zamalek « Ramblings of a Hopeless Khowaga

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12 of 12: July 2009 / ١٢ من ١٢: يوليو ٢٠٠٩

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

It’s time once again for 12 of 12! This 12th of July, I’m in Cairo, capitol of the Arab Republic of Egypt. I’ve been out of the US since June 29 — I was in Turkey for 10 days and flew down here on the 9th. (For the record, and if you’re interested, there are photos from Turkey here).

I’ve been in Cairo many times — I studied here for a year in university — and it’s one of my favorite places in the world. This is my first visit since 2006. I’m here on a combined business / vacation trip. Although today is a business day (the work week in Egypt is Sunday through Thursday, since Friday is the communal day of prayer in Islam), I didn’t have any meetings scheduled, so it was kind of a fun day.

7:52 am: Skyping with Ray

I’ve been waking up kind of early since I got here, and I caught Ray up late at home so we talked by Skype for a bit. Mocha was in the picture for a bit, but she never quite looked at the camera. Sorry, Mocha fans, there are no photos of her this month

10:00 am: Errands

After pretending to go back to sleep for a bit, I finally wandered out around 10 o’clock to go pick up my laundry from the place down the street. The laundry is in the same complex as the supermarket, so I stopped in to pick up some water and soda first, and then carried it all back to the hotel. It was warm in Cairo today (102 F/41 C), and unusually humid. This is, lamentably, still cooler than it is at home in Austin. Tomorrow it’s going to be cooler – by Tuesday, it’ll be 91 (36).

1:56 pm: Christian Cairo

I met up today with Tarek, our junior professor in modern Arabic literature, and we went down to the so-called Christian quarter. It’s in the oldest part of the city, which actually predates the city of Cairo by 300 years. A little-known fact: around 10 per cent of Egypt’s population is Christian, belonging to the native Coptic Church. In an area of town called Mar Girgis, there are a number of churches and one of the few synagogues remaining in the country, all clumped together.

Tarek and I first hit the Coptic Museum (no photography allowed), and then wandered through the rest of the complex. Although it’s a tourist draw, most of the people there were Egyptian, which was OK by us.

2:11 pm: St George’s Cemetery

That’s Tarek taking a photo of the mausoleums in the Greek Orthodox cemetery behind St. George’s Church. There are a bunch of mausoleums and family plots back there. I was a bit surprised to find the tomb of someone with the same name as my grandfather — how many Neoklis Triantafillides’s could there have been in the Greek speaking world?

2:16 pm: Water from the Holy Well

Although it’s not spelled out in the Gospels, the Egyptians have an entire itinerary set out for exactly where the Holy Family (Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus) traveled during their flight into Egypt. In the cemetery is a crypt built over a cave where the Holy Family is said to have sheltered and drawn water from the well above. As Mary (as Meryem) and Jesus (as ‘Issa) are both revered as prophets in Islam as well as Christianity, you can see adherents of both faiths making pilgrimages at these shrines.

2:51 pm: … you crazy, adorable fool

The oldest known synagogue in Egypt still in existence, the Ben Ezra Synagogue, is in Mar Girgis as well, although, once again, no photography allowed. Tarek and I got the royal tour, and were shown to the ‘Ayn Musa, the spring of Moses, located behind the synagogue. This is said to be the spring where Pharaoh’s daughter drew the baby Moses from the Nile (the synagogue is said to be on the place where Moses pleaded with God to stop the plagues inflicted on Egypt).

3:12 pm: Off to Lunch

OK, by this point in the day it was really hot in the sun and time for lunch. Tarek and I had made plans to meet up with some students who are here for the summer, so we set back off for the area where I’m staying and several of the students live.

I am routinely asked by people if I feel unsafe traveling to Egypt as often as I do. The answer is no – I have been coming to Egypt for 15 years, and I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m American, nor that I’m Christian (I don’t mention the part about being gay, however — that’s one barrier I’m not willing to cross here). I’ve never been greeted with anything but kindness by people here.

The one place I do feel unsafe is on the road, however. Egyptian taxis are built like tanks, but it doesn’t stop me from flinching often when riding in them. Cairo is horrifically congested (by most unofficial estimates there are 20 million people in the Cairo/Giza/Shubra el Khayma metropolitan area) and it can take ages to get anywhere. The Metro, wisely, is more for local use than tourists (it’s also not air conditioned), so we decided to cab it.

