Mule

Well, Tuesday was not such a great day. As you may have noticed. (1) Bush is re-elected, easily sweeping Arkansas despite the death of one potential voter . Well, that's no doubt an urban legend, but it was recounted to our modern standard Arabic class by Nur ad-Din. When I told Amin the story, he burst out in his hyena-like laugh for a good minute, then went straight into a lecture about how in Islam the second coming of Jesus won't occur until a series of pre-ordained events have taken place, only a few of which have happened so far. (2) The ruler of the UAE, Shaykh Zayid, passed away. One of the very few good leaders in the Middle East. (3) Arafat is dying. Which is sad, but Palestine needs to move beyond him, since he's basically become just a Mubarak/Assad/Bouteflika-style dictator stifling the growth of any independent political movements, even if he was popularly elected (4) This one didn't show up on the Egyptian state news so much, but an opposition editor was beat up by the armed thugs of the powers that be. (5) Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmaker who had made a ten-minute piece blasting the mistreatment of women by some Muslims, was assassinated by a Moroccan immigrant.
While the Egyptian public may have a reputation for a fatalistic resignation to bad news from American, Palestine, Egypt, and elsewhere, they did not take this one sitting down, sipping tea, smoking sheesha, and watching soap operas at the local 'ahwa. On Thursday night, as I was going from my apartment to Khan al-Khalili, a mob of some 50 young men raced through the streets, burning the flag of the Other, and screaming insults about select parts of the Other's mother's anatomy. This demonstration was repeated throughout Cairo, threatening to topple the political status quo. As anyone who's spent some time in Egypt might have guessed, yes, Al-Ahly did beat Zamalek in the big annual match Thursday night, 4-2.

While it's not quite on par with East Asia as far as humorously bad English goes, Egypt does have its highlights. Such as the following notebooks which I use for my studies:
-on one side, covered with balloons, saying "Any place we can flay". The other side has a parachutist, with "H..e...lp me....I can't do it again".
-In a popular American West theme, both sides have a large picture of a cowboy roping in a calf, with the word "CAWBOY" in huge letters, with a logo of "Man and Horses".
-My notebook for Egyptian Arabic features a dog scrubbing himself in the shower on the front side, captioned "Washing in New Yaer" while the back side has a dog with a ribbon in her fur/hair hugging an enormous pencil, entitled "Touch Wood" (this is also the name of a stationery/stationary store in Cairo, the title coming as a literal translation of the Egyptian saying "imsak al-khashab", which has the same meaning as "knock on wood).
-My newest addition features the same characters, this time getting even lewder, with the dog in the shower saying "Come to washing with me / I want met you before clain..I love you". The pencil-hugging dog doesn't share the emotion, and replies "No I can't do it with you never". The back side has a reenactment of Romeo/Juliet by squirrels: "Love Forever / ROMIO & GOLIT / You're not alone / Another day has gone, I'm still all alone / How could this be. you're not here with me, you never said..! whay". Brilliant.

And there are some good shirts with offensive English worn by Egyptians completely unaware of their meaning.
-"All I want is Peace in the Middle East" -- both people I saw wearing this shirt knew what that meant and were proud to be voicing this opinion, but didn't notice, nor did I at first, a small "And a blowjob" printed underneath it in fancy script.
-"Big Man: Choking Hazard" t-shirts, with a large obelisk design, are widespread in Cairo.

My Norwegian identity was ripped apart twice at a party at Rana and Anjali's house the night before Ramadan started. The first time, Rana deviously introduced me to a Swedish man in attendance as being from Oslo. His face lit up and he said something to the effect of "Først i kveld kan politiet få avhørt åringen som ved midnatt fikk knekket armer og ben?". To which I replied, trying my utmost to imitate my mother on the phone with her Minnesotan relatives, "Oh ja, ja." I don't think he was convinced.
And then I ran into Hanan at the party, an Algerian AUC graduate who also thought I was Norwegian. She had come over to our apartment a couple times, accompanied by her Italian-Egyptian boyfriend at the time, Bruno, where Amin flirted with her and played Afghan tapes with a running translation for her as Bruno glowered at him and complained about the tea I brought him. Anyway, she turns out to now be dating Charles, a classmate of mine in CASA, so I was busted again.

