Mule

Right now I'm in Luxor with Paul's friend Julia, who's an English teacher in Sinai. We spent the day looking around Luxor and Karnak temples, which are both really huge and well-preserved. It's hard to believe that five-thousand-year-old buildings could still be in such great shape that everything but the roof is still solid.

After the full day of touristy things, I guess we both felt that we'd had enough Egyptian stuff, because we decided to head to Murphy's Irish Pub (pronounced "Bubba" or "Bobba" in Arabic). Turns out it was more Irish than we could ever have imagined. The lower floor of the pub was empty, but the top floor was filled with Irish tourists of all ages watching a rugby match between Ireland and somebody else. It was completely surreal -- nothing inside the pub would have given us a clue that we weren't in Ireland, let alone in Egypt, except for the waiters. Even they were playing along, putting the Pogues and various Irish folk tunes on the sound system. The Irish were singing along and clapping (especially after the Irish team won the rugby match), and it was altogether the most stereotypically Irish pub experience I've ever had (with apologies to Buckley and Fitzgeralds'). One of the funniest things was when Julia noticed that some of the younger tourists still had their backpacks -- apparently they'd come straight from the Luxor train station to the pub without even stopping to find a hotel. As we were leaving, we heard some of the older patrons complaining that the pub wasn't Irish enough because it was temporarily out of Guinness. Of course, I shouldn't be too snobby about tourists who avoid the "real" Egypt, because Julia and I spent at least two hours on the night we arrived searching for Luxor's only Indian restaurant. (Turned out it had closed -- Egyptians are NOT fans of spicy food.)

As Paul could tell you, I've gone through a lot of culture shock in the last week. One thing he hasn't mentioned (possibly for fear of offending the parental portion of the viewing audience) is how terrible the traffic situation is here. The worst part is trying to cross the street (and yes, I'll admit I'm a bit oversensitive). There are occasionally painted crosswalks (I've seen two), but no one ever stops at them. There are some traffic lights, but no one really stops at those, either. The only thing that really stops the flow of traffic is a policeman, but there aren't too many intersections with traffic cops. I've seen a couple of intersections with both a traffic light and a police officer, but the two weren't signaling the same thing.

However, all of the cases I've just mentioned are improvements over the usual situation, which is more like a constant stream of cars, trucks that are loaded so high they look as if they're about to topple, donkeys pulling loads of clover, microbuses (from the early eighties at the latest, sometimes with made-up brand names like "Volkas Wagon"), bicycles, motorcycles, and people. The people usually try to make it across the street one lane at a time, but since no one observes the concept of the lane, this is difficult. Also, no one will stop for you if you make it across one "lane" and are stuck waiting for the next lanes to clear. And at any moment a motorbike could come whizzing down on the "in-between space" where you're standing. I will say, though, that I haven't seen anyone get hit by a car yet. Alhamdulillah!

Another Cairene driving idiosyncracy: they prefer not to use turn signals or headlights, even at night (although some drivers will occasionally flash their brights just as they're coming towards you). Headlights are apparently considered so unnecessary and/or decorative that some of the cars in Abu Sir have had their normal headlights replaced with red or blue lights, while others have had extra colored lights added to the front of the car in random places. (That's also how the ceiling of Paul's living room looks, by the way.) I also like the way in which some trucks play cell-phone-sounding music (I heard "London Bridge Is Falling Down" yesterday) instead of beeping when they back up. Potentially lethal, but cute.

Speaking of cute, I'll tell you more about Paul's Egyptian family next time.

Paul and I just got back from watching an anti-war protest that was going on in Midan Tahrir (Cairo's main square, where the American University and Egyptian Museum are). One year ago, I was at a huge, chaotic protest in Spain (near the station that was just bombed), but the Egyptian version could not have been more different. At first, I couldn't even tell if there were any protesters -- they were hard to spot because of the sea of military police surrounding them. The police were perfectly lined up three deep all around the little circular oasis in the middle of the square and all along the sides, plus they were completely surrounding the protesters (of whom there weren't more than a couple of hundred). There was nothing at all chaotic or riot-like about the protest -- they looked more as if they were about to do the can-can.

