Want to know the easiest way to completely destroy the existing order in a middle eastern country? Hand out fiction novels to everyone, free of charge.
I'm not even talking about deep fiction; you know, the kind of fiction they made you read in English class because it was supposed to mean something. No one actually reads that stuff anyway. I'm suggesting instead that we provide good old fantasy and science fiction novels to anyone who will take them. In a generation, the authoritarian regimes will collapse.
I'm sure you all think i'm being ridiculous, but one of the fundamental weaknesses in societies I've seen here (so really, Egypt) is the incredible paucity of imagination across almost every social group I've had the fortune to interact with. I should add, that because AUC is an extremely upper class institution, for the most part, I'm talking about educated elites. Despite all their education, very few of them seem to have come by this essential quality that the West seems to enjoy in abundance. I'm convinced that much of that has to do with a lack of fiction.
The example (and outrage) I like to use in illustrating this point (I'm making it sound like i've ranted about this before, but I haven't, except in my own head) is that of Diwan Booksellers, a fine establishment on 26 July Street here on Zamalek Island. It's a very nice bookstore, with a little coffee bar, fine wooden interiors, fairly decent selection, and dramatically overpriced postcards - everything you could possibly want in an upscale bookery. It has only one extremely fatal flaw, and that is its complete and utter lack of a sci/fi fantasy section. At all. Period, anywhere in the store. The only exception to this are the Harry Potter books which can be found in the miniscule 'teens' alcove off the main chambers - and I imagine those only made it on the shelf because they're so bloody popular (economics for the win). You can imagine my horror went I went to go buy the next book in any of number of series that I'm currently reading. ("What do you mean, you don't have a fantasy section?! Augh!!"). More seriously though, I think the fact that no one here seems to think its a problem that there isn't a sci fi or fantasy section is really telling about the state of imagination here in Egypt.
You see, imagination is the cornerstone of our ability to create solutions to the problems we face in daily life. For the most part, you don't need much - if you're hungry, make a sandwich, or buy one for 50 piasters (8 cents! whee!) off the guys selling them at the corner. Need money? Get a job. Can't get a job (because, oh wait, there aren't any)? Talk to someone who has a job and see what they or someone they know can do for you. Need housing? See "Job, Get a." Anyway, you see what I mean. Day to day, it is possible to get buy with what little imagination one picks up of necessity on the road to adulthood. Life's little questions can be answered, one way or another. But, if you want to answer the bigger questions (Why aren't there any jobs? Why do I have to talk to my friend in security so he can talk to his brother in the interior ministry so that he can bribe a guy in transportation so that he can get the mechanic to repair a bus so that I can be hired as driver?), you need to be able to do more critical thinking. And that takes imagination, the kind of imagination that can envision alternatives to the status quo, that can see where things aren't right, and drive someone to take action to rectify the situation. While it is possible to pick this sort of imagination from philosophy or more scholarly studies, the most accessible way to do so, I contend, is through fantasy.
Fantasy, unlike regular fiction, is not constrained by the bounds of the real, or the facade of reality. It can take liberties, it can say "what if?" and use that as the fundamental basis on which to write its story. It asks its readers to imagine something dramatically different than what they are used to, wrap their heads around it, and even sympathize or relate to it. In its futuristic form (Sci/Fi), it asks the reader to think about what could be, if only we let it happen. Better yet, in good fantasy, there are situations which on second thought (or, with a little imagination) can be related to real situations here on Earth. Good fantasy promotes unconscious digestion of ideas and modes of thinking that people otherwise would never be exposed to. Think of it as philosophy, but far more accessible for those who can't bear to read the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, (that's Marx, for the record) much less the first 10. The new mental connections open new pathways and new solutions - liberating the mind from the confines imposed on it by the oppression of the regime, and more importantly, making people aware of those confines in the first place. (Egyptians know they are limited by the regime, but it is one think to feeel you are oppressed and another thing to know you are oppressed, if you catch my drift). More than anything else, imagination breeds hope and the ability to see new solutions to problems. It excites the mind and encourages action where before passive acceptance would have ruled. It helps create new narratives by which action can be governed - narratives owned by the people, rather than by the state.
It is perhaps ironic, then, that the arab and/or muslim mind is simultaneously particularly susceptible to meta-narratives, but also hamstrung by a cultural resistance to individual initiative (Lest I be accused of anti-Islamism or anti-Arabisim, these are not my conclusions, but those of the Arab thinkers i've been reading for classes). Their attention and imagination is readily captured by an effective look at the big picture - perhaps, a partial explanation for the success of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its coherent worldview and plan for the future - but at the same time, they have been denied the ability to take that big picture, manipulate/process it, and make it their own. Helping people develop the mental tools to own their own imaginations and take control of their own stories would go a long way towards breaking the chains of the state on the public at large.
EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, I don't think Muslims or Arabs or Egyptians or anyone else are inherently lacking in imagination or intelligence or anything else. I do think that the repressive authoritarian regimes of the region have definitely prevented them from acheiving their potential. In a long and rambling post like this, its pretty easy to lose track of what I've said and not said, and I didn't want to leave the wrong impression (by omission or otherwise).
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
SPAM!
Ok everyone, I'm afraid i'm going to have to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a minute to introduce you all to the glorious creation that is www.spam.com. I discovered this quite by accident earlier today (I actually have no idea what link I ran into where, now that I think about it), but visiting this site puts a warm glow in my heart. Everyone needs to see in particular the SPAMMOBILE and the SPAM FAQ. Then imagine me grinning like an idiot and doing a little happy dance in my head. I knew SPAM was brilliant after seeing a can with the word "Spamtabulous" on it, but this really takes the cake. I may be forced to buy a T-shirt or something. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit I've tried SPAM once, and thought it was pretty decent. It has a little bit of an odd smell, but it tastes decently good. I imagine that when fried it probably improves on both fronts).
Ok, now that that is out of my system, I'll just "quickly" (I'm sure this is going to end up being quite long) report that I am now safely back in Cairo after a marathon bus ride Sunday night. We got back here around noon Monday, after which I basically crashed/vegetated for the afternoon and slept the whole night. I'm feeling a little off today still (partially I think because I've been a bit sick for a while now, and partially from all the travelling), but overall things are going well. I've realized I've got a lot more homework than I thought, which is unfortunate, but should still be manageable if I work at it pretty consistently.
Before I go, I'll just quickly tell you all a little more about Jerusalem. My last post was on Friday (well, technically Saturday but it was just shortly after midnight), when I told you a bit about the Old City. We continued our explorations on Saturday, spending a fair amount of time shopping (among other things, I managed to bargain a 53% price reduction on a gigantic Israeli flag for my collection back home) and enjoying the wonderful atmosphere. We tried to see the Dome of the Rock again (but were sadly unsuccesful - they keep odd hours and close often I think partly as a deterrent to tourists, though I can't actually know that. We never did make it onto the Temple Mount, though, despite our persistence). One huge highlight as far as I was concerned was a long walk down the battlements of the city. As I said before, the walls are basically intact (though apparently mostly of Ottoman rather than Medeival construction). The view of the city is pretty good, and I of course geeked out because I was walking on the walls of Jerusalem. I'm sure all of you can imagine me marching (since of course one does not simply walk when atop a wall) from crenelation to crenalation, humming and imagining that all the buildings on Mount Zion were actually beseiging Crusader tents, arrayed before the final assault on the walls.
Anyway, my geekyness aside, as afternoon approached, we realized we'd seen just about everything there was to see in the city, and so resolved to go to Bethlehem for our next foray. As some of you may be aware, Bethlehem (بيت لحم , or Bayt Lahm, literally, house of meat) is actually in the West Bank, despite its short physical distance from Jerusalem. It was with some trepidation therefore that we set out for the border. A short (but incredibly expensive, since all taxis in Israel are disgustingly, criminally expensive) taxi ride later brought us to The Wall. I say "The Wall" in capital letters because it really is one hell of a wall. In the west we hear about a border fence or a barrier being constructed around the West Bank, but pictures don't really do justice to the substantiality of the thing. It's some 30 feet high, 1 and a half feet thick, and made entirely of reinforced concrete. There are towers set into the wall roughly every 200 meters (I'm really just guessing on that part, and I imagine there are fewer towers away from Jerusalem) and barbed wire is coiled along its entire length. The gateway itself is tightly controlled and automobile access in particular is regulated by means of a huge steel door across the roadway. For pedestrians, you go through a fairly large processing facility before finally reaching the gateway itself to cross the barrier. The facility is very obviously built to control explosions, with reinforced concrete and bullet-proof glass throughout and specialized turns in the passages meant to protect civilians in the unfortunate case where a suicide bomber tries to take out the metal detectors. Naturally, entering the West Bank was very easy, and we quickly made it through to the other side.
Once across the wall, the Bethlehem area turned out to be fairly nice. A little dusty, but otherwise calm. I didn't really expect anything different, because we were so close to the border, we were in a tourist area, and there's no mixing of cultures to provide tension. Ironically, part of that is probably thanks to the wall itself (Palestinian protests to the contrary). It is also true that even the most violent areas of the world (and I'm not saying that the West Bank is one of them) are typically mostly quiet with occasional outbursts of violence. Iraqis, for example, still have to go out and shop, and eat and interact on a daily basis, no matter how many suicide bombs go off or how violent the civil war becomes. This truth also explains why statements like John McCain's "I was totally safe walking the streets while visiting Baghdad" are ridiculous and also meaningless - the streets are perfectly safe up until the point at which someone starts shooting. When conservatives tell you there is no civil war going on, they are imagining conventional warfare, which doesn't translate to reality very well. Civil war doesn't look like the traditional blasted hellscapes you see from World War I or II - it is a state of unregulated and irregular violence that punctures the normal rythyms of life. I like to joke that that the Administration is waiting for the sides to start wearing blue and gray before admitting reality; in some ways though, its not really a joke, because that is sort of the picture they want to paint about civil war.
Anyway, enough about violence. Our trip included nothing of the sort. We picked up a new taxi shortly after crossing the border, and took it into the city. Our driver was very nice and also a pleasure to talk to, as Palestinian arabic is much closer to the standard arabic we've all studied for so long (its nice to know our textbook is good for something after all - you wouldn't know from hanging out in Cairo). He also spoke excellent english, which compensated for our collective poor understanding of arabic. On our way to the Church of the Nativity, he showed us where the Shepherds' field (yes, those shepherds) and the Milky Grotto (where apparently Mary breast fed Jesus) were, though we decided not to trek over to either. The church itself seems to be positioned right in the downtown, and appears to be a comination of several structures into one semi-monastic complex. Like with the Church of the Sepulcher, the church is divided along Eastern Orthodox and Latin lines, and also like the Church of the Sepulcher, much of it is in bad repair. Visiting the Church of the Nativity though helped me to understand why this was the case. Both structures are very old, and so the original mosaics and forms are badly damaged (what can still be seen, though, is absolutely stunning - the mosaics are technical masterpieces and also appear to use a whole heck of a lot of gold). Its not so much that the churches are in bad repair as there's no way to replicate or otherwise do justice to the old, mostly lost artistry. The decision seems to have been to do all repairs in a minimalist style so as not to detract from what remains. The blank walls are thus not a sign of poor maintenance, but rather bear mute testimony to the tragic toll of years.
After touring the Church, we of course did the requisite souvenier buying before heading back to the Wall. Bethlehem's residents are very Arab in disposition, and bargaining there is very similar to bargaining in Egypt. Prices are also dramatically lower for non-touristy items (relative to Jerusalem), which again strongly resembles Egypt. The few people we met were decently friendly, but what little I saw of the Palestinian security forces didn't impress me (admittedly were weren't there long, but I saw a fair amount of sitting/not being present and not a lot of attention or care, and I'm comparing to the Egyptian standard, where things are peaceful). Back at the Wall, incoming security was much tighter than it was on the outbound trip, but not terribly so. Clearly the route is fairly well used by tourists and religious pilgrims, though traffic when we were crossing was very light. Other than the obvious security measures, it was not unlike customs at any other border.
After Bethlehem, our evening was fairly easy. We did a little more touring (this time in the New City, which I imagine is a far more happening place when holidays haven't closed everything - I'm not going to launch into Israeli politics here, but lets just say that the orthodox religious parties of the Knesset have far too much power, ergo, everything including public transportation shuts down early or entirely around the end of Passover, like the beginning), and then retired to our new sleeping arrangements. Saving ourselves from the couches of the New Palm Hostel, we were able to secure a room for a night at the Mount of Olives Hotel, on the mount of the same name. Though at $25 per person, it wasn't exactly a 5 star accomodation, all of us were incredibly happy to see proper beds. Unfortunately, that meant that yours truly slept a little too deeply and so missed the Sunday services that we had planned to go to. I made up for it sort of by going to the Church of St. Anne and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but I sadly didn't get to be a part of an organized service (though I observed part of an Orthodox ceremony that made no sense at all - a lot of pacing and a little bit of chanting by the priests and patriarch, no clear organization and no participation by the congregation. I can't even pretend to know what they were up to, and I watched like an hour of it before giving up and going to pray at the Sepulcher itself).
Anyway, after the religious part of the day, we spent a goodly amount of time walking around the new city (without seeing a whole lot of interest), before returning to the hotel. Our minibus picked us up at 11:30 pm (as I mentioned before) and we came back to Cairo. On the whole, I'm pretty happy I'm back, though I had an awesome time with everything.
Before I bring this to a close, I just want to quickly clarify some stuff about what I was talking about re: the West Bank/the Wall. I don't want to be misinterpreted as seeming to be anti-Israel or anti-Palestinian, both of which positions I can imagine people getting from the observations I made. I've done a fair amount of thinking about how I feel about the Wall (and about Israel/Palestine more generally, which I'm not about to get into here) and I think the place I come down at is reluctant support for it. Fundamentally, I don't like the Wall and what it represents as a physical manifestation of the division between two peoples. At the same time, I recognize why the Israelis have built/are building it. After years of effort and countless tries at negotiation and peace, including Sharon's bold pullout from the Gaza strip, Israel has been unable to effect a settlement with the Palestinians. Part of this is the fault of the Israelis, to be sure (again, i'm trying really hard not to launch into a whole debate about the broader questions, so you're just going to have to accept that at face value), but I think that also a very large part of the problem lies with the Palestinians. Frankly, they haven't really ever had their act together and/or started behaving like a responsible state/entity. Even with Abbas (who I have a ton of respect for and definitely think is a huge improvement over Arafat, who again i'm not going to get into), the Palestinians have been plagued by internal divisions and infighting (Hamas and Fatah is just the latest version of the same tired meme). Even were the Palestinians to make a deal with Israel, like in the many interim deals of the past, the Palestinians can't be trusted to keep their groups under control long enough to translate words into action. Inevitably, someone goes and blows something up in retaliation for something or other (I'm not getting into whether any given retaliation was justified, so don't start), and things are back to square one. Looking entirely from Israel's perspective as a state for a moment, the Palestinians are unreliable and also dangerous. The Wall represents Israel's answer to those years of danger. Shutting off the West Bank and Gaza behind concrete barriers is a sort of capitulation - giving up on cooperative solutions, giving up hope at least for the short term. After so many years of pain and frustration, Israel is trying to disengage itself from the conflict. It just doesn't want to be involved anymore. It's a cynical response and it's a sad response in many ways. It definitely isn't the ideal solution or even really a good compromise/attempt at a solution. It is, however, a solution. Since the Wall has gone up, violence in Israel related to Palestine has dropped dramatically. When the Wall is complete, most of the danger to Israel will likely go with it. Of course, Israel also loses a lot because of the wall (the losses to the Palestinians I think are very evident), too, most notably the potential benefits of continued engagement with their neighbors.
Now, I'm an optimist, so I don't think the Wall represents the sort of gloom and doom most people think of it as. It is certainly an abandonment of faith in the best alternative futures, and is in many ways a cop out as opposed to a true solution. Rather than seeing the Wall as a hot knife driven into the wounds of both Israel and Palestine, I think it may have some potential as a scab which might help wounds to heal. Both sides will have the opportunity to solve their own problems before returning to the negotiating table (I think actually this is part of the Israelis' plan: get the Palestinians to fight it out with eachother and resolve their own problems before Israel has to deal with them - there's a cynical spin to that, but I prefer the more optimistic one). In some ways, this will increase the pressure on Israel not to interfere in Palestinian affairs, because with the Wall, any such interference will be readily seen as unjust and uncaused. Without such interference, the pressure will also be on the Palestinians to organize their affairs and become more of a nation and less of a cluster___ of competing interests. Here's hoping.
Ok, now that that is out of my system, I'll just "quickly" (I'm sure this is going to end up being quite long) report that I am now safely back in Cairo after a marathon bus ride Sunday night. We got back here around noon Monday, after which I basically crashed/vegetated for the afternoon and slept the whole night. I'm feeling a little off today still (partially I think because I've been a bit sick for a while now, and partially from all the travelling), but overall things are going well. I've realized I've got a lot more homework than I thought, which is unfortunate, but should still be manageable if I work at it pretty consistently.
Before I go, I'll just quickly tell you all a little more about Jerusalem. My last post was on Friday (well, technically Saturday but it was just shortly after midnight), when I told you a bit about the Old City. We continued our explorations on Saturday, spending a fair amount of time shopping (among other things, I managed to bargain a 53% price reduction on a gigantic Israeli flag for my collection back home) and enjoying the wonderful atmosphere. We tried to see the Dome of the Rock again (but were sadly unsuccesful - they keep odd hours and close often I think partly as a deterrent to tourists, though I can't actually know that. We never did make it onto the Temple Mount, though, despite our persistence). One huge highlight as far as I was concerned was a long walk down the battlements of the city. As I said before, the walls are basically intact (though apparently mostly of Ottoman rather than Medeival construction). The view of the city is pretty good, and I of course geeked out because I was walking on the walls of Jerusalem. I'm sure all of you can imagine me marching (since of course one does not simply walk when atop a wall) from crenelation to crenalation, humming and imagining that all the buildings on Mount Zion were actually beseiging Crusader tents, arrayed before the final assault on the walls.
