23 June 2008
Home...?
For some of my friends, the adventure isn’t over at all. I know a few who are doing international summer programs hot on the heels of our Egyptian experience, including one who flew straight to Buenos Aires from Cairo, no down time whatsoever. The idea of beginning something new so soon, of launching into another voyage right from the first, is almost mindblowing to me. To take the plunge into another culture – one radically different from both the Middle East and the United States, with no time even to absorb and process the Egyptian experience, to let everything sink in… what a challenge that must be, and yet, what a unique perspective that must provide.
For me, it is an active struggle not to leave pieces of myself in Cairo. I don’t mean that in the usual “there’ll always be a little piece of my heart in X” way. I mean that I face the very real danger of losing, of forgetting what I learned and who I became. In my old environment, with my old friends, surrounded by the familiar, it is indescribably easy to slip gradually back into my former self. I must fight daily to make real in my life all of the personal changes I worked so hard for abroad.
So to embark on another adventure so soon, without fully internalizing the first… it’s hard to know what would happen to me. Would the second experience overwrite the first? Would each throw the other into sharper relief? Would the two mesh into some sort of inextricable web? I can’t say.
And then there are some of my peers who have been traveling for a long, long time (by my standards anyway). How they do it is far beyond me. When one journey bleeds into the next, and then the next, it is an understatement to describe the task of sorting out the layers of experience as a challenge. But then again, not everyone feels the need to do quite so much sorting as I do.
03 May 2008
Reflections
When I first arrived in
But I see now that I was wrong. The expats living here don’t perceive themselves as disconnected at all. Rather, they have attained a sense of familiarity with their environment. They have the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the tasks that confront them on a daily basis. They know the city, or at least the parts of it that they frequent. They speak enough Arabic to get by. And they are fluent enough in the culture, the way things work in this country, to live with relative ease. Like me, they are comfortable with their environment. And it seems that being comfortable with a milieu breeds the sense that one’s surroundings are equally comfortable with you. How much longer living here would it take, I wonder, for me to lose my own self-awareness?
That question will never be answered. I can no longer avoid the fact that my journey is near its end. I returned last night from my spring break travels with a strong sense of the finitude of time. I had but little of it everywhere we went, and I will probably never see the places I visited again. With one month left, I have much to do and much to see before I leave
This post would be quite a change of tone if it was all contemplation and no entertainment, however, so I leave the reader with this:
Spring Break Part One: Ahoy!
Two weeks ago, I set out with seven faithful companions on a journey across the Middle East. Our goal was to visit Jordan, Syria, and Israel, before making our way back to Egypt. Our travels began with a long bus ride across the Sinai desert to Taba, a low-key resort area on the
As we cruised across the Gulf of Aqaba toward
“Pirates!” I yelled. “Pirates ho!”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than our vessel shook violently as it was rocked by a cannon blast. We needed to move. Now.
“They got the engine! We’re done for!” our captain wailed.
Immobilized, we could do nothing but watch as a massive, three-masted pirate ship flying the skull and crossbones pulled up alongside our vessel. Thirty swarthy pirates swung from the riggings onto our deck, brandishing knives, cutlasses, and pistols.
“Avast!” cried their one-eyed, peg-legged leader, “Hand over yer booty, ye scurvy rapscallions, or walk the plank!”
The passengers around me cowered in fear. Our captain tried to tell everyone to be calm and hand over anything of value so we could all walk away alive.
Over my dead body.
I cast about for a weapon. My eyes fell upon Ainsley, our group’s petite Texan belle with a backpack of prodigious size. “Ainsley,” I yelled, “Bring that backpack over here!” She scurried across the deck as quickly as she could under the weight of the massive bag on her back. I seized her by the ankle and swung her through the air, backpack and all. I heard the sound of bone shattering against expensive cosmetics as the bag crashed squarely into the pirate leader’s jaw, knocking him overboard.
Their leader fallen, the other pirates hesitated, unsure of what to do. Several of them glanced at each other, nodded, and took a step toward Andy. Andy crossed his arms, furrowed his brow, and let loose a low, guttural grunt. Two pirates fainted, a third soiled himself, and nine more jumped screaming into the sea. Brandishing a nail file and a blow dryer (and shrieking like banshees), Ariel and Alison drove the rest of the crusty scalawags overboard as well. Leah sat calmly through the incident with a tranquil, bemused expression on her face, while Tim enjoyed a hearty brunch of salted pork and rum.
The pirates defeated, we now faced the challenge of reaching the shore with an engineless boat. Dan, being a Florida resident, was intimately acquainted with the workings of three-masted pirate ships, and after procuring a captain’s hat, he commandeered the vessel and set about making it ready. We reached Aqaba without further incident, and continued unfazed on our daunting journey.
02 May 2008
Triumphant Return
29 April 2008
Probability of Survival Now High
25 April 2008
Not Dead Yet
20 April 2008
16 April 2008
Mount Sinai
In the late afternoon, before leaving for the mountain, I went with three other guys to ride all-terrain vehicles in the desert. Riding an ATV is probably the most fun thing I’ve ever done (if you don’t know what one looks like, go here: http://www.dandydirtbikes.com.au/images/uploads/300%20atv.jpg). As soon as I got going, thoughts of everything manly drifted unbidden to the forefront of my mind. Halo music played in my head. I saw myself cruising the Tatooine desert in a landspeeder. I heard Doc Brown’s line from Back to the Future: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!” I highly recommend this experience to anyone who hasn’t tried it already.
