You may have surmised by the dearth of my entries that I finally got serious about my thesis. Kind of. I'm still not all the way finished, but recapping Thanksgiving and 'Aid are worth a few moments.
Yesterday, Marise, Phil, Erin, Cynthia and I went to Lucille's for Thanksgiving dinner. There was turkey with gravy and stuffing for the carnivores, and sweet potatoes with marshmallows, corn, carrots, green beans, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes for everybody except for Cyn who opted for a south of the border Thanksgiving and ordered nachos. For dessert was some very respectable pumpkin pie. While we laughed off the cheesiness of going around the table and each reporting what we were most thankful for this holiday, I think we were each cognizant of how much we had come to mean to one another in the three semesters. It was great to be with the people I've become closest to in Egypt even though it made me all the more conscious we only have a couple more weeks living in proximity, bumming around at each others apartments, and eating out like it's going out of style.
Today, Phil (never the early riser) woke me up and demanded I follow through on our plans to go see what was afoot for 'Aid al-Adha in the nearby neighborhoods. Last year, I saw little more than a puddle of blood and a detached hoof in the street. This year, Phil and I stumbled upon a whole crowd observing and participating in the ritual sacrifice of several cows. The men and boys welcomed, asked our names, explained what was going on, and asked what we thought of Algeria and the recent soccer match. We snapped lots of photos. Yesterday, on the way to Thanksgiving dinner, we'd seen a lot of livestock--one sheep was squirming in the trunk of a white taxi. Today we saw what was to befall all the transiting animals. I'd never seen a cow slaughtered before. I imagine that the three of my grandparents who grew up on farms would be more inured to the process, but my relationship with farm animals has been limited mostly to petting zoos and steak restaurants. There was something almost serene about the process. People watched intently as a whole team of men calmed each animal, set it on its side, and dispatched it swiftly. It didn't die right away, and that was perhaps the hardest part to deal with it. I won't explain all the details out of deference to more squeamish readers. But the best part was watching people's reactions. The little kids were more fascinated than scared and for other people, it was routine--just another 'Aid. We bid the kids we'd been talking to goodbye and returned home. I wondered how people back home would treat a couple of Arabs wandering into a celebration. I'd like to hope we'd be as welcoming.
Back to my thesis! 'Aid mubarak!

Things seem to have settled down here in Cairo. There're no new reports of chanting mobs. I was chatting with Marise about the whole debacle last night and we concluded that, with pieces like the one in the New York Times by Michael Slackman misrepresenting the source of many Egyptians' outrage, Egypt was in some small way, not getting a fair shake. While some of the protesters were without a doubt mere soccer hooligans, other people who have protested more civilly truly believed that Egyptians were being harmed abroad. The Egyptian media, Facebookers, and YouTubers exaggerated accounts of violence against Egyptians in Sudan and Algeria and convinced Egyptians moreover that the Sudanese and Algerian governments were complicit or at best, not doing enough to protect Egyptian nationals. That claims of serious injury have not been substantiated is immaterial. The fact is, Egyptians were led to believe that their conationals were being harmed and left unprotected by governments with whom Egypt has complex and sometimes troubled relations. This isn't just about people whining over a soccer match, at least not for everyone.
Still others (and perhaps this group includes the soccer hooligans) have turned this into an issue of honor. According to the BBC, the Egyptian president said "Egypt does not tolerate those who hurt the dignity of its sons" while his normally media-shy son Ala' said in an interview that "When you insult my dignity ... I will beat you on the head". While I can appreciate protesting civily in solidarity with physically wounded fellow citizens, the concept of protesting against violations of your honor (like the YouTube videos Algerians have made insulting Egyptians) is totally alien to me. Not coming from an "honor culture", bravado and reputation-preserving violence and boycotts make me cringe. A Facebook group called "ACT TO END RELATIONS BETWEEN EGYPT & ALGERIA" that, as of now, has nearly 5,000 members maligns (in all caps, annoyingly) Algerians and paints ending diplomatic relations between the two countries as a religious duty. Meanwhile, some 5000+ Facebook users are fans of a page called "Si tes [sic] ALGERIENS et tu F**k l'égypte pour notre drapeau qu'ils ont brulés [sic]" (If you're Algerians and you f**k Egypt for our flag that they burnt). Absurdity. This certainly shatters the façade of Arab unity.

