Egypt running through my head

The first thing I noticed looking around the rest station was how fat, sloppy and skimpily dressed people were. I was sitting with my mom eating a big green, albeit slightly flavorless, salad at the Charleston rest stop on our way home from Logan Airport in Boston. We left Zamalek 2:00 a.m. Cairo time and arrived in Boston 2:45p.m. EST.
The last day in Cairo was also our first day back from Abu Dhabi, we got to the Marriot, where we had rooms for the day, at 9 a.m. slept, shopped for souvenirs’ and were packing when the guys—Mufas, K-$ and Amir arrived at our door.
Mufas--7p.m. is too late, this is your last night in Cairo. Lily-we’re not done packing—come at 6:30. They arrived at 6, the first time they—or actually I’ve ever seen any Egyptian, arrive early. Lily-How did you get here so fast? K-$—We were at Macs. Lily-Where!? K-$—MACCdonalds.—Ohh. Lol. Right down the street…..

Conversations usually go like that with them.

It hasn’t hit me that this is more than ‘cya in a week or two.’
Some cried when we left. I didn’t; felt pretty detached actually. Denial? The rush of all I have to do here right now….we’ll see how I feel in a couple of weeks.

What I’ll remember most about the trip, aside from Arabic—inshallah, are the people. They not only influenced where I went and what I saw but how I saw and understood it all. They provided a lens, showed me Egypt as they knew it.

‘I know I’ve asked you this before,’ Mufas said. From the way he said it, I was knew it would be yet another thoughtful question. ‘But how has your view of Egyptians and Egypt changed from being here?’

We were sitting at an outdoor café the most casual type—a few tables, juice and sheisha, at Moquttam Hills with the lights of Cairo glowing below us and the pyramids visible, at least before it got dark, in the distance.

I tried not to have a lot of expectations. Be open-minded. Plus, I told him, I left in such a rush. Finals, job searching, goodbyes, moving and packing, I hardly had time to think.
The difference is I feel more connected now, I won’t picture pyramids when I think of Egypt, I’ll picture friends and places I love and remember ridiculous stories about one-way streets.
The answer, unsurprisingly, didn’t satisfy him.
I tried to explain it like this.
When we were in Marsha Matruh I met a guy Rami, half Palestinian, half Greek, born and bred in Egypt. Everything I told him, he shrugged. Nah, I think it’s just those people, if I showed you Cairo it would be completely different, you wouldn’t think that.
While I think he’s right to some extent, it’s not that simple.
If I had traipsed Cairo with him I don’t think my picture would be more correct, simply different.
It’s slice replacing slice.
We can expand by seeing more and withholding judgments. We can accumulate slices and fit them together like puzzle pieces but even then, even if we were to complete an entire puzzle, it’s still only one out of countless and we’re only seeing it through our own lens.
Insert nature vs. nurture debate here if you feel the need…I know where I stand.

The whole journey for me was perfect. Amazing. I hate using phrases like best thing of my life so I won’t. I think it’s silly to qualify like that, unnecessary. How it turned out was an endless array of choices and risks and chance. I can use words like “perfect,” but really a different choice could have led to another perfect and who am I to mess with words like that….
So what is was….
Probably the most I ever laughed and smiled
Tons of great quotes, phrases and invented words
More thoughts chasing each-other and jousting for space inside my head, blog and conversations than ever
The most I’ve talked about things I care about
I won’t compare girl friends—I am so lucky in that regard, but the guys—in the highest percentile I have ever known, you guys make it hard to accept what’s here…i.e in the US.

And speaking of here…
I am typing at the kitchen table in my home—my mom’s home—where I still have a bedroom and some stuff and I’ll be living for the next week or so before, inshallah, I find an apartment in DC.

Abu Dhabi

I have a lot to say about The Arab Emirates and a whole lot else to say about what we did there, where we went and who we met. For now however I will leave it at the country itself--at least my glimpse of it which made me appreciate Cairo more than ever.