After dinner that evening, our intrepid band departed for
By the time I made it to the top, the sun was almost up. I didn’t care. I was dizzy, nauseous, dehydrated, and exhausted. The seventy-five percent of my skin surface that was sunburned was chafing like no one’s business. As I stumbled up onto the large plateau just below the peak, someone called to me. I turned and saw several of my comrades sitting in a large tent drinking tea. They were hiding from the bitter cold while they awaited sunrise. I staggered into the tent and collapsed on a bench, where I passed out. I slept through the sunrise and didn’t wake up until my party was beginning the descent. Everyone wanted to get down out of the cold. I groggily lurched after them, moving in an awkward, bow-legged manner that minimized the friction between my legs and my jeans. I gradually woke up more as we went, and I finally began to enjoy the descent.
As we approached the base of the mountain and St. Catherine’s monastery at the bottom (reportedly home to the burning bush of biblical legend), we came out of the mountain’s shadow into a long stretch of unshaded mountainside. Partly to minimize sun exposure, but mostly because I was finally in the mood for some fun, I surged ahead of the group and bounded down the mountain, leaping from rock to rock like a lanky, bright red billy goat.
I spent the week after we returned from the mountain trying to recover from sunburn, as did many other members of the party. I had no moisturizing lotion of any kind, although Mike generously provided me with a 2 ounce bottle of aloe vera that worked wonders while it lasted. I limped to a nearby supermarket and tried to find more. I saw nothing useful. I finally stumbled across a bottle of Dove “Calming Night.” It was labeled primarily in Dutch, so I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. The English description read like this:
“The smoothing, soothing blend of Dove with ¼ moisturizing cream renews the skin’s lost moisture, and a sensuous fragrance of Sandalwood calms a tired soul. Use nightly.”
I bought it. I returned to my room and smeared a large handful on my leg, then began rubbing it in. The “lotion” started to lather. Huh. I typed the Dutch description into Google translator. It wasn’t lotion. It was body wash. Interesting. I left it on my leg.
After a week or so, I began a full body peel. Taking showers became interesting, as the running water would pool in pockets of loose skin, making it seem as if my entire body was covered in massive bubbling boils or pulsating slugs. Occasionally, the flow would enter a rip in my loose, molting skin and exit through another a few inches below, creating writhing rivers beneath the surface of my torso. As would be expected, everyone I talked to was delighted to hear about these developments. I won't even tell you about what happened to my legs when I worked out in the gym.
12 April 2008
Homeward Bound: Luxor, Part 4
We got up the next morning day to catch the 9:00 train. Diligent readers will remember that Mike and I had been unable to procure tickets for this train when we arrived three days prior. Phil, another AUC student, was in the same predicament. We all boarded the train anyway and found seats in a relatively empty car.
About half an hour into the trip, the ticket-checking guy came by. We paid him 52 pounds and he gave us pink slips of paper granting us the right to be on the train (but not the right to specific seats). “Well,” I thought, “that was pretty painless.” And for the first three hours or so, it was. The only eventful thing that happened during that time was Phil vomiting off the side of the train, probably as a result of some falafel we’d eaten that morning before we boarded. But at around the three hour mark, we got booted when a large family swarmed into our car with tickets for our seats. We lugged our junk to another car and found new seats. We got booted again at the next stop. We found new seats, this time separated from each other. We got booted again. Then we couldn’t find seats. Phil disappeared for long stretches of time, which I can only assume were spent making peace with his digestive system in the bathroom.
I wandered around the crowded train for a while in my t-shirt and jeans, feeling very foreign, with people staring at me the whole time. I would occasionally find an empty seat and sit for a few minutes, only to be kicked out at the next stop, or when someone returned from the bathroom. Eventually, Mike and I bumped into an Egyptian student from AUC. We stood talking to him for a while. He looked surprised when I said I spoke some Arabic.
“Really, you speak Arabic? When that guy was talking to you a minute ago, you just smiled and nodded and it was really obvious you didn’t understand anything that he was saying to you.”
Great.
“So what do you think of
“It’s good, I like it a lot.”
“Is it weird having people stare at you all the time everywhere you go?”
“Uhh…”
I decided I wasn’t much in the mood for this particular conversation. I went to talk to my six friends who had tickets. They offered various solutions to my seat situation. Dan volunteered a spot on his armrest, which was both uncomfortable and impractical considering how many people were passing by the aisle. I was offered a chance to sit in Max’s seat for a little bit while he stood, which I felt bad doing. Finally, I could sit on the floor where Tim and Ariel had their feet, provided I didn’t mind being a footrest. This was the option I chose. I wriggled my way back into the corner and leaned against the outer wall with my legs stretched toward the aisle. Although far from comfortable, it wasn’t a terrible position, and I was initially relieved to finally have a place to call my own. My feelings soon changed, as Ariel kept petting me like a dog, much to everyone’s amusement but my own. I was also decorated with tinsel and photographed repeatedly. I failed to see the humor in the situation. I whined repeatedly until I was given an issue of Time to read, which kept me occupied for a while. After about half an hour Tim got up to walk around, and I took his seat for ten minutes or so before being relegated to my former position, which was becoming progressively less comfortable. Eventually, Mike finished his conversation with the AUC kid and came by. He fed me cookies, improving my mood considerably. I’d had enough of the patronizing, though, and I got up to wander around with him.
We realized we hadn’t seen Phil in several hours. I found him passed out in a seat a few cars back. Either because the Egyptians are by nature a compassionate, warm-hearted people, or because Phil is big and bearded and scary looking, no one was trying to make him move. I was jealous. Mike and I went as far forward on the train as we were able and then worked our way back. Each car had doors to the outside at either end, and we had idyllic visions of sitting with our legs dangling out of the train as the landscape passed. We pried a door open when no one was looking. Wind rushed in. We were really moving. I stuck my head out momentarily and realized that the train was traveling far too fast and passing much to close to trees, fences, and buildings for our plan to be safe. We just stood and looked out for a few minutes until an indignant employee scolded us for our foolishness. He also tried to steal the newspaper we had been sitting on. This turned into a bit of a shouting match, which inexplicably morphed into an attempt by Mike to sell the man the newspaper for two pounds. That didn’t really work so we just shut the door and sat back down. I eventually fell asleep. Mike noticed that I kept falling sideways and finally procured me a seat where I slept for about an hour. It was dark when I woke up, and we were close to our destination. I was overjoyed when we finally pulled into the station.