I hear from friends in Zamalek that it looks like a war zone in the area where the "protesters" were. I failed to understand how translating a beef with another country's soccer team (or even a beef with the fact that your conationals are being attacked in foreign countries) into destroying the property of your countrymen is productive. Non-Egyptians have had to show their passports to get places within Zamalek itself and roads are blocked off. The Subway deliveryman made it here to bring Phil a sandwich though. Twitter's been abuzz with accurate and not-so-accurate reports about riots, mobs, and other collectivities chanting, protesting, rock and Molotov cocktail-throwing, Central Security arresting people, cameras confiscated from the media, and so forth. I'd heard there was a disturbance in Tahrir, but when Phil and I ventured out in the late afternoon, we saw only touts and families and lost-looking tourists—the usual. Who knows what will happen. Meanwhile, I'm hard at work finishing the conclusions section of my thesis!

• Ben Wedeman with CNN published this story, reportedly after having his camera confiscated.
• Sarah Carr published these photos to Flickr and wrote this article in Daily News Egypt.
• "'Thousands 'besiege' Algerian embassy in Cairo" from Monsters and Critics
• Weighing in on the row with Algeria, President Mubarak's oldest son says "When you insult my dignity ... I will beat you on the head"
• Infotainment channel FOX News asks the sensational question, "Could a soccer match spark the next Mideast war?" I think it's equally likely that FOX News will start the next Mideast war.
• Cairo ripe with denial in wake of "demonstrations"
  

Meanwhile...

• One fatality reported in clashes between Bedouin and police
• Study estimates that two-thirds of Egyptian girls aged nine and under will faced genital mutilation over the next decade
• Amnesty calls Egyptian military courts to task for failing to overturn sentences on Muslim Brotherhood members

Midwest meets Middle East:
I read a review of the movie Amreeka in Daily News Egypt and now I'm really curious to see it. It's apparently about a Palestinian family that moves to small town Illinois. Check out the trailer here.

I'm just now back from a wee adventure in Zamalek. Erin persuaded Marise and me to indulge her craving for Indian. I ignore my lingering flu symptoms and, after a double class, joined the two of them as well as Phil and two other friends for dinner in an Indian restaurant on one of the riverboats on the east side of Zamalek. Dinner was delicious and the conversation was good and it seemed like I'd have time to spare for my thesis. Then, however, a few of us decided to stop by the grocery store. Erin was trying to make her way home in the same general direction. Our whole party got in two cabs and headed north only to find several streets blocked off because masses of young Egyptians were "protesting" outside the Algerian embassy and for blocks around. Our cabdriver flicked on his lighter and told us that's what the shabab (youth) were trying to do to the Al-Gaza'air (Algeria) embassy. Erin and the other friend that went with her didn't even make it to their part of the island, but rather ended up all the way back in front of the riverboat. Meanwhile, we were shopping at Alfa, enjoying the tacky Christmas decorations for sale, and snapping forbidden photos of the live sheep in a makeshift pen at the intersection of the holiday section and the meat counter where they await their demise for 'Aid.
Erin got a hold of us and asked us to walk her home. We met up with her outside the grocery store and walked her to the line of riot police blocking off the road that led to the embassy whence she was able to quietly head up her street to her place. Oh, soccer and nationalism. Phil, our other friend Camilla, and I found our way to a cab, seeing improvised torches (hair spray or pesticide plus a lighter) in the distance, and returned downtown. Now there's shouting and the occasional little mob parading toward Zamalek. I'm keeping up to date here. In related news:

• Egypt recalls its ambassador to Algeria for "consultations" after lodging a formal diplomatic protest with the Algerian ambassador
• Riots in the streets of France after Algeria win

Other news and issues:

• Two Spanish tourists lost at sea off coast of Sinai
• Egyptian parliamentarian jailed in spoiled blood products scandal
• Iraqi refugees face dwindling support

I'd planned to see one of my professors lecture at the weekly CMRS seminar, but am instead at home in my apartment curled up with my old friends thesis and fever. My throat is no longer sore, but my head kills. Happily, it isn't the sort of headache exacerbated by honking, drumming, cheering, or chanting, all of which are filling the air in Cairo tonight ahead of the Egypt-Algeria playoff in Sudan. Hopefully no one's killed in whatever happens when the game is won and lost.