3:44 pm: Decisions, Decisions

We met up for lunch at Abu Sid, a local upscale Egyptian restaurant. You can get just about everything they serve on the street, but without the nasty side effects afterwards

5:38 pm: Towel Art

Back on my own, I headed back to the hotel — a small, unassuming place run by a lady who governs with an iron fist. I had forgotten that I’d hung my socks on the towel rack to dry after handwashing them in the sink this morning. Hence, the guy who cleans the rooms at the hotel got a little creative with towel placement and left me a duck!

8:05 pm: Sunset

In my food coma haze, I checked e-mail quickly and read while half watching episodes of the less successful Law and Order franchises (Trial by Jury; Trial by Fire; and Parks and Recreational Petty Crimes Division). I lose track of the time until I hear the call to prayer wafting in through the window, meaning that it’s sunset.

8:45 pm: Evening Traffic in Zamalek

I wander out, mostly from sheer boredom, and it’s traffic as usual in Zamalek on a weeknight. Cars and pedestrians going every which way.

10:06 pm: Dessert before dinner

One of the students calls to see what I’m up to and invite me to tag along to dinner (they eat late here). I’m not that hungry, but first we stop in at a local bakery/sweet shop that I’ve frequented since my student days. They churn out really nice baked goods–baklava, basboussa, kinaffeh–and ice cream as well.

For the record, we didn’t actually eat this stuff until after dinner (the shop was on the way to where we were going). That would have been totally crazy … *innocent look*

And that was my 12. How was yours?

Tags: 12 of 12, art, Austin, baklava, bla, blog, boredom, cairo, cars, cat, christianity, churches, coptic, crime, decisions, dinner, egypt, family, fes, food, Friday, fun, gay, god, greek, Home, ice, islam, khowaga, law, literature, me, meetings, men, Mocha, nile, photography, Photos, Ray, SHE, stuff, summer, taxis, traffic, Travel, turkey, university, vacation, Will, work, zamalek
Posted in 12 of 12 | 13 Comments »

The City Victorious

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

I knew I was in trouble when I saw the Ettihad Airways 777 trundling up to the gate ahead of us shortly after we landed at Cairo Airport. Terminal 2 — referred to in cruel ironic fashion as the “new” airport, even though it is now the oldest and smallest of the three terminals — is notoriously cramped and the arrival of two or three airplanes at once is a sure way to gunk up the works.

It was worse than I expected. Just down the gangway, where arriving passengers descend to the first floor for customs, a uniformed security official was distributing health declaration forms. Egypt has had its share of cases of the H1N1 virus, and the country is in full lockdown, beginning with the airport. The passengers off of the Ettihad flight, arriving from Abu Dhabi in their Hermes headscarves and Dolce and Gabbana thobes clustered around three small podiums filling out the forms (why Egypt, unlike Turkey, seems to be unable to give these forms out on the plane is beyond me), and jamming up the narrow hallway.

Then all 500 of us — for by then the Ettihadis and those off of my flight from Istanbul had been joined by a third flight arriving from Brussels — headed for one of two checkpoints. The one I found myself waiting for was staffed by a tough woman with henna colored hair sticking out from under her hijab, who pointed a thermal camera at every single passenger, testing for fever. Of course, by this point, we were all hot, sticky, and sweaty. Who could tell what was fever?

A bottle-blond behind me tried to smarm her way forward. “Please,” she said, “My kids are tired.” By way of emphasis, she gestured to the two children, who seemed to be having fun playing with the stantions. I considered suggesting the trick would have worked better if she hadn’t waited until she was at the front of the line to try it. By that point, I was ready to bodily prevent her from getting in front of me.

Apparently fever-free, I stopped in at the Banque Misr, where a bored looking woman took $100 from me, handed me my entry visa, and an amount of money in Egyptian pounds that I’m not sure was correct because she didn’t offer me a receipt.

From there, the line for passport control took another 45 minutes. Every so often, someone would complain about the wait, and would be set promptly in their place. But it slowed down the process. And this is Egypt, where things never run quickly.

The good news is that by the time I got through passport control, my luggage was sitting there waiting for me.

And off I went into the arrivals hall, surrounded by hundreds of anxious people waiting for arriving friends and family, wondering where they were (still in line, most likely). The usual line of limo company reps popped up out of nowhere like a bad date. “Taxi? Where you go?”
“Zamalek.”
“I take you for 80 pounds.”
“EIGHTY? Are you KIDDING me? I’ll take a cab.”