The Best Nine Pounds I Ever Spent: Luxor, Part 3
The next morning at around ten, our party of nine assembled and rented bikes from a dirty little shop down the street from the hotel. It was a mere nine pounds ($1.64) to use one for the entire day. Although this was unbelievably cheap, we got what we paid for, and not much more. These were old school, one-speed contraptions with iffy brakes. Mine had a bell, marking it as the deluxe machine in the group. Our plan was to ride these suckers to Karnak, an ancient temple complex on the outskirts of
The bike ride was a trip. I’ve never experienced anything like the thrill of cruising through the rough, rocky streets of
We finally reached
After we finished up at
Eventually, we reached a small town, crossed the river again, and from there headed toward the “island.” It was protected by a tiny cluster of dwellings, which seemed to be inhabited mostly by small children occupied playing all kinds of indiscernible games. At the sight of foreigners, they abandoned their amusements and swarmed us. They were mostly dirty and shoeless, although one tiny tyke had a Spider-Man mask on. They babbled at us in Arabic and scraps of English, and tried to climb on our bikes. We stopped to entertain them for a few minutes, then tried to move on. This was difficult, as they clung to the back of our bikes, whether to detain us or amuse themselves I wasn’t quite sure. As we made our way away from their homes, they chased us and began signing a song:
Hello! Hello! Hello, hello, hello!
Hello! Hello! Hello, hello, hello!
As adorable as this was, the light was dying and we still had to make it to the island and back to the hotel. We extricated ourselves and made our way down a steep incline and around a sharp curve. A mass of greenery came into view separated from the bank we were riding on by a small land bridge. I coasted across and up to the fringe of the trees, where I was met by a cool wave of fresh, banana-scented air. Success! It looked like a jungle in there. We were ready to dive in, but wait, where was Mike? We looked back and didn’t see any sign of him along the path we’d ridden. After a few minutes, I called him.
“Yo, where are you?”
His reply, in the most excited voice imaginable: “I’m playing soccer with little kids!”
Lord help us. He finally made it to the island. It looked like a really neat place but we didn’t get to explore much, as we were quickly accosted by the island's residents/owners, who demanded money. We left rather than pay them anything. The ride back was relatively uneventful, and I think we all slept well that night.
02 April 2008
Interlude: April Fool's Day
Subject: Nonreceipt of payment for student housing
Dear Mike Y-----:
The
Regards,
Mahmoud Ahmed al-Mouqtar
AUC Student Accounts
I thought this would work well because Mike hadn’t paid his $1300 housing fee yet, and his musings about the possible consequences were a perennial topic of conversation in the room. I wanted it to look like this email was coming from the AUC Office of Student Accounts. I realized that I could change my display name in Gmail to anything I wanted, but my actual email address would remain the same, so it would be hard to pull the joke off. I sent a text message to Anthony, who’s something of a computer wiz, asking if he could spoof an email address. Anthony said he could, and I forwarded him the text of my email. But he never got back to me, so I forgot about the idea until that night.
I was sitting in my room at around 11:00 talking to Dan and Mike when the topic of April Fool’s came up in passing conversation. Remembering my idea, I decided to go ahead and send Mike the message just for kicks. I thought the fact that it came at eleven in the evening would be a pretty big tip off that it was fake, but why not try? He got the email right after I sent it and started laughing incredulously while reading it aloud. There was about a second or two at the beginning when he almost bought it, but he realized it was fake pretty quickly. He was amused though. So I thought I’d had my fun. But Dan wanted to know what the commotion was about, so I forwarded him the email. He was a big fan and advocated sending it to more people we knew. At his suggestion, I added an address and phone number to the signature section. This made the message look significantly more official. My cause also was helped substantially by that fact that Gmail only shows the display name when users initially open an email – they have to click on the “show details” button to see the actual email address. I started sending the email out to people I knew one by one. I’d been at work for three minutes when I got my first reply:
10:51 pm
From: Jane
i will go to the student accounts office and pay my housing bill tomorrow. thank you,
Jane
No way. Did she really fall for it? I read the email three times, looking for some subtle sign of understanding or complicity. Nothing. Wow. I was momentarily caught off guard. What should I do now? I didn’t want to freak anyone out too bad, and I hadn’t even considered how to deal with the situation if the emails were successful. But, less than five minutes after starting, I already had at least one person hook, line, and sinker. I couldn’t stop now.
I sent eight emails in total, seven to girls and one to Andy, whom readers may remember as the guy I inadvertently saw urinating on a mountain at the Valley of the Kings in
The next reply was from Mary. I realized moments after I sent her the email that she doesn’t actually live in the dorm; she lives in a university apartment near campus. Whoops. But that only added to the fun:
11:01 pm
From: Mary
To whom it may concern,
I am sorry for the confusion, but I do not live in Zamalek. I live in Garden City and my University, ---------------------- University, is responsible for my accounts here. Please let me know what I need to do to fix this situation.
Thank you,
Mary
Wow. Never mind the date, did it not strike anyone as strange that this email was coming from the office of student accounts at 11:00 pm? Let’s think about that for a second. The true irony lies in the fact that university offices are never open. I have shown up at 2:00 in the afternoon only to have someone sitting behind a window tell me the office is closed, come back tomorrow.
Although I was getting a huge kick out of this, I became progressively more concerned as I thought about the situation further. Visions of people having money wired from the
11:13 pm
From: Jane
hahahahahahaha good one. very good. bravo.
