Settling In

We had a dorm orientation two nights ago. There were around sixty or seventy kids who showed up, 22 of which were from Georgetown. That makes us by far the biggest group among the foreign students in the Zamalek dorm. Orientation wasn't particularly interesting, but the residence directors seem pretty laid back. Basically, we can come and go as we please, with only a few restrictions. Security guards check our bags every time we come in to see if we have any alcohol, guns, or drugs, which are, sadly, prohibited. If one manages to sneak any of those things in and later gets caught, it’s a stern letter of warning sent home to the parents. On the other hand, the dorm is strictly segregated, and should someone be caught on the opposite sex’s floors at any time, that individual gets kicked out of school, no and's if's or but's. This seems logical – I clearly pose more danger to the ladies of the dormitory than an AK-47 would.

The best part of orientation was when it was over, because we got free food. Alright, so this food happened to be Pizza Hut, but whatever. We all partook of a hearty meal, which was shared by one of the craftier stray cats that roam the dorm. This particular fellow jumped up on the table when no one was looking, and I caught him chowing down on olive pizza. I happen to have a grudge against this particular cat, so I shooed him away. The cat and I don’t get along for a couple of reasons. First off, he looks kind of like Hitler. He’s black and white, and the black across his face resembles a fuehrer-esque mustache. Secondly, little Adolf had the audacity to harass me the first night I was here. I was innocently trying to eat my Hardee’s in the lobby at 3 in the morning when, without invitation, the cat jumped up onto the table we were sitting at and meandered across it to check out my food, which I was holding in my hands at the time. It’s kind of a challenge to toss a cat onto the floor while eating a chicken sandwich, but I think I’m getting pretty good at it.

On a different topic, I’m not sure if I stressed enough how insane traffic is here. I saw four guys run out into the middle of a packed highway with cars whizzing by in order to board a bus that was in motion at the time. Seriously, who does that? I’m also slowly learning to decipher the meaning of various types of car horn honks, as they seem to comprise a highly advanced system of communication here. There are countless different types of honks, which vary in tempo and duration, and they’re very standardized. You’ve got your common wedding honk, your “we just won the game” honk, your “I’m coming in really fast off the bridge so you better watch out” honk. There are even honks that sound like swear words. Mostly, though, honking just means, “look out, I’m here.” Once a driver merging into traffic has honked, establishing himself as the “honker,” he’s sort of passed the responsibility for a collision onto the receiver of the honk (or the “honkee,” if you will). It’s very different from driving in the states, but the Egyptian traffic system has a charm all of its own.

I found myself in another weird situation two mornings ago. I was half asleep, and I heard Dan messing around with the door. I had no idea what he was doing, but he spent five or ten minutes flipping the door lock back and forth and jimmying it around. For a while I thought he was purposely trying to torment me, but as the haze of sleep cleared it eventually dawned on me that he couldn’t get the door open. At that point I switched from being annoyed at his obnoxiousness to being irritated with his incompetence. It was wrong of me to judge him so harshly though, because it turns out that for some bizarre reason our dorm room keys wouldn’t unlock the door when used from inside the room. Moreover, our door locked itself automatically when closed. So basically, we had locked ourselves in our own room. A random dorm worker happened to pass by and notice our predicament, and he tried to get Dan to shove the key under the door. It wouldn’t fit. There’s a locked door between our room and the one next to us, though, so Dan finally got the key under that and our neighbors gave it to the maintenance guy, who then bailed us out. Fun. And this happened again the next day. Today, though, someone finally came to fix the problem, which is fortunate because I thought it was kind of a dangerous situation. I mean, what if there had been a fire or a mummy attack while we were locked in our room? We would have been totally effed.

Cairo - First Impressions

Yesterday was my first full day in Cairo. After the late night, Mike and I slept in until around 12:45 and only reluctantly got up after that. The plan, as I understood it, was to meet Angela and Jessi at 1 and go out into the city. There was no sign of them when we got down, so we sat and waited. We ended up talking to another student by the name of George. I mistook him for a Middle Easterner at first because of his skin tone and hair style, but I eventually found out that he was from Spokane, and a student at the University of Washington. He’s been here since last summer through a direct matriculation program, so he really knows the ropes. Being an incredibly cool guy, he offered to show us around Cairo. Angela came downstairs up after a bit and we headed out.

First stop was a small Arab restaurant the name of which escapes me. George got us some taamiyya (similar to falafel, this is lettuce, tomato, and something like fried chickpeas tucked into half a piece of pita bread), for which we paid 50 piasters. That works out to roughly 10 cents in USD, and I've found my true love. We walked across the bridge over the Nile that connects Zamalek (the island the dorms are on) to the rest of Cairo, and then spent the afternoon touring the city. George was incredibly helpful, and he had answers to almost any question we asked about how to do things or where to find things in the city. I learned an incredible amount, and it’s a struggle to keep it all from leaking out of my head.

There are a couple of things to mention about Cairo so far. First, crossing streets is something of an experience. There are very few (functioning) stop lights, traffic signs, crosswalks, etc. If you need to cross a street, you just cross, regardless of oncoming traffic. This applies to everything from crowded one-way back alleys to huge four lane highways, which Egyptian motorists drive on as if they had six or seven lanes. All in all, crossing streets is a lot like playing Frogger, or at least that’s the best comparison I’ve heard so far. Honking horns are a near constant occurrence, but the honking generally doesn’t seem to be out of anger. In fact, I’m told that the Egyptian driving system works perfectly, and there are very few accidents. More on that in a bit.

After exploring the city for a few hours, we walked back to the island and went to a café near the dorms. We ended up staying for around two hours just talking and eating. It was very different from an American restaurant. Everything was slower and people sat around for a long time smoking or shooting the breeze. I started getting restless after we finished eating – my ingrained sense of American propriety kept telling me it was time to leave. But the culture here is much more relaxed and people aren’t in a hurry, so I’m going to have to adjust to that.

George got a call while we were at the café from an Arab friend of his by the name of Mohammad. When George told him where he was and what he was doing, Mohammad, who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, wanted to take us out around town, despite having never met us. He came by the dorm with another friend in his mid-size Chevy, so Mike, Angela, George, and I crammed into the back and we headed off. Cruising through town, I started to appreciate the beauty of the Egyptian driving system. Because there are no real rules of the road, everyone is used to the insanity and is excellent at gauging distance and speed. They do whatever they need to in order to get where they’re going, and that approach works in a country where everyone is used to it. If you put a solitary Egyptian driver into an American city, however, I have no doubt that he could single handedly wreck the entire highway system.

After a quick stop at a huge Western-style mall, we ended up at Mohammad’s apartment, an upscale affair in downtown Cairo. Mohammad is quite the character. I’m not sure that he would appreciate the label, but the best word I can find to describe him is metrosexual. Around 23 years old, he’s a big, loquacious, well-dressed guy with curly hair, a soft voice, and perfect English. Bizarrely, he’s a huge American movie/television buff, and has three hard drives and cases upon cases of dvds on which he stores a ridiculously, obscenely large number of tv and movie downloads. Seriously, he has everything, ever. Mohammad was extremely friendly, offering to take us up to his apartment at 1 AM (where he lives with his parents, as is Egyptian custom). After making us food and tea, he showed us his room. Conversation turned to movies for a while, as Mohammad is an aspiring film director (although he graduated from dental school). He’s particularly into American classics (Stanley Kubrick is perhaps his favorite director), and he had seen anything that any of us mentioned. Struggling to catch him off guard, I played my trump card and brought up Incubus, the Esperanto cult classic starring William Shatner. To my delight, Mohammad’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped – he’d never heard of it. I smiled. Like a challenger reaching the top of the final tower obstacle in Ninja Warrior, I too had finally achieved total victory.

After discussing movies for a while, we switched to a more traditional Middle Eastern activity: an intense game of Cranium. At two in the morning. In Cairo. This turned into a two or three hour affair and afterwards, somewhat against my will, we watched segments of a downloaded American Idol episode and some of Britain’s Got Talent. That finished, Mohammad drove us all back to the dorm at a quarter to five in the morning. I finally got to bed around six, just as the sun was rising. All in all, it was an extremely Western night, and couldn’t have been more different from the night before.

The Adventure Begins

Got in last night. So much to write about already. I hate to launch into this without giving background, but this entry is going to be long enough as it is, so it'll have to wait.

An old guy waving an AUC placard picked us all up from the airport and shepherded us through immigration. The assistance wasn’t really necessary, as the guy stamping my passport literally didn’t even glance at it. I wanted to get some Egyptian currency in the airport, but the AUC guy told us to do exactly what he said and nothing else. I snuck off to the bathroom when he wasn’t looking and found myself in a strange situation. I walked in and an airport employee standing inside pointed me to a urinal. I used it while he watched. He then pointed me to the sink. I used that. He then handed me a paper towel. After I threw that away he looked at me expectantly and said something about a tip. I told him I didn’t have any Egyptian currency. He said “Euros, euros.” I truthfully told him I didn’t have any of those either and pushed past him after some more arguing. This was my formal introduction to the Arab institution of “baksheesh” – tipping/bribery.