The people we met on the other hand. About 30 Arab students from I believe 14 out of the 22 Arab countries were mostly incredibly. Walking in the first day, exhausted from traveling and sick from Koshari in Cairo, fish on the plane? we were met by a room filled with students in traditional dress. I was intimidated, surprised, while Egyptians may be different, they dress the same.

Turned out a lot of them had planned it.

"I told them it would scare the Americans," Maher, a Palestinian peer, told me.

There’s a lot that goes between that first night and what I will write soon.

For now suffice it to say somewhere between long conference hours brainstorming and writing, arguing and explaining tours and bus rides, meals, mall and spa trips, we all became pretty tight.

Stuck in the desert

It is big and comfy, complete with lean-back seats, AC—not all buses here have that, and a flat screen TV up front. This is also our bus’s maiden voyage and it is still working out a kink or two…
Tara—let’s sit in the back, than we can sit all together.
Tara, Katharine and I setup camp in the back of the bus.
On the way to Marsha Matruh
A couple hours later finds waking up from naps to breathe the smell of gas. After putting shirts over our noses for a few minutes and Tara talking about how many brain cells we were losing I decided it was time ---Sullivan! It smells like gas back here.
Turns out the gas filter was broken.
We stopped at a military museum and graveyard while it was fixed.Rushhh we’re NOT getting stuck in the back of that bus again. We stretched out, opened our books and turned on our ipods, happy to be seats away from the front of the bus for the three hour ride to Siwa from Marsa Matruh.
This time we woke up to a burning smell….a smell no one could miss.
We pulled over to the side of the road, which happened to be desert. In fact all we could see, with the exception of a little stand and shed thing, was desert in every direction and our road.
We waited an hour or so for vans to drive from our hotel to rescue us.
Our poor driver, who had to wait with the bus, didn’t arrive in Siwa until 4 a.m. in the morning. –we’d left MM at about 1:30 p.m.
We drove our bus to the cites this morning and other than a few scratches, from trees that reached into the dirt road, everything went fine.
We’re driving our bus back to Cairo on Friday 13th.
This could be an adventure…..

Update: we’re back at Flamenco hotel in Cairo. Unpacking and repacking for Abu Dhabi. We’re going out with the guys 6-ish “real time…” to where, they won’t tell us.
We’re staying at the Intercontinental hotel, all expense paid, with 30 students from Arab countries.
Our conferences are supposedly 10-5 Sunday through Tuesday. We were assigned around 300 pages of reading material which I’ve done some of and been disappointed by. Instead of providing intelligent information and answering questions it brings up points without providing adequate context and seems to miss the big picture.
There is however, one thing the reading brought to out attention. The whole time we’ve been talking about how liberal the Arab Emirates are, Sullivan said “anything goes in Dubai,” more than once.
Turns out women couldn’t even vote until 2006….
The next section of this journey is underway—I’ll update as possible, I might not pay for internet at the hotel…

Sandboarding and other desert wonders

Yesterday, Wednesday 12th, was one of the most fun days I’ve experienced. Ever. Though for the record, fun and laughing, I’ve learned are different. I laugh more laying on the beach with Tara and Katharine talking into the night or driving around with the Egyptian guys….
In the morning we toured The Mountain of death, predictably a set of tombs, and the Oracle temple.
Along the way we dove into Cleopatra’s Well. Pulling up I thought, who’s going into that! It was very slimy looking and a ways below ground level, but minutes after getting out of the van Ted had jumped and Oscar was stripping hurriedly as I filmed. A bunch, including myself when I finished filming, joined them.



The water was warm and refreshing at the same time. Climbing back onto the bus I felt wonderful and refreshed.

When Sullivan said we’d be taking four-wheelers into the desert a bunch of us pictured driving our own motor bikes. Instead jeeps showed up at 4:30 to take us on our desert trek.

Five of us chose a lovely blue jeep with a smiling driver and we set off into the desert, west toward Libya. We zoomed up sand dunes and sped down.
This is with my regular camera. There's lots of footage I took of sandboarding and such on the video camera.