Anyway, my geekyness aside, as afternoon approached, we realized we'd seen just about everything there was to see in the city, and so resolved to go to Bethlehem for our next foray. As some of you may be aware, Bethlehem (بيت لحم , or Bayt Lahm, literally, house of meat) is actually in the West Bank, despite its short physical distance from Jerusalem. It was with some trepidation therefore that we set out for the border. A short (but incredibly expensive, since all taxis in Israel are disgustingly, criminally expensive) taxi ride later brought us to The Wall. I say "The Wall" in capital letters because it really is one hell of a wall. In the west we hear about a border fence or a barrier being constructed around the West Bank, but pictures don't really do justice to the substantiality of the thing. It's some 30 feet high, 1 and a half feet thick, and made entirely of reinforced concrete. There are towers set into the wall roughly every 200 meters (I'm really just guessing on that part, and I imagine there are fewer towers away from Jerusalem) and barbed wire is coiled along its entire length. The gateway itself is tightly controlled and automobile access in particular is regulated by means of a huge steel door across the roadway. For pedestrians, you go through a fairly large processing facility before finally reaching the gateway itself to cross the barrier. The facility is very obviously built to control explosions, with reinforced concrete and bullet-proof glass throughout and specialized turns in the passages meant to protect civilians in the unfortunate case where a suicide bomber tries to take out the metal detectors. Naturally, entering the West Bank was very easy, and we quickly made it through to the other side.
Once across the wall, the Bethlehem area turned out to be fairly nice. A little dusty, but otherwise calm. I didn't really expect anything different, because we were so close to the border, we were in a tourist area, and there's no mixing of cultures to provide tension. Ironically, part of that is probably thanks to the wall itself (Palestinian protests to the contrary). It is also true that even the most violent areas of the world (and I'm not saying that the West Bank is one of them) are typically mostly quiet with occasional outbursts of violence. Iraqis, for example, still have to go out and shop, and eat and interact on a daily basis, no matter how many suicide bombs go off or how violent the civil war becomes. This truth also explains why statements like John McCain's "I was totally safe walking the streets while visiting Baghdad" are ridiculous and also meaningless - the streets are perfectly safe up until the point at which someone starts shooting. When conservatives tell you there is no civil war going on, they are imagining conventional warfare, which doesn't translate to reality very well. Civil war doesn't look like the traditional blasted hellscapes you see from World War I or II - it is a state of unregulated and irregular violence that punctures the normal rythyms of life. I like to joke that that the Administration is waiting for the sides to start wearing blue and gray before admitting reality; in some ways though, its not really a joke, because that is sort of the picture they want to paint about civil war.
Anyway, enough about violence. Our trip included nothing of the sort. We picked up a new taxi shortly after crossing the border, and took it into the city. Our driver was very nice and also a pleasure to talk to, as Palestinian arabic is much closer to the standard arabic we've all studied for so long (its nice to know our textbook is good for something after all - you wouldn't know from hanging out in Cairo). He also spoke excellent english, which compensated for our collective poor understanding of arabic. On our way to the Church of the Nativity, he showed us where the Shepherds' field (yes, those shepherds) and the Milky Grotto (where apparently Mary breast fed Jesus) were, though we decided not to trek over to either. The church itself seems to be positioned right in the downtown, and appears to be a comination of several structures into one semi-monastic complex. Like with the Church of the Sepulcher, the church is divided along Eastern Orthodox and Latin lines, and also like the Church of the Sepulcher, much of it is in bad repair. Visiting the Church of the Nativity though helped me to understand why this was the case. Both structures are very old, and so the original mosaics and forms are badly damaged (what can still be seen, though, is absolutely stunning - the mosaics are technical masterpieces and also appear to use a whole heck of a lot of gold). Its not so much that the churches are in bad repair as there's no way to replicate or otherwise do justice to the old, mostly lost artistry. The decision seems to have been to do all repairs in a minimalist style so as not to detract from what remains. The blank walls are thus not a sign of poor maintenance, but rather bear mute testimony to the tragic toll of years.
After touring the Church, we of course did the requisite souvenier buying before heading back to the Wall. Bethlehem's residents are very Arab in disposition, and bargaining there is very similar to bargaining in Egypt. Prices are also dramatically lower for non-touristy items (relative to Jerusalem), which again strongly resembles Egypt. The few people we met were decently friendly, but what little I saw of the Palestinian security forces didn't impress me (admittedly were weren't there long, but I saw a fair amount of sitting/not being present and not a lot of attention or care, and I'm comparing to the Egyptian standard, where things are peaceful). Back at the Wall, incoming security was much tighter than it was on the outbound trip, but not terribly so. Clearly the route is fairly well used by tourists and religious pilgrims, though traffic when we were crossing was very light. Other than the obvious security measures, it was not unlike customs at any other border.
After Bethlehem, our evening was fairly easy. We did a little more touring (this time in the New City, which I imagine is a far more happening place when holidays haven't closed everything - I'm not going to launch into Israeli politics here, but lets just say that the orthodox religious parties of the Knesset have far too much power, ergo, everything including public transportation shuts down early or entirely around the end of Passover, like the beginning), and then retired to our new sleeping arrangements. Saving ourselves from the couches of the New Palm Hostel, we were able to secure a room for a night at the Mount of Olives Hotel, on the mount of the same name. Though at $25 per person, it wasn't exactly a 5 star accomodation, all of us were incredibly happy to see proper beds. Unfortunately, that meant that yours truly slept a little too deeply and so missed the Sunday services that we had planned to go to. I made up for it sort of by going to the Church of St. Anne and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but I sadly didn't get to be a part of an organized service (though I observed part of an Orthodox ceremony that made no sense at all - a lot of pacing and a little bit of chanting by the priests and patriarch, no clear organization and no participation by the congregation. I can't even pretend to know what they were up to, and I watched like an hour of it before giving up and going to pray at the Sepulcher itself).
Anyway, after the religious part of the day, we spent a goodly amount of time walking around the new city (without seeing a whole lot of interest), before returning to the hotel. Our minibus picked us up at 11:30 pm (as I mentioned before) and we came back to Cairo. On the whole, I'm pretty happy I'm back, though I had an awesome time with everything.
Before I bring this to a close, I just want to quickly clarify some stuff about what I was talking about re: the West Bank/the Wall. I don't want to be misinterpreted as seeming to be anti-Israel or anti-Palestinian, both of which positions I can imagine people getting from the observations I made. I've done a fair amount of thinking about how I feel about the Wall (and about Israel/Palestine more generally, which I'm not about to get into here) and I think the place I come down at is reluctant support for it. Fundamentally, I don't like the Wall and what it represents as a physical manifestation of the division between two peoples. At the same time, I recognize why the Israelis have built/are building it. After years of effort and countless tries at negotiation and peace, including Sharon's bold pullout from the Gaza strip, Israel has been unable to effect a settlement with the Palestinians. Part of this is the fault of the Israelis, to be sure (again, i'm trying really hard not to launch into a whole debate about the broader questions, so you're just going to have to accept that at face value), but I think that also a very large part of the problem lies with the Palestinians. Frankly, they haven't really ever had their act together and/or started behaving like a responsible state/entity. Even with Abbas (who I have a ton of respect for and definitely think is a huge improvement over Arafat, who again i'm not going to get into), the Palestinians have been plagued by internal divisions and infighting (Hamas and Fatah is just the latest version of the same tired meme). Even were the Palestinians to make a deal with Israel, like in the many interim deals of the past, the Palestinians can't be trusted to keep their groups under control long enough to translate words into action. Inevitably, someone goes and blows something up in retaliation for something or other (I'm not getting into whether any given retaliation was justified, so don't start), and things are back to square one. Looking entirely from Israel's perspective as a state for a moment, the Palestinians are unreliable and also dangerous. The Wall represents Israel's answer to those years of danger. Shutting off the West Bank and Gaza behind concrete barriers is a sort of capitulation - giving up on cooperative solutions, giving up hope at least for the short term. After so many years of pain and frustration, Israel is trying to disengage itself from the conflict. It just doesn't want to be involved anymore. It's a cynical response and it's a sad response in many ways. It definitely isn't the ideal solution or even really a good compromise/attempt at a solution. It is, however, a solution. Since the Wall has gone up, violence in Israel related to Palestine has dropped dramatically. When the Wall is complete, most of the danger to Israel will likely go with it. Of course, Israel also loses a lot because of the wall (the losses to the Palestinians I think are very evident), too, most notably the potential benefits of continued engagement with their neighbors.
Now, I'm an optimist, so I don't think the Wall represents the sort of gloom and doom most people think of it as. It is certainly an abandonment of faith in the best alternative futures, and is in many ways a cop out as opposed to a true solution. Rather than seeing the Wall as a hot knife driven into the wounds of both Israel and Palestine, I think it may have some potential as a scab which might help wounds to heal. Both sides will have the opportunity to solve their own problems before returning to the negotiating table (I think actually this is part of the Israelis' plan: get the Palestinians to fight it out with eachother and resolve their own problems before Israel has to deal with them - there's a cynical spin to that, but I prefer the more optimistic one). In some ways, this will increase the pressure on Israel not to interfere in Palestinian affairs, because with the Wall, any such interference will be readily seen as unjust and uncaused. Without such interference, the pressure will also be on the Palestinians to organize their affairs and become more of a nation and less of a cluster___ of competing interests. Here's hoping.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Jerusalem (Subtitle: No Room at the Inn)
Michael, Clark and I finally said goodbye to Tel Aviv today, and hello to Jerusalem, the holy city we all know and love as the headquarters/symbolic victim of the Zionist-Crusader Forces of the Godless West (TM). (Incidentally, Clark and I want to make t-shirts: On the front, there would be an IDF soldier and a medieval knight, and on the back, in big bold letters (like for SWAT teams), it would say "Zionist-Crusader Force"). Contrary to popular belief, Jerusalem has so far neither turned out to be the headquarters of any kind of occupation, nor has it turned out to be a particularly hostile place (so far, though obviously, we're in the relatively safer tourist areas). Actually, if I didn't know that I was in spitting distance of the West Bank, I'd think I was in Ireland for all the apparent danger/unrest in the area. That aside, you do gain some understanding of Israel's fears re: the Palestinians when you realize that Tel Aviv (the operational capital of the nation) is less than an hour from the frontier, and relatively speaking, Jerusalem is a far more distant frontier than other parts of the border with the West Bank.
Politics aside, the city itself is quite beautiful. We are staying in East Jerusalem, just outside the Damascus gate of the Old City, which gives us ready access to most of the historical areas of the city while hopefully keeping us out of harm's way. We are in the Arab portion of the city, so we are being a bit careful with what we do/where we go than we might be otherwise, but so far we haven't had any trouble at all on the streets. Ironically, the Palestinian areas of the city are in some ways more familiar and comfortable than the Jewish ones; we all understand Arabic much better than we do Hebrew and the street dynamics are very similar to those in Cairo. I'm hoping this will continue to be an advantage throughout Holy Weekend.
Speaking of Holy Weekend, I have to say it is really cool to be here in Jerusalem for the end of Passover and the Easter holiday. After we got in (a little after noon) today, we dropped our stuff off at our erstwhile hostel (more on housing intrigues in a bit) and went into the old city to see the religious sites around us. On the way, of course, we got to see a good bit of the Old City and its lovely architecture. I didn't really realize it before coming here, but the Old City is a rather impressively intact medieval style city, with complete city walls, operational gates, narrow cobbled streets and aged buildings. Adding to the interest, every single street is filled with shops, stands, juice bars and restaurants, turning the whole city into one giant bazaar. As most of the city seems to be populated with Arabs (who I suspect live elsewhere for the most part if only for space reasons), the winding streets of the Old City strongly remind me of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar in Cairo. Jerusalem is probably a little bit more touristy, but not so much as to be overwhelming.
We began our tour of the fascinating elements of the city by basically making a beeline for the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. It took a bit of wandering (though we were well lead by a girl named Sasha who'd been here for a few days), but we made it to the Wailing Wall pretty quickly. It was quite a sight, though smaller (at least widthwise - vertically, it is quite high) than I was expecting from pictures I've seen. You could tell even from a distance how incredibly old (and worn) the stones of the wall were; up close, you can practically see the centuries carved into some of the rock. Overall, I felt the site had a certain majesty (calling to mind the temple of old, perhaps), but also sadness. We were lucky enough to be there during some kind of ceremony (mass bar mitzvahs, maybe?) and so most of the time we were there the entire wall resonated with prayer, which I found really powerful. We were able to go up all the way to the wall and touch it (after getting skullcaps to cover our heads appropriately). On the whole, it was a really great experience, marred only slightly by one thing; the Wailing Wall is divided into two sections, one for men and one for women. I imagine this is because of the massive Hasidic influence (especially at the wall - probably 95% of everyone I saw there was hasidic or otherwise orthodox in dress and comportment). I'm not about to criticize customs that aren't my own (and that I don't properly understand), but it just seemed unfortunate that women and men should have to be divided in prayer, particularly when the wall itself is so divided and fragmentary. I may be waxing poetic (if so, feel free to shoot me), but somehow the division felt like a microcosm of a lot of other divisions in the Middle East and in Middle Eastern societies.
After our visit to the western wall, we went out of the Old City and around to the Lion Gate to do the Stations of the Cross (as part of the route to the Church of the Holy Sephulcher). We were able to visit almost all of the shrines (I couldn't find 7 for the life of me and I think 9 was closed or some such) and got to the church feeling very pious indeed. I felt that the richness of the experience was hugely amplified by the heavy Christian Orthodox (particularly greek, but also Armenian and other Eastern Orthodox) presence in the city. Actually, between the Russian Orthodox Christians and the Hasidic Jews, the city looked like it was hosting the annual pageant of the "Confederation of Former Tsarists and Nostalgic White Russians." (I particularly like this one kind of hat some Hasidic men wear, which looks like a thick single layer cake made out of fur. I kid you not, the thing is probably 8 inches thick and two feet in diameter). This Orthodox presence is very visible in the Church itself - much of the artwork and architecture recalls the Byzantine tradition more than the Latin tradition. The Church itself is very beautiful (particularly the central portions around the primary domes and the Sepulcher itself), but I was dismayed to see that much of the rest of the church is badly in need of repair. My understanding is that part of the problem is political competition between the Greek, Latin and Armenian churches, but it seems a shame that the holiest center in Christianity should be in parts little better maintained than basements in Cairo. The bathrooms in particular recalled more closely the actual trials and suffering of Christ than the holy site they were meant to be attached to.
That aside though, I really appreciated the opportunity to see/pray/experience the religious side of Jerusalem. I don't often get the chance/take the time to be a part of the more organized aspects of the Christian religion, but I always enjoy it when I do. I keep telling myself that I'm going to start going to mass regularly (or semi-regularly), but most of the time I don't actually live up to that 'commitment.' I end up only getting involved during the high holidays, and not often any time else. With time, I hope to find a better balance for me between the organized and personal aspects of my spirituality.
Anyway, on a more secular note, after taking in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, we went out into the bazaar parts of the city for a little more shopping before dinner (of course, while criss-crossing the city, we'd had plenty of time to look at a variety of shops and such, too). I got a huge Israeli flag and a couple of really great t-shirts that i'm looking forward to wearing back home, far away from the Middle East. My current favorite has a picture of an F-15 with the caption: "Don't Worry, America - Israel is Behind You." While I imagine it goes over like a lead balloon in oh, Syria, it's been a universal favorite for all the Americans/AUCians who've seen it.
Dinner came at around 8:30 (early by Israeli standards) when we went to a place in the Old City called (oh hell I don't remember, something like Cafe Andumin, but actually not anything like that) "Cafe Andumin" for lack of actually knowing the name. They had fantastic grilled food (and local Israeli wine), which was great, and as the restaurant is situated on the roof of its building, we had a great view of the whole city - from Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (which we weren't able to visit as they are closed on Fridays for prayers), to the Church of the Sepulcher, the Church of the Ascension and the Tower of David (Citadel of Jerusalem). We met up with some AUC girls who happened to be staying near our hostel, and they were a nice addition to our group (and especially dinner conversation). I had something of a political discussion (as yet uncompleted) with one of the girls who is basically a batshit looney Republican (though very nice otherwise). I don't know where she thinks she gets her facts, but her die hard refusal to consider the possibility of global warming and/or the possibility of regulated capitalism puts her sadly far away from the fact/reality based community that I like to think most people live in. Such a tragedy.
Well, I think i'm going to bring this to something of a close. Its quite late now and I really should be headed to bed so that I can enjoy the day tomorrow. Our sleeping accommodations leave something to be desired, because the hobos who run the hostelry establishments around here managed to lose our reservations (along with those of a great number of other people). In addition, they managed to book more reservations than they actually had rooms (including literally promising rooms to people off the street) and also to lose our reservations again later in the day after we thought we'd remedied the situation before (they took us to the neighboring hostel which gave us beds, but then rescinded them to give them to someone else. Each hostel owner claims the other one told them we didn't need the rooms anymore, but I think they are both just morons. In fact, I don't think they actually know how many rooms/beds they have to rent, period!). As both hostel owners are Israeli Arabs/Palestinians, this has led to more than a few uncharitable (and hopefully unwarranted) comments by our disgruntled party as to the competence and efficacy of the Palestinians. The general gist is "If they can't run a freaking hostel, what hope is there for the Palestinian government?" I just hope the comparisons don't have any valid basis, or they really are screwed. Stupid hostel people. Anyway, we're on a mix of mattresses and couches in the common room and one of the dormers for lack of proper sleeping quarters. We'll live, but it sure is frustrating.