I did eventually realize that I wasn’t going to win, as every limo company quoted the same price. 80 pounds to the city center. Last time, I paid 60 and knew I was getting fleeced. Back in my day, I would have paid 30. But it was hot, I was sweaty and tired, and I had no idea where the taxi rank had been moved since Terminal 3 was completed in the parking lot of Terminal 2.

In the back seat of the air conditioned Lexus, I tried to strike up a conversation with the driver, but he wasn’t having it. Fine with me. I wasn’t feeling like talking anyway. I looked out the window and noticed how unlike Turkey Egypt is. While in Istanbul, several people asked me which I like better, Cairo or Istanbul? Istanbul’s prettier, that’s for sure. But there’s something about Egypt …

My room wasn’t ready when I got to the hotel, so I left my bags at reception and decided to go down the street to the supermarket for water and other supplies. A British lady held the door at the elevator and we rode down together.

“First visit to Egypt?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been here many times.”
“Me too,” she said. “I just keep coming back.”
“There’s something about it … ” I said.
“Exactly. It’s chaotic, dirty, and nothing works-”
“-and you miss it the second you leave.”
We stepped out onto the street and bid each other good day. I walked up the shady sidewalk, taking a moment to appreciate that I’m back in Cairo, a place that is, for better or worse, near and dear to me.

When I got to my room, I opened the drapes and found this:

Yeah. I’m hooked.

Tags: blog, cairo, children, egypt, family, fashion, friends, fun, health, ice, istanbul, khowaga, luggage, me, men, money, news, SHE, turkey, work, zamalek
Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »

Somewhere in Texas …

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

… a village rejoices, for it has regained its long lost idiot.

I don’t want to write another mushy post about Obama. Others have blogged longer and waxed more poetic about what the day means to them, and I don’t want to belittle their contributions by trying to force a contrived post about What Obama Means to Me.

Instead, let me share a reminiscence.

Cairo, July 2003.

It was my first trip back to Egypt since I had lived there in the mid 1990s, and I had just been ripped off in one of the most obvious schemes imaginable. The young man who had waited on us at the restaurant had claimed that I had given him a 50 piaster note instead of a 50 pound note. I knew which I’d given him, and I knew he was holding out for more money. I knew that the problem was that my companion and I had started counting our remaining Egyptian money after paying the bill, and that we’d neglected to tip him anything, and he was angry that we had so much and couldn’t spare an extra pound or two for him.

I was pissed and embarrassed at myself for having fallen into the trap, and no amount of screaming in English or Arabic seemed to be making a damned bit of difference. I knew why he did it, but I was angry anyway.

I had to go back to the hotel. Heidi, one of my colleagues on this lengthy multi-country business jaunt had joined me for lunch in the Khan al-Khalili, the storied marketplace in the center of the oldest district of Cairo. When I think about Cairo, I think about the area around the Khan – not necessarily the Khan itself, but the core of the city that dates back a millennia.

The rest of the group had returned to the hotel for a siesta, but I wanted a last chance to visit my favorite part of town, as we were in Egypt for barely 48 hours and I had a nearly physical need to cram in as much of it as I could. And now I was unhappy because I’d been ripped off like a common tourist.

I was still seething as I hailed a cab from the not-moving traffic on Azhar Street and Heidi and I climbed in. I told the driver where I wanted to go, and sat staring out the window.

“You look as though you’ll break the glass with your eyes, my friend,” the driver said, and I laughed. He gave a start: he’d said it in Arabic and not expected me to understand. Here began a conversation I have routinely whenever I’m in the Arab world: how it is that the khowaga, the quintessential white boy, came to know our language and our country and culture.

As is the case with many Egyptian cab drivers, he was not a cab driver by training. I’ve forgotten what he told me his actual profession was, but as we made our way through the early afternoon traffic back toward Zamalek and my hotel, he waxed poetic about many things.

It was July 2003, I was in the largest Arab capital, and my country was still in the process of bombing Baghdad.

The driver asked me where I was from, and I didn’t hesitate about telling him I was American. Even in the darkest days of the past eight years, when we joked about changing the translation in our survival Arabic guide of “I am from America” to “Ana min Canada” I never lied about where I was from.

This day, my cab driver was in a philosophical mood. “Your president lies,” he said to me. “He said that the reason your armies were in Iraq was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Saddam is gone, and your armies are still there. Why? What is the true reason?”

“I don’t know, ” I said simply.

“This man is not good for your country,” he went on. “All peoples around the world, they felt sympathy for your country in Eylul [September]. We wept. I have family in America. I felt as if these planes were hitting me! But now, we are all so angry at America because of what they do in Iraq.”

“I know,” I said glumly.