Meanwhile, an undergraduate AUCian was diagnosed with H1N1. Though this is likely another nail in the coffin of resuming a normal class schedule, the university claims that it will "close for the Thanksgiving and Eid holidays as announced on the academic calendar. The Eid break will not be extended and classes will resume on December 1st".

News & Issues

• Egypt tries to ban smoking in public...kind of...if people feel like it
• Sudan tightens security ahead of Egypt-Algeria showdown
• Apparently Egyptians have always eaten unhealthily— heart disease detected in mummies
• Egyptian songstress claims she didn't recognize her songwriter's use of term 'Nubian monkey' as racial slur
• Rights groups oppose Egypt-US UN resolution to restrict freedom of speech

I've had my own mini-plagues of Egypt experiences recently--after managing to avoid stomach troubles for months, I've been afflicted for a week, my throat mysteriously also has begun hurting (coinciding with a delightful post-nasal drip), and some mysterious creatures (not mosquitoes this time) have been nibbling away at me during my sleep. Pharaoh, let my people go. And write the rest of my thesis for me while you're at it.
After a night of stomach problem-generated sleeplessness, I walked to the shuttle, zombified. Everything seemed particularly surreal along my route because of the sleepiness, but a taxidermied fox, frozen forever mid-growl suddenly appeared on one of the streetcorners I pass. Suddenly in the sense that it wasn't there before, not in the sense that I was hallucinating stuffed creatures promenading around Cairo.
New campus had its share of interesting sights too--a Model United Nations poster with George W. Bush flanked by Hitler and Stalin. The text asked what they had in common. The answer? That none of them had Model UN in school. Never mind that Bush went to Harvard in the 1970s, a school whose MUN program began in the 1950s. To be fair, I don't suppose it's something an MBA student would've taken an interest in.
There's also a big poster depicting a friendly, fluffy sheep asking something like "Can you imagine an Eid without meat?" Given the cuddliness of the spokesheep, I had thought it was some kind of social awareness campaign about the social and environmental impacts of meat consumption (or perhaps even a PETA-style appeal). Nope. The cuddly sheep wants you to donate money to supply animals for poor people to slaughter during 'Aid al-Adha. Oh well.

News & Issues

• Tensions still running high over football, Egyptian office-building stormed in Algeria, employees evacuated by police
• Amnesty calls on Egyptian government to act to prevent further rockslides in poor communities
• Marriage offices increasingly popular with mate-seeking Egyptians
• Reporters Without Borders criticizes proposal to hold internet governance forum in Egypt
• Fishing in the desert: out of the slums and into unemployment

Today's the day my "final" thesis draft is due...better keep writing it! This entry's just to say, Egypt beat Algeria 2-0 and so survived at least until the next game. Nothing particularly violent happened a a result, al-hamdulilla (at least nothing directly related to the match, though a young activist was kidnapped and beaten while Egypt's eyes were on the field and the screen). Instead, the streets were abuzz with celebrating fans shouting, drumming, and carrying on for hours. Fun times all around, I hear.