Politics aside, the city itself is quite beautiful. We are staying in East Jerusalem, just outside the Damascus gate of the Old City, which gives us ready access to most of the historical areas of the city while hopefully keeping us out of harm's way. We are in the Arab portion of the city, so we are being a bit careful with what we do/where we go than we might be otherwise, but so far we haven't had any trouble at all on the streets. Ironically, the Palestinian areas of the city are in some ways more familiar and comfortable than the Jewish ones; we all understand Arabic much better than we do Hebrew and the street dynamics are very similar to those in Cairo. I'm hoping this will continue to be an advantage throughout Holy Weekend.
Speaking of Holy Weekend, I have to say it is really cool to be here in Jerusalem for the end of Passover and the Easter holiday. After we got in (a little after noon) today, we dropped our stuff off at our erstwhile hostel (more on housing intrigues in a bit) and went into the old city to see the religious sites around us. On the way, of course, we got to see a good bit of the Old City and its lovely architecture. I didn't really realize it before coming here, but the Old City is a rather impressively intact medieval style city, with complete city walls, operational gates, narrow cobbled streets and aged buildings. Adding to the interest, every single street is filled with shops, stands, juice bars and restaurants, turning the whole city into one giant bazaar. As most of the city seems to be populated with Arabs (who I suspect live elsewhere for the most part if only for space reasons), the winding streets of the Old City strongly remind me of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar in Cairo. Jerusalem is probably a little bit more touristy, but not so much as to be overwhelming.
We began our tour of the fascinating elements of the city by basically making a beeline for the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. It took a bit of wandering (though we were well lead by a girl named Sasha who'd been here for a few days), but we made it to the Wailing Wall pretty quickly. It was quite a sight, though smaller (at least widthwise - vertically, it is quite high) than I was expecting from pictures I've seen. You could tell even from a distance how incredibly old (and worn) the stones of the wall were; up close, you can practically see the centuries carved into some of the rock. Overall, I felt the site had a certain majesty (calling to mind the temple of old, perhaps), but also sadness. We were lucky enough to be there during some kind of ceremony (mass bar mitzvahs, maybe?) and so most of the time we were there the entire wall resonated with prayer, which I found really powerful. We were able to go up all the way to the wall and touch it (after getting skullcaps to cover our heads appropriately). On the whole, it was a really great experience, marred only slightly by one thing; the Wailing Wall is divided into two sections, one for men and one for women. I imagine this is because of the massive Hasidic influence (especially at the wall - probably 95% of everyone I saw there was hasidic or otherwise orthodox in dress and comportment). I'm not about to criticize customs that aren't my own (and that I don't properly understand), but it just seemed unfortunate that women and men should have to be divided in prayer, particularly when the wall itself is so divided and fragmentary. I may be waxing poetic (if so, feel free to shoot me), but somehow the division felt like a microcosm of a lot of other divisions in the Middle East and in Middle Eastern societies.
After our visit to the western wall, we went out of the Old City and around to the Lion Gate to do the Stations of the Cross (as part of the route to the Church of the Holy Sephulcher). We were able to visit almost all of the shrines (I couldn't find 7 for the life of me and I think 9 was closed or some such) and got to the church feeling very pious indeed. I felt that the richness of the experience was hugely amplified by the heavy Christian Orthodox (particularly greek, but also Armenian and other Eastern Orthodox) presence in the city. Actually, between the Russian Orthodox Christians and the Hasidic Jews, the city looked like it was hosting the annual pageant of the "Confederation of Former Tsarists and Nostalgic White Russians." (I particularly like this one kind of hat some Hasidic men wear, which looks like a thick single layer cake made out of fur. I kid you not, the thing is probably 8 inches thick and two feet in diameter). This Orthodox presence is very visible in the Church itself - much of the artwork and architecture recalls the Byzantine tradition more than the Latin tradition. The Church itself is very beautiful (particularly the central portions around the primary domes and the Sepulcher itself), but I was dismayed to see that much of the rest of the church is badly in need of repair. My understanding is that part of the problem is political competition between the Greek, Latin and Armenian churches, but it seems a shame that the holiest center in Christianity should be in parts little better maintained than basements in Cairo. The bathrooms in particular recalled more closely the actual trials and suffering of Christ than the holy site they were meant to be attached to.
That aside though, I really appreciated the opportunity to see/pray/experience the religious side of Jerusalem. I don't often get the chance/take the time to be a part of the more organized aspects of the Christian religion, but I always enjoy it when I do. I keep telling myself that I'm going to start going to mass regularly (or semi-regularly), but most of the time I don't actually live up to that 'commitment.' I end up only getting involved during the high holidays, and not often any time else. With time, I hope to find a better balance for me between the organized and personal aspects of my spirituality.
Anyway, on a more secular note, after taking in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, we went out into the bazaar parts of the city for a little more shopping before dinner (of course, while criss-crossing the city, we'd had plenty of time to look at a variety of shops and such, too). I got a huge Israeli flag and a couple of really great t-shirts that i'm looking forward to wearing back home, far away from the Middle East. My current favorite has a picture of an F-15 with the caption: "Don't Worry, America - Israel is Behind You." While I imagine it goes over like a lead balloon in oh, Syria, it's been a universal favorite for all the Americans/AUCians who've seen it.
Dinner came at around 8:30 (early by Israeli standards) when we went to a place in the Old City called (oh hell I don't remember, something like Cafe Andumin, but actually not anything like that) "Cafe Andumin" for lack of actually knowing the name. They had fantastic grilled food (and local Israeli wine), which was great, and as the restaurant is situated on the roof of its building, we had a great view of the whole city - from Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (which we weren't able to visit as they are closed on Fridays for prayers), to the Church of the Sepulcher, the Church of the Ascension and the Tower of David (Citadel of Jerusalem). We met up with some AUC girls who happened to be staying near our hostel, and they were a nice addition to our group (and especially dinner conversation). I had something of a political discussion (as yet uncompleted) with one of the girls who is basically a batshit looney Republican (though very nice otherwise). I don't know where she thinks she gets her facts, but her die hard refusal to consider the possibility of global warming and/or the possibility of regulated capitalism puts her sadly far away from the fact/reality based community that I like to think most people live in. Such a tragedy.
Well, I think i'm going to bring this to something of a close. Its quite late now and I really should be headed to bed so that I can enjoy the day tomorrow. Our sleeping accommodations leave something to be desired, because the hobos who run the hostelry establishments around here managed to lose our reservations (along with those of a great number of other people). In addition, they managed to book more reservations than they actually had rooms (including literally promising rooms to people off the street) and also to lose our reservations again later in the day after we thought we'd remedied the situation before (they took us to the neighboring hostel which gave us beds, but then rescinded them to give them to someone else. Each hostel owner claims the other one told them we didn't need the rooms anymore, but I think they are both just morons. In fact, I don't think they actually know how many rooms/beds they have to rent, period!). As both hostel owners are Israeli Arabs/Palestinians, this has led to more than a few uncharitable (and hopefully unwarranted) comments by our disgruntled party as to the competence and efficacy of the Palestinians. The general gist is "If they can't run a freaking hostel, what hope is there for the Palestinian government?" I just hope the comparisons don't have any valid basis, or they really are screwed. Stupid hostel people. Anyway, we're on a mix of mattresses and couches in the common room and one of the dormers for lack of proper sleeping quarters. We'll live, but it sure is frustrating.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Other Thoughts on Tel Aviv (and Hebrew)
I'm cheating a little bit by editing the time on this post, but I was thinking about sending this in at the stated time, so its almost like it actually happened the way I'm about to claim it did. Anyway, last night I took a long walk down the Tel Aviv boardwalk (despite the fact that we got up early today, I for some reason felt the need to stay up) and really enjoyed it and wanted to talk about it. So now, for the rest of the post, its actually last night. Shh....
Anyway, so I was walking south down the boardwalk towards Old Jaffa, listening to music on the MP3 player (thanks again, bro) , enjoying the sound of the waves hitting the breakwaters and reveling in the cool night air, when I noticed an extremely bright star glowing over the water (this would have been to my right, which is also the West. I know that for some of my readers, one or both of those directional cues will be meaningless, but well, I do what I can). I couldn't figure out what it was for a long time; the light glowed brighter and brighter, so much so that I could see its reflection off the water. Finally, it got close enough that I could see that it was in fact several lights - an airplane, flying very low over the water, inbound towards Tel Aviv airport. This wouldn't be worthy of mention in this post except for the fact that it was so different from any other plane I've ever seen come in for a landing. It had no blinking lights and was so bright it briefly outshone the full moon. Anyway, it ended up being one of several planes coming in, so I got to watch a series of 'shooting stars' materialize offshore, grow and then majestically streak overhead towards the airport. I thought it was really neat, anyway.
The other thing worthy of mention (and that I'm particularly proud of), is that within about 18 hours of arriving in Tel Aviv, I managed to learn and understand most of the Hebrew alphabet, without any assistance other than that provided by road signs and other standard street information. I'm still a little shaky on one or two characters (and I'm sure I've absolutely mutilated the pronunciation - there's no way to work out the vowelling system without a textbook), but its already come in handy several times. For example, when I went to buy shampoo (having foolishly left mine back in Cairo), I was able to determine which of the myriads of products was the one I wanted by reading "Shampa" and "Konditioner" on the Hebrew label. Likewise, at the sandwich shop today, I was able to read various food items (like "Kebab" and "Shwarmeh") which meant I didn't have to ask the proprietor directly. I think its really cool and have really enjoyed 'decoding' the Hebrew I see around me. Of course, I can only read it if it is in what I like to call "runic" form: blocky letters with no stylistic flourishes. Once the text starts looking like "script," I might as well be reading cuneiform. Likewise, some of what I call "symbolic" Hebrew, like that used in brand names, is totally illegible. Oh well, some knowledge is better than none, right?
Anyway, so I was walking south down the boardwalk towards Old Jaffa, listening to music on the MP3 player (thanks again, bro) , enjoying the sound of the waves hitting the breakwaters and reveling in the cool night air, when I noticed an extremely bright star glowing over the water (this would have been to my right, which is also the West. I know that for some of my readers, one or both of those directional cues will be meaningless, but well, I do what I can). I couldn't figure out what it was for a long time; the light glowed brighter and brighter, so much so that I could see its reflection off the water. Finally, it got close enough that I could see that it was in fact several lights - an airplane, flying very low over the water, inbound towards Tel Aviv airport. This wouldn't be worthy of mention in this post except for the fact that it was so different from any other plane I've ever seen come in for a landing. It had no blinking lights and was so bright it briefly outshone the full moon. Anyway, it ended up being one of several planes coming in, so I got to watch a series of 'shooting stars' materialize offshore, grow and then majestically streak overhead towards the airport. I thought it was really neat, anyway.
The other thing worthy of mention (and that I'm particularly proud of), is that within about 18 hours of arriving in Tel Aviv, I managed to learn and understand most of the Hebrew alphabet, without any assistance other than that provided by road signs and other standard street information. I'm still a little shaky on one or two characters (and I'm sure I've absolutely mutilated the pronunciation - there's no way to work out the vowelling system without a textbook), but its already come in handy several times. For example, when I went to buy shampoo (having foolishly left mine back in Cairo), I was able to determine which of the myriads of products was the one I wanted by reading "Shampa" and "Konditioner" on the Hebrew label. Likewise, at the sandwich shop today, I was able to read various food items (like "Kebab" and "Shwarmeh") which meant I didn't have to ask the proprietor directly. I think its really cool and have really enjoyed 'decoding' the Hebrew I see around me. Of course, I can only read it if it is in what I like to call "runic" form: blocky letters with no stylistic flourishes. Once the text starts looking like "script," I might as well be reading cuneiform. Likewise, some of what I call "symbolic" Hebrew, like that used in brand names, is totally illegible. Oh well, some knowledge is better than none, right?
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Tel Aviv - Israel! (Happy Passover)
Hey folks,
I'm writing to you now from the lobby of the hostel we're staying at in Tel Aviv. This is the evening of our second full day here. The blog interface is currently in Korean, so I'm not sure this is going to work properly - here's hoping this will actually be readable when I'm finished.
Anyway, so far Tel Aviv has been fun but also surprisingly quiet. It turns out that it probably wasn't the best plan in the universe to visit Israel over passover. Don't get me wrong, we've had fun, but I think things are a lot more lively when everyone isn't home with family for the week. I'm getting ahead of myself though. When last I posted, we were in Petra, so I should fill in the gaps!
We left Petra on the morning of the 1st of April (no April fool's day jokes though - apparently its not a thing here in the Middle East. I actually think it's someone famous' holiday that day or some such, i'll have to look it up...). Since the safest/primary border crossing is back in Aqaba, we went south to that city, before hitting the border and re-entering Elat. From there, we took a 5 hour bus through the Negev Desert (which is beautiful, but very desert like, if that means anything to you all, my dear readers. In this case, lots of hills/plateaus of sand/rock, and no plants). Since we were up fairly early, we got into Tel Aviv around 6 or 7 pm. I was a little cranky from the bus ride - I was sore, and also a little sick. I got a bit of a sore through starting on day 1 in Petra, and that only worsened in the following days. It's almost gone now, though I have a runny nose still. Anyway, at the bus station, I was thankfully able to ignore my sick self enough to appreciate the glory that is Israeli public transportation.
In general, Israeli public transport is reliable, efficient and reasonably inexpensive - more than can be said for the networks of any other country (especially that of the United States). The trains in particular are particularly nice (more on them later), with plush seats and two levels of comfort. The buses, as part of this network, should thus be included in the praise. I have to say, on the whole, I am in face impressed with them, but buses frankly suck and always will, even if they are Israeli buses. They take a long time, get stuck in traffic, are at least somewhat uncomfortable, and are generally inefficient relative to other modes of conveyance. As any Detroiter will be happy to explain, no SMART bus system in the world is about to beat a real public transport net for actual usability.
Anyway, the one thing that is in fact impressive about the Israeli bus network is the Tel Aviv bus terminal. This colossal matrix of buses, ramps, gates, doors, escalators and markets is perhaps the closest thing Earth has to Star Wars' Coruscant City. We entered on the 5th floor of this capitalist megacomplex and I don't believe I once saw the ground floor (much less the ground) during our trek through the facility. Taken from the outside, it appears mainly to be a giant parking deck with indoor spaces, but this would be a devastating underestimation of the scope of the facility. Inside the barriers and security gates of the bus lanes themselves, the terminal is a fantastic matrix of catwalks, escalators, stairs, tunnels, bridges and of course, desperate people trying to use all of the above to make it from one sector of the terminal to another in an almost (but not quite) futile attempt to connect to the next leg of their journeys. When you take into account also that these people range from 18-22 year old uniformed Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers (complete with automatic weapons) to punk rockers, goth fanbois, elderly couples and businessmen, you might get at least a vague impression of sheer craziness of this facility.
To use our own expedition as an example, upon entering the fifth floor of the facility, we rapidly ascended a pair of aging escalators to floor 7 (so called Dan terminal), from where most of the intra-city buses depart for destinations like the one we sought. On the way, we passed three techno-music stores, two banks, several restaurants and any number of shoe shiners, cell phone vendors and computer parts stores. Looking over the edge of the escalators (which struck rather haphazardly across multilevel gaps in the hallways (these gaps are not unlike the 'skylight' areas in most modern malls, except these ones aren't really so much about providing light as about networking various floors in as many ways as possible), you could see similarly chatoic capitalism perched across the floors above and below the fifth (again, the floor on which we started). On the seventh floor, we were able to easily find the information booth (despite the apparent chaos, the Israeli's have somehow managed to make the place function as an actual transportation hub), whereupon we discovered that the bus we wanted (towards one Allenby Street), was actually on the fourth floor. So we headed back to the escalators, only to discover that there were no down escalators in this area. Furthermore, there were no nearby stairs, either. We were able to find a set of stairs winding down from in front of a movie store, leading us to the sixth floor, where a 'straight' shot across an intersection of three hallways got us to another stairwell, reaching the fourth floor. Following a series of dovetailed and sometimes slightly contradictory signs, we were able to wander across ramps, curves, secondary access-ways and terminal gates to our destination. Perhaps miraculously (though probably not, since this process seems far less confusing for the Israelis), the bus we were actually looking for showed up a very short time later, and hauled us out of the complex (for a nominal fee) to our destination: Mugraby Hostel, Allenby Street.
Mugraby Hostel is definitely far more "hostel-like" than any other place I've stayed in. Where in Jordan we effectively stayed in small hotel rooms not unlike what you might find at a Bed and Breakfast joint, here in Tel Aviv the situation is markedly inferior. We're staying in a 'dorm' room the size of a largish living room, but with 8 bunk beds stacked into it. The beds are narrow and the matresses are thin, and what passes for storage spaces are 8 tiny lockers the likes of which my middle school got rid of before I graduated. This isn't to say that I'm unhappy with the situation, however - I'm paying 10 dollars a night to stay in a pricey western city, and I'm less than a block from the Mediterranean. Furthermore, there's plenty of hot water (absolutely a requirement), and the other 'tenants' are reasonably quiet and friendly. I will, however, look forward to a proper bed when I get back.
Beds aside, again, I can't complain. Allenby Street is one of the main drags as far as shops, pubs and clubs are concerned, and again, we're less than a block from the beach. Its a little cold for swimming, but not too cold for sitting out and reading, which we've done a decent bit of since arriving here. I've gotten a slight tan (enough to stop blinding people with my whiteness), which I'm hoping will develop more fully before I get back to Egypt, and I've enjoyed the relaxing pace we've taken here so far. Our days have been largely filled with hanging out on the beach and exploring the older quarters (we visited Old Jaffa in the south yesterday, with its ancient churches, mosques and monasteries). The boardwalk is really nice and stretches north-south for miles along the shoreline (Tel Aviv-Jaffa is perched directly on the 'side' of the Mediterranean).
