Kellie, Ana, Maddie, Alison and I leave for Istanbul tonight/tomorrow morning. Our flight's around 3am.

We come back on the 27th, so I may not update until then. If we find an inexpensive internet cafe, maybe we'll stop in.

If I don't update till the 27th, that doesn't mean I'm dead, or that I hate everyone who reads my lj (I'm talking to you, Dad). ;)

It just means that I'm in Turkey.

Here are the few Luxor pictures that I've been able to load: