Probability of Survival Now High

Well, made it to Jerusalem. Heck of a lot easier to get into than Syria. Lots of IDF military personnel carrying M16s. Be back in Cairo sometime between Friday and Sunday.

Not Dead Yet

I'm in Aleppo, Syria. Got here last night from Damascus. Facebook and Blogspot are blocked in most places in this country, so I haven't had a chance to update until now. Here for a few days, then headed south again.

Update: Still Alive

In Amman, Jordan. Leave for Damscus in the morning. Keep your fingers crossed.

Out To Lunch

Spring break starts tomorrow. Going to Jordan, Syria, Israel. Back May 3rd.

Mount Sinai

I went to climb Mount Sinai two weeks ago. On the way there, my party of thirteen stopped in nearby Dahab, a low-key beach resort town on the Red Sea. We spent the day swimming in the clear blue sea, sleeping in the sun, and sipping drinks on the beach. I decided I could use a tan and foolishly declined to apply sunscreen before falling asleep. That turned out to be a poor choice.

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 Mount Sinai, two hours away by bus. Our plan was to start climbing at around 2:30 a.m. in order to make the sunrise at 5:30. The mountain trail was packed with other climbers and camels making the ascent. Although I had been looking forward to this experience for months, I ended up staying back to make sure the slowest member of our group made it up. The slow pace of ascent, frequent stops, my excessive sun exposure earlier in the day, and lack of sleep wore on me as the night dragged by.

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.

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 Cairo so far?” he asked.
“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. Cairo felt safe. I knew where I was and where I was going. I knew where I was sleeping and where my food was coming from. I was home.

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 Luxor. It had been years since I’d ridden a bike, and I was a little nervous about my ability to cope with the traffic conditions we’d be facing. After a quick test drive, I decided I’d be ok. I checked out all the other bikes while everyone got adjusted. Brakes ranged from unreliable to nonfunctioning, and I had Mike get more air for his back tire since it seemed a little low. Everything else seemed fine. With everyone assembled, we plunged down the dirt ramp that led into the main street, and took off.

The bike ride was a trip. I’ve never experienced anything like the thrill of cruising through the rough, rocky streets of Luxor dodging trucks, motorcycles, buses, horse-drawn carriages, donkey-pulled carts, pedestrians, and other bikes, all the while trying to stay with the group. It felt like a scene from an action movie. After some initial confusion during which our party was separated, we made it to the paved road that would take us out toward Karnak. I rode ahead with Tim and Jordan, weaving through busy intersections and gliding between massive tour buses. So much fun.

We finally reached Karnak, where we left our bikes at the gate. The temple is my favorite tourist attraction in Egypt so far, and I expect that it will maintain that position. It doesn’t matter whether you know a lick of history or not – this place is impressive. Colossal pillars, elaborate hieroglyphics, ornate obelisks, and stunning statuary surrounded us at every turn. The place was jam packed with tourists like ourselves, but it was fairly easy to sneak off to quiet areas. I found a way to climb on top of one of the temple’s large chambers, which afforded an excellent view for pictures (which I would include if they didn’t take an hour each to upload).

After we finished up at Karnak, we rode back. Most of the group headed to the hotel after lunch, but five of us kept the bikes and took them on a ferry across the river to the west bank. Our goal was to reach Banana Island, which was rumored to be more of a peninsula. We weren’t positive how to get there. We rode out a ways until we reached the outskirts of town and then pedaled along a narrow dirt road parallel to the Nile. This was a rural area, filled mostly with palm trees and fields of tall sugar cane. Enmeshed in this scene were rich adobe-colored houses that fit perfectly into their surroundings. As we glided by, the men scattered throughout the fields and the women and children sitting near the houses shouted and waved to us. Kids ran along the rode with us, clapping and smiling. The scene was idyllic, serene, and I felt out of time for a moment, as if an illustration from a fantasy novel had come to life around me. I have probably never been more out of place anywhere in Egypt, but nowhere did I feel so welcome.

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.

Interlude: April Fool's Day

Sitting in class on the morning of April 1^st, I decided I needed to pull a good prank. I haven’t participated in April Fool’s festivities since my junior year of high school, when a prank of mine backfired severely. I decided now was the time to break that streak. But what to do... I pondered for a few minutes and then came up with an idea. After class, I sat down at a computer in the library and wrote the following email:

Subject: Nonreceipt of payment for student housing

Dear Mike Y-----:

The American University in Cairo Office of Student Accounts regrets to inform you that your eligibility for housing in ZAMALEK DORMITORY has been withdrawn due to nonreceipt of payment. You have been granted a three day grace period in which to remove your personal belongings from the residence, after which time you will not be permitted to return to the premises. Please respond acknowledging your receipt of this notice.

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 Luxor. I fully expected him to see right through my nonsense (both because he’s sharp and because he doesn’t use Gmail), but I wanted to see what his reaction would be.

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 US and making international phone calls to their parents floated through my head. I didn’t want to stop the show completely, so I decided to compromise by keeping close tabs on the situation. I had Dan intervene in Jane’s case. Via instant message, he broached the topic of strange emails from student accounts. I don’t know if that did it or if she’d already figured it out, but I received the following email moments later:

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 US on her cellphone when her roommate Anna (who also received the email, but was apparently less gullible) was unable to contain her laughter any longer.

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.