Plastic Bags and Taxi Cabs

Wow. I haven’t posted in almost a week?! Hope you’re sitting down because this is likely to be a loooooong one!

Sarah arrived safe and sound from the states last Monday night and we have been moving like crazy ever since. Literally…moving. Sarah was living in an apartment in a part of Cairo called Misr Gedida, or “New Cairo” on a huge busy street, which I wrote about previously. But this week we moved to an area called Maadi, which in my mind can only mean “heaven”. Aside from the fact that I still cannot find my apartment on my own, I LOVE Maadi. There are trees! Everywhere! Even ones with flowers!And I can hear BIRDS! The first morning I heard them I thought something was wrong with my A/C but nooo…actually birdies! And it doesn’t smell like exhaust and…get this…there are signs telling cars they cannot honk! You see, Cairo has it’s own system for navigating trafficlawless and laneless streets and it is done by honking and flashing one’s lights – making Cairo possibly the loudest city in the world. But no no, not in Maadi! I now live in an actual neighborhood. There are no big streets except circling it, the drive to downtown Cairo is along the River Nile and there are small shops and cafes everywhere. I may never leave this place after all! I mentioned McDonald's delivery right?...

A bit on moving “Egypt style”. There is no UHAUL, but most apartments that are rented come furnished. Hamdulillah. (Thank God) This is not to say however that moving is an easy task. No no no. We began by loading everything into plastic shopping bags. That’s right…plastic bags. We had to go 7 flights down in an Egyptian elevator (think 1960. tiny (TINY) box with no doors that open close…so you see inside of the elevator shaft on the way up and down.) Then make the 30-40 min drive to Maadi then carry everything up 4 flights. No elevator here. Luckily Hassan’s family has a driver so he was able to drive us back and forth a few times. Other than that we have been loading up cabs and hauling stuff over. Buildings here have a “doorguy” called a Boheb. They don’t open and close doors or anything like that, but if you have a good one (and we do, hamdulillah) they will carry your stuff upstairs for you. Funny story. The first day we got here we brought a huge load of things over with the intention of making a least one more trip. So we get everything in the apt then go back outside to drive back to Misr Gedida. I close the door all excited that it locks automatically when we realize…shit…the keys are still inside! So we call the landlord and he says he will meet us back there at 6pm. So we come back with another load and what do you know…no landlord! So we sat awkwardly in his brother’s apartment until about 7:30, kitty between us in his carrier on a couch drinking water and Pepsi that he brought us on a tray. Finally the guy arrived and let us in. Anywho moving has been an interesting and long process. Hopefully we will get the internet in about 2 wks. The government controls it so it takes awhile.

Sarah has an amazing group of friends here that I have been lucky enough to be able to hang out with since getting here. A few nights ago we went to a party thrown by one of Theo’s co-workers who is American. There were a few Americans and a whole lot of Frenchies. It was definitely a good time. Afterwards Scott shamed me in Bananagrams (Google it) until way too late (early?). Last night we went to Sarah’s friends Ali and Janan’s who just got married. They live 2 buildings down form us in the most beautiful apartment I have seen since getting to Egypt. We ate pizza (Pizza Hut! But waaay better than US Pizza Hut)and brownies and watched Cloverfield then RussellPeter’s Red, White and Brown which if you have not seen must see. (Unless you are my parents. Please don’t watch it. You will hate it). Then Ali busted out Boggle and I was getting all excited about turning around my bananagrams word game shame. Silly me. I got schooled once again (5 times actually) but this time not only by Scott but Ali as well. Who doesn’t even speak English as his native language! WHAT THE DEUCE?! I’ve realized that what it comes down to is that Egyptians are just way smarter than Americans. ;-) Seriously though…I need to learn some English.

Ramadan begins on Monday so I am trying to prepare myself mentally hahaha. I have already decided that I am going to cheat and drink water during the day, which is a no no. But I do not care. Iftar (the meal that breaks the fast at night) is a big, very social affair so I am excited to see what it is like. Egypt is already a late night kind of place, it is not uncommon to eat dinner after 8, so Iftar being after sundown is not too huge of a switch. But after not eating since 5am-ish it will be a stretch. Ugh. People are beginning to decorate with hanging lights and Ramadan flags. It is so colorful, I love it! I will definitely put up pics of Ramadan once it begins. We went to Drinky’s (the beer and wine store) yesterday and learned that they close for alllll of Ramadan. what? WHAT?!

