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 6th 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
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