Driving from the airport to the university in a bus loaded with students, I was struck by how similar Cairo looked to a large Western city. There were frequent billboards, though not quite as many as back home (my favorite was an advertisement for Rambo 4, although the Coca-Cola and Samsung ones were pretty good too). There were definitely more mosques and fewer lights than I was used to, but the buildings didn’t strike me as particularly foreign in design. Our luggage churned along in front of us, roped down haphazardly in the back of a pickup truck that we followed. We eventually turned off the highway and down a side street, and I suddenly felt very much out of place. The architecture changed, the buildings looked older, and there were gangs of young men in the streets everywhere, despite the fact that it was almost 1 AM local time. They looked harmless enough, but we would discover otherwise before the night was over.

Arriving at the university dorm, we rounded up our luggage and checked in. Security guards did a quick search of our belongings while we waited for room assignments. I ended up in a quad room with two other students from Georgetown – Mike and Dan – as well as a guy named Louis from Rowan University in Jersey. We dumped our luggage and the headed back downstairs to see about getting some food or exploring. It was close to 2 AM, but I’d slept for several hours in Heathrow and none of us were about to call it quits on our first night. I was also incredibly hungry. We started talking to some guys downstairs who had clearly been around for a while. One of the people most interested in talking was Amir, a Palestinian enrolled full-time at AUC. We Americans wanted to go out for some food and supplies, and Amir was willing to show us around. Nine of us set out in total – six girls, Mike, Amir, and me. After a drawn out stop at a dingy market, we ended up heading for a Hardee’s – not at all what I was expecting for my first meal on Egyptian soil, but everything else was closed and I wasn't going to fuss about it.

This is where everything got crazy. The Hardee’s was at a four way intersection and there were quite a lot of young men hanging around in the streets outside, probably in their late teens. We got to the door and the girls started to go in first, followed by me, and finally Mike and Amir. I made it inside, but when I turned around I suddenly realized that Amir was in the middle of the street with at least ten of the young men swarming him, punching and kicking. I had no idea what was happening. He broke free after fifteen seconds or so and an older man wearing white robes and a headpiece tried to keep the gang off him while two other boys handed him his scarf and parts of his clothing that had been torn. Then he came inside. I asked him if he was alright, what had happened. He said “nothing, no big deal,” but that he was going to go get some friends and come back, so he would have to leave us for a little while. As far as I know, the girls had been ordering food and hadn’t noticed any of this. Amir went back outside and was instantly swarmed again, pushed into the middle of the street and beaten violently. Everyone noticed this time. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea what the fight was about – I could only guess it had something to do with Amir being Palestinian and the fact that he was wearing a traditional scarf, like the one Arafat always wore (I know, I really should know the name for those things). Regardless, it was fifteen on one and I was afraid Amir would be seriously injured if someone didn’t do something. I started for the door, but a student behind me told me not to go, said this wasn’t our fight. I have to admit my resolution to intervene was hardly firm, and I stayed where I was.

With the help of the white-robed man, Amir escaped again and returned to the restaurant. He was bleeding from the nose, his lip was cut, his shirt was torn, and he was breathing heavily. He said nothing, but went straight to the bathroom, where he stayed for some time. During that interval, Mike explained some of what had happened, as he had seen the whole thing start and tried to pull Amir inside at the beginning. Apparently, some of the young men outside had made lewd comments about the girls we were with as we walked in (this is a common occurrence in Cairo). Mike, who speaks Lebanese Arabic, heard Amir say, “respect yourself,” to them in Arabic. Clearly they were not pleased.

Eventually, Amir came out of the bathroom and we talked to him. The guys were still hanging around by the door, and I got the sense he would have been for continuing the fight if he’d had backup. We persuaded him to tell the Hardee’s manager the situation instead. The manager was extremely helpful. He went outside with Amir and supervised a heated discussion with one of the gang. The manager and Amir came back in after a bit, called the police, and we had an escort out of the restaurant within five minutes. We walked back to the dorm shaken, but without incident. I sat downstairs in the lobby with Mike and two of the girls to finish our food and talk the events over. It was around 4 AM by the time we headed upstairs, but this seems to be a typical, if not early, bedtime for Egyptians on the weekend. The four of us made plans to meet up at 1 PM the next afternoon so we could get out to buy cell phones, but that’s another story entirely.