This post is going to be all over the place, sorry. Sarah, Hassan and I went out to dinner at an amazing Italian place the other night. Once we were finished eating, Hassan’s mom showed up to switch cars with him and sat with us for awhile. She is a doctor but now does mostly policy related work. She is also super politically involved and has been a part of the Kefaya! (“enough”) movement here in Egypt for a long long while. A good friend of hers is the Health Minister in Egypt and as you likely know, there are many more radical Egyptians who are not keen on any Ministers in place now. So she has spent a good deal of time in Tahrir Square and facilitating meetings between the protestors and this friend. She and Hassan are both very passionately involved in what is going on politically here in Egypt and watching them talk about it is fascinating.

What you may not be aware of is that as of now close to 1000 people have died as a result of the violence that was carried out mostly by the police in January and esp. on Jan. 28^th. People are still dying from injuries incurred during those days. Sarah and Hassan have more than one friend with rubber bullets lodged in them. The families of these martyrs have been staging a sit in in Tahrir Square for months nowand are vowing to stay there through Ramadan (which is HUGE) along with Cairo residents who lost their homes to mud slides awhile back and were promised re-homing by the gov’t but still have not received it. (Total run on sentence. deal with it.) Problem is they have no leadership and no demands. So they have the sit in part down but are missing the “we will sit here until ______________ happens” aspect. Which is a fairly important part of a sit in. There are many in Cairo who believe that these “radicals,” as they are often referred to, are actually hurting the political situation here. Sitting in Tahrir with no demands and no leadership as opposed to pushing for legal action in the justice system is not a pragmatic way to push for real change. Which is clearly needed. There is conflict in Tahrir as well, Hassan’s mom told us a story about a huge fight that broke out when someone was smoking in front of another man’s tent which led to a chair being thrown at him and a fight after. Yesterday a few thousand Salafis protested in the square. The Salafis arethe ultra conservative, traditional, religious right. Until recently they have been largely uninvolved in the revolution because politics is something they stay out of for religious reasons. But lately there has been talk of them aligning themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is no good for the movement. It is also entirely hypocritical of them since for religious reasons they are not supposed to even involve themselves. Anyways, a few thousand showed up to Tahrir yesterday calling for Egypt to return to a religious state. 28 political parties and coalitions walked out of Tahrir in protest, which was pretty cool.

I have been trying my darndest to pick up this Arabic thing. I can now count decently well and recognize most numbers. Very helpful when trying to pay cabs, etc. I can also write and read the letters that correspond to the“D” “B” and “Th” sounds as well as the hamza and ‘alif. What what! hahaha. I am also starting to recognize more and more words as people are speaking and can say a fair number of words as well. Not quite to the point of whole sentences though. At thee end of the day my tongue literally hurts from repeating sounds (mostly hamza and ‘alif) Feeling pretty good about my progress thus far!

Alrighty…that’s enough for now. Hopefully we will getthe internet back soon so I can be more regular about this and write shorter posts! So for now…

Love from Cairo,

Martha

P.S. - Did I mention that you buy eggs and milk unrefrigerated???

Street Music and Protest

Saturday was a fairly lazy day. By mid afternoon I was bored out of my mind so I walked over to Theo’s apartment, which is about 8 blks down from me. He convinced me that learning the Arabic alphabet would help me pick up the language easier so I guess that’s what I’m doing. The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read and Write It courtesy of Theo will be my new best friend. The prologue to said book is a bit confusing going from “readers will find that progress is rapid and will be surprised at the relative ease with which they master the first steps in learning this increasingly important world language” straight into “It is not just that the alphabet and the words are unusual. More profoundly, the whole structure of the language – its logical basis so to speak – is alien to the structure of any European language.” Let’s just say I’m not optimistic…

I should probably let you all know that I have decided to observe Ramadan. Obviously I have no religious reason for this; lets face it, I couldn’t handle Christianity so I surely can’t handle Islam. My reasons are more culture based. I’m living in a Muslim country and if I really want the whole experience I have to be willing to step way out of my comfort zone. Some of you I’m sure are familiar with Ramadan, but for those who aren’t, check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan. Basically what this means for me is that for the month of August (aside from the week I’m in London. Such a cheater…I know) I won’t eat from sun up to sun down. Which pretty much means from 6am until 9pm give or take. What? WHAT?! Nuts…I know. But it will be enlightening and hell…maybe I’ll lose a few pounds.

Anyways, back to Saturday. There is a website here, Cairo360, that is basically the equivalent of MetroMix in Chicago. It is a calendar of local happenings: restaurants, shopping, cultural events, reviews, etc. I found a street music festival called Street Music Revolution that looked pretty cool. Apparently this was the 6^th of these impromptu music fests where musicians get together and randomly set up concerts at random spots in the city. We had to go to the festivals facebook page to get the latest information as to where the event was taking place as it was forced to switch locations a few times.