The city itself is sadly not as exciting as it could have been as a result of Passover - many places have been closed (or close early) and the number of people out in general has been far less than what I'd imagine for a city this size. There's not really an opportunity for tourists to join in the festivities, either (not that I expected there to be, really, as Passover is really properly a family thing), which makes me miss Seder with Nathan's family last year. I'm reminded, however, that one of the toasts at the Seder was "Next year in Israel!" Ironically, that came true for me, and I'm not even Jewish. Happy passover to everyone who is, though!
Well, I think I'm going to bring this to a close. Tomorrow, we are taking the train north for a day trip to Haifa and Akka (ancient Acre), which should be all kinds of exciting. The day after that, we're off to Jerusalem, for the final leg of our trip. I'll do my best to report back in a timely manner as soon as I can!
I'm writing to you now from the lobby of the hostel we're staying at in Tel Aviv. This is the evening of our second full day here. The blog interface is currently in Korean, so I'm not sure this is going to work properly - here's hoping this will actually be readable when I'm finished.
Anyway, so far Tel Aviv has been fun but also surprisingly quiet. It turns out that it probably wasn't the best plan in the universe to visit Israel over passover. Don't get me wrong, we've had fun, but I think things are a lot more lively when everyone isn't home with family for the week. I'm getting ahead of myself though. When last I posted, we were in Petra, so I should fill in the gaps!
We left Petra on the morning of the 1st of April (no April fool's day jokes though - apparently its not a thing here in the Middle East. I actually think it's someone famous' holiday that day or some such, i'll have to look it up...). Since the safest/primary border crossing is back in Aqaba, we went south to that city, before hitting the border and re-entering Elat. From there, we took a 5 hour bus through the Negev Desert (which is beautiful, but very desert like, if that means anything to you all, my dear readers. In this case, lots of hills/plateaus of sand/rock, and no plants). Since we were up fairly early, we got into Tel Aviv around 6 or 7 pm. I was a little cranky from the bus ride - I was sore, and also a little sick. I got a bit of a sore through starting on day 1 in Petra, and that only worsened in the following days. It's almost gone now, though I have a runny nose still. Anyway, at the bus station, I was thankfully able to ignore my sick self enough to appreciate the glory that is Israeli public transportation.
In general, Israeli public transport is reliable, efficient and reasonably inexpensive - more than can be said for the networks of any other country (especially that of the United States). The trains in particular are particularly nice (more on them later), with plush seats and two levels of comfort. The buses, as part of this network, should thus be included in the praise. I have to say, on the whole, I am in face impressed with them, but buses frankly suck and always will, even if they are Israeli buses. They take a long time, get stuck in traffic, are at least somewhat uncomfortable, and are generally inefficient relative to other modes of conveyance. As any Detroiter will be happy to explain, no SMART bus system in the world is about to beat a real public transport net for actual usability.
Anyway, the one thing that is in fact impressive about the Israeli bus network is the Tel Aviv bus terminal. This colossal matrix of buses, ramps, gates, doors, escalators and markets is perhaps the closest thing Earth has to Star Wars' Coruscant City. We entered on the 5th floor of this capitalist megacomplex and I don't believe I once saw the ground floor (much less the ground) during our trek through the facility. Taken from the outside, it appears mainly to be a giant parking deck with indoor spaces, but this would be a devastating underestimation of the scope of the facility. Inside the barriers and security gates of the bus lanes themselves, the terminal is a fantastic matrix of catwalks, escalators, stairs, tunnels, bridges and of course, desperate people trying to use all of the above to make it from one sector of the terminal to another in an almost (but not quite) futile attempt to connect to the next leg of their journeys. When you take into account also that these people range from 18-22 year old uniformed Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers (complete with automatic weapons) to punk rockers, goth fanbois, elderly couples and businessmen, you might get at least a vague impression of sheer craziness of this facility.
To use our own expedition as an example, upon entering the fifth floor of the facility, we rapidly ascended a pair of aging escalators to floor 7 (so called Dan terminal), from where most of the intra-city buses depart for destinations like the one we sought. On the way, we passed three techno-music stores, two banks, several restaurants and any number of shoe shiners, cell phone vendors and computer parts stores. Looking over the edge of the escalators (which struck rather haphazardly across multilevel gaps in the hallways (these gaps are not unlike the 'skylight' areas in most modern malls, except these ones aren't really so much about providing light as about networking various floors in as many ways as possible), you could see similarly chatoic capitalism perched across the floors above and below the fifth (again, the floor on which we started). On the seventh floor, we were able to easily find the information booth (despite the apparent chaos, the Israeli's have somehow managed to make the place function as an actual transportation hub), whereupon we discovered that the bus we wanted (towards one Allenby Street), was actually on the fourth floor. So we headed back to the escalators, only to discover that there were no down escalators in this area. Furthermore, there were no nearby stairs, either. We were able to find a set of stairs winding down from in front of a movie store, leading us to the sixth floor, where a 'straight' shot across an intersection of three hallways got us to another stairwell, reaching the fourth floor. Following a series of dovetailed and sometimes slightly contradictory signs, we were able to wander across ramps, curves, secondary access-ways and terminal gates to our destination. Perhaps miraculously (though probably not, since this process seems far less confusing for the Israelis), the bus we were actually looking for showed up a very short time later, and hauled us out of the complex (for a nominal fee) to our destination: Mugraby Hostel, Allenby Street.
Mugraby Hostel is definitely far more "hostel-like" than any other place I've stayed in. Where in Jordan we effectively stayed in small hotel rooms not unlike what you might find at a Bed and Breakfast joint, here in Tel Aviv the situation is markedly inferior. We're staying in a 'dorm' room the size of a largish living room, but with 8 bunk beds stacked into it. The beds are narrow and the matresses are thin, and what passes for storage spaces are 8 tiny lockers the likes of which my middle school got rid of before I graduated. This isn't to say that I'm unhappy with the situation, however - I'm paying 10 dollars a night to stay in a pricey western city, and I'm less than a block from the Mediterranean. Furthermore, there's plenty of hot water (absolutely a requirement), and the other 'tenants' are reasonably quiet and friendly. I will, however, look forward to a proper bed when I get back.
Beds aside, again, I can't complain. Allenby Street is one of the main drags as far as shops, pubs and clubs are concerned, and again, we're less than a block from the beach. Its a little cold for swimming, but not too cold for sitting out and reading, which we've done a decent bit of since arriving here. I've gotten a slight tan (enough to stop blinding people with my whiteness), which I'm hoping will develop more fully before I get back to Egypt, and I've enjoyed the relaxing pace we've taken here so far. Our days have been largely filled with hanging out on the beach and exploring the older quarters (we visited Old Jaffa in the south yesterday, with its ancient churches, mosques and monasteries). The boardwalk is really nice and stretches north-south for miles along the shoreline (Tel Aviv-Jaffa is perched directly on the 'side' of the Mediterranean).
The city itself is sadly not as exciting as it could have been as a result of Passover - many places have been closed (or close early) and the number of people out in general has been far less than what I'd imagine for a city this size. There's not really an opportunity for tourists to join in the festivities, either (not that I expected there to be, really, as Passover is really properly a family thing), which makes me miss Seder with Nathan's family last year. I'm reminded, however, that one of the toasts at the Seder was "Next year in Israel!" Ironically, that came true for me, and I'm not even Jewish. Happy passover to everyone who is, though!
Well, I think I'm going to bring this to a close. Tomorrow, we are taking the train north for a day trip to Haifa and Akka (ancient Acre), which should be all kinds of exciting. The day after that, we're off to Jerusalem, for the final leg of our trip. I'll do my best to report back in a timely manner as soon as I can!
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Spring Break!
Hey everyone! This is the first of a series of posts on my spring break vacation. I'm out and about for the next 10 or so days with two guy friends of mine, Michael and Clark. In between lots of eating, sleeping and quite possibly some drinking, we'll see parts of Jordan and Israel! Here's our rough itinerary:
March 29th (Thursday): Leave Cairo at 10:15 pm for Taaba/Elat/Aqaba (border zone centered around the southernmost part of Israel)
March 30th and 31st: Petra, Jordan! We'll be seeing the ancient city as well as recuperating from the polluted air of Cairo.
April 1-4: Tel Aviv, Israel! I expect lots of time on the beach, not a lot of moving, and lots of time re-acclimating to western cultural norms (holy crap, bikinis!). Here's hoping the Mediteranean will be warmer than it was in January (when it very strongly resembled the North Atlantic in terms of temperature)
April 5-9: Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine! Plans are a little shaky, but there will definitely be a religous component. I'm hoping to see Bethlehem and definitely do Easter Mass in the city.
April 10: Boogie back to Cairo for the start of classes!
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Anyway, as I'm sure all of you have astutely noted, its March 31st right now, so obvious this itinerary is already in progress. I'm going to start from the 29th and work my way up to the present. There'll be a little overlap with the yet to exist Alexandria post, but I feel like the information is necessary to properly appreciate the marathon nature of our trip to Petra. Clark and Michael, you see, had a relatively leisurely Thursday, with plenty of time to get ready for the bus that night, but I started the day in Alexandria at the tail end of the fencing competition with a 20 page paper to finish and a bus to catch in another city! I'd spent almost whole night before up, working on the aforementioned paper (curse you, Government and Politics of Egypt!), and after about two hours of accidental sleep (literally zonked out while taking what was supposed to be a short break from the paper), had to get up, work some more, and pack for a 2 pm train to Cairo. The train, by the way, was really really nice - I'm frankly impressed. Of course, my only other train experience is the line from Detroit to Chicago, which is not a paragon of high class transportation. They had decent food, though, and comfortable seats, so I can't complain. I got back in Cairo at 4:30 and back to the dorm by 5:00. I spent the next three hours finishing the paper, which got done at about 8:30. Hurried packing got me downstairs by 9:05, in time to catch the taxi to the bus station. We sat through traffic for a half hour, and then got on the 10:15 bus (which I think left closer to 11) to Taaba.
Things were pretty uneventful for a while after that - we spent all night driving across the Sinai. The bus was too bumpy and brightly lit to really allow for sleeping, so I spent most of the time reading junk fantasy. I also caught bits of an Egyptian movie (don't even ask me what it was about, as I haven't a clue), and then they showed us Speed. Speed, incidentally, is even worse than I remembered it being, and whereas before, it was bad but awesome, now its more just kind of campy. Also, you can totally tell it was filmed in the 90s. I never though I'd look back at the 90s and think that was dated. I guess I'm getting old.
Anyway, we got to Taaba at about 6 am, whereupon we began our arduous journey across the two borders (Egypt - Israel, then Israel-Jordan). Unfortunately, the first of these borders took us more than three hours to cross; first, we had to deal with indolent Egyptian security (there were probably 10 officials at the crossing, one of whom was working whilst the others drank tea, chatted and generally sat around doing nothing while the entire bus attempted to get stamped to leave the country); then, we had to deal with the Israelis, who were very nice, professional and speedy, but had to deal with literally 1000 Russians who were trying to cross the border ahead of us. By the time we left the intricate mazes of buildings, barbed wire, fences and gates that constitutes the border (cold peace for the win!), it was almost 10:00. Our bus in Jordan, incidentally, was supposed to leave at 9:30. Good thing we didn't pay in advance.
We ended up taking a taxi across the city of Elat (this, of course being the Israeli name for Taaba, even though the 'cities' are about three kilometers away from one another), to the Jordanian border (at that point, the city becomes Aqaba, despite even less distance across the border between them). All the while, we marvelled at "being in the west:" all of us were very impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of the security, as well as the immediate and noticeable presence of women. This may be a part of the male psyche only, as there are certainly women in Egypt, but, well, conservative dress has a fair number of downsides. The limited number of Israeli women we saw weren't exactly dressed provocatively, but it still stuck in our minds (so it wasn't just me!). It does, however, occur to me that this bias may be largely because of the cute 20 something year old who stamped our passports.
Fortunately, when we got to the Jordanian border, we discovered that this new professionalism wasn't exclusive to Israel (though the female border agents were). The Jordanian authorities also comported themselves professionally - they didn't even ogle the girls who accompanied us across the border (they happened to be headed to Petra too), which is a lot more than can be said for the Egyptians. Its amazing the difference you can see when the government's employees A care about their jobs, B care about their country and its image and C have pride in themselves. In fact, the Jordanians have been almost uniformly impressive in their comportment, whether or not they're employed by the state. The police, are of course, courteous, the shopkeepers, mercantile but not pushy, the park staff, professional, and the restaurateers, prompt and genuinely interested in providing service. (I should note, by the way, that this account is heavily colored by Clark and Michael's fairly intense dislike of many aspects of Egypt at this point - although I also noticed the difference, they are both far more aggressive in asserting it.)
Anyway, we caught a taxi for the two hour ride to Petra (since we'd already missed the aforementioned bus) and got into the city around 2 pm (ish, because we had to change our watches by an hour so i'm not surely what time was what around this period). We dropped our stuff off in our rooms and then went and got food at this fantastic restaurant creatively called "Restaurant Arabya." I had the mixed grill, hommus and taboule, and almost died of happiness, it was so good. The hommus in particular was great, especially since what passes for it in Egypt is neither hommous nor good. It was also great having tabouleh again, as it is also not very common in Egypt. The meat, as well, was delicious (though the beef was a little tough), and the kofta in particular was probably the best i've ever had. It was so good that we went back to the same restaurant tonight (more on that later).
After food, we went downhill into the city (I think the habitated part is called Wadi Rum - spring of the Romans), where we saw a cultural event going on in celebration of Petra. You all may or may not be aware, but there's a UN sponsored (I think its UN sponsored) competition to find a new 7 wonders of the world for us earthlings to properly enjoy. Again, for those of you with a rather more normal interest in history are unaware, 6 of the 7 wonders Herodotus (?) first listed have since been destroyed by a combination of earthquakes, fires, raping and pillaging and other calamaties. This leaves only the Pyramids of Giza, which I'm happy to say I've seen (finally!). Anyway, since they want new famous things for everyone to visit, they've got this competition going to get 7 new ones. They're pretty serious about it too; I don't think even the Pyramids themselves have a guaranteed slot. There's something like 49 locations/thingies nominated right now, and whichever ones get enough votes will be permanently enshrined on a tablet somewhere (probably in New York). As far as I'm concerned, its a combination of America's Next Top Model and Survivor - "Earth's Next Top Wonders!" (I wonder what they do to the losing contestants? "You're off the continent?" Maybe they just bomb them). Anyway, the Jordanian government, desiring both to not be bombed and also to make a lot of money for hosting a world wonder, is doing a series of these events to promote Petra and get people to vote online in its favor. In this case, they had a relatively well known Jordanian singer (well known in Jordan, anyway), doing a bunch of songs in front of a pretty big crowd of people. She was quite talented and the music sounded really good. I kind of wanted to dance, but it wasn't really the right setting.
After listening to some of the great music (arabic music in general has a great beat and great melody, which is my preferred combination), we wandered down to Petra proper and bought ourselves some entry tickets. Fortunately, they've got a great deal where you can buy a two day pass for 26 Jordanian Dinars (JD). Since a one day pass is 21 JD, it made perfect sense to spend the extra 5 JD to be able to spend a few hours in the park yesterday in addition to a full day today. (For the record, 1 JD is about 1.5 USD, so Jordan is not exactly Egypt in terms of prices. Ah well, 'tis the price of having an awesome vacation). The park is mostly a giant rocky/ravine filled mountainy area surrounded by a flat plain on one side and rolling hills on the Wadi Rum side. We wanderd through said hills for a while and saw some outlying tombs. We also spent some time on the road to Petra, which drives straight into the mountains down an old canyon (more description later). By about 6 pm though, we were all really tired though, so we headed back to the hostel.
The first order of business upon returning to the hostel was one heck of a shower. All of us were feeling grimy, me especially so since I didn't get the chance to shower thursday thanks to the aforementioned paper and Alexandrianess. While waiting for the hot water to appear (they turn the boiler off during the day), we all took a "half hour" nap, which turned into more like four hours. I woke up just long enough to bathe and then crash back into bed, where I stayed until 10 am this morning. I only woke up once, at around 5 am, and after the call to pray completed, I was out like a light again.
Today, after getting ourselves together, grabbing some food at the hostel (not unlike the breakfast we had in the desert), we went downhill again into the ancient city of Petra. As we had much more time today, we were able to more fully explore the surroundings. The outer hills I mentioned earlier are suprisingly green and are lined with what appear to be ancient terraces; it looked a little bit like Ireland actually, excepting only the vibrancy of the color. Ireland is almost universally a rich, elegant emerald green, from the wide valleys to the rolling hills. Even in the truly rocky areas, any gap in the stone that's wider than about a quarter inch is host to an entire ecosystem of flowing plants and emerald leaves. Here, the green is a much lighter color, faded by sun and weathered by sand. The plantlife's grip on the land seems to be tenuous, almost fleeting (though in reality all of the plants seem to be quite hardy and unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon). There are a few trees of the deciduous variety, and a bunch of juniper plants, which I would call trees even though i'm pretty sure that they're actually bushes when properly trimmed (the gardeners among the readership will know, i'm sure).
As you work your way into the park, and towards the city itself, the rolling hills are quickly replaced by bare rock outcroppings. Looking forward, you see that the rock outcroppings themselves form what I'd loosely term a broad, wide mountain cluster which is heavily broken up by water erosion. The road into the park actually follows an old floodchannel (apparently this area is prone to flash floods in the place of proper rain) that is a magnified version of the channels that have been carved into almost every part of the soft sandstone range. As I said re: the flash floods, apparently, when it rains, it pours (if only for a short while), and the water tears into the rock like a hot knife through soft cheese as it barrels its way down the various channels and riverbeds. Petra itself is actually placed into one such floodchannel, but its inhabitants were smart enough to attend to the issue of millions of gallons of unchecked water before choosing to settle there. Rather than be carried away like so much chaff every few weeks or months, they build an elaborate network of dams across all of the minor canyons leading towards their city. (At this point, almost all of the engineering is Roman, though the Nabateans preceded them and the Byzantines followed them as inhabitants). They left only one, very wide and deep canyon unblocked, which they paved and use as the primary road into the city. The floodchannel/road I mentioned earlier leads directly to this one. The junction of these two channels is of course dammed (so that the flood water will not turn the road into a river), but it is easy to surmount today thanks to a combination of centuries of sand on the protected side of the damn, and Jordanian ingenuity (bridges and causeways) on the unprotected side.