Jane proceeded to use the fake name trick to mess with her parents and some friends back home [note: she told me the next day that this backfired pretty horribly; she ended up sending flowers to her parents to make up for some hurt feelings]. Louis, who was also in the room, wanted me to forward him my email so he could prank people he knew. I happily obliged. This was awesome! I was having the time of my life. Then this rolled in:
11:29 pm
From: Mary
Again, I apologize for this mistake. After reviewing my payment records with my home university I realize that my housing was, indeed, not paid for. My parents are having a very difficult time making ends meet and they were unable to pay this. If there is anything I can do to pay back this debt I would be more than willing to do it - wash dishes, clean the dorms, or work in one of the bathrooms on campus.
Please do not kick me out of housing. I will have to live on the streets next to the little boy that sits and cries near campus. I hope we can come to some sort of conclusion to rectify this matter in a way that satisfies all parties.
Thank you for understanding and I assume you maintain a strict confidentiality policy in your office. i would not want anyone to find out about this. I hang out with these students from Georgetown, who I would never want to know about this embarrassing situation - they are kind of stuck up and I already have to get over the "wait-list-school" stereotype.
Thank you again and I am so sorry for this mix up.
Sincerely,
Mary
I have to admit, she really had me going around the end of the first paragraph. I thought she was very upset, probably crying, and I felt like a terrible, despicable human being for a good ten seconds or so. Touche.
This was also about the time when Jane’s roommate Sarah got back to the dorm. Now, I don’t know Sarah very well. Moreover, this particular prank didn’t strike me as something that would appeal to her sense of humor. So I was reluctant to send her the email. The only reason I did was because Dan insisted. What happened, according to Jane, is the following: Sarah comes into the room. Sarah checks her email. Sarah doesn’t freak out. Sarah is ecstatic. Sarah doesn’t want to be in the dorm anyway – she’d rather move out and get an apartment. She gets ready to call her dad on Skype and discuss arrangements.
At some point, either Dan or Jane broke the news to Sarah that this was a joke. I received the following email a few minutes later:
11:44 pm
From: Sarah
good job brian
happy april fools
I heard from Andy next. I’d been waiting for this one.
11:47 pm
From: Andy
Deal with it. I need my falouse [money] to spend on Stellas [local beer]
Nothing gets past this guy. Things were quiet for a while after that, until Dan got an instant message from Tiffany asking if I was around. Upon his affirmative reply, she politely informed him that she wanted to strangle me.
12:16 am
GAHHH you gave me a heart attack!!! I will admit it was sort of the most genius April Fools Day prank ever ...
She had freaked out a lot. After reading the email three times, she was getting ready to call her dad in the
I stayed up for a while, but that was it for the night. There were only two people left unaccounted for, Emily and Megan. These characters have fairly level heads (and I’d dropped hints about my prank to Emily earlier in the day), so I decided it would be safe to go to bed without hearing from them. I nevertheless decided to wake up early and check my email to avert any catastrophes that might be brewing. That turned out to be unnecessary. Emily didn’t check her email until I told her about it later in the day, which was a bit of a disappointment. I didn’t see Megan until around 5 in the afternoon. She’d gotten the email late the night before and flipped out a fair bit before her roommate figured it out. She had worked all day on coming up with a sob story to feed me about the email wreaking havoc in her life, but she couldn’t keep a straight face. That’s too bad, because it would’ve worked like a charm. Megan’s mother and sister were visiting Cairo and I’d already been worried that she would get the email in the morning and go down to the student accounts office instead of taking them out around the city (hence my decision to rise early). If she were a bit more ruthless, Megan could’ve gotten me back pretty good. I guess I might be a little too softhearted to be a truly masterful practical joker.
26 March 2008
Tombraiders: Luxor, Part Two
We eventually caught sight of our hotel, the Nubian Oasis. The place was packed, as several groups of AUC students were visiting
Mike and I got back to the hotel around 11:00 and were informed that we had to move. More people with reservations had shown up and they needed our room. Ok… so what now? Foreseeing the possibility that the hotel could be booked when we arrived, we had a backup plan: the Bob Marley Hostel. As enticing as this sounds, it was pretty late in the evening and we weren’t exactly sure where the hostel was. I was tired and not keen on going to look for it. The hotel owner felt bad for us and offered to let us sleep on the roof for the night. For free. Score.
Now when I say we slept on a roof, the wrong image probably jumps to mind. The roof of the Nubian Oasis is furnished with benches, tables, chairs, and a TV, and many guests spend their evenings socializing up there. Most of the rooftop is sheltered by a latticework overhang, and a large area covered in blankets provides an adequate (although quite public) place to sleep. There’s even a comfortable hammock that I napped in a couple of times during the day.
The next morning, we got up and started touring the sites. Tim and Ariel, who’d arrived a day early, had a bus lined up to take us around for the day. Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings, home to the tombs of many ancient Egyptian pharaohs and one of the most famous landmarks in
As unimpressed as I was with its contents, I thought the valley itself was pretty sweet. The area surrounding the tombs was comprised of sandy mountains, and our rugged band hiked over them in order to reach our next destination, which was some other temple thing that may or may not have had a name. As I scrambled up the dusty mountainside along with my companions, I made occasional forays off the path to explore what looked like promising alternate routes. Upon returning from one of these deviations, I rounded a corner to find myself with a full view of Andy urinating on the mountain fifteen yards in front of me. Awesome. Not realizing I had wandered off on my own, he had waited until everyone else had passed before going about his business. He didn’t notice me, so I passed without comment and waited until later to broach the topic. A true stoic, his only comment was, “You haven’t really been somewhere until you’ve peed on it.”