News & Issues

• Sectarian murder leads to death penalty for two
• Government crackdown may be driving moderate Islamists to the fringes
• Palestine to appeal directly to the UN for state
• CS Monitor: "Crossing into Israel, African migrants dodge Egyptian bullets, Israeli jail threat"

After spending the day in my apartment writing, reading, revising, reading, taking breaks to eat, watch an episode of The Office and part of a documentary on Obama with Phil, reading some more, and writing some more, I ended up in a long e-conversation with an Egyptian acquaintance about sexual harassment here. He was discouraged by what he perceived as the recurrent negativity in my portrayals of Egypt, my focusing on the social ills. This was the same person that, when Marise and I met up with him insisted that she wouldn't be sexually harassed if the three of us walked Qasr al-Nil bridge together. He reiterated in a Facebook comment that this was a minor problem and so I went into the conversation guns blazing.
He vacillated between saying his religious sister's in the countryside didn't experience the problem and that none of his other foreign friend's had experienced the level of sexual harassment I described to saying he felt deep shame and explaining to me how he believed unemployment, the proscription of premarital sex, drugs, paternal verbal abuse, and pornography combined to create the phenomenon. I conceded that education played some role as I didn't see the same behavior perpetrated by AUCians or the well-to-do Rotarians and Rotaractors I've met.
As Egyptians are wont to do, my acquaintance told me that Egypt was a great country. When that sort of thing I said, I think it's more for the benefit of the speaker, as if pronouncing it makes it so. I told him that I wasn't arguing that Egypt was fundamentally bad (or good), that there were things about America I complain about too. After that remark, though, and as we amicably closed our conversation, I did think about my knee-jerk critical approach to life in Egypt. As I've mentioned before, I think it has to do with the fact that my impression of Egypt is colored far more by the people on the streets of downtown, by the cabdrivers and waiters, than by the students at AUC or the people I met through Rotary.
I began feeling disappointed again that I didn't get to know more Egyptians whom the language barrier wouldn't prevent me getting to know, to try to understand Egypt a bit more deeply, and to give myself the opportunity to see a sunnier side of things. When that sentiment has welled up in the past, I've tried to come up with rather abstract positives to blog about—the premium placed on family togetherness, the "flexibility", the late hours of shops and restaurants. I still agree with most of what I wrote in that entry, especially about disentangling Egypt itself from all of the frustrations and recognizing that this culture and society encompasses much more than my narrow window into it. Now, however, I don't feel like I'm grasping at straws trying to come up with something to make myself sound well-adjusted and cross-culturally savvy.
What I love about Egypt, in fact, are my Egyptian friends, classmates, and acquaintances. I love the environment that exists here that draw the sorts of often fascinating and quirky people that've stretched how I think. I treasure seeing Egypt through the eyes of friends like Marise who, accepting its failings, manages to see the best and to maintain faith in its potential. I am thankful to see Islam through the pure faith of acquaintances like Omar and Sayed who have, in their overtures of friendship and our open discussions, provided a counterbalance to both negative media portrayals of Islam and the intolerance I have encountered in other Muslims.
Egypt, like life, is a mixed bag. It includes ups and downs, hardships and celebrations, vexations and delights. So why do I still wrestle with the question of whether I like Egypt some fourteen months after I moved here? I don't like or dislike Egypt, but rather I would answer that I like living in Egypt in the same way I would say I liked being alive if you asked me if I liked life.

News & Issues

• FIFA says Egypt-Algeria will still happen tonight but warns Egypt over security
• Plan Egypt and Indian CAP Foundation help marginalized youth gain skills to compete in difficult job market
• The actions and questions of the moderator and interviewers at a press conference held by American actress Lucy Liu leaves me wondering whether they weren't trained by Cairo cabdrivers. One serenaded her with a rendition of "happy birthday" a month early while others asked her about her "Asian soul", about Obama, and whether she liked Egypt.
• WaPo: "Adrift in Cairo: Is US watching?"
• Refugee tension eases in Indonesia
• PJStar editorial about religion, bias, and facts in the Ft. Hood shootings
  

Forgive my e-slacking, but I've nothing much new to say. Thesis, thesis, thesis. Both of my classes this week involved coming up with contingency plans for the inevitable extension of the 'Aid al-Adha recess. Some are even suggesting classes might be canceled altogether for the rest of the semester. We came up with some suitable solutions tonight after discussing Cosmopolitanism, but insha'Allah, we won't miss too many sessions. After class, I had a fantastic dinner with a CMRS colleague and our professor. Yes, we spent part of our Thursday evening (the equivalent of Friday evening's here in the Muslim world) discussing critical theory and academia and that is what I love about grad. school. Don't worry, Annie and I went to Horaya later on too and chatted and played games like normal people too.
Aside from that, I read Derrida for class and got a hold of AirFrance iron out my tickets to Madagascar. Seems that everything's booked. Without further ado, let's move on from my unremarkable prose to some...