As you enter the city road proper, you are struck almost immediately by two things. First, as you look at remains of the gate (at the head of the road) carved into the steep canyon walls, you can't help but be impressed at the ingenuity of the city's inhabitants in choosing and preparing this site for habitation. Secondly, the beauty of the rock itself is really something to see. The basic reddish brown stone is laced with bands of minerals that reflect every color of the rainbow; in some areas, you see whites and yellows, in others, blues and purples, and in still others, coppers and blacks. Tenacious plants rooted in the narrow channels cut into the rock provide shots of green, further adding to the visual interest. To go back to the human aspects of the route, as you walk down the road, across ancient roman cobblestones, you see the remains of small aqueducts carefully carved into the side of the rock. Remember those dammed side ravines? These meticulously leveled channels are supplied by a succession of these smaller dams as they wind down the slope towards the city. In a few places, there's actually still watern in reserve cisterns and the like - one gets the impression that with some care, the entire network could be re-established. It won't be, naturally, as this would hurt the bottled water industry and damage the historical artifactness of the construction, but its neat to see all the same.
The road itself takes about 30 minutes to walk down (traveling at a relatively relaxed pace), and opens rather abruptly on the famous Treasury building of Petra (of Last Crusade and postcard fame). We were very suprised to run into it as soon as we did because our guide book had suggested an hour's walk; actually, on day one, we had gotten within 300 feet of the end of the road without realizing it, and turned around and headed back because we were tired. Had we gone a little further, we would have seen the massive columns of the building through the twists and turns of the canyon road. The building itself is amazingly massive - Its almost impossible to take a picture of someone and include a reasonable amount of it in the photo. It is also impressively well preserved. Many of the details on the columns and carvings are still visible. The interior is relatively plain - other than the beautiful colors in the rock, the rooms itself were mere blocks, and did not run very far back into the mountainside. I imagine this was for lighting purposes, as it gets very dark very fast when you move away from the entrance. Also, though in photos it appears to be completely excavated, in reality the foundations of the building are some 10 feet lower than the current ground level. As a result, many of the other buildings that once surrounded the "Treasury" are now mostly buried. A few have been excavated for the entertainment of tourists, but I think they are taking their time on the rest to do it properly. There appear to be no plans to lower the ground in that area back to its ancient level, however - they just dig down and put steps in where relevant.
After the Treasury, you wander down the ancient street into the city proper. On the outskirts, there are a series of large tombs, mostly Nabatean, which are quite impressive to see. These follow the outsides of the "valley" the city is in (basically, a very widened flat area in the canyon, though it appears to open out onto some low rolling hills on one side). Against the far (western) wall, and around the lower ridges that wind their way through the area, are smaller carved openings, which I imagine are houses from the old city. Most of the structures, however, are not carved but are instead built in the valley along a small network of roads. The main street tends to dominate, however, and that's where most of the remaining items of visual interest are. One exception to this rule is the huge roman amphitheatre carved into the rock on one 'side' of the city. Able to seat 4000, it is absolutely stunning and can be seen from almost half the city.
On the other side of the city, there are some tourist facilities and a small road that leads off into a small ravine. This ultimately develops into a path and a series of stairs (almost 1000 in total) leading up to an ancient monastery carved into the peak of one of the mountains. It is of a similar design to the treasury building, but somewhat more austere in its ornamentation. It too is surrounded by a variety of smaller room/buildings carved into the rock around it. If you walk some distance away from the monastery, you reach the edge of the peak area and are met with an incredible view of the mountains and the valley below. I like to think that on a clear day you could see north and west all the way to the Dead Sea itself.
After seeing the monastery, we made the long trek back to civilization. We were all starving by the time we got back, so we didn't stay too long in the tourist area (I did try to buy a Jordanian flag, as I try to collect a flag from every country I visit - eventually i'll have my own UN :). It turned out to be obscenely expensive though in the size I wanted, so I passed for now. Hmm, I just checked online and maybe it wasn't so expensive. Damn!. Anyway, we headed back to the hostel area and got food again at Restaurant Arabya. I had grilled chicken which was brilliantly tender and perfectly spiced, as well as tabouleh, parsleyah and fattoush, which were also fantastic. We finished dinner at around 7, and I've been busily typing away on the computer since then.
I'm going to bring this to a close now, both because the internet is somewhat expensive, and because Michael and Clark are headed down to a pub with some other AUCians. I think i'll join them. I'll be sure to report on the local beer. Rumor has it that "Petra" brand is crappy, but not all of the brands can be, right?
March 29th (Thursday): Leave Cairo at 10:15 pm for Taaba/Elat/Aqaba (border zone centered around the southernmost part of Israel)
March 30th and 31st: Petra, Jordan! We'll be seeing the ancient city as well as recuperating from the polluted air of Cairo.
April 1-4: Tel Aviv, Israel! I expect lots of time on the beach, not a lot of moving, and lots of time re-acclimating to western cultural norms (holy crap, bikinis!). Here's hoping the Mediteranean will be warmer than it was in January (when it very strongly resembled the North Atlantic in terms of temperature)
April 5-9: Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine! Plans are a little shaky, but there will definitely be a religous component. I'm hoping to see Bethlehem and definitely do Easter Mass in the city.
April 10: Boogie back to Cairo for the start of classes!
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Anyway, as I'm sure all of you have astutely noted, its March 31st right now, so obvious this itinerary is already in progress. I'm going to start from the 29th and work my way up to the present. There'll be a little overlap with the yet to exist Alexandria post, but I feel like the information is necessary to properly appreciate the marathon nature of our trip to Petra. Clark and Michael, you see, had a relatively leisurely Thursday, with plenty of time to get ready for the bus that night, but I started the day in Alexandria at the tail end of the fencing competition with a 20 page paper to finish and a bus to catch in another city! I'd spent almost whole night before up, working on the aforementioned paper (curse you, Government and Politics of Egypt!), and after about two hours of accidental sleep (literally zonked out while taking what was supposed to be a short break from the paper), had to get up, work some more, and pack for a 2 pm train to Cairo. The train, by the way, was really really nice - I'm frankly impressed. Of course, my only other train experience is the line from Detroit to Chicago, which is not a paragon of high class transportation. They had decent food, though, and comfortable seats, so I can't complain. I got back in Cairo at 4:30 and back to the dorm by 5:00. I spent the next three hours finishing the paper, which got done at about 8:30. Hurried packing got me downstairs by 9:05, in time to catch the taxi to the bus station. We sat through traffic for a half hour, and then got on the 10:15 bus (which I think left closer to 11) to Taaba.
Things were pretty uneventful for a while after that - we spent all night driving across the Sinai. The bus was too bumpy and brightly lit to really allow for sleeping, so I spent most of the time reading junk fantasy. I also caught bits of an Egyptian movie (don't even ask me what it was about, as I haven't a clue), and then they showed us Speed. Speed, incidentally, is even worse than I remembered it being, and whereas before, it was bad but awesome, now its more just kind of campy. Also, you can totally tell it was filmed in the 90s. I never though I'd look back at the 90s and think that was dated. I guess I'm getting old.
Anyway, we got to Taaba at about 6 am, whereupon we began our arduous journey across the two borders (Egypt - Israel, then Israel-Jordan). Unfortunately, the first of these borders took us more than three hours to cross; first, we had to deal with indolent Egyptian security (there were probably 10 officials at the crossing, one of whom was working whilst the others drank tea, chatted and generally sat around doing nothing while the entire bus attempted to get stamped to leave the country); then, we had to deal with the Israelis, who were very nice, professional and speedy, but had to deal with literally 1000 Russians who were trying to cross the border ahead of us. By the time we left the intricate mazes of buildings, barbed wire, fences and gates that constitutes the border (cold peace for the win!), it was almost 10:00. Our bus in Jordan, incidentally, was supposed to leave at 9:30. Good thing we didn't pay in advance.
We ended up taking a taxi across the city of Elat (this, of course being the Israeli name for Taaba, even though the 'cities' are about three kilometers away from one another), to the Jordanian border (at that point, the city becomes Aqaba, despite even less distance across the border between them). All the while, we marvelled at "being in the west:" all of us were very impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of the security, as well as the immediate and noticeable presence of women. This may be a part of the male psyche only, as there are certainly women in Egypt, but, well, conservative dress has a fair number of downsides. The limited number of Israeli women we saw weren't exactly dressed provocatively, but it still stuck in our minds (so it wasn't just me!). It does, however, occur to me that this bias may be largely because of the cute 20 something year old who stamped our passports.
Fortunately, when we got to the Jordanian border, we discovered that this new professionalism wasn't exclusive to Israel (though the female border agents were). The Jordanian authorities also comported themselves professionally - they didn't even ogle the girls who accompanied us across the border (they happened to be headed to Petra too), which is a lot more than can be said for the Egyptians. Its amazing the difference you can see when the government's employees A care about their jobs, B care about their country and its image and C have pride in themselves. In fact, the Jordanians have been almost uniformly impressive in their comportment, whether or not they're employed by the state. The police, are of course, courteous, the shopkeepers, mercantile but not pushy, the park staff, professional, and the restaurateers, prompt and genuinely interested in providing service. (I should note, by the way, that this account is heavily colored by Clark and Michael's fairly intense dislike of many aspects of Egypt at this point - although I also noticed the difference, they are both far more aggressive in asserting it.)
Anyway, we caught a taxi for the two hour ride to Petra (since we'd already missed the aforementioned bus) and got into the city around 2 pm (ish, because we had to change our watches by an hour so i'm not surely what time was what around this period). We dropped our stuff off in our rooms and then went and got food at this fantastic restaurant creatively called "Restaurant Arabya." I had the mixed grill, hommus and taboule, and almost died of happiness, it was so good. The hommus in particular was great, especially since what passes for it in Egypt is neither hommous nor good. It was also great having tabouleh again, as it is also not very common in Egypt. The meat, as well, was delicious (though the beef was a little tough), and the kofta in particular was probably the best i've ever had. It was so good that we went back to the same restaurant tonight (more on that later).
After food, we went downhill into the city (I think the habitated part is called Wadi Rum - spring of the Romans), where we saw a cultural event going on in celebration of Petra. You all may or may not be aware, but there's a UN sponsored (I think its UN sponsored) competition to find a new 7 wonders of the world for us earthlings to properly enjoy. Again, for those of you with a rather more normal interest in history are unaware, 6 of the 7 wonders Herodotus (?) first listed have since been destroyed by a combination of earthquakes, fires, raping and pillaging and other calamaties. This leaves only the Pyramids of Giza, which I'm happy to say I've seen (finally!). Anyway, since they want new famous things for everyone to visit, they've got this competition going to get 7 new ones. They're pretty serious about it too; I don't think even the Pyramids themselves have a guaranteed slot. There's something like 49 locations/thingies nominated right now, and whichever ones get enough votes will be permanently enshrined on a tablet somewhere (probably in New York). As far as I'm concerned, its a combination of America's Next Top Model and Survivor - "Earth's Next Top Wonders!" (I wonder what they do to the losing contestants? "You're off the continent?" Maybe they just bomb them). Anyway, the Jordanian government, desiring both to not be bombed and also to make a lot of money for hosting a world wonder, is doing a series of these events to promote Petra and get people to vote online in its favor. In this case, they had a relatively well known Jordanian singer (well known in Jordan, anyway), doing a bunch of songs in front of a pretty big crowd of people. She was quite talented and the music sounded really good. I kind of wanted to dance, but it wasn't really the right setting.
After listening to some of the great music (arabic music in general has a great beat and great melody, which is my preferred combination), we wandered down to Petra proper and bought ourselves some entry tickets. Fortunately, they've got a great deal where you can buy a two day pass for 26 Jordanian Dinars (JD). Since a one day pass is 21 JD, it made perfect sense to spend the extra 5 JD to be able to spend a few hours in the park yesterday in addition to a full day today. (For the record, 1 JD is about 1.5 USD, so Jordan is not exactly Egypt in terms of prices. Ah well, 'tis the price of having an awesome vacation). The park is mostly a giant rocky/ravine filled mountainy area surrounded by a flat plain on one side and rolling hills on the Wadi Rum side. We wanderd through said hills for a while and saw some outlying tombs. We also spent some time on the road to Petra, which drives straight into the mountains down an old canyon (more description later). By about 6 pm though, we were all really tired though, so we headed back to the hostel.
The first order of business upon returning to the hostel was one heck of a shower. All of us were feeling grimy, me especially so since I didn't get the chance to shower thursday thanks to the aforementioned paper and Alexandrianess. While waiting for the hot water to appear (they turn the boiler off during the day), we all took a "half hour" nap, which turned into more like four hours. I woke up just long enough to bathe and then crash back into bed, where I stayed until 10 am this morning. I only woke up once, at around 5 am, and after the call to pray completed, I was out like a light again.
Today, after getting ourselves together, grabbing some food at the hostel (not unlike the breakfast we had in the desert), we went downhill again into the ancient city of Petra. As we had much more time today, we were able to more fully explore the surroundings. The outer hills I mentioned earlier are suprisingly green and are lined with what appear to be ancient terraces; it looked a little bit like Ireland actually, excepting only the vibrancy of the color. Ireland is almost universally a rich, elegant emerald green, from the wide valleys to the rolling hills. Even in the truly rocky areas, any gap in the stone that's wider than about a quarter inch is host to an entire ecosystem of flowing plants and emerald leaves. Here, the green is a much lighter color, faded by sun and weathered by sand. The plantlife's grip on the land seems to be tenuous, almost fleeting (though in reality all of the plants seem to be quite hardy and unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon). There are a few trees of the deciduous variety, and a bunch of juniper plants, which I would call trees even though i'm pretty sure that they're actually bushes when properly trimmed (the gardeners among the readership will know, i'm sure).
As you work your way into the park, and towards the city itself, the rolling hills are quickly replaced by bare rock outcroppings. Looking forward, you see that the rock outcroppings themselves form what I'd loosely term a broad, wide mountain cluster which is heavily broken up by water erosion. The road into the park actually follows an old floodchannel (apparently this area is prone to flash floods in the place of proper rain) that is a magnified version of the channels that have been carved into almost every part of the soft sandstone range. As I said re: the flash floods, apparently, when it rains, it pours (if only for a short while), and the water tears into the rock like a hot knife through soft cheese as it barrels its way down the various channels and riverbeds. Petra itself is actually placed into one such floodchannel, but its inhabitants were smart enough to attend to the issue of millions of gallons of unchecked water before choosing to settle there. Rather than be carried away like so much chaff every few weeks or months, they build an elaborate network of dams across all of the minor canyons leading towards their city. (At this point, almost all of the engineering is Roman, though the Nabateans preceded them and the Byzantines followed them as inhabitants). They left only one, very wide and deep canyon unblocked, which they paved and use as the primary road into the city. The floodchannel/road I mentioned earlier leads directly to this one. The junction of these two channels is of course dammed (so that the flood water will not turn the road into a river), but it is easy to surmount today thanks to a combination of centuries of sand on the protected side of the damn, and Jordanian ingenuity (bridges and causeways) on the unprotected side.
As you enter the city road proper, you are struck almost immediately by two things. First, as you look at remains of the gate (at the head of the road) carved into the steep canyon walls, you can't help but be impressed at the ingenuity of the city's inhabitants in choosing and preparing this site for habitation. Secondly, the beauty of the rock itself is really something to see. The basic reddish brown stone is laced with bands of minerals that reflect every color of the rainbow; in some areas, you see whites and yellows, in others, blues and purples, and in still others, coppers and blacks. Tenacious plants rooted in the narrow channels cut into the rock provide shots of green, further adding to the visual interest. To go back to the human aspects of the route, as you walk down the road, across ancient roman cobblestones, you see the remains of small aqueducts carefully carved into the side of the rock. Remember those dammed side ravines? These meticulously leveled channels are supplied by a succession of these smaller dams as they wind down the slope towards the city. In a few places, there's actually still watern in reserve cisterns and the like - one gets the impression that with some care, the entire network could be re-established. It won't be, naturally, as this would hurt the bottled water industry and damage the historical artifactness of the construction, but its neat to see all the same.
The road itself takes about 30 minutes to walk down (traveling at a relatively relaxed pace), and opens rather abruptly on the famous Treasury building of Petra (of Last Crusade and postcard fame). We were very suprised to run into it as soon as we did because our guide book had suggested an hour's walk; actually, on day one, we had gotten within 300 feet of the end of the road without realizing it, and turned around and headed back because we were tired. Had we gone a little further, we would have seen the massive columns of the building through the twists and turns of the canyon road. The building itself is amazingly massive - Its almost impossible to take a picture of someone and include a reasonable amount of it in the photo. It is also impressively well preserved. Many of the details on the columns and carvings are still visible. The interior is relatively plain - other than the beautiful colors in the rock, the rooms itself were mere blocks, and did not run very far back into the mountainside. I imagine this was for lighting purposes, as it gets very dark very fast when you move away from the entrance. Also, though in photos it appears to be completely excavated, in reality the foundations of the building are some 10 feet lower than the current ground level. As a result, many of the other buildings that once surrounded the "Treasury" are now mostly buried. A few have been excavated for the entertainment of tourists, but I think they are taking their time on the rest to do it properly. There appear to be no plans to lower the ground in that area back to its ancient level, however - they just dig down and put steps in where relevant.