When we reached the mountain’s crest, we were accosted by a thirty-something year old Egyptian man who looked happy to see us. I can’t blame him. As far as I can tell, his job was to sit on top of the mountain all day long and point out the path down to the other side. The guy followed us around for a while and kept offering to take group pictures (in exchange for money, of course). He was also talking to Camille a lot, paying her the awkward, heavy-handed compliments to which Western women who visit Egypt are constantly subjected in markets and on the streets. After spending much of the train ride to
View from the mountain overlooking Luxor. The transition between desert and cultivated land was surprisingly stark.
We finally made it to the other side of the mountain, took some pictures from afar of the temple thing, and boarded our bus again. It took us to the nearby Valley of the
When we got back to the hotel in the mid-afternoon, Mike and I were informed that we now had a room. We were in a triple on the first floor with a guy named Phil who also goes to AUC, but wasn’t part of our group. The quality of our lodgings had decreased noticeably when compared to the third floor room. We no longer had air conditioning, although there was a ceiling fan. The bathroom sink was clogged. Our room had no doorknob. But it was a place to sleep and keep our stuff, and I was happy to take what I could get after the night on the roof. Everyone was hot, hungry, and tired, so we ate a relaxed lunch and then slept until evening. Before I dozed off, I walked around outside for a bit and stumbled across a small herd of goats foraging for edible material around a dumpster. I couldn't decide what was more strange: the sight of goats munching trash on a public street in the middle of a city, or the fact that this scene had seemed completely natural to me until I stopped and thought about it for a few minutes.
We enjoyed a pleasant dinner that evening, and then whiled away the night on the roof talking and playing card games. I went to bed fairly early since we had big plans for the next day. I'm glad I got the rest, because Saturday was a real workout.
25 March 2008
Trouble With Trains Times Two: Luxor, Part One
The
I came back the next morning. I knew from my failed attempt the day prior that I shouldn’t expect the man at the counter to speak any English. I would have to do this all in Arabic. That was fine. I made sure I knew all the words I was likely to need. Unfortunately, the situation was complicated by the fact that the time we had originally planned on booking was full, meaning I had to call the rest of the group in Dahab and confirm before I bought anything. The situation was further complicated by the fact that I was standing in line with a bunch of impatient Egyptians breathing down my neck (somehow, God be praised, there actually was a line here). When it was finally my turn, the conversation went something like this:
Me: Ticket to
Guy:
Me: What times are available?
Guy: How about 6:00?
Me: Ok great, 6:00.
Guy: Second class?
Me: Yes. I want eight ticket.
Guy: Eight tickets?
Me: Oh, tickets. Yes, eight tickets.
Guy: Ah. Wudjca fajf lamnip?
Me: I’m sorry?
Guy: Travelers utbukh Egyptian or faiod?
Me: Travelers… what? Oh. No, American. All of them are Americans.
Guy: Ah. Ok.
He started typing a bunch on his computer, which looked like it was running an Arabic version of DOS. He had asked me whether the party was Egyptian because that affects what trains we could ride, and possibly prices as well. I took the opportunity to call Camille. She confirmed that this was good, and I should go ahead and buy the tickets. Perfect. This was working much better than I’d expected.
After a few minutes, the guy looked up. He told me the train was full. I asked for a minute and quickly called Camille again. The line behind had grown substantially since I got to the window, and it was starting to shift impatiently. I told Camille the situation and heard her relaying the message, followed by background chattering. People behind me edged forward. Someone else came on the phone. It was Liz or Nur-E, I couldn’t tell. She said they needed a minute to ask everyone. I heard a lot of muffled rustling. Whoever had the phone was running. I waited. People behind me came forward and started using the window. I stepped slightly to the side, but kept my left leg in front of everyone. I knew this could get ugly, quick.
Finally, someone came back on the phone. Everyone wanted tickets for the next morning. I hung up and wedged my way back to the window. I told the man at the counter what I wanted and he pecked some information into his computer, then informed me that one of us would have to be in a separate car. Well, that was unfortunate, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. After a long process of entering information into the computer and triply confirming every detail of our trip with me, the guy at the counter printed out the tickets, looked them over, stamped them, and handed them to me. I grabbed them. I looked at them. They looked fine. I left. I felt good.
I took a closer look at the tickets once I was out of the line of fire. As previously established, one ticket in the stack was in a different car. This was fine. The problem was that it also departed from a different train station. Great. Well, at least it was for the same train and both stations were in
Later that night, I had a bad feeling. I got up at around two and looked at the tickets again. “Assyoot.” Something about that struck me as wrong. I looked up the
Shit.
How did this happen? How could this happen? I had clearly told the man “
Determined to rectify the situation, I went back to the ticket office with several people the next day, including Ariel, whose Arabic is better than mine. The ticket salesmen told us he couldn’t change our tickets. Nor could he sell us tickets from Asuit to
When I got the tickets, I inspected the first three carefully and glanced through the rest. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. We were good now. My mistake (if we’re even going to call it mine) was going to cost us an extra 25 pounds each (around $5), but at least we were good to go. I was happy again. Then people started backing out. For a variety of complicated reasons, several people decided they didn’t want the tickets and would prefer to make other arrangements. Because everyone was in Dahab when I bought the tickets, I had paid for everything out of pocket. I was worried about getting my money. This turned out not to be an issue, as everyone paid. In fact, the situation turned out to be perfect. Why? Although the first six tickets in the stack were correct, the last three turned out to be as messed up as the ones from the ticket office. Inexplicably, I had assumed the AUC travel office would make sure they were giving me what I paid for. How foolish of me.