News & Issues:
Indiana Jones thinks Beyoncé is stupid
Tomorrow's Algeria-Egypt football (soccer) match already causing violence
Clashes between security forces and smugglers on Egyptian border with Palestine
Egyptian teens in court to try and have religious beliefs recognized in official documents
Egyptian Christian banned by Egypt from seeking asylum abroad

Thesis progress has come at the expense of regular blogging, but I though I'd check in. A new print edition of AUC's Caravan is out, slightly better than the last. Their feature is an attempt at investigative journalism that reveals that several of the donors who have departments and rooms named in their honor may not be the most ethically upstanding. They took issue with a room being dedicated to the memory of Dr Mine Ener.
Ener was a professor at Villanova University and author of Managing Egypt's Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1890-1952. In 2003, Ener gave birth to a baby girl with Down's syndrome a fact that appeared to have caused Ener to sink further into postpartum depression. Tragedy struck when, gripped by mental illness, Ener killed her child and later, after being incarcerated, committed suicide. Villanova took down a plaque erected to her memory and instead held a symposium on postpartum depression and psychosis to memorialize her. The Caravan's choice of title for the story, "This Room is Dedicated to a Murderer. Who Else Has AUC Accepted Money From?" is sensational and doesn't take it account the role mental illness played. I won't add further commentary to the sanity and misdeeds of others whom the named spaces honor, but you can checked them out and draw your own conclusions.
Other topics covered in the Caravan included an article and a cartoon about the challenges faced by female students interested in student body politics. Charming quotes like "girls are unable to handle the kind of commitment and campaigning it takes to win a competitive election" and alleged threats to the reputations of women who decide to run for office come from male students, showing that for all it's progressive shine, the situation at AUC smacks of the rest of Egypt's pervasive sexism. The Muslim Brotherhood offer us another example, promising to suspend members who requested positions for women in the party's guidance bureau. "Not all jobs are appropriate for women," wisely asserts a member. This of course is not to suggest that the rough gender equality in the US is anything close to perfect.
The online version of the student paper euphemistically refers to the strongly possible canceling of post-'Aid classes as another "H1N1 Break". According to NPR, Egypt's PM has already declared that the four-day 'Aid al-Adha vacation will be extended a further six days for all government-run schools and universities. It's only a matter of time before they demand AUC shutter for this second "swine flu" vacay. The logic for such a class suspension escapes me, yet again.

Other News & Issues

• Abuse of domestic workers in Lebanon leads to mysterious deaths
• Egyptians circumvent rigid relationship proscriptions by seeking love online
• Growing Evangelical popularity puts Coptic Orthodox Church on defensive

Lonely Planet will inform you in the online version of its guide to Egypt that

The incidence of crime, violent or otherwise, in Egypt is negligible compared with most Western countries. Most visitors and residents would agree that Egyptian towns and cities are safe to walk around in during the day or night. Unfortunately, the hassle factor often means that this isn’t quite the case for an unaccompanied foreign woman.