After the Treasury, you wander down the ancient street into the city proper. On the outskirts, there are a series of large tombs, mostly Nabatean, which are quite impressive to see. These follow the outsides of the "valley" the city is in (basically, a very widened flat area in the canyon, though it appears to open out onto some low rolling hills on one side). Against the far (western) wall, and around the lower ridges that wind their way through the area, are smaller carved openings, which I imagine are houses from the old city. Most of the structures, however, are not carved but are instead built in the valley along a small network of roads. The main street tends to dominate, however, and that's where most of the remaining items of visual interest are. One exception to this rule is the huge roman amphitheatre carved into the rock on one 'side' of the city. Able to seat 4000, it is absolutely stunning and can be seen from almost half the city.
On the other side of the city, there are some tourist facilities and a small road that leads off into a small ravine. This ultimately develops into a path and a series of stairs (almost 1000 in total) leading up to an ancient monastery carved into the peak of one of the mountains. It is of a similar design to the treasury building, but somewhat more austere in its ornamentation. It too is surrounded by a variety of smaller room/buildings carved into the rock around it. If you walk some distance away from the monastery, you reach the edge of the peak area and are met with an incredible view of the mountains and the valley below. I like to think that on a clear day you could see north and west all the way to the Dead Sea itself.
After seeing the monastery, we made the long trek back to civilization. We were all starving by the time we got back, so we didn't stay too long in the tourist area (I did try to buy a Jordanian flag, as I try to collect a flag from every country I visit - eventually i'll have my own UN :). It turned out to be obscenely expensive though in the size I wanted, so I passed for now. Hmm, I just checked online and maybe it wasn't so expensive. Damn!. Anyway, we headed back to the hostel area and got food again at Restaurant Arabya. I had grilled chicken which was brilliantly tender and perfectly spiced, as well as tabouleh, parsleyah and fattoush, which were also fantastic. We finished dinner at around 7, and I've been busily typing away on the computer since then.
I'm going to bring this to a close now, both because the internet is somewhat expensive, and because Michael and Clark are headed down to a pub with some other AUCians. I think i'll join them. I'll be sure to report on the local beer. Rumor has it that "Petra" brand is crappy, but not all of the brands can be, right?
Sorry!
Hey everyone,
Sorry I've been so delinquent about posting for so long! My excuse is camera trouble, but as that's still continuing, I'm just going to have to start posting without the pictures I so wanted to include. I'm actually on Spring Break right now (started yesterday), so I'm going to try to post fairly regularly to document the trip. In addition to that, I owe you all four posts (so feel free to hold me to them). There's about one for each week I missed. I'm going to try to fill them in as I get time, and then I'll backdate them appropriately. The theory is that that way it'll be a continuous history. So you don't all have to go looking for them, though, i'll be sure to post up top letting you know its there (if I can, i'll even put in a swanky link). As a preview though, here are the titles/themes for the coming posts (in chronological order):
Pyramids!
MUN Conference
Desert Camping
Fencing Tournament - Alexandria
Anyway, I'm going to end this post so I can start a new one on my spring break vacation!
Sorry I've been so delinquent about posting for so long! My excuse is camera trouble, but as that's still continuing, I'm just going to have to start posting without the pictures I so wanted to include. I'm actually on Spring Break right now (started yesterday), so I'm going to try to post fairly regularly to document the trip. In addition to that, I owe you all four posts (so feel free to hold me to them). There's about one for each week I missed. I'm going to try to fill them in as I get time, and then I'll backdate them appropriately. The theory is that that way it'll be a continuous history. So you don't all have to go looking for them, though, i'll be sure to post up top letting you know its there (if I can, i'll even put in a swanky link). As a preview though, here are the titles/themes for the coming posts (in chronological order):
Pyramids!
MUN Conference
Desert Camping
Fencing Tournament - Alexandria
Anyway, I'm going to end this post so I can start a new one on my spring break vacation!
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Classes: Week 3
Well, as the title suggests, it’s the end of week 3 of classes here at AUC and my schedule has finally settled down enough that I think there’ll be no more changes (this is a good thing, since drop add ended week one, or at least we were told it did, which may or may not conform to reality). Though I initially planned to be in mostly Arabic classes, it turns out that most of what I’m studying here is political science. The classes, however, are extremely interesting, so I can’t complain. As I’ve finally visited all of them, I’ll try to lay them out for your collective appreciation. Without further ado, here’s my class schedule (in no particular order):
POLS 325: Government and Politics of Egypt: The class is perhaps self-explanatory, as it focuses on the political history of Egypt in the last century. It is taught by one Dr. Hendrik Kraetschmaer, who is a very engaging lecturer and a pretty cool guy. I suspect, however, that some of the girls in my class are more engaged by his European sensibilities and good looks than by the material he’s covering; he’s relatively young, and with his glasses, roguish 5 o’clock shadow and mixed German/British accent, he’s exactly the sort my study abroad compatriots are likely to be drawn to.
POLS 302: History of Political Theory: This class is basically the equivalent of Modern Political Theory back at Swarthmore, covering the main patterns of western thought since the enlightenment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get political theory credit for it back home (which was the initial motivation for taking it). I think, however, I’ll stay in it because it’s the only class that I am in which is made up predominantly by Egyptian students. I think the perspectives in class will be particularly interesting. The class is taught by Professor Lattanzi, who appears to be at least partially Greek by descent. I say this because between his Athenian features, short curly hair, beard and melodic voice, he makes a particularly striking professor of philosophy – a modern day Socrates. The likeness is compounded by his penchant for the subversive – without seeming to do so, he’s spent most of the time in class subtly undermining the theoretical underpinnings of the Egyptian state. I think its fascinating (and he’s a great lecturer) and I look forward to the rest of the semester. By the end of it, we’ll all be a bunch of flaming liberal western looking democrats (Well, I suppose that most of AUC is, from a relative perspective, already).
POLS 422: Twentieth Century Egypt: This seminar, as the name suggests, covers in detail elements of the 20th Century history of Egypt. Professor Mustapha K. Al-Sayyid is very interesting if somewhat disorganized; forgetting one’s discussion notes for seminar isn’t usually the best way to organize discussion, for example. He clearly knows the subject though (and was readily able to wing it for the entire time) and has taught us a lot about the ongoing reforms in Egypt (apparently, there are a bunch of Constitutional Amendments up for review, some positive and some negative in democratic impact).
POLS 354: Political and Social Thought in the Modern Arab World: This class ties very usefully in with my other “modern Egypt” classes, approaching the same material/era from a thought/philosophical direction. Egypt figures prominently because it developed a civil society and at least marginal independence long before the other states – hopefully those other states will be covered in more detail after we pass the World War II era. The professor is interesting but very long winded; she spends a lot of time talking intelligently but somewhat incoherently and very ramblingly on subjects sometimes only marginally related to the primary subject of the course. I have a feeling that whatever notes I manage will be utterly useless, so I can only hope I absorb her discussions more directly – otherwise, the only thing I’m going to be left with is whatever I read for the class.
ALNG 102: Modern Standard Arabic: My Arabic class is definitely my hardest class this semester. I got into it somewhat marginally, since my semester of Arabic over the summer used a different book and covered far less grammar than I was apparently expected to. I’m having to play a fair bit of catch up, especially on the vocabulary, so as to be at all useful in class. The grammar makes a fair bit of sense so far though, so once I get my ass in gear, I shouldn’t have too much trouble. The professor is very nice and doesn’t give me too hard of a time, which I particularly appreciate (though I feel both stupid and guilty whenever I can’t answer her questions).
POLS 430: Authoritarianism and Blocked Political Development: I’m not actually taking this course, but am instead auditing it because I think it is a terribly interesting subject. Professer Maye Kassem seems a bit self-important and over-bearing (she tends to talk very loud, for example, when explaining things, which comes across like she’s trying to blast things into our very dull heads), but on the whole pretty good. She does a very good job of promoting discussion and letting people talk during that discussion, which I particularly like. She’s also good about simultaneously letting me contribute and keeping me from overindulging (given the opportunity, as most of you well know, I tend to go on at length). I feel like I get the best of both worlds in this class – good discussion, and little to no homework.
So, there you have it. Six classes (Five and a half, if you wish), Sunday through Thursday. My schedule is packed, but pretty decently arranged – no classes before noon, for example. I’ve attached a screen shot of my calendar for your collective enjoyment:
As you can see, i've cutely color coded everything (Mom and Dad, this is all your respective faults). Red is for classes, yellow is for extracirriculars, green is for audited courses, blue is for meetings and other irregular activities, and purple is for assignments. There are a few things yet to be added in here, but for the most part the shape of the schedule is complete. UTR (Sunday Tuesday Thursday) are relatively light (they end earlier, anyway), and MW are much more arduous (I don't get home till after 8 or 9 pm). I'm pretty happy with it. Now, I just need to figure out how to do homework here in a timely fashion, and i'll be set!
POLS 325: Government and Politics of Egypt: The class is perhaps self-explanatory, as it focuses on the political history of Egypt in the last century. It is taught by one Dr. Hendrik Kraetschmaer, who is a very engaging lecturer and a pretty cool guy. I suspect, however, that some of the girls in my class are more engaged by his European sensibilities and good looks than by the material he’s covering; he’s relatively young, and with his glasses, roguish 5 o’clock shadow and mixed German/British accent, he’s exactly the sort my study abroad compatriots are likely to be drawn to.
POLS 302: History of Political Theory: This class is basically the equivalent of Modern Political Theory back at Swarthmore, covering the main patterns of western thought since the enlightenment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get political theory credit for it back home (which was the initial motivation for taking it). I think, however, I’ll stay in it because it’s the only class that I am in which is made up predominantly by Egyptian students. I think the perspectives in class will be particularly interesting. The class is taught by Professor Lattanzi, who appears to be at least partially Greek by descent. I say this because between his Athenian features, short curly hair, beard and melodic voice, he makes a particularly striking professor of philosophy – a modern day Socrates. The likeness is compounded by his penchant for the subversive – without seeming to do so, he’s spent most of the time in class subtly undermining the theoretical underpinnings of the Egyptian state. I think its fascinating (and he’s a great lecturer) and I look forward to the rest of the semester. By the end of it, we’ll all be a bunch of flaming liberal western looking democrats (Well, I suppose that most of AUC is, from a relative perspective, already).
POLS 422: Twentieth Century Egypt: This seminar, as the name suggests, covers in detail elements of the 20th Century history of Egypt. Professor Mustapha K. Al-Sayyid is very interesting if somewhat disorganized; forgetting one’s discussion notes for seminar isn’t usually the best way to organize discussion, for example. He clearly knows the subject though (and was readily able to wing it for the entire time) and has taught us a lot about the ongoing reforms in Egypt (apparently, there are a bunch of Constitutional Amendments up for review, some positive and some negative in democratic impact).
POLS 354: Political and Social Thought in the Modern Arab World: This class ties very usefully in with my other “modern Egypt” classes, approaching the same material/era from a thought/philosophical direction. Egypt figures prominently because it developed a civil society and at least marginal independence long before the other states – hopefully those other states will be covered in more detail after we pass the World War II era. The professor is interesting but very long winded; she spends a lot of time talking intelligently but somewhat incoherently and very ramblingly on subjects sometimes only marginally related to the primary subject of the course. I have a feeling that whatever notes I manage will be utterly useless, so I can only hope I absorb her discussions more directly – otherwise, the only thing I’m going to be left with is whatever I read for the class.
ALNG 102: Modern Standard Arabic: My Arabic class is definitely my hardest class this semester. I got into it somewhat marginally, since my semester of Arabic over the summer used a different book and covered far less grammar than I was apparently expected to. I’m having to play a fair bit of catch up, especially on the vocabulary, so as to be at all useful in class. The grammar makes a fair bit of sense so far though, so once I get my ass in gear, I shouldn’t have too much trouble. The professor is very nice and doesn’t give me too hard of a time, which I particularly appreciate (though I feel both stupid and guilty whenever I can’t answer her questions).
POLS 430: Authoritarianism and Blocked Political Development: I’m not actually taking this course, but am instead auditing it because I think it is a terribly interesting subject. Professer Maye Kassem seems a bit self-important and over-bearing (she tends to talk very loud, for example, when explaining things, which comes across like she’s trying to blast things into our very dull heads), but on the whole pretty good. She does a very good job of promoting discussion and letting people talk during that discussion, which I particularly like. She’s also good about simultaneously letting me contribute and keeping me from overindulging (given the opportunity, as most of you well know, I tend to go on at length). I feel like I get the best of both worlds in this class – good discussion, and little to no homework.
So, there you have it. Six classes (Five and a half, if you wish), Sunday through Thursday. My schedule is packed, but pretty decently arranged – no classes before noon, for example. I’ve attached a screen shot of my calendar for your collective enjoyment:
As you can see, i've cutely color coded everything (Mom and Dad, this is all your respective faults). Red is for classes, yellow is for extracirriculars, green is for audited courses, blue is for meetings and other irregular activities, and purple is for assignments. There are a few things yet to be added in here, but for the most part the shape of the schedule is complete. UTR (Sunday Tuesday Thursday) are relatively light (they end earlier, anyway), and MW are much more arduous (I don't get home till after 8 or 9 pm). I'm pretty happy with it. Now, I just need to figure out how to do homework here in a timely fashion, and i'll be set!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Pyramids...Not!
When I first started planning this post last night, I thought I would be regaling you all with a long and exciting tale about my expedition to the Pyramids - Pyramids, I should add, which I have been trying to see for almost a month now. That post is going to have to wait, because while I've found a group of people who would like to go with me, we didn't end up making it to Giza. I did, however, have a pretty awesome day, so I'll have to tell you about that instead.
To give you the complete story of my weekend to date, I'll have to start with Thursday (remember, Thursday is the new Friday here in Egypt) evening. If you'll recall last week's admittedly whiney post (I get to take out my frustrations on you all, since you are a captive audience), I mentioned that I met a guy named Mina during my ordeal with the swindlershopkeeper Tariq. As I said there, we hit it off pretty well and talked about meeting up in the future. Those vague plans became concrete when Mina got in touch with me earlier this week; we agreed to meet yesterday at 8 pm in Coptic Cairo to hang out. At first, some other AUCians were going to come with me, but ended up bailing/doing other things instead. So, with some trepidation (I was, after all, going to a foreign part of the city and meeting up with a guy I'd only met once and with whom I share about 1/3rd of a language in common), I hopped on the metro and rode out to Mar Girgis station (at the heart of Coptic Cairo).
I arrived about 10 minutes early, and Mina showed up soon thereafter. We walked over to his part of town, which is (if I had to guess) middle class by Egyptian standards. I don't have a good sense of economic scale, since the wealth structure of society is so stratified; the difference between the richest 1% and the rest in terms of living conditions appears to be quite dramatic. Mina's family's apartment, from what I saw, could fit inside one or (maybe, if I didn't see some rooms) two dorm rooms here in Zamalek. The building is cramped, with a steep, narrow staircase and poor lighting. On the other hand, the streets were regular, clean and relatively wide, and the apartment itself was clearly in good care and boasted a computer with DSL. Mina's parents are very nice and clearly very supportive of Mina and his brother (who I haven't met yet). I can't remember where his dad works, but I remember that he was fortunate to have a good job (unemployment here is very high). Mina himself recently graduated from Cairo University (not AUC, despite the similar name) with a degree in accounting and finance, along with enough english to manage well enough with me. He's also a competent programmer, and he showed me the website he designed for his church (along with introducing me to some of his favorite music and showing me some pictures from his time at the university). My impression is that his family is relatively well to do and generally happy, but suffers from a stort of stagnation that from what I can see is both endemic and specific. I'll try to explain.
Despite Mina's university education, he is currently working for Tariq for 10 egyptian pounds ($1.60) a day doing what essentially amounts to menial/fetch-and-carry labor. His skills go to waste except for where he puts them to use in his own individual capacity (like his church's website) From my limited understanding, Mina is a part of the "intellectual middle class," which has been through university and has graduated with advanced and marketable skills, but is effectively stifled by the current economic and political situation here in Egypt. Most of the jobs for educated people who are not directly employed in a major national scale business are with the government, which while large, is quite unable to hire more promising employees (if anything, they are trying to downsize). Legal, social and economic barriers (hopefully, i'll learn more from my studies) appear to block entrepreneurship and upward mobility for people of all classes. Many men (I say men, because their situation is more apparent than that of women at the street level), young and old, pass their time on the street in coffeeshops and shisha (hookah) bars, with nothing to engage them but conversation. Those with regular work have little to look forward to; people who are waiters or servers will always be waiters or servers, whether they work hard or not. This is what I mean by "endemic" stagnation - everyone seems to be locked in place, with no ability and thus no incentive to try and change their status or station. Mina's problems, specifically, are compounded by the fact that he is a Copt, and is therefore disadvantaged in a preponderately muslim state. Mina has told me that when he goes to do things, from activities to job applications, that fact that his name is Mina (apparently, there's a Saint Mina) or that his brother's name is Peter automatically disqualifies them from what opportunities that do exist. Men with good muslim names like "Mohammed" or "Ahmed" take precedence; Copts need not apply. From what I can gather, this sort of mistreatment is widespread but assymetric - not everyone in Egypt treats the Coptic minority as second class citizenry, but enough do that the community feels that even the government holds them in low regard, and is at least guilty of looking the other way at abuses.
I don't intend this post to be all gloom and doom; Mina's situation isn't horrible, it just lacks the opportunities that someone of his obvious intelligence and skills should have available to him. He isn't being actively oppressed per se, but his opportunities for advancement are repressed by the structure of the society around him. Despite that, he does have a rich social life (I met some of his friends) and a clear devotion to his religion and church (they are building a new one, incidentally, and from what I saw, when it is finished it will be beautiful). We spent a lot of time socializing, both about the social problems in Egypt and his perspective on it, and on more mundane matters like football (soccer, for those Americans who've forgotten) and food. I also learned some new words in arabic (and taught him some things in english) and we hope to teach eachother in a more structured way in the future. Next Thursday, I'm going to try to bring some more people along with me to play football; Mina is going to reserve a field. I'm a horrible player, but I think it will be a lot of fun.