He swerved back and forth and raced with the other jeeps. We screamed, laughed and felt pretty safe. We played on dunes, posed on rocks and picked up seashells.


We stopped at an oasis where Tara and I swam out and reveled in our location—we’re in a oasis, in Africa!! There we ran into a couple other students from BU, I think it was.
Weird.
Next we visited a natural hot spring.

Amazing. I know the wonders of nature but there are things here I’ve never heard about…and for the finale—we sand boarded.
Our drivers took out wooden boards waxed them and let us figure out the rest.
The driver handed me one when we were getting out of the van so I took it and went for it…it wasn’t as hard as I expected—I stayed up and glided a ways before falling and getting sand in every possible place…yummy…lol
Running up was the best workout I’ve had in Egypt…














After having our fill of the boards we sipped mint tea our drivers brewed us and watched the sun set over the dunes.














Moments after arriving at our hotel, Paradise Siwa, a few of us jumped into the pool, another natural body of water with converted into a pool, aka amazing and warm and chlorine-free. We played Marco Polo, haha I haven’t played that in a year or two. After dinner—which we got to around 9:30 or so, I did some reading for Abu Dhabi before falling asleep. It’s about 2:00 a.m. now and I can’t wait for morning. As much as I want time to go slowly here I am so eager to begin each day. Today we’re going to drive back to Marsah Matruh—three hours if our van doesn’t break down again, and spend the day on the beach. We’re—I hope leaving early Friday morning so we have most of the day in Cairo before jetting off to Abu Dhabi at Saturday morning.

We'll make it a one way street and other classic Cairo

Yesterday we—Tara, Katharine and I, is who I generally mean by that these days—decided to visit Alzar park, the cite of Cairo Earth Day festival. Tara found the festival listed on yallabina.com, the site Sullivan told us to scavenge for events, and the irony of an Earth day in Cairo, one of the world’s most polluted cities, seemed too good to miss.

At the park we failed to find the wide selection of NGOs promised however we did see a lot of interesting art work—drawings and creations composed of recyclables, and see in interesting e walked in a wedding procession swirled by us, busy in dance, and everywhere we walked children played and couples reladance by children dressed as trees and the like.

The park itself was magnificent. The air smelled fresh, the views were incredible and there were flowers, trees and ponds with sprinklers that made rainbows. As wxed in the shade of trees.

We’re going back to the park today with our entire group to have our last, “debrief,” as Sullivan likes to call our group discussions.

Each day here is a new adventure, a new story, full of possibilities and intrigue. The people I have met deserve most of the credit.

It’s hard to capture the little things which make moments perfect with laugher but those are the ones that mean the most.

Here are some of my favorite/intrinsically Cairo episodes from the last couple days.

There are few stop signs here, no traffic lights and a plethora of police, mostly tourist, but none who seemed concerned with the rules of the road. I’ve seen people get clipped by cars—none hurt and no cars that stopped a time or two.

The other day driving around the block to pickup friends took a good 40 minutes—they could’ve walked to the car in two minutes but the guys decided to swing by and get them….I wouldn’t trade that drive for anything…

It’s a one way street.
Mufas -That’s OK we can make it a two way street.
—Abu Shady zooms down it.
Me-look there’s a woman…and a dog…
Abu Shady—zoom swerve stop zoom swerve.

The guys ask a bizliodfsn people for directions to get back around the block—after we’ve told them—dudes we live here!

Suleyman joked that sometimes he gets his laughs watching foreigners cross the street. Sometimes it takes them five minutes just to get up the courage to walk, he said.

A couple days ago we played soccer probably about 30 Americans and Egyptians combined. It was at this huge outdoor club where adults seemed to sit around chatting while hordes of children of all ages ran wild. I had my video camera out and many of the boys pounced all over me. It was hard to tell if they wanted to be filmed or for me to turn it off...When we finished soccer--about 2 or so in the morning, kids were still everywhere. Only in Egypt.