We made it to the station in the morning and boarded the train without incident. The eleven hour ride was unremarkable, except for the part where the train stopped for a few minutes and then began going backwards. Even the Egyptians seemed thrown off by this. Eventually, though, we rolled into the station at around 7:00 on Thursday night. Mike and I went straight to the ticket window to buy return tickets for Sunday morning. Everyone else already had them, but we had been debating exactly when to come back, so we waited to buy ours. I wasn’t at all worried about getting tickets, for several reasons. First, Mike speaks fluent Arabic, so that wouldn’t be an issue this time. Second, we were buying tickets four days in advance, which is ordinarily more than enough time. And finally, we were buying tickets for a Sunday morning, hardly a peak travel time for Egyptians. We ambled up to the window.
Mike: We want second class tickets for Sunday morning.
Guy: Mafeesh.
There are none.
Mike: Mafeesh? Ah. Ok, what other times are available on Sunday?
Guy: Mafeesh.
There. Are. None.
Mike: No? Nothing on Sunday? What about Sunday night?
Guy: Mafeesh. Come back Sunday morning and check then.
Mike: Sunday morning? But—
Guy: Mafeesh.
No. Please. You’ve got to be kidding me.
13 March 2008
Small Victories
Getting laundry done continues to be cause for celebration, as the condition of the facilities has deteriorated recently. I’m nowhere near exhausting my 4.5 kilo supply of BioCleana, of which I now have a picture (see below). But, the washer did tip sharply onto one side about a week ago while my clothes were in it. This concerned me. The machine continued to function, so I let it be. We’ve also had some issues with the dryer. One night it started making a horrible screeching noise that could be heard all across the floor. It was even worse than the Egyptians in the common room. Every time someone turned the dryer on, Dan would get out of bed and turn it off again. This continued for several hours. Finally, someone called maintenance, which resulted in the dryer’s temporary decommissioning. The next day, half of it was gone – the base remained, but the central rotating mechanism had been removed. A few days later, the entire thing disappeared. This leaves the men’s side of the dorm with only two functioning dryers. As a result, I frequently air dry my clothes, hanging them from every available surface in my area of the room. This leaves my laundry with a consistency similar to cardboard. On the plus side, my shirts are stiff enough to be used as lawn ornaments and make my nipples bleed.
The final, and most pervasive, challenge I will share is the constant need to make change. If I go to a supermarket or a restaurant in the
I obtain money by going to a bank and cashing traveler’s checks. Naturally, the bank employees try to give me the largest bills they can, and look exasperated when I ask for smaller ones. If I’m getting 762 pounds, I end up with seven LE 100 bills, one LE 50, a ten, and two ones. The hundreds are highly inconvenient since I’m never going to spend that much at once and there are few places where I can break one without a huge fight. Sometimes the guy at the bank will give me fifties instead, although these are only marginally better. But I’ve noticed something. Whenever I have a female cashier at the grocery store, she never gives me trouble about change, even when I pay with a large bill. The men, meanwhile, always want to fight about it. So a theory began to brew in my mind. I got to test it a few weeks ago at the bank. For the first time, I had a woman cashier. I was getting a lot of money – around 1350 pounds. I filled out the paperwork, gave her my passport and checks, and waited. As expected, she pulled a stack of hundreds out of a drawer and began counting them out. I didn’t want thirteen hundreds and change, so I interrupted her. “Could I get some smaller bills also please, like some fives and tens?” She looked at me, shrugged, said “ok,” and disappeared into the back. She returned with a massive stack of ten pound notes roped together with a rubber band. She then pulled out some twenties and counted out three hundred pounds, which I thought was most generous. To that she added a fifty and change. I expected her to give me fifteen or twenty of the tens and then round the rest out of my due with hundreds. I was perfectly fine with that. This was far better than I’d ever done before. To my surprise, she put the hundreds away. She then handed me the money she’d counted out, along with the enormous stack of ten pound notes, which was as thick as my fist. I stared at it in disbelief. Was this really for me? I picked it up with all the care I would use with a newborn baby and staggered away from the counter. A note under the rubber band said the stack contained one hundred ten pound notes. I counted them. Unbelievable. Somehow, it was real. I was holding the Holy Grail in my hands.
So how did I feel? Take the idea of walking around with a stack of one hundred of any bill (awesome!) and add to it the fact that I now had no worries about change – the bane of my existence – for at least a month. I was ecstatic! With this stack, anything was possible. If I held it out in front of me when crossing streets, traffic was sure to part like the
09 March 2008
Team USA: The Untold Story
The games were played outdoors on either a clay tennis court or a paved basketball court in the evenings. Only four or five players took the field at once, depending on the size of the court being used. Team
I attended the first game as a spectator, along with Liz and Steph. When we arrived, the teams were warming up and a few Egyptians were lounging around watching. The teams played on a clay tennis court with three fielders and a goalie in at a time. The game consisted of two halves that lasted around 15 or 20 minutes each, with a five minute break in the middle. At 8:30 sharp the teams took the field and the game began. Team
Things are looking dire by the end of the first half. The score is 3-1, Team
The Egyptians begin playing more conservatively, trying to hold onto their lead as the clock winds down. They’re still aggressive with the ball when they have it downfield, however, and it’s a stellar combination of good defense by the fielders and knucklebiting saves by Anthony that keeps Team
With the game all tied up and play time quickly expiring, both teams are focused and the intensity level is high. Riding the momentum from Steve’s goal, our boys dribble down the court, pass, pass, and send it to Charlie... he takes the shot from outside ----- it’s good! Pandemonium in the stands! We’re up 4-3! Mike, who has arrived to support the team, erupts with shouts of U-S-A! U-S-A!