Though I left Coptic Cairo around 11:30, I didn't end up getting back to the dorm until about 4 am, because I met up with a bunch of people in Garden City (an area slightly south of AUC where a bunch of international students - mostly female - live) and hung out. Garden City is a popular hang out because some of the apartments are unrestricted by doormen or behavioral rules. The Zamalek dorms prohibit males from the female section of the building and vice versa, and many of the other AUC residences have strict visiting hours and rules. We end up going to these apartments so that we can associate in mixed company at hours past 10 or 12 pm (since the country doesn't go to sleep until 2 am, this is both more natural and necessary than it is back home in the States). We made a brief stop at a jazz club in the Nile Hilton, but spent most of our time socializing in the Garden City apartments. In addition to a good debate on the Iraq war, I had a particularly good discussion about Consitutional Law with a judicial conservative. I won't bore you with details (and I remember them impressively well considering I had a slight beer induced buzz at the time), but I had a good time. I also slept until 12:15 pm the next day (today), which helps to explain why we didn't end up making it to the pyramids. I, of course, wasn't the only one to sleep in so late, and by the time the group I was going to Giza with had assembled, it was almost 2 pm. When we learned that the Pyramids themselves close to the public at 4 pm from a friend in the lobby, we (now reduced to four) decided to scrap the plan until next week (Giza is not the closest part of Cairo to Zamalek). Instead, spearheaded by my friend Jhale, a Brown student of Pakastani descent, (who incidentally almost went to Swarthmore - for those of you who are Swatties, I think she would have been a great fit), we went out to Garden City, met up with some other girls and went for Indian Cuisine at a place called Asia House. It was expensive, but extremely good. It's the first properly spicy food i've had in a month, and I really enjoyed it.
After Asia House, we wandered over to a pastry shop by campus and bought a lot (literally, 2.5 kilos) of assorted baked and delicious items to use as both dessert and future snack food. My favorite kind is something akin to a Fig Newton, but differs in two important ways: First, the filling is dates, not figs (dates are sweeter and figs are fruitier, in case not everyone is up on the distinction - I certainly wasn't before I came) and second, the pastry itself is orders of magnitude more excellent than the mush they wrap Fig Newtons in. They are is light and flaky and crisp and oh so deliciously good. I've creatively christened them "Date Newtons" for ease of recognition.
After getting dates, we met up with yet another girl (I keep mentioning the people we're "adding" because it will be important later) and went out to the Nile. The highlight of the night came went we rented a boat (called a Felucca for reasons utterly unknown to me - we think it might be italian or something) for an hour long cruise along the Nile. It was dark out by then, and absolutely spectacular. Thanks to Jhale's incredible mad bartering skillz, we also only paid 60 pounds (with a little tip thrown in at the end), which was hot.
The final leg of our trip came when we returned to the Zamalek area and went to a place called Versailles Palace for tea and shisha. At this point, we were a group of four girls: Jhale, Vivette, Shamiss (who's name I'm probably horribly mispelling) and Kate, as well as me. This is important primarily because both Vivette and Shamiss cover their hair, and Jhale is Muslim and fairly dark skinned. Kate and I were the only pasty-white Americans in the group (though I think everyone in the group was an international student). Now, Versailles palace was fairly crowded when we got there, so we waited some 15 minutes before being seated. This wasn't so much of a problem, except for the fact that there was a side room with a bunch of tables that wasn't being used. When we asked a waiter about available seating, however, he told us to wait and not to sit down there. Well, thirty seconds after we sat down, a group of 8-10 obviously western tourists came in, and were immediately seated in this vacant area (still leaving plenty of space for several more groups, incidentally, and Versailles palace so far as I know doesn't bother with reservations). When Jhale confronted the server about this obvious injustice, he basically blew her off. He seemed pretty irritated too, which showed up in his treatment of us. It took us forever to get our drinks, and the shisha pipe Jhale ordered never arrived. We asked about it several times and never had a breakthrough. The server did his best to ignore us, not meet our eyes (people here know when they are being jackasses, and usually won't look you in the eye if they have done something and know you know) and generally fail in his role as a server. Finally, we got frustrated and just asked for the check. No sooner than had we cancelled the shisha order, four shisha pipes were wisked over to the table of the western tourists. After demanding the check several more times (and having the server storm off like a petulant child on the last occasion, without even bothering to respond to the question), we just figured out our total ourselves from the menu, left the money on the table, and left. We had barely made it out the door when our erstwhile server came running up to us, claiming we hadn't paid the entire total. Amazingly, he was both able to move quickly AND produce the check in a timely manner when it was his wallet on the line - you'd almost think he had been, you know, deliberately holding the check and not providing it for us out of spite. It turned out we had understimated the tax slightly and so were short a few pounds. The way he confronted us though was pretty ridiculous, and again targeted at Jhale, who he'd been working to piss off all night. Rather than just go, Jhale blew up at him and basically ripped him a new one right in front of the restaurant. It was really great to watch, because we'd all been in similar situations before and felt we had to let it go because we were trying not to offend the shopkeeper or whoever, and create a bad impression of Americans. In general, Egyptians (and when I say Egyptians, I don't mean all Egyptians, but more specifically a certain class/group of shopkeepers and such) interpret the American's desire not to offend as some combination of weakness, stupidity and ignorance, as if we don't understand that we are being cheated, abused or ridiculed. They seem to figure that if you aren't actively taking umbrage, that they have managed to successfully hoodwink you with their incredible wits and sparkling intelligences.
Well, Jhale, being Muslim and possessing a much stronger command of arabic than most of us (though Vivetta and Shamiss I think are native speakers), refused to just go quietly. She gave him a piece of her mind that probably still has his ears stinging. I thought it was really powerful; she spoke with passion and righteousness that all of us have but most of us most of the time are afraid to tap into. Speaking truth is a scary thing, but beautiful in its own way.
Sorry this post is so long (and sorry for the lag time). I've got another post I'm working on on class descriptions that should hopefully be out soon. I hope all is well back home (and various places abroad!)
To give you the complete story of my weekend to date, I'll have to start with Thursday (remember, Thursday is the new Friday here in Egypt) evening. If you'll recall last week's admittedly whiney post (I get to take out my frustrations on you all, since you are a captive audience), I mentioned that I met a guy named Mina during my ordeal with the swindlershopkeeper Tariq. As I said there, we hit it off pretty well and talked about meeting up in the future. Those vague plans became concrete when Mina got in touch with me earlier this week; we agreed to meet yesterday at 8 pm in Coptic Cairo to hang out. At first, some other AUCians were going to come with me, but ended up bailing/doing other things instead. So, with some trepidation (I was, after all, going to a foreign part of the city and meeting up with a guy I'd only met once and with whom I share about 1/3rd of a language in common), I hopped on the metro and rode out to Mar Girgis station (at the heart of Coptic Cairo).
I arrived about 10 minutes early, and Mina showed up soon thereafter. We walked over to his part of town, which is (if I had to guess) middle class by Egyptian standards. I don't have a good sense of economic scale, since the wealth structure of society is so stratified; the difference between the richest 1% and the rest in terms of living conditions appears to be quite dramatic. Mina's family's apartment, from what I saw, could fit inside one or (maybe, if I didn't see some rooms) two dorm rooms here in Zamalek. The building is cramped, with a steep, narrow staircase and poor lighting. On the other hand, the streets were regular, clean and relatively wide, and the apartment itself was clearly in good care and boasted a computer with DSL. Mina's parents are very nice and clearly very supportive of Mina and his brother (who I haven't met yet). I can't remember where his dad works, but I remember that he was fortunate to have a good job (unemployment here is very high). Mina himself recently graduated from Cairo University (not AUC, despite the similar name) with a degree in accounting and finance, along with enough english to manage well enough with me. He's also a competent programmer, and he showed me the website he designed for his church (along with introducing me to some of his favorite music and showing me some pictures from his time at the university). My impression is that his family is relatively well to do and generally happy, but suffers from a stort of stagnation that from what I can see is both endemic and specific. I'll try to explain.
Despite Mina's university education, he is currently working for Tariq for 10 egyptian pounds ($1.60) a day doing what essentially amounts to menial/fetch-and-carry labor. His skills go to waste except for where he puts them to use in his own individual capacity (like his church's website) From my limited understanding, Mina is a part of the "intellectual middle class," which has been through university and has graduated with advanced and marketable skills, but is effectively stifled by the current economic and political situation here in Egypt. Most of the jobs for educated people who are not directly employed in a major national scale business are with the government, which while large, is quite unable to hire more promising employees (if anything, they are trying to downsize). Legal, social and economic barriers (hopefully, i'll learn more from my studies) appear to block entrepreneurship and upward mobility for people of all classes. Many men (I say men, because their situation is more apparent than that of women at the street level), young and old, pass their time on the street in coffeeshops and shisha (hookah) bars, with nothing to engage them but conversation. Those with regular work have little to look forward to; people who are waiters or servers will always be waiters or servers, whether they work hard or not. This is what I mean by "endemic" stagnation - everyone seems to be locked in place, with no ability and thus no incentive to try and change their status or station. Mina's problems, specifically, are compounded by the fact that he is a Copt, and is therefore disadvantaged in a preponderately muslim state. Mina has told me that when he goes to do things, from activities to job applications, that fact that his name is Mina (apparently, there's a Saint Mina) or that his brother's name is Peter automatically disqualifies them from what opportunities that do exist. Men with good muslim names like "Mohammed" or "Ahmed" take precedence; Copts need not apply. From what I can gather, this sort of mistreatment is widespread but assymetric - not everyone in Egypt treats the Coptic minority as second class citizenry, but enough do that the community feels that even the government holds them in low regard, and is at least guilty of looking the other way at abuses.
I don't intend this post to be all gloom and doom; Mina's situation isn't horrible, it just lacks the opportunities that someone of his obvious intelligence and skills should have available to him. He isn't being actively oppressed per se, but his opportunities for advancement are repressed by the structure of the society around him. Despite that, he does have a rich social life (I met some of his friends) and a clear devotion to his religion and church (they are building a new one, incidentally, and from what I saw, when it is finished it will be beautiful). We spent a lot of time socializing, both about the social problems in Egypt and his perspective on it, and on more mundane matters like football (soccer, for those Americans who've forgotten) and food. I also learned some new words in arabic (and taught him some things in english) and we hope to teach eachother in a more structured way in the future. Next Thursday, I'm going to try to bring some more people along with me to play football; Mina is going to reserve a field. I'm a horrible player, but I think it will be a lot of fun.
Though I left Coptic Cairo around 11:30, I didn't end up getting back to the dorm until about 4 am, because I met up with a bunch of people in Garden City (an area slightly south of AUC where a bunch of international students - mostly female - live) and hung out. Garden City is a popular hang out because some of the apartments are unrestricted by doormen or behavioral rules. The Zamalek dorms prohibit males from the female section of the building and vice versa, and many of the other AUC residences have strict visiting hours and rules. We end up going to these apartments so that we can associate in mixed company at hours past 10 or 12 pm (since the country doesn't go to sleep until 2 am, this is both more natural and necessary than it is back home in the States). We made a brief stop at a jazz club in the Nile Hilton, but spent most of our time socializing in the Garden City apartments. In addition to a good debate on the Iraq war, I had a particularly good discussion about Consitutional Law with a judicial conservative. I won't bore you with details (and I remember them impressively well considering I had a slight beer induced buzz at the time), but I had a good time. I also slept until 12:15 pm the next day (today), which helps to explain why we didn't end up making it to the pyramids. I, of course, wasn't the only one to sleep in so late, and by the time the group I was going to Giza with had assembled, it was almost 2 pm. When we learned that the Pyramids themselves close to the public at 4 pm from a friend in the lobby, we (now reduced to four) decided to scrap the plan until next week (Giza is not the closest part of Cairo to Zamalek). Instead, spearheaded by my friend Jhale, a Brown student of Pakastani descent, (who incidentally almost went to Swarthmore - for those of you who are Swatties, I think she would have been a great fit), we went out to Garden City, met up with some other girls and went for Indian Cuisine at a place called Asia House. It was expensive, but extremely good. It's the first properly spicy food i've had in a month, and I really enjoyed it.
After Asia House, we wandered over to a pastry shop by campus and bought a lot (literally, 2.5 kilos) of assorted baked and delicious items to use as both dessert and future snack food. My favorite kind is something akin to a Fig Newton, but differs in two important ways: First, the filling is dates, not figs (dates are sweeter and figs are fruitier, in case not everyone is up on the distinction - I certainly wasn't before I came) and second, the pastry itself is orders of magnitude more excellent than the mush they wrap Fig Newtons in. They are is light and flaky and crisp and oh so deliciously good. I've creatively christened them "Date Newtons" for ease of recognition.
After getting dates, we met up with yet another girl (I keep mentioning the people we're "adding" because it will be important later) and went out to the Nile. The highlight of the night came went we rented a boat (called a Felucca for reasons utterly unknown to me - we think it might be italian or something) for an hour long cruise along the Nile. It was dark out by then, and absolutely spectacular. Thanks to Jhale's incredible mad bartering skillz, we also only paid 60 pounds (with a little tip thrown in at the end), which was hot.
The final leg of our trip came when we returned to the Zamalek area and went to a place called Versailles Palace for tea and shisha. At this point, we were a group of four girls: Jhale, Vivette, Shamiss (who's name I'm probably horribly mispelling) and Kate, as well as me. This is important primarily because both Vivette and Shamiss cover their hair, and Jhale is Muslim and fairly dark skinned. Kate and I were the only pasty-white Americans in the group (though I think everyone in the group was an international student). Now, Versailles palace was fairly crowded when we got there, so we waited some 15 minutes before being seated. This wasn't so much of a problem, except for the fact that there was a side room with a bunch of tables that wasn't being used. When we asked a waiter about available seating, however, he told us to wait and not to sit down there. Well, thirty seconds after we sat down, a group of 8-10 obviously western tourists came in, and were immediately seated in this vacant area (still leaving plenty of space for several more groups, incidentally, and Versailles palace so far as I know doesn't bother with reservations). When Jhale confronted the server about this obvious injustice, he basically blew her off. He seemed pretty irritated too, which showed up in his treatment of us. It took us forever to get our drinks, and the shisha pipe Jhale ordered never arrived. We asked about it several times and never had a breakthrough. The server did his best to ignore us, not meet our eyes (people here know when they are being jackasses, and usually won't look you in the eye if they have done something and know you know) and generally fail in his role as a server. Finally, we got frustrated and just asked for the check. No sooner than had we cancelled the shisha order, four shisha pipes were wisked over to the table of the western tourists. After demanding the check several more times (and having the server storm off like a petulant child on the last occasion, without even bothering to respond to the question), we just figured out our total ourselves from the menu, left the money on the table, and left. We had barely made it out the door when our erstwhile server came running up to us, claiming we hadn't paid the entire total. Amazingly, he was both able to move quickly AND produce the check in a timely manner when it was his wallet on the line - you'd almost think he had been, you know, deliberately holding the check and not providing it for us out of spite. It turned out we had understimated the tax slightly and so were short a few pounds. The way he confronted us though was pretty ridiculous, and again targeted at Jhale, who he'd been working to piss off all night. Rather than just go, Jhale blew up at him and basically ripped him a new one right in front of the restaurant. It was really great to watch, because we'd all been in similar situations before and felt we had to let it go because we were trying not to offend the shopkeeper or whoever, and create a bad impression of Americans. In general, Egyptians (and when I say Egyptians, I don't mean all Egyptians, but more specifically a certain class/group of shopkeepers and such) interpret the American's desire not to offend as some combination of weakness, stupidity and ignorance, as if we don't understand that we are being cheated, abused or ridiculed. They seem to figure that if you aren't actively taking umbrage, that they have managed to successfully hoodwink you with their incredible wits and sparkling intelligences.
Well, Jhale, being Muslim and possessing a much stronger command of arabic than most of us (though Vivetta and Shamiss I think are native speakers), refused to just go quietly. She gave him a piece of her mind that probably still has his ears stinging. I thought it was really powerful; she spoke with passion and righteousness that all of us have but most of us most of the time are afraid to tap into. Speaking truth is a scary thing, but beautiful in its own way.
Sorry this post is so long (and sorry for the lag time). I've got another post I'm working on on class descriptions that should hopefully be out soon. I hope all is well back home (and various places abroad!)
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Sometimes I'm Really Just Pretty Dumb
Today wasn't exactly one of my better days here in Cairo - in fact, I'd put it down at the bottom. I woke up this morning planning to meet up with Mahmoud, my AUC fencing instructor, to do some extra practice. He teaches on the side at a small school in Maadhi (a suburb of Cairo a relatively small number of stops from Zamalek), which is where I was going to meet him. So I woke up early, showered, got myself together, and went to reach for my jacket and head out, only to realize it wasn't there. A quick search though my relatively small amount of stuff showed that it in fact was not in the room at all. I realized then that I had left it downstairs in the main floor lounge the night before. I should clarify: I left my jacket downstairs in the relatively unsecured, accessible main floor lounge the night before. I hurried downstairs and looked over to where I had been sitting. No jacket. I walked over to the main desk and asked them about missing items. No jacket, but they told me to talk to security across the hall. I went over there and, thankfully, saw my jacket - the officer in the room was looking though it to find some kind of ID (from what I can tell, anyway). I also recovered a bag of school supplies I had purchased and left with the jacket. A quick check of my pockets, however, showed that all was not well after all. The officer had found my ID and a few pencils, but my camera, which had been sitting in the right coat pocket, was quite gone. As far as I can tell, someone pilfered it during the night or early morning, leaving everything else behind.