Last night we—planned, to have dinner with our fav Egyptian guys—Mostafa aka Mufas and Karim—aka K-Money, and then go to a concert at the Sowi Cultural Center, a venue on Zamalek.

*Flashback a couple days ago*
“Who’s playing?”
“The best band in Cairo!”
“What are they called?”
“uhhh hmmm….I don’t know! We’ll get tickets.”
Sounds like a plan.

Sullivan explained before leaving the United States that Cairo time is not the same as time we know. Lateness here is part of the framework. If it’s not the notorious traffic maybe it was time for tea—or really what’s the rush. (Though I’ve been told by Egyptians the rush is here and we’re simply oblivious to it.)

Anyway, 7p.m. found the three of us waiting in Hardee’s, an American chain near our hotel. Ironically we never would’ve set foot in if it weren’t for the Egyptians who always want to meet there.

We’re not sure how exactly we agreed to meet at 7, as the concert supposedly started at 8, predictably the guys arrived 7:20ish—actually quite impressive.

We headed to Didos Al Dente—our fav Italian joint where we had to wait another 15ish minutes for a table. The restaurant was a slightly odd choice; for once we blended in better than our Egyptian counterparts.

While waiting another 7 or so people from our group arrived—again, completely typical. While there’re a plethora of restaurants on Zamalek, let alone Cairo, we hardly go anywhere without seeing a few of the 35 familiar American faces…(I.e. in the middle of the biggest Souk in Egypt we ran into fellow NEU-ers down a small side-street.

So now for the impressive “ow-e” (very) part of the night. They guys knew there own lateness and had a backup plan for us.

We went to Cairo Jazz club, where they had reservations, and spent the night laughing, taking ridiculous pictures, listening to amazing music and playing hand games Brits? at the bar mimicked. Another interesting difference. The guys here are incredible dancers--way better than any of us. I'd love to trade hips....lol.

I’m shocked my ribs aren’t sore from laughing….

I don’t know what the internet situation will be like in the desert we’re driving into early tomorrow…so don’t be alarmed if I don’t post blogs for uhh.. about a week =)

Mufas smiling and Tara and I imitating him....lol>

Suleyman's House

If these entries seem choppy and rough it's due to lack of time...there are so many things I'd love to write about and explore but time's limited. Likely I'll add to and edit all of these at some point.

Also, there is apparently a feedback/response section of this blog I don't know how to get to. Either e-mail or leave comments, those are the only things I get. Thanks!

Suleyman, the Senegalese student I met at St. Andrew’s, invited Julia and over to his house for a traditional dinner cooked by his mother. He lives alone with his mom downtown Cairo by The Palace of Abdeen, Quaf Abdeen was a Turkish occupier of Egypt in and he built his palace as an exact replica of the dsklf palace in France.

The cab found the place easily and we waited on the corner until we saw Suleyman, easily distinguishable due to his height, striding toward us.

We followed him through the park adorning to the palace, down a side street and up the stairs of an old building. People stared and I spoke words in Arabic I didn’t know..but that was nothing unexpected.

We entered a neat albeit sparse apartment. His mother was sitting on a couch watching Senegalese TV, via satellite.

Though she insisted she spoke little English, it was much better than our Arabic and when she wanted to she was perfectly capable of getting her ideas across.

They served the Egyptian pastries Julia and I brought and cookies and then she brought out a huge platter of different fish with vegetables and spices. We ate with spoons, directly from the platter in the traditional way. We were sitting in the living room, all huddled around the plate and his mom kept placing choice pieces of fish in front of us. I tried to eat as much as I could which was not nearly enough—if someone doesn’t eat we say they don’t like the food, she said to me. I assured her over and over it was delicious. “Wad,” I said, I promise.

The whole time we ate Akon, he’s Senegalese, and Chris Brown played in the background. They’re very nice, Suleyman said repeatedly. My favorite. I kept thinking about past dance parties.