Indeed, it is common for many of us in the foreign student community here to marvel that we can walk around at 3 AM without fear either of theft or violent crime. We all too often paint Egypt as a place where sleazy but ultimately harmless men are but an inconvenience to foreign and Egyptian women alike. The stark and disgusting reality is that marginalized women don't experience this reality. Domestic workers and refugees are On top of this, gender-based violence victims have little access to services here.
Two friends of mine and I were discussing, yesterday, the stories of women they knew in Cairo. One, a veiled Muslim mother of six children whose husband had disappeared following poplution displacements in Eritrea had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by an Egyptian employer. Another, a 17-year-old girl without legal status had been raped several times, the last time brutally with a glass bottle that broke off inside of her body. She was left by the man to bleed out and her family, afraid of being deported because of their status, refused to take her to a hospital. My friend and his flatmate had to go and find and pay a doctor to come to the girl's home. Domestic workers from the Horn of Africa who have to take cabs home from their place of employment are sometimes not dropped off at their destination, but told by the driver's that they'll pay them for the services because "they know it's what they do".
While abuse of domestic workers and irregular migrants happens all over the world, I think the intersection of the general disregard for women in Egypt with the mistreatment of marginalized people is an especially insidious combination.
Not only are migrant women at risk, but Egyptian women as well. Marital rape, as in many other Middle Eastern countries, is not a crime in Egypt. Moreover, for more than 90 years (until 1999), there was a law on the books here that absolved rapists if they later married their victims. A similar law still existed as of last year in Lebanon.
And yet, this flagrant disregard for the dignity of women regardless of their background is minimized, even ignored and denied. The entire spectrum from verbal sexual harassment to rape is often dismissed. A male Egyptian friend couldn't understand why I didn't want to go for a walk downtown with a female friend of mine. I told him the kinds of disgusting things I'd heard with my own ears said to her in the past and he laughed it off and repeatedly told me that sort of thing didn't happen. In the wake of attacks on women by some 150 in downtown Cairo in 2006, the president's wife maintained, in an interview on Al-Arabiya, that "Egyptian men always respect Egyptian women".
Faced with these facts and figures and with the personal anecdotes that I hear all too often, I'm frustrated with my own helplessness to make a difference. While I'm in class reading theory or at some restaurant half the population can't afford, all of this is going on. I really wish I knew what I could do. I can say, though, I won't be complicit anymore in blithely describing Egypt as "safe" while wives and domestic workers are raped with relative impunity. In the end, this is an Egyptian problem that must be solved by Egyptians. Many of them are in the habit of minimizing the problems of their country to outsiders as a matter of pride, but recognize among themselves what's really going on. Perhaps change can come from this kind "internal dialogue". For a society so concerned with honor, one would think that this stain in Egypt's image would be of urgent importance.

Related

For more on the vulnerability of Eritreans and Ethiopians in Cairo see: "The Insecurity of Eritreans and Ethiopians in Cairo" in the International Journal of Refugee Law. A preview is available here.

Other News & Issues

• BBC: "Why Egypt's young dream of life abroad"
• Not a single Egyptian film to be shown at the Cairo International Film Festival next week
• Female presenters on Egyptian state TV to appeared unveiled from now on

In my Migration & Refugees in International Relations class, we discuss citizenship, in-groups, and out-groups a lot in the context of migration. For yesterday's class we read a chapter from political theorist Bonnie Honig's book Democracy and the Foreigner. The chapter dealt with the love-hate relationship Americans have with immigrants. On the one hand, we have the myth of an America founded on the sheer grit and virtue of immigrants and on the other, we have the view of an "invasion" of "illegals" who steal jobs, form isolated enclaves where "un-American" ideals are fostered, and generally ruin the country for the native-born. Immigrants are seen as both integral to the greatness of America and as a possible force for its undoing. When this tension between xenophilia and xenophobia tilts in the latter direction, as happens during times of economic hardships and war, the "natives" of a country come more rigidly to draw the line between "us" and "them" even when "they" are native-born or have been in the country for years. In circling the wagons, people draw dangerously on insufficient or flawed understandings of that "other" that fuel hatred.
Place into this context the massacre at Fort Hood yesterday by Virginia native, Nidal Malik Hasan. The news is still fresh, and the facts are unclear, but there is much speculation about Hasan's religion. This is certainly the case in the comments on an AP article published in the online edition of my local newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star. As a student of migration and refugees whose living in the Middle East, I am inevitably drawn to what the PJStar's comment sections following articles about Islam or Arabs reveal about my fellow Peorians' attitudes toward the kinds of people that not only live here, but who are also part of the patchwork of the American citizenry. So how does Islamophobia play in Peoria? I realize that those who choose to comment on articles don't necessarily proportionally represent the populace, but they provide interesting insight nonetheless.
The first comment to introduce the idea of foreignness read,

This exemplifies why American troops should be natural born citizens. Allowing other nationalities to enlist in the United States military is detrimental to the safety and integrity of America.