The Egyptians are crestfallen but hardly about to give up. They come flying back into action with a vengeance. The tension of the situation is heightened by the fact that only the ref knows exactly how much time remains – there’s no visible game clock. Good defense and goalie work by the Americans hold back the tide of Arab fury, but barely. With seconds (presumably) remaining, Team
Team
27 February 2008
School: My Ostensible Reason for Being Here
Classes at the
People not cool enough to chill at Greek spend their time hanging around Main Campus, about a block down the street. This is where most administrative offices are located, and it’s home to a gym, a soccer/basketball court, and a tennis court. Although well maintained and aesthetically pleasing,
The Egyptian students remind me of American high schoolers. Outside of class, they tend to congregate in cliquish clusters and clog up stairwells. It depends somewhat on the class, but most of the local students don’t seem to care about school at all. They come in late, don’t open their notebooks, don’t have pens, play with cell phones, get up and leave randomly. I can’t much blame them though – most of my classes are fairly boring. My history class is particularly bad. The professor is a late middle aged Arab woman with shoulder length black hair parted severely to the left of middle. Always clad in multiple waist-length necklaces and several gaudy golden bracelets, she wears glasses on the end of her nose and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. Instead, she stares at a point in the upper back of the room where the wall joins the ceiling and recites her lectures as if she were doing a PBS special. Unlike my other professors, she doesn’t get angry when people come in late, but rather plows inexorably onward in her speeches.
My Arab Society class has a fluttery female professor who likes to complain about the flaws of the Egyptian educational system rather than teach us anything. Ironic, no? The most interesting occurrence so far was a big argument on the first day about whether Egyptians are Arabs or not. Half the class said yes. Half the class said no, Egyptians have a unique heritage as descendants of the pharaohs. Identity politics is huge here. Ask two people what it means to be Arab and you’re guaranteed to get different answers.
International Politics of the
My
The beauty of thine eyes
Shines forth with radiant glow
The luster of thy skin
Doth rival purest snow
To gaze on thy fair form
Unloosens my mind’s load
O who wouldst ever guess
That thou art but a toad?
I’m going to preempt any criticism of lines 3-4 and state that the subject of this poem is a rare African albino toad. I swear they exist. I’m going to preempt any criticism of the rest of the poem and say that anyone who doesn’t like it can go jump in a lake.
My last class is Egyptian colloquial Arabic. I don’t even know what to say here. We spend 90% of our time repeating simple phrases until our heads explode or the professor decides we’ve finally gotten the pronunciation right. I can’t remember the latter option happening with any great frequency. My ability to correctly pronounce the words, bad enough as it would ordinarily be, is made exponentially worse by my two years of exposure to Modern Standard Arabic. Although the two dialects share a substantial bit of vocabulary, the intonation is different and it’s hard not to pronounce things the way I originally learned them. Sadly, I’m far from the worst in the class – in fact I’d say I rank fairly high. Sometimes it’s just maddening. I do like the class dynamic though; the kids are lighthearted and friendly and the professor is a riot on most days. Unfortunately, this class meets four days a week, and we’re in a different room in a different building each day. This can be confusing, as the following incident illustrates:
Log 02-20-08
15:54 Arrive at usual Wednesday room, same one utilized for prior three weeks. Area occupied by another class. Unacceptable.
15:56 Commanding officer not yet present. Rank and file unilaterally make decision to exchange fire with hostile occupying forces. Initial assault repulsed.
16:03 General Khaled arrives. Parleys with enemy commander. Negotiations unsuccessful.
16:04 Situation dire. Enemy fortified in encampment. Our forces outnumbered. Many hostiles wielding laptops, granting technological superiority. Morale low.
16:06 In the midst of planning highly sophisticated flanking maneuver designed to recapture room. Interrupted when enemy soldier launches preemptive strike with internet-based evidence indicating our assigned classroom has been changed without notice. Defeat.
16:07 Dispute in ranks over proper course of action. Many troops in favor of tactical retreat to café in order to obtain provisions and discuss strategy. Proposal vetoed by commanding officer.
16:08 Forced march to alternate building with purpose of locating new base camp.
16:20 Forward scouts discover new base camp is overrun as well.
16:21 Engage in skirmish with hostile forces and exchange fire for period of several minutes. Opposing commander advises we check with admin to confirm accuracy of our orders. Blatant chicanery intended to get us out of the room so the enemy can construct defensive fortifications.
16:27 Further hostilities prove pointless. Temporary ceasefire declared.
16:28 Rank and file again suggest café option.
16:29 Proposal vetoed.
16:30 Rank and file attempt to override veto.
16:31 Override of veto carries.
16:32 Override of veto vetoed.
16:33 Class commences in courtyard. Weather: cold and windy. Environment: noisy. Attention paid: none.
17 February 2008
Alexandria, Part Three: Stranger in a Strange Land
We launched an abortive attempt to visit the Graeco-Roman museum Saturday morning, which was oddly closed on weekends. We instead headed for the catacombs, another popular tourist destination. On the way, we paid a small entry fee to visit Pompey’s Pillar, a massive (Corinthian?) column jutting from the top of a hillside near the catacombs. There were several sphinxes nearby, and we stopped to take pictures. I waited until none of the guards were looking and scrambled up for a quick photo. Liz and Steph were dying to follow suit, and they entrusted me with a camera so I could take a picture of them. This was a poor decision on their part, as I got a nice (i.e. not particularly flattering) candid shot of them climbing, which is now on Facebook. 
We then made our way to the catacombs. After paying admission, we descended down a narrow stone spiral staircase into the depths of the earth. The air was dank and musty, and it would have been black as night without the dim yellow lighting installed throughout the complex. The main chamber was ornate, with pillars, archways, and small sculptures carved into the rock. Faded paint stained the walls in vague, washed out shapes. I wish I had more pictures of this place, but cameras were prohibited. We did manage to sneak ours in, but a suspicious old attendant kept staring at us, making it was hard to get good shots off. After doing our best, we set off to explore the numerous side passages branching out from the central area. This turned out to be less exciting than I had anticipated, as virtually all of the passages led to small rooms with chambers hollowed out for sarcophagi. To make things worse, we couldn’t descend to the bottom level because the caverns were flooded due to recent rain. Disappointed, I followed my group back up and out as a massive horde of Asian (I’m guessing Chinese) tourists flocked down the spiral staircase, chattering noisily and obstructing our path.