It was one of the strangest juxtapositions of culture I’ve encountered.

Morgan Heritage is another one of his favorite artists I don’t know. When he left to play it for me, Julia and I followed. The music had been coming from an old PC in a bedroom with two beds he shared with his mother. His was distinguishable by a Michael Jordan poster which hung above it, the sole decoration on the wall.

He was open and welcoming. He took out a t-shirt from his dresser—Bob Marley, the same picture as on my backpack, he said. He showed us pictures of his sister, Aisha who’s studying biology in Senegal. He played us music and said he’d make us a C D of artists we didn’t know.

Julia and I were discussing it afterward. While all outsiders here, as a fellow African he has a different sense of entitlement than we do. While we try to absorb all the differences and love Egypt for them, he compares the traffic, noise and nonchalance of the city to the community life in the-not-too-far-away Senegal. While we resist judging with all our might, because we often don’t feel we have the right to do so, he doesn’t hold back.

Never been kissed

One of the other Arabic classes went to dinner at their 24-year-old teacher, Peter’s, house. Sometime during the meal the differences in dating and relationships came up. Like who hasn’t kissed before? Someone said. Peter raised his hand.

How the men and women interact here, the cultural expectations, relationship norms and traditions are one of the most interesting differences between here and the United States.

Last night—by the time I post this, i.e. no internet, who knows when, we had a surprise birthday party at a café for two of our Egyptian friends. We were hanging out, just talking when one of the guys suggested we play spin the bottle.

WHAT!! Maybe when we were 14 and even then…lol. They reassured us, no, we just ask each other questions.

Culture, marriage, relationships, politics…no alcohol, drugs not even sheisha…Real conversation.

Some of the differences are hard to take. For example all the girls we meet have curfews. They’ll go home early or not come out at all while the majority of the guys can stay out ‘til all hours.

The guys also refuse to let us take cabs alone or pay for them.

While in the United States, I wouldn’t put up with it—after all I’m the girl who ruins first dates by insisting on going Dutch…here I think of it differently. These guys don’t mean the same things by it, they’re paying because they really believe it’s right, women here often don’t have money, jobs and don’t take cabs alone to begin with. It goes beyond egotism or macho-ism it’s about caring, friendship and I think treating us as they would any other friend or sister.

I think because of the different expectations overall, kind gestures seem more genuine from them. I’ve learned more about Egypt and people in general from them and then I ever could from a course, a moderated dialogue or my own observations…

While I like that things are more laid back, people don’t rush through things as much—by choice or not… I also wonder if the oppression results in the harassment—i.e. catcalls, hisses, stares—we encounter everywhere we go. While I feel physically safer here than in the United States, the words and stares become exasperating. Control yourself! Is my general gut reactions. I try to hold back my disgust, realize they don’t mean anything by it…it's so hypocritical...

The other night about a bunch of the guys came back to our hotel to hang out. Within two minutes of entering our room the phone rang. Egyptian guys aren’t allowed in your room, it’s hotel policy. Katharine, Tara and I were more furious than the guys, it’s OK it’s OK they said and discouraged us from arguing.

They ended up letting us chill on the porch, I guess where there was no danger of extramarital sex…

My first reaction was shock and outrage; the engineering guys have all been over without a problem. Besides the fact that I don’t like being told who can and cannot be in our rooms the fact that they said “Egyptians,” specifically is what infuriated me.

I'm trying to be open-minded. It’s like the receptionist was looking out for fellow Egyptians—i.e. Americans are not their business, the hotel’s reputation and the values, agree or not, with the society we’re in.

I asked one of the guys the other night what one thing he would change about his religion. He said how people interpret it.

Unrelated topic wise...but check it out. This was a favorite spot downtown where some of the above took place.
Also interesting, after performing she came around looking for tips, which we, still in awe from her performance, immediately gave her. The boys told us we didn't do it discreetly enough. It's not to make a show, they explained. It supposed to be from the heart, between you and God, you and the person, not something to show other people or benefit in earthly ways from.