"Common Tater"'s first mistake was that he conflated nationality with being born in a given country. Millions of American nationals were born outside of the US and, in many situations (take the Turks in Germany, for example), people who were born in a country and lived there their entire lives may not be nationals. In Honig's book, she mentions the myriad of ethnic group contingents that fought in the American Civil War displaying a patriotism just as zealous as those "natural-born citizens" they fought alongside. But, perhaps more importantly, what Common Tater failed to appreciate was that Hasan is a natural-born citizen.

"slick06" is less polished in his or her arguments:

He was a Muslim that's why this happened!!! The Muslims are waging a hold war on us at we let them into the armed forces????

Even if Hasan's break-down and subsequent act of violence was related to his religious beliefs, it is a question of religious extremism, not something unique to or inherent in Islam. In that case, it would be appropriate to say "he was a violent religious extremist, that's why this happened". Just as the supposedly-Christian abortion clinic-bombers don't represent all of us, neither do suicide bombers or rampaging gunmen represent all Muslims. "The Muslims" slick06 refers to are a diverse people socioeconomically, linguistically, ethnically, politically, ideologically, and so forth. If they were all united in waging a war on us by now, I'm sure I'd have been felled by my landlord, a taxi driver, a waiter at one of the restaurants I frequent, a policeman, the woman that begs for food down my street, one of my professors, the Rotarians who hosted me last year, or any other of the tens of millions of Muslims in this country. Furthermore, there are thousands of Muslims in our armed forces and there have been for years. Muslim Americans fight alongside other Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and there were Muslims in the Allied Forces in World War II. Islam does not detract from a person's service in the military of a non-Muslim country, it is rather a question of ideology and extremism.
Thankfully, I'm not the only Peorian who thinks this way. Says "nothingshocking":

common tater-i didn't read anywhere in the article that the gunman was not a natural born citizen. since when does one have to be a foreigner in order to convert to islam? timothy mcveigh was a natural born citizen and was capable of blowing up a building filled with his fellow americans. crazy is crazy-regardless of creed, religion, or race.

Still, "Pancho" brings us this lovely reminder that ignorance is rampant:

slick06 nailed it, and yeah, part of this IS Obamas fault. His way of thinking assists people like this to prosper in OUR country. OUR country is full is trash that want to bring us down. What a shame it has come to this.

Whatever you think of the president, Pancho's comment has little to do with politics, but rather those fundamental questions of "us" and "them". Who is the "us" to whom the country belongs in Pancho's statement? And who, in fact, is the trash? Many of us in Central Illinois have German and Irish roots. These ethnic groups, now an indistinguishable part of "White America", were vilified and demonized just as much as Muslim Americans are now. German-Americans were associated with Nazis, the Irish were considered job-stealing scum, etc. etc. I would put to Pancho that this "us" is comprised of the descendants of the "trash" of past generations.
The rest of the comments were divided between reasoned expressions of concern over the stress of war, impending deployment and multiple tours of duty and more ignorant comments about Muslims and Islam. While I understand the fears associated with the unfamiliar, I really hope that those in my hometown who struggle with how to fit those who are different from themselves (especially Muslims) into their idea of America will think deeply and rationally about it.