Our last tourist stop was the famous Library of Alexandria. I don’t really know or care why it’s famous, although I will admit the building is nice. Truth be told, I was far from impressed, and I sat down and went to sleep while everyone else looked at some old paintings and maps and other such museum stuff.
We finished up with the library late on Saturday afternoon. At this point, Dan and I decided we wanted to head back to
You must be joking. After a moment of despair, we thought to try getting third class tickets. I had been warned not to do this because the conditions in third class are not particularly pleasant, but what choice did we have at this point? Reproaching the counter, we asked:
“Can we buy third class tickets?”
“Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock trains, full.”
“Right, but what about third class?”
“Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine…”
These seemed to be the only words of English the man spoke. We changed tactics.
“Daraga talata, daraga talata – fein daraga talata? (third class, third class, where is third class?)”
The man started speaking incomprehensibly in Arabic and pointed us down the station the way we had come. We walked until we found another counter. Egyptians were crowding around the windows, exchanging money for little stubs of paper that didn’t look anything like the tickets we had bought on the way down. Unsure of what to do, we drew near one of the windows and asked in Arabic for tickets to
We went back out to the platform and looked around. No place to buy a ticket in sight. We tried asking a security guard for help. Unlike in
We went back and forth between the counters several times in a futile attempt to solve the great mystery of where third class tickets come from. The common answer, insofar as we could understand, was “platform one.” Desperate, it occurred to me to try outside sources assistance. My phone’s battery was almost dead, but I squeezed off a call to George, who I knew had visited
Crestfallen, we left the station and caught a cab back to the hostel. It took a couple minutes, but I eventually realized I had never seen Dan so angry. Although completely calm and composed to all external appearances, he muttered under his breath nonstop about murdering people the whole way back, and wouldn’t stop saying, “I’m so pissed. I’m so pissed,” in a flat monotone.
We were not pleased with the state of affairs at the time, but it turned out to be just as well that
we stayed in
After dinner we went back to the same bar from the previous night, Cap D’Or. It was even livelier this evening, and we sat in a corner of the main room instead of in the back. The owner gave us a hearty welcome back and accurately recited the drinks we had all ordered the night before. The music playing that night was of a particularly catchy Arabic variety, and people clapped along while a few middle aged women danced in the middle of the floor. We clapped along to the beat from time to time from the safety of our corner. The bar owner tried to get our 
girls to get up and dance, but they weren’t having any of it. A few minutes later, one of the particularly enthusiastic men at the bar noticed that some of us were participating in the clapping, and he started waving at us excitedly to get up and dance. In a betrayal that will neither be forgiven nor forgotten, Dan pointed at me. The man’s face lit up and he seized my arm roughly and pulled, while I struggled to resist. He was not halfhearted in his efforts. I found myself dragged to my feet and thrust across the room, almost into the arms of a much older Arab woman. This brought universal applause from the bar. Having no idea what to do, I tried an awkward two step, waving my arms frantically out of time, and then decided I was better off shuffling my feet and clapping. I did a discomfited jig for thirty seconds or a minute, and then I fled back to my corner refuge where my “friends” sat laughing at me. I spent the rest of the night plotting evil things to do to Dan in his sleep.
The bar left us to ourselves for a while after that. I started a game where we took turns trying to flip a bottle cap into an empty glass from around eighteen inches away. This was more difficult than anticipated, even for the sober ones among us, and it was some little while before Mike finally succeeded in winning. We burst into triumphant shouts, which attracted the nearby bar owner, who began giving us all high fives. When he clasped hands with Anthony, he wrapped around into an arm wrestling position, saying something about Anthony being strong. Anthony was obviously surprised by this, and not quite sure what to do. Although he didn’t appear particularly muscular, the bartender was a big man, probably around 250 pounds. I had full faith in our enforcer’s abilities, and I wanted to see this. We made way at the table and cheered him on, so the contest began. Still looking slightly bemused, Anthony held the smiling barman in place, biding his time. Eventually, he made a move and started gaining ground. With a laugh, the owner stood up and broke off their grip. “Left hand now,” he said. Anthony was not so confident in his left, but he consented. This didn’t go as well. From the beginning, the owner was putting some wacky moves on Anthony’s wrist. Anthony held on for a minute or two and then broke grip. After mutual compliments and applause from the audience, his jolly opponent waddled off to tend to other customers. Another challenger quickly stepped up – a nicely dressed businessman wearing glasses. This guy was a bit on the scrawny side, and I don’t know what he was thinking. Anthony beat him down in about a second and a half, at which point the man cheered loudly and started clapping his hands. Bewildered, Anthony glanced around to make sure no other contenders were going to crawl out of the woodwork, and moved gratefully back into his former seat.
(Photo courtesy of Mike)
We stayed for a while longer, but not much else noteworthy happened that evening. The guy who had forced me into dancing was very social, talking to people as they came into the bar and trying to get them to participate in the dance party. After a few more drinks he told me I was a good man and scribbled his email address and phone number on a piece of paper, advising me to call him if we were ever in Alexandria again. I guess I’m just irresistible.
The next morning we checked out of the hostel and headed to the train station. It being Sunday (the first day of the week in Islamic countries), we had no trouble securing tickets. We were all tired and didn’t talk much on the ride back. I watched a little boy giggle and play on the luggage rack for a while, and then I dozed off. When we arrived in the station back in
(One more from Mike)
Note: I’m not positive, but my best estimate for the total cost of the weekend in Alexandria, including train fare, four meals, two nights in a hostel, entry fees for attractions, and about a billion cab rides: $70. I love this country. Come visit anytime.