Most of the "ordinary" (non-protesting and non-riot-police) Egyptians were headed away from the square, but Paul and I and a couple of his friends wanted to get a better view, so we went into a random building and climbed to the top floor, hoping it would be a store or office that would let us in for a bit while we watched. Unfortunately, it was a private apartment, but Paul's friend rang the doorbell anyway. A very nice Lebanese woman let us in after Paul explained that we were from Al-Ahram. She had a gorgeous apartment and a cute little balcony overlooking the square, and she very kindly let us watch the action from there (even though it was her birthday and she was in the middle of throwing a party!). I was the only one with a camera, but I had heard that tourists could get into big trouble for taking pictures of the military, so I was a little bit nervous. However, I did end up taking some pictures, as did Paul's friends -- I could tell that a couple of the soldiers saw us, but they didn't try to confiscate the camera when we came out of the building.

So that was our exciting photojournalist/superspy adventure. I also had another chance to see the Egyptian police in action a couple of days ago, when I was going into the metro by the building where Paul works and saw a pair of heavily armed police beating up a kid who looked to be about thirteen while about thirty horrified subway-riders looked on. Paul's coworkers say that this kind of police brutality isn't that uncommon.

Due to popular demand, my sister will be taking over the blog for the next three weeks, while she's in Egypt. This is surely a disastrous step. It'll be like those Family Circus cartoons, where you're getting used to your daily dose of witty insights, cutting social commentary, and touching greetings from the family, including Grandma's angel, on all national holidays, and then Bill Keane hands the whole thing over to his son Billy. I mean, the man must be smart, judging from his cartoonery, but what is he thinking? This is a child, whose artistic skills are visibly inferior, and whose idea of "humor" is a map of himself wandering around the neighborhood, as illustrated by a dotted line tracing his path. And that's it. Actually, come to think of it, maybe Bill Keane and not little Billy did the dotted path cartoons but that's beside the point.

I just found out about the bombings in Spain this morning, since I was in Abu Sir all yesterday. I did read the news briefs at the bottom of the screen during a soap opera, but 8 of the 12 items were about Mubarak's speech in Alexandria, where he called for reform from inside Egypt, not externally imposed. Clearly newsworthy. On Wednesday, there was a rumor at work that Mubarak was going to finally lift the Emergency Law that has been in place in the tumultuous 22-year-long wake of Sadat's assassination, but no such luck.
With the onset of spring here (although there's not much spring to speak of, it just goes from a very mild winter directly into summer -- Ahmad, Abu Ahmad, and a couple of the cousins were arguing the other day over what season it was, until Abu Ahmad authoritatively declared that it was fall: "Because it goes summer, spring, winter, fall, summer") I've been starting to miss ultimate. Collin and Vinny had forwarded the e-mail addresses of a couple ultimate players in Cairo, and I got in touch with them. The Christian Science Monitor reporter for the Middle East, Dan Murphy I think his name is, is an ultimate fanatic and with some other expats is getting some games going twice a week, so I'll try to make it out to one of those every other week or so.
I brought some of the foreigners from work, plus Raghu and Thomas (Swatties at AUC this semester) out to Abu Seer two weeks ago. The kids, especially Hasna' (8) and Ali (3), were not as shy as I expected, and really liked all of them. Ali, misunderstanding Thomas' name, toddled up the stairs when we were all on the roof, and said "Where's Hummus?". We'll see if the name sticks. And tomorrow Joanna is coming to Egypt! She'll be staying with me in Abu Sir for about ten days, then going to Aswan and Luxor with Julia, and after that both of them, Nori, Kay (Nori's mom), and I will all go to the Pyramids. This'll actually be my first visit to the Pyramids, despite passing by them twice a day.

A couple of you have asked about girls' education in the village, so I'll tell you what I learned from Um Ahmad (the mother of the family in Abu Sir) several weeks ago. Um Ahmad (her original name, which I almost never hear, is Rouhiya) never went to school, and married Adil, later to be known as Abu Ahmad, when she was 15 and he was about 22. She's illiterate, though she has been trying, half-heartedly and to little avail, to get Ahmad to teach her to read. The next generation of girls in Abu Sir is considerably better off, education-wise, though it's still normal for a girl to marry at 16, 17, or 18 years of age, usually to a guy who is 22 or 23, and has finished his army service and possibly university, and found a job and an apartment. Olfat, who is 14 or so, aspires to be a doctor, and not marry until she's in her mid or upper twenties. One of the cousins, Sharwat (17) never went to school, but she's taking lessons informally from some woman in the village who has a university degree and gives free classes to illiterate girls and women, while her brother Muhammad (19) only had four years of schooling.
Generally the school system seems pretty god-awful in any case, with the English teachers none too fluent from what I can tell.