We left Theo’s to a very strange scene. We live on a street called El Khalifa El Maamoun that is a VERY busy street. Its 4 “lanes” with a median. You wouldn’t believe the number of cars that are on this street at any given time. It has taken me literally 10 minutes to walk across this street before. (There are no such things as crosswalks or right-of-way for pedestrians in Cairo). Anyways, we got outside and there was not one car on the street. NOT ONE. I felt like I was in one of those movies where someone wakes up and suddenly they are the only person left on earth. It was eerie. We could see that a few blks down there were roadblocks blocking off the few blocks of El Khalifa around where Theo lives. So we walked to where to roadblock began which was right by the Hotel Triumph about halfway between our apartments. Mukhabaret – the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate- apparently has a lot of offices in this hotel, so we assumed the roadblocks had something to do with that. More on the real reason behind the roadblock later…

We got to the concert around 6pm and I must say, I was shocked. There was a stage set up and a really sweet Egyptian reggae band called Meshwar was performing. The best definition I have found for Meshwar is a task or duty someone has to do. The crowd was really into it. From my experience street music, especially reggae, hip-hop, etc is not a big thing in Egypt so I was surprised to see a few hundred people there. Most were teenagers but there were a few twenty to thirty something’s scattered in as well as handful of genuinely shocked and out of place looking older men in galibayas wandering around. (perhaps hashish led to their arrival?) The crowd was pretty fun. People were dancing, singing along, etc. There was a hip hop group that followed Meshwar and then an American cover band that played the most random American music you could imagine. Smoke on the Water, Foxy Lady (or “fuxy lady”), some Bob Marley, Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall and a horrible rendition of “Give me one Reason to Stay Here” by Tracy Chapman. And everyone knew they lyrics to everything! They closed out with a re written version of La Bamba that I need Theo to interpret for me. The part I could understand was the chorus. Instead of “la bamba” it was “hellwa hurriya” which basically means “sweet freedom”. It was pretty cool. The very last band was this intense MTV inspired rap group complete with a lot of “put ya hands up” and “yeah yeah”, a T-Pain look alike, a dude with grills and a lot of other unnecessary members. hahaha. My favorite part of the night was probably when this group said they were singing a song for “the ladies” and I looked around and realized that since it was almost 11pm, I was one of the only “ladies” left. It’s a bit taboo for girls to be out late at night.

Despite the group’s mediocre musical abilities I must say I am impressed that they are up there doing what they do. Rap music doesn’t have a niche in Egypt yet so what they are doing really is ground breaking. I only wish they would step back a bit from the MTV image and use the material they have all around them to write some great lyrics. Rap was born out of a struggle and its roots were very political and even revolutionary. This time and place in Cairo is perfect for some prolific protest music.

As we left I couldn’t help but wonder what the people living in the buildings surrounding this very small park thought. As I mentioned earlier, street music, esp genres like reggae, hop hop and rap, are new to Egypt; the performers and most of the attendees to this concert were definitely under 30. This took place in a quiet neighborhood in Cairo and I’m sure the people living in the surrounding buildings were far from thrilled. But it went down uninterrupted and drama free.

Now to the reason behind the roadblock. Yesterday, July 23, is the anniversary of the start of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. A little background from the history teacher in me. Prior to this revolution Egypt was a monarchy with a great deal of British influence. This revolution was aimed at creating a republic in Egypt and ushering in a more modern, pan-Arab nationalist government. The ultimate result was the ousting of King and the appointment of the first Egyptian president. That is the revolution in a tiny nutshell. As you would imagine, given the current Revolution taking place in Egypt, it was anticipated that there would be a lot of protests taking place yesterday. Which there were…just not by our apartment, one of the locations they anticipated it may be.

As you may have seen on the news there were about 5000 protesters that walked from Tahrir Square to the headquarters of the Defense Ministry in a part of the city called Abbasiyah which is not too far from me.

The protestors are calling for military leaders to speed up reforms, end military trials of civilians and ultimately an end to anything and everything having to do with the Mubarak regime. The protests became violent when people in the neighborhood began throwing stones and even Molotov cocktails at protestors. There are people in Cairo who see the role of the military as a positive one. Our cab driver told us he saw the current situation as a good one as the military and the people have “become one”.

So it was an interesting day. This post has gotten out of hand so I’m going to call it a day. I am posting a few videos from the concert. The first is Meshwar, the second is the Pink Floyd cover the third is revolutionary La Bamba and the last is some Egyptian rap. Enjoy!

Love from Cairo,

Martha

Ahlan from Cairo!