I spent about 30 pounds in bathroom fixtures--the sink now drains properly and there is a hose to accompany the Egyptian-style toilet. The locals in my part of Hussein seem to have mostly gotten used to seeing me, though the first few times the guys in the coffee shops beside my apartment would invariably helpfully try to steer me to Khan al-Khalili, believing that I was about to blunder into an apartment building. When lost or wandering tourists do pass through my street, I can hear a chorus of "Welcome", "No, no, no", and "This way, my amigo" from them.

Ramadan is in full swing in Hussein. The 6th of October holiday (marking the start of the 1973 war, widely believed here to have been a resounding Egyptian victory) went by with the usual combination of bombastic state propaganda and public apathy for such holidays, if appreciating the four day weekend. Sanaa's daughter, by the way, was in Basata (where Julia worked) for the holiday and walking on the beach when she saw the explosions near Nuweiba a few miles away). Basata itself was not chosen for the attack, probably because of the owner's policy since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada to ban Israelis from staying there. "Sinai Liberation Day", a political much wiser if less accurate name than "Peace Treaty with Israel Day" is April 25th, but is sure to go by basically unnoticed by normal Egyptians. Religous celebrations, such as Ramadan and the two Eids for Muslims, or Coptic Christmas (January 7th) and the Coptic New Year (September 11th) for Copts, or ones celebrated by both Muslims and Copts such as Sham al-Naseem (the Coptic Easter superimposed on an old Pharaonic holiday), tend to arouse much more interest than the secular national holidays.

Sorry I've been a lax poster yet again. For those of you I haven't been in touch with, I'm now living in Gamaliya, Naguib Mahfouz's birthplace at the heart of Islamic Cairo. My new roommate is Walid, an Egyptian senior at Al-Azhar and friend of Amin's (and unlike Amin, actually due to finish his studies on time). We're sharing a rather modest dwelling, which is furnished, technically speaking, but not according to sweeping definitions of the word that would require such luxuries as chairs, a fan, a fridge, a sink that pipes runoff water into the sewage system rather than dropping it unceremoniously onto the floor below, etc. It does have, at least, nice large wardrobes, and a tiled floor in the entry room, incorporating an (apparently unintentional) design of interlinked light-green swastikas and blue diamonds.
Ramadan started on Friday, and is really loud in Hussein. I chose to stay in the apartment studying rather than venturing out the first night due to the swarms of screaming young children throwing firecrackers.

Abu Ahmad has been trying to persuade me to buy a bicycle for Ali (who turned four in July) for Ramadan. I happened to run into him downtown and he took me to ask about prices on Rushdi Street, which specializes in bicycles and wheelchairs. The first place we went to the guy working there naturally asked how old the kid was, so he could guess how big a bike to get. Abu Ahmad hesitated and stalled a bit, before throwing out "Seven years old". So we were shown a bike that was much too large for Ali. And this happened in every shop we went to, since I didn't want to embarrass Abu Ahmad by interrupting with Ali's correct age. He at least realized that the bikes we were looking at were too big, but when he tried to get a small one, the store owner would say that a seven-year-old couldn't possibly ride it.

I can't get to my hotmail account, but I didn't go to Sinai for the 6th of October vacation, and so was far from the scene of the bombings. They all took place fairly close to where Julia had been working, and in towns I had passed through before. Right now I'm in Marsa Matrouh on the Mediterranean with a big group of CASA and AUC people.

John, Ryan, Amin and I left our apartment Friday morning for good. The landlady came by to go through the Egyptian ritual of making up phony damages to keep as much of our deposit money as possible. It wasn't too bad, though, and we kept LE 1075 of the original LE 1300. John and Ryan are staying with friends in Doqqi until they leave town, Amin is back in the dorms at Al-Azhar, and I'm crashing with Rana and Anjali (who just moved out from Melanie's apartment into a new place just two blocks from our old apartment downtown) until I can find somewhere to live. If anyone knows of a decent, cheap apartment in Cairo, preferably near the Metro and far away from aganib (foreigners), let me know.