News & Issues

• A third of Egyptian children malnourished according to Middle East Online
• 17 arrested for possession of explosives, alleged plans to attack targets in Cairo
• Muslim Brotherhood: Beyoncé a threat to peace and social stability
• Egypt calls for UN resolution if Israel rejects settlement freeze
• Students arrested for grafittiing anti-Mubarak Jr slogans in central Cairo

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/fort-hood-shootings-7-dea_n_347366.html&cp

This morning, I rode the bus with a fellow blogger. As we passed the Ministry for Social Solidarity, the Ministry for Tunnels, the Potato Grower's Cooperative, and the sea of McMansions, we chatted about Egypt (what else?). We bonded over our predilection for sarcasm, a feature that permeated our conversation all the way to campus where I saw, behind the monstrous tentlike structure that's blocking out the sun from the main quadrangle, two Egyptians dressed like Fonzie from happy days.
The Writing Center was busy and full of interesting characters and even more interesting papers. One of them extolled the virtues of Michael Jackson, endearingly referring to him as "Mike" throughout. Another complained that the garbage problem in Cairo was an affront to his "social status". My favorite moment came when a young woman burst in and loudly interrupted two tutoring sessions to announce herself. I motioned her to sit down at which point she told me I looked really young. I suggested it might be because I am, in fact, young. She then added that I "looked too young to be a professor". I informed her that I was not a professor. After being handed an essay dripping with sarcasm, ellipses, and exclamation points that read like an instant message, I explained the need for formality in academic writing. After half-listening to my comments, she asked if she too could "get a job" at the Writing Center. Unfortunately for her and for everyone else, she can't. Ma3lesh, ma3lesh.
The growing urgency to take more notice of my surroundings as I realize how short my time left in Egypt is has pressed me to have my camera on hand more often. When I wasn't sleeping in the bus stuck in traffic, I was doing my best to be surreptitiously snap photos of "the street". Maybe I'll upload some when I get time (next century, after my thesis is finished).

News & Issues

• Cairo "almost ready" to begin unified call to prayer...almost
• Egyptian opposition leader barred from traveling to US
• Mubarak lauds party for "reform" success
• US backpedals on Israeli settlement concessions
• Egypt's crumbling infrastructure not just annoying, deadly
  

Today, walking down the street, I ran into a lovely new scam. I was ignoring the world with the aid of my headphones and a man came up beside me and shouted "welcome" until I finally took one earbud out. He walked alongside me, realizing I wasn't about to stop, and engaged me in conversation about where I was from. He asked me about the cost of living in Cairo, whether I didn't think it was cheaper than the US an Europe and it didn't take me long to realize what he was getting at. He claimed to be a Palestinian that had been in Egypt for 20 days, that his wife and four kids were killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza, and then he'd found the Egyptians to be terribly inhospitable and unwelcoming. He then told me that an old man in Dubai had been paying his way at the hostel for these 20 days, but that he had stopped and now had nowhere to stay. Without bringing up the fact that the Palestinian border wasn't opened 20 days ago, I politely told him we didn't have any extra beds in our apartment. He told me he only need me to go with him to the hostel to pay $7 which "wasn't much". He backpedaled and said, "well, it is a lot for me". He proceeded to tell me that he hadn't eaten in 20 hours (20 being his favorite number, apparently). I told him I didn't feel comfortable giving him money but would be glad to buy him a meal at the restaurant right across the street from where we were. His hunger magically vanished, he shook my hand, and disappeared into the crowd.
That was but one interesting conversation I managed to have today, but I'm getting up in the early hours tomorrow to be able to catch the bus to new campus, so those are stories better saved for another time. In the meantime, enjoy the news:

News & Issues

Egypt

• 23-year-old woman from Giza sixth H1N1 death
• Center for Contemporary Sudan Studies spotlights mistreatment of Sudanese in detention
• Mubarak Jr. vows to respond to opposition attacks
  

The ol' thesis is due in two weeks, at least in theory. Forgive the sparser and sparser entries and, with the advent of nice weather, my sappy comments about gentle breezes and mild temperatures.

News & Issues

Egypt

• Documentary chronicles the lives of Egyptian garbage-collectors
• Migration to Italy drives up land prices in one of Egypt's poorest governorates
• 9-year-old dies of H1N1, first school-aged child to die of the illness in Egypt
• British ambassadors wades into niqab debate to the ire of Muslim bloggers

Elsewhere in the Middle East

• US caves on illegal Israeli settlements, Egypt unimpressed
• Web addresses available in Arabic for the first time starting 16 November