Mule

Vinny's going to be coming to Cairo from May 3rd to May 8th, right after our spring break ends (which is really late, because there's an Islamic holiday on April 21st this year, Sinai Liberation Day on April 25th, some other holiday on April 28th, and then Shem El-Nessim on May 2nd, in a weird convergence of the Islamic, Coptic, and Western calendars combining to push spring break back a month).
I just got back from the first trip of spring break, which was to Sharm El-Sheikh and Moses' Mountain/the St.Katherine Monastery. AUC organized the trip for about $90 all-inclusive (buses seven hours there and back, three nights in the Movenpick Golf Resort and Hotel with breakfast and dinner). By far the most luxurious experience I've had in Egypt. Sharm El-Sheikh itself was really not very appealing, being very tacky and overpriced, resembling Las Vegas but on the Red Sea with great diving and snorkeling. A ten-minute taxi ride that I'd pay maybe LE4 or LE5 for in Cairo cost LE20 to LE25 in Sharm El-Sheikh -- and that was the fixed price which drivers try to charge twice.

From the original NYTimes story on the Oklahoma City bombing ten years ago today:
------------------------------------------------------------
Some experts focused on the possibility that the attack had been the work of Islamic militants, like those who bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993.

But if so, it was unclear why they would have struck in Oklahoma City. Some Middle Eastern groups have held meetings there, and the city is home to at least three mosques. But of the estimated five million Muslims in the United States, 'there's just very, very few out that way,' said Imam Muhammad Karoub, director of the Federation of Islamic Associations, based in Redford, Mich, a Detroit suburb.

Several news organizations, including CNN, reported that investigators were seeking to question several men, described as being Middle Eastern in appearance, who had driven away from the building shortly before the blast. There were also reports that the authorities had interviewed employees at a National Car Rental office in Dallas about a recently leased truck.

Yesterday witnessed the surprise return of Muhammad from Shubra, an old "friend" who still thinks I'm Norwegian (I generally say American these days, except in Gamaliya), and was actually one of the main factors encouraging the whole Norwegian identity, thanks to all the English he tried to use when we first met. He's mostly dropped that now, speaking entirely in Arabic but throwing in the English phrase "just a minute" four times during our dinner yesterday. I was with Walid and Mimi going to dinner at Prince, near the old apartment downtown, when someone across the street started yelling "Khalid...ya Khalid". I didn't recognize him from afar, and hadn't talked to him since October, when he left for Port Said to work for a big multinational, mostly on oil rigs. You'd think it'd pay well, and it does at least include living and food, since he's stuck on an oil rig, but he only gets LE400 ($75) a month, a modest salary by Egyptian standards.
In the fall of 2003, he earned notoriety among the CASA class of that year by coming along with me to a party, then misbehaving, under the illusion that anything goes at American parties. I barely avoided having my identity busted, since there was a Norwegian girl there that Muhammad met first and then introduced me to, but just when she was starting to speak to me in Norwegian, Muhammad's phone rang and he went out onto the balcony, giving me a chance to quickly explain everything to her. The party was in a massive two-floor penthouse apartment in Garden City (where Yahya was living), and somehow Muhammad decided that any girls who ventured to the upper floor were fair game. He started putting the moves on a hapless Croatian girl, getting a slap in the face when he pulled out his pickup line, in a creepy Egyptian guy accent, "Do you like sex and whores?". Only he botched up the last word, according to eyewitness accounts, asking her instead "Do you like sex and horses?".
So anyway, he's back in town for a few days, before going back to his rig.

It's still unclear what happened exactly. Al-Jazeera is saying that there are three dead, one French tourist, one American, and one Egyptian suicide bomber, while people yesterday were saying that the bomb was thrown by a man on a fizba (the little mopeds not too common in Cairo at large but all over the place in Hussein and Gamaliya since regular cars have trouble navigating the narrow streets), but the police are now saying it was a pedestrian who threw the bomb.
The explosion took place near the gold and silver souq, apparently near the intersection of Muizzeldin lillah and Muski streets, which I go by on my way home from classes two or three times a week, whenever I want to get yogurt, milk, or rice with milk from a store at the end of the street. Yesterday I went through Hussein instead about an hour before the attack, cause I wanted to have fresh orange juice (the weather's hot right now, in the upper 80s) and check out Al-Malky Hotel as possible accomodations for Amelia and my folks, where I met a couple guys from Baghdad here as tourists. By the time the attack happened (5:00pm), I was at home taking a nap before going back to Al-Azhar to meet Melanie and her roommate Andrea for dinner at 6:30.

Just to let you know, we're all fine. The explosion was in the Khan, in a street that I go through every few days on my way home, though usually I take the other route through the square.

Opposition leader Ayman Nour's headquarters in Baab ash-Shariya, about a fifteen-minute walk from my house, are now surrounded by pro-Mubarak signs, no doubt spontaneously put up by the masses. They say slogans like "Yes to the leader Mubarak", "Yes to the commander of the first strike [Mubarak was the air force commander in the 1973 war against Israel]", and "Yes to Mubarak, No to every cowardly (gabaan) Egyptian agent for the Americans (amrikaan)". Kinda funny coming from someone taking $1.8 billion a year in US money, primarily military aid.

Murfreesboro makes the front page of the Onion.