The driver looked in the mirror, eyes twinkling, and shook his head. “Do not take it personally, my friend,” he said. “After all, we did not vote for our president, either.” This man, from a country that never had democracy and has even less of it now, was reassuring me, supposedly from the shining example of what democracy is supposed to be. Although he meant it as a reassurance … and partially as a joke … it’s something that I’ve never forgotten. Had we really sunk that low?

Yesterday, when I sat around the conference table at work and watched the new president address the nation–and I thought it was an appropriate speech; it may not go down in history as one of the greatest speeches of all time, but Obama said what we needed to hear–I watched with colleagues who’ve found themselves in similar situations. I thought about all of the times since 2003 I’ve been in the Arab world. Arabs love to discuss politics, but I’ve refrained. I have no idea what my country is doing, and I can’t explain it, and I don’t want to defend it.

Barack Obama has been president for a little over 24 hours. So far, with each executive order, I’ve felt my gut unclench a little more. Sure, he could turn out to be ineffective. He could be a flash in the pan. The next four years could be marked by economic stagnation and turmoil.

But we elected him. And I’m proud of that.

Tags: art, barack obama, blog, cairo, colleagues, conference, democracy, egypt, english, family, fes, hilo, history, ice, iraq, khowaga, lost, love, me, money, moving, politics, rain, tea, texas, traffic, translation, work, zamalek
Posted in Politics as Usual | 2 Comments »

Search Term Fun

Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

It’s time for another round of “search term fun,” where I pull up Google Analytics and look at all the search terms that have somehow managed to bring people to this site. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes, it’s a little scary … Also, I’m dawdling on putting together the presentation I have to give this week.

Ready? Let’s go!

As tired as I am of the subject, Christian Chavez-related terms still lead the way. We’ll ignore those.

There are several misspelled search terms: ‘pron,’ for example. I assume you mean ‘porn,’ and you might want to specify what kind of porn you’re looking for. If you can’t spell it, you might still be young enough to not be aware of the fact that there’s all sorts of porn out there, and some of it might make you cry if you’re not fully prepared. I’m just saying.

Several people looking for syllabi from courses taught by professors I know. Dudes, have you tried just e-mailing them?

“Is Zachary Quinto gay?” [Sylar on Heroes]

Photos like the above to the contrary, I don’t think so, but anyone can be gay these days. That’s sort of the point. To all the folks that feel the need to send nasty messages about this or leave ridiculous comments (which are now disabled anyway): The above image is a still from a very bad television show that starred Tori Spelling. ZQ was playing a *role*. I don’t care whether you think he’s gay or straight. I don’t care whether he IS gay or straight. Stop sending me messages about it.

(Thanks to Andy Towle for finding these.)

Is Zachary Quinto Jewish?
I … have no idea. He’s half-Italian and half-Irish, so my guess would be that he’s Catholic, but anything is possible…

“Is Eros Ramazzotti gay?”
I’m almost 100% sure he’s not. He’s been linked to every supermodel in Europe and has a kid. If he’s hiding something, he’s doing a really good job of it. Sometimes, you know, they’re actually straight. It’s OK. There’s lots of superstars who are.

Here’s one: “How to pronounce Mma Ramotswe”
Well, I don’t speak Setswana, but the lady who does the audio books certainly sounds like she knows what she’s doing when she runs through all of those names, so here goes: it’s “mm” as in “mmm, cookies!” with an “ah” at the end. “mm-ah”

I assume it was the “Mma” part that was giving you problems. “Ramotswe” is pretty straightforward – the ending is pronounced “way,” not “we.”

So: “mmah rah-MOATS-way.”

“texas gay egypt arabic university blog mexico greek”
Hey, you found me!

“legal to email photos of shirtless boys?”
It depends on how old the boy is. You know, in general, if you have to ask …

“antonio bandera penis almodovar”
OK, to begin with: it’s Banderas, and the man’s first name is Pedro, not penis.

Check out “Law of Desire” (“La ley del deseo“). It has all of those correctly spelled elements in it.

God’s e-mail address in Saudi Arabia oil company
I’m guessing “God” is someone’s nickname. You might have better luck if you try his real name.

If you’re trying to actually reach HaShem Jehovah Allah, you’d do well to try one of the Western Wall delivery services.

List of detective agencies in Bombay directory
Try … the Bombay phone book? If such a creature doesn’t exist (they’ve got one for Cairo now, so there must be one for Bombay/Mumbai), try Google India.