I feel like an incredible idiot right now just thinking about it - I get so mad (mostly at myself) I'm almost sick. Every other day I've been here I've put my jacket on the back of my chair after getting in the room, and then picked it up again in the morning. I've never had a problem remembering it before, and I always check to make sure I have everything before leaving the room and so on. Even worse, I actually knew I had left the bag of school supplies downstairs the night before, but hadn't bothered to get it because I was lazy and it wasn't anything particularly important. I resolved to grab it in the morning and left it at that. Never once did it occur to me to check and see what else I may have left, nor did the thought that someone might steal something even cross my mind (though in my defense, if I had realized my jacket was also downstairs, I would have gone down for it immediately. The school supplies weren't anything I was going to miss). I feel incredibly naive and generally like a stupid tourist who has no business being in a country he clearly can't handle. Worse still, along with the camera, I lost all of my pictures for this week. About the only "good" thing was that I didn't have more in my jacket - I had put down things like my MP3 player in the room before going out with friends the night before.
The rest of the day kind of felt like adding insult to injury. The fencing practice I was going to, that theoretically started at 11:00, didn't end up starting until 12:30/1:00 pm because Mahmoud slept through his alarm and so thus took a long time getting down to Maadhi. Fencing practice itself was rewarding (a few good saber bouts in particular, which I lost but definitely enjoyed), but that was one of only a few bright spots in the day. Of course, it doesn't help that the entire day kind of feels tainted by my fantastic and utterly idiotic ability to piss hundreds of dollars down the drain (along with one of my favorite christmas presents) due to my own lack of care; I know I wouldn't have been bugged by the late start time otherwise.
After fencing, I met my friends Clark and Michael in Coptic Cairo. Clark had invited us to come to dinner with him and a shopowner named Tariq whom he had met the week before. Tariq was a nice enough guy (though definitely laying it on thick with the praise and whatnot), and we enjoyed a decent lunch/dinner, tea, beer, shisha (water pipes, on of which was filled with "ubbly bubbly" - weed - rather than tobacco - I stayed away from that one) and such for several hours. Though somewhat awkward due to linguistic difficulty (Tariq's english was decent, if broken, while our Arabic is atrocious), it was on the whole a decent experience, up until the point at which we had to buy things. I was expecting to "have" to buy something as it was (Tariq's hospitality, while generous, was definitely also a commercial enterprise), but what I was not expecting was the degree to which he totally screwed us over. Its a little hard to describe here, but he managed to basically place us in a position where we were unable to bargain with him to really any degree at all, nor were we able to in any meaningful way control the transaction taking place before us. We basically got forced into buying crocodile skin belts (which are pretty nice, if not what I'd actually normally spend money on) for 55 US dollars each (which is about 5 times more than we should have paid), and that represented a victory for us, in that we avoided buying "authentic antique" short swords for 140 US dollars each. Basically, I spent 300+ Egyptian Pounds in a day, whereas for the entire first two weeks I spent approximately 500. Neither Michael nor I were particularly pleased with this experience (Clark got off the hook since he bought something the week before, though hadn't bothered to warn us about Tariq's bargaining strategy or the price we were likely to pay). He did make it up to us by buying us some drinks that evening, though. I had a beer and a something or other - orange juice and vodka - a twister(?).
In retrospect, after this particularly painful experience I think I have a much better idea of how to handle bargaining situations in the future. A lot of the storeowners here like to be very friendly and lavish you with their displays of hospitality before getting down to business. In this way, they first force you to buy something (because you feel obligated to reciprocate for their hospitality) and also handicap you in bargaining by co-opting all of the standard approaches to challenging a quoted price. They start by telling you how much they like you and how you are like a sibling to them, and how the price they are giving you is like what they would give to family, and how they know you are a college student and so can't afford to spend a lot (which is why they give you this special, so special price!), and they make you promise not to give the item as a gift but to keep it for yourself, because they like you and want you to have something from them, and so on. These lines, of course, make it much more difficult to counter-bargain, as many of the easiest lines to use have already been pre-empted. You can't very well claim you are a poor college student and deserve a discount if he's already accounted for that in the initial price offering. Of course, I knew that we were being given a raw deal right from the beginning, but couldn't figure out how to turn the tables. I know Michael and I were particularly concerned about coming across as rude or otherwise offending our hosts. Now that I've seen some of the lines and know what to expect, and I think in the future I'll be less susceptible to such worries, as I think most people have thicker skin than they pretend to have in negotiation.
One bright note to our Coptic Cairo trip was that I met a guy named Mina who works at Tariq's shop who is about our age. I think he felt sorry for us since we got railroaded by Tariq, and I know his opinion of his boss is not that great. He was a very nice guy (the first Coptic Christian I've met). He invited us to play football (soccer for those of you still in America) and generally hang out with some of his friends in the future. I think we may take him up on his offer sometime; hanging out with people our age would I think be better than with shop owners, both because they would be our peers and so uncolored by the power imbalance that so obviously permeated the shop, and also because no elaborate unwritten purchase requirements would be invovled.
So, basically, today was a lot of little good things coupled to a few really bad things. I'm still pretty bitter about the camera but when I'm not thinking about it its easier to handle. The lessons learned (beware of shopkeepers with wide smiles, quit being a naive idiot about security and personal property) were good, if a lot more painful than I'd like. Here's hoping I don't have to learn them again.
I feel like an incredible idiot right now just thinking about it - I get so mad (mostly at myself) I'm almost sick. Every other day I've been here I've put my jacket on the back of my chair after getting in the room, and then picked it up again in the morning. I've never had a problem remembering it before, and I always check to make sure I have everything before leaving the room and so on. Even worse, I actually knew I had left the bag of school supplies downstairs the night before, but hadn't bothered to get it because I was lazy and it wasn't anything particularly important. I resolved to grab it in the morning and left it at that. Never once did it occur to me to check and see what else I may have left, nor did the thought that someone might steal something even cross my mind (though in my defense, if I had realized my jacket was also downstairs, I would have gone down for it immediately. The school supplies weren't anything I was going to miss). I feel incredibly naive and generally like a stupid tourist who has no business being in a country he clearly can't handle. Worse still, along with the camera, I lost all of my pictures for this week. About the only "good" thing was that I didn't have more in my jacket - I had put down things like my MP3 player in the room before going out with friends the night before.
The rest of the day kind of felt like adding insult to injury. The fencing practice I was going to, that theoretically started at 11:00, didn't end up starting until 12:30/1:00 pm because Mahmoud slept through his alarm and so thus took a long time getting down to Maadhi. Fencing practice itself was rewarding (a few good saber bouts in particular, which I lost but definitely enjoyed), but that was one of only a few bright spots in the day. Of course, it doesn't help that the entire day kind of feels tainted by my fantastic and utterly idiotic ability to piss hundreds of dollars down the drain (along with one of my favorite christmas presents) due to my own lack of care; I know I wouldn't have been bugged by the late start time otherwise.
After fencing, I met my friends Clark and Michael in Coptic Cairo. Clark had invited us to come to dinner with him and a shopowner named Tariq whom he had met the week before. Tariq was a nice enough guy (though definitely laying it on thick with the praise and whatnot), and we enjoyed a decent lunch/dinner, tea, beer, shisha (water pipes, on of which was filled with "ubbly bubbly" - weed - rather than tobacco - I stayed away from that one) and such for several hours. Though somewhat awkward due to linguistic difficulty (Tariq's english was decent, if broken, while our Arabic is atrocious), it was on the whole a decent experience, up until the point at which we had to buy things. I was expecting to "have" to buy something as it was (Tariq's hospitality, while generous, was definitely also a commercial enterprise), but what I was not expecting was the degree to which he totally screwed us over. Its a little hard to describe here, but he managed to basically place us in a position where we were unable to bargain with him to really any degree at all, nor were we able to in any meaningful way control the transaction taking place before us. We basically got forced into buying crocodile skin belts (which are pretty nice, if not what I'd actually normally spend money on) for 55 US dollars each (which is about 5 times more than we should have paid), and that represented a victory for us, in that we avoided buying "authentic antique" short swords for 140 US dollars each. Basically, I spent 300+ Egyptian Pounds in a day, whereas for the entire first two weeks I spent approximately 500. Neither Michael nor I were particularly pleased with this experience (Clark got off the hook since he bought something the week before, though hadn't bothered to warn us about Tariq's bargaining strategy or the price we were likely to pay). He did make it up to us by buying us some drinks that evening, though. I had a beer and a something or other - orange juice and vodka - a twister(?).
In retrospect, after this particularly painful experience I think I have a much better idea of how to handle bargaining situations in the future. A lot of the storeowners here like to be very friendly and lavish you with their displays of hospitality before getting down to business. In this way, they first force you to buy something (because you feel obligated to reciprocate for their hospitality) and also handicap you in bargaining by co-opting all of the standard approaches to challenging a quoted price. They start by telling you how much they like you and how you are like a sibling to them, and how the price they are giving you is like what they would give to family, and how they know you are a college student and so can't afford to spend a lot (which is why they give you this special, so special price!), and they make you promise not to give the item as a gift but to keep it for yourself, because they like you and want you to have something from them, and so on. These lines, of course, make it much more difficult to counter-bargain, as many of the easiest lines to use have already been pre-empted. You can't very well claim you are a poor college student and deserve a discount if he's already accounted for that in the initial price offering. Of course, I knew that we were being given a raw deal right from the beginning, but couldn't figure out how to turn the tables. I know Michael and I were particularly concerned about coming across as rude or otherwise offending our hosts. Now that I've seen some of the lines and know what to expect, and I think in the future I'll be less susceptible to such worries, as I think most people have thicker skin than they pretend to have in negotiation.
One bright note to our Coptic Cairo trip was that I met a guy named Mina who works at Tariq's shop who is about our age. I think he felt sorry for us since we got railroaded by Tariq, and I know his opinion of his boss is not that great. He was a very nice guy (the first Coptic Christian I've met). He invited us to play football (soccer for those of you still in America) and generally hang out with some of his friends in the future. I think we may take him up on his offer sometime; hanging out with people our age would I think be better than with shop owners, both because they would be our peers and so uncolored by the power imbalance that so obviously permeated the shop, and also because no elaborate unwritten purchase requirements would be invovled.
So, basically, today was a lot of little good things coupled to a few really bad things. I'm still pretty bitter about the camera but when I'm not thinking about it its easier to handle. The lessons learned (beware of shopkeepers with wide smiles, quit being a naive idiot about security and personal property) were good, if a lot more painful than I'd like. Here's hoping I don't have to learn them again.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Fencing and Miscellany
So today we had our first official meeting for fencing, and I have to say it was pretty freaking awesome. As I mentioned before, theres about 10 people in the group, many without much experience. There are, however, a few experienced guys and most importantly, a guy named Mahmoud who has been to international tournaments. I think he's the assistant coach (we apparently have a real coach too, though he just got married and is on his honeymoon. The honeymoon is a month long, by the way - they don't joke around about it around here. I don't think its even possible to come home with the marriage unconsummated after all that.), and he's obviously really good. He put us through our paces, with a really good warm up and stretching, and then other drills designed to tire us out and help us get back in shape (I need all the help I can get), without overstressing us. In case any fencing Swatties are reading this, I think I'll have a few ideas for when I get back. Also, we conducted much more of the practice in french than we do normally, so soon enough I should know all the commands - Randall, I know you can appreciate the coolness of that.
Incidentally, apparently the french command for "extend" is something along the lines of "elongez," or as pronounced by Mahmoud, "lonje." Not entirely sure if that's actually a word, but i'm guessing its cognate in english is elongate. This is relevant because the french for "lunge" is "fondez" or something like that. So when Mahmoud says "lonje," I instinctively lunge, and so i've been having a terrible time of it for that part. Hopefully it sinks in soon enough though or practice is going to be a comedy of errors.
Anyway, partway in to the practice, while the newer folks were doing drills, Mahmoud took me and a few of the other more experienced guys aside and kind of felt out our strengths. We didn't bout or anything, but I kind of got the impression we were being reviewed. I don't know exactly what it is, but Mahmoud is really good at explaining some things. He's already corrected a few of my idiosyncracies in my style, like in my lunge for example. He has a picture perfect image of how it should be in his head and can somehow make me do it too, which a lot of other people have had a lot more trouble doing. I'm going to try to figure it out, because however he's doing it, it'd be nice to be able to replicate it. I'm pleased to report that I acquitted myself well (thanks to Ben, Randall, Fletcher, Manoli and everyone else who helped teach all the disengages and remises and suchlike!). As I have three years of experience, I'm a rare commodity, so I seem to be of particular interest - as far as I can tell, in terms of raw time I outrank all of the other students, which is really a wierd experience. Also, though I'm not entirely sure, I think Mahmoud is grooming me/us few for tournaments here. He invited me and another guy out to MaHdi (other side of the Nile) on Saturday morning for more practice. In the meantime, I'll be doing some more practice on my own, mostly of the getting in shape variety. I've been to the gym a few times, and I've forsworn the use of the elevator from now on. As my room is on the sixth floor (with ground counted as floor 0), its a reasonable hike with a loaded backpack.
Anyway, on the schedule front, i'm still finalizing things, but it looks like I'm going to have a freakin' huge number of Political Science courses. I'm hoping to switch my only AM class to a PM one, and maybe switch another, so you'll have to wait a little longer (tomorrow is the last day of drop add) before I can give you all my final schedule arrangement. I think things will be easier than back at Swat, but i'm not entirely sure since i'm having a hard time working up the energy to do homework so far. I imagine I'll be rudely awakened next week to the realization that I need to stop being a lazy ass and start being useful. Good thing I have a few days left.
Incidentally, apparently the french command for "extend" is something along the lines of "elongez," or as pronounced by Mahmoud, "lonje." Not entirely sure if that's actually a word, but i'm guessing its cognate in english is elongate. This is relevant because the french for "lunge" is "fondez" or something like that. So when Mahmoud says "lonje," I instinctively lunge, and so i've been having a terrible time of it for that part. Hopefully it sinks in soon enough though or practice is going to be a comedy of errors.
Anyway, partway in to the practice, while the newer folks were doing drills, Mahmoud took me and a few of the other more experienced guys aside and kind of felt out our strengths. We didn't bout or anything, but I kind of got the impression we were being reviewed. I don't know exactly what it is, but Mahmoud is really good at explaining some things. He's already corrected a few of my idiosyncracies in my style, like in my lunge for example. He has a picture perfect image of how it should be in his head and can somehow make me do it too, which a lot of other people have had a lot more trouble doing. I'm going to try to figure it out, because however he's doing it, it'd be nice to be able to replicate it. I'm pleased to report that I acquitted myself well (thanks to Ben, Randall, Fletcher, Manoli and everyone else who helped teach all the disengages and remises and suchlike!). As I have three years of experience, I'm a rare commodity, so I seem to be of particular interest - as far as I can tell, in terms of raw time I outrank all of the other students, which is really a wierd experience. Also, though I'm not entirely sure, I think Mahmoud is grooming me/us few for tournaments here. He invited me and another guy out to MaHdi (other side of the Nile) on Saturday morning for more practice. In the meantime, I'll be doing some more practice on my own, mostly of the getting in shape variety. I've been to the gym a few times, and I've forsworn the use of the elevator from now on. As my room is on the sixth floor (with ground counted as floor 0), its a reasonable hike with a loaded backpack.
Anyway, on the schedule front, i'm still finalizing things, but it looks like I'm going to have a freakin' huge number of Political Science courses. I'm hoping to switch my only AM class to a PM one, and maybe switch another, so you'll have to wait a little longer (tomorrow is the last day of drop add) before I can give you all my final schedule arrangement. I think things will be easier than back at Swat, but i'm not entirely sure since i'm having a hard time working up the energy to do homework so far. I imagine I'll be rudely awakened next week to the realization that I need to stop being a lazy ass and start being useful. Good thing I have a few days left.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Classes
Well, after two weeks of being here, classes have finally started. Actually, today was the second offical day of classes, as the Egyptian weekend is Friday and Saturday; we thus started on Sunday. Interestingly, in Arabic, the days of the week are named to reflect this: Sunday is called الاحد - Il Had - or very loosely, "the first." Similarly, Monday is الاثنين - Il Itneen - or very loosely, "the second." This continues until Friday, which is called الجمعة - Il Gama'a - or, "mosque day." As the holy day in the Islamic tradition is Friday, this nomenclature makes sense. Some of you will have noticed by this point that I've only discussed the pattern for 6 days of the week, which as most second graders and at least some study-abroad arabic students can tell you, is one less than there should be. This is because Saturday, السبت - Il Sabt - means absolutely nothing to me. I only remember it because it very vaguely approximates the first syllable of "Saturday" in english.
Anyway, back to classes. I'm pleased to report that I'm starting to have a schedule worth the name. Its got a lot more Political Science and less Arabic than I'd hoped, but I think it'll be fun nonetheless. I'll definitely learn a lot. The arabic course I am in is a little above my level, so I've got my work cut out for me for the first few weeks. On a related note, I also think I've managed to wheedle Swarthmore's Political Science department into letting me deal with the political theory requirement abroad here (or at least get part of it out of the way). I'll be sure to lay out a full arrangement of my schedule here once i'm confident I know what it is.
Oh, I also went to the first fencing club meeting here. Looks like there's about 10 people, many of whom are beginners. Now, i didn't follow the whole discussion, but its possible that I'm one of the better people there, and that if AUC sends people to tournaments, one of them might be me. So that'd be pretty freaking awesome.
Anyway, back to classes. I'm pleased to report that I'm starting to have a schedule worth the name. Its got a lot more Political Science and less Arabic than I'd hoped, but I think it'll be fun nonetheless. I'll definitely learn a lot. The arabic course I am in is a little above my level, so I've got my work cut out for me for the first few weeks. On a related note, I also think I've managed to wheedle Swarthmore's Political Science department into letting me deal with the political theory requirement abroad here (or at least get part of it out of the way). I'll be sure to lay out a full arrangement of my schedule here once i'm confident I know what it is.
Oh, I also went to the first fencing club meeting here. Looks like there's about 10 people, many of whom are beginners. Now, i didn't follow the whole discussion, but its possible that I'm one of the better people there, and that if AUC sends people to tournaments, one of them might be me. So that'd be pretty freaking awesome.
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