It has taken much longer than I would have liked to get this thing up and running but Mom, you were right, I sure did leave my computer power cord at the apartment. oops. So far Egypt has been amazing! The trip here was interesting. I flew first class on Air France which was insane. I was planning on getting to hear English until I got to Cairo but silly me...on Air France they speak French! Which I apparently remember much less of than I should. Sahibi and I made it through security just fine and on to the plane without any complications. The trip to Paris was 8 hours and kitty was amazingly well behaved. We tried to give him benadryl to knock him out but he didn't want any part of it. Didn't seem to need it though. I took him to the bathroom on the plane a few times so he could at least stand up and realize he was better off in the carrier because he was TERRIFIED of not being in it. hahaha. Service on Air France is unbelievable. Dinner was four courses! First a tiny little appetizer (appertif? is that right?) and wine. then a salad and lobster. LOBSTER! (and more wine) then a choice of 3 main courses (i had red snapper with Japanese vegetables) with more wine then a cheese plate and then dessert and wine! it was insane! i fell into a nice food/wine coma for about 4 hours after. We arrived in Paris at about 8am. There we were supposed to have a 7 hr layover that turned into a 10 hr layover due to tehnical issues on the plane. That was definitely the worst part. I slept in the lounge for most of the time but Sahibi was NOT happy. Every hour or so he would start meowing and trying to get out. Definitely made me feel like a horrible cat mom. But alas...we made it. The 4 hr trip from Paris to Cairo was a breeze. We both slept the whole way.

Since we didn't get into Cairo until after 11pm we were one of only 2 flights in the airport. I got my visa and made it through customs really fast. No one seemed to notice or care that I had a cat with me so that was good. Luckily they had carts (free ones) so I was able to load my 4 bags onto one. As most of you know this was my biggest fear....that I wasn't going to be able to lug my crap to a cab. So I got all my bags and went outside with the cart to find a ride home. The cab driver led me to believe he knew where I was going based on the address but that was apparently far from the truth. Thank God for Dina Shalash. I called her from the cab and she was able to give him directions. Not that that stopped him form stopping 3 times to ask for directions. Get this . . . .we stopped a McDonald's delivery driver. That's right. They have McDonald's delivery drivers who cart Big macs around on red and yellow mopeds. WHAT?! Anywho, we finally made it here, he helped me carry my bags to the door and the door guy helped me lug them all upstairs. I made it to the apartment around 3:30 am went to sleep and didn't wake up until 4:30 PM the next day!!! WHAT?! Guess I needed it...

Sarah and Dina have a friend, Theo, who lives a few blocks away. He is from Urbana and was tasked with keeping me together and entertained until Sarah gets back hahahaha. I had some issues getting my phone card to work so it was a but dramatic but he finally made his way over here yesterday evening. We went to dinner at a little delicious Lebanese place and I quickly began to remember why I love Cairo. After dinner we went to meet friends of his at a bar downtown. We walked past Tahrir Square to get there which was amazing. There are still tents set up and people speaking late into the night. I definitely teared up a bit and got goose bumps. (impressive when its like 100 degrees.) It was amazing to be in this place that I have followed from so far away for so long.

This morning I woke up determined to not stay in the apartment all day. My Arabic is a joke and so it is pretty difficult for me to get cabs, etc. But I decided to give it a go. This morning I walked to the grocery store and stocked up (Apple Fanta! Ive missed you so!!!) I left my computer power cord at home and my laptop was almost dead so i knew i needed to find an apple store. I found one fairly close to here so I grabbed my English-Arabic dictionary and ventured out into the unknown hahaha. There is a HUGE super western fancy mall called City Stars not too far from me. So i hailed a cab said "city stars?" got the "OK" nod and i was off. this mall was INSANE. Ive never seen something so huge. i had to go through a metal detector and my bag thru an x-ray just to get in! i wandered around and found the apple store and got my charger. i was happy to see that i can get my western shopping fix here though. they had starbucks, longchamp, moscato, tons and tons of high end stores mixed in with more Egyptian places. there is also a food court with Carls Jr, KFC, Pizza Hut and some other disappointing showings from the U.S.

So now here I am...emailing you all on my charged laptop drinking Apple Fanta and watching "Last Holiday" on Egyptian TV. I think I am going to be just fine here. I feel empowered, liberated and just honestly really proud of myself for getting out there today. It wasn't easy but it felt good. I haven't stopped smiling since I got out of my cab and up to my apartment.

Im off now to "shower" and go to dinner with my knight in shining armour, Theo. (the shower is a shower head connected in the sink. no tub or separate shower space. you literally just stand in the bathroom and shower and then squeegee the water down the drain in the floor. fun stuff.) My phone situation is still a bit sketchy so as soon as i figure out what my phone number is I will let you all know!!!!

I love you all and am so thankful to be surrounded by such amazing people. Please send the link to this blog to anyone you think may be interested!

love from cairo,

martha