Zamalek Egypt Abu Seed
Great food. The service is horrific, but the food makes up for it. You need reservations pretty much any night of the week. The same guys run L’Aubergine and Cafe Tabasco, which are also both in Zamalek. (Be warned: there’s no sign – it’s got an elaborately carved door, but it does look like you’re about to walk into someone’s house.)

Is there sand dunes off the coast of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia?
No. There’s a coral reef, but no sand dunes.

Pictures of Egypt in the summer
Interestingly enough, Egypt looks the same in the winter as it does in the summer.

Geek porn free photos
OK, I’m a little scared now. Is this the type where she wears a pocket protector and nothing else?

Here’s a few other ones that I don’t quite know what to do with:
“Austin body shave” — sad part is that I can think of a few places …
“passing car bomb” — I don’t wanna think about it.
“Christian Chavez since when was gay” — since birth. Duh.
“Bad rock Agia Napa” — I’ve been to Agia Napa. I haven’t been to music clubs there, but I’m going to guess that there’s a lot of bad rock music there. Unless you’re looking for the village whose name means “Wicked stones,” in which case you should try looking for “Kakopetria.” If you don’t plan to rent a car, forget it, though, as it’s at least two hours away and public transport is pretty non-existent in Cyprus.
“Quentin Tarantino man-love Robert Rodriguez” — Um, OK …
“Scat porn Paris Hilton” — aaaaand I’m done.

Tags: bombay, Books, cairo, egypt, eros-ramazzotti, gay, god, jeddah, jews, mma ramotswe, mumbai, no-1-ladies-detective-agency, pedro-almodovar, restaurants, Saudi Arabia, zachary-quinto, zamalek
Posted in Home | 4 Comments »

Our first stumble

Saturday, June 18th, 2005

Cairo, 82 degrees

It’s late. This evening we had our first near catastrophe. Hopefully it’ll be our last, too. We were supposed to go to the Gezira Art Centre, which is about a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. To begin with, our hotel’s tourist policeman freaked out at the sight of us walking out as a group with no bus to take us anywhere, and made us wait while he called his office to confirm that 17 foreigners really can walk somewhere here. I guess I’ve never been as inconvenienced by the Egyptian bureaucracy as we have been in the past few days, and I’m finding it really annoying. Apparently, whoever he talked to had (slightly) more sense and said we could go, so we set off down the street.

We’d gone maybe 50 feet when Barbara stumbled in the street, fell, and cut her knee. And it was a really bad cut, too. After dithering for a moment and looking at each other with that sort of “what do we do?!?” look, Kamran and I decided that we really should take her to a hospital and have the cut looked at. It was deep, and she was bleeding pretty badly. I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take us to Al-Salam Hospital in Mohandeseen (in the Giza governorate, about a ten minute drive away). It was the hospital we used when we were students at AUC, and the only one I could think of that might be reasonably equipped to deal with foreigners in the area – as far as I know, there isn’t a hospital in Zamalek. The group took the map and kept walking to the museum – Kamran didn’t know where the hospital was, and I didn’t have confidence in my ability to communicate with anyone in Egyptian Arabic, so we both went. Sometimes, it helps to have a take-charge kinda group.

We got to Al-Salam quickly, and the driver – bless his soul – chose to rip us off. Kamran tried to give him LE 7, which was too much in my opinion to bgin with, and the driver wanted 10. Jackass.

Anyway, to my surprise, Kamran chose not to speak Arabic in the waiting room, and so we did the “confused foreigner” thing. It sounds like the beginning to a dumb joke: “Three confused foreigners walk into a hospital…” We were almost instantly ushered into an exam room, and about half an hour later Barbara was stiched up and walking out, with a prescription for amoxycilin. We took a cab back,and I went to join the group at the museum. On arriving, my Arabic failed me again (what is it with me lately?), but I did discover that the Gezira Art Centre isn’t entirely free – the Islamic Ceramics collection, the part that’s worth seeing, is LE 25 for entry. Only a couple of people had paid it, so I tracked down Philip and Roxane in the art gallery, and we went from there. Fortunately, more people did come later, and we managed to spread the word that it’s worth seeing.

All in all, more excitement this evening than I really wanted. It’s late, and I must get to bed. We have a late start tomorrow, and there’s an actual danger that I might – just maybe – get enough rest for one night…

Tags: art, cairo, egypt, hospitals, islamic_art, police, zamalek
Posted in Egypt 2005 | Comments Off

Tag: ‘zamalek’

12 of 12: July 2009 / ١٢ من ١٢: يوليو ٢٠٠٩

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