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

I'm sure it's in terrible form, but I'm writing this from the Writing Center. The mind boggles at my having been so ambitious as to ask to be scheduled from 10 AM until 3 in the afternoon. 10 AM is an hour of the day I am otherwise generally unacquainted with and today it occurred to me that my practice of catching the 9:25 bus which has arrived later and later (once it was 10:10) is not practical. This means I am now, barring the discovery of a magical shuttle service on the half-hour, going to have to rise at 7:30 AM to get ready and get to the 8:25 bus, arrive at 9:15-20ish, and wait forty minutes for the Writing Center to open. Yes, I realize there are children starving and wars waging. I don't feel particularly sorry for myself, but I do pity both the those that come in for tutoring when my brain is still not functioning and for my flatmates who have to put up with me when I take sleeping pills that make me loopier than a bucket of eels on a Farris wheel. Why it is that AUC planned the bus to arrive ten minutes after the hour, I'll never know. I presume it's the same logic that leads the buses to depart concurrently with the end of my Tuesday night class rather than after it.
In any event, I enjoyed my bumpy ride to the new campus this morning. After giving up trying to sleep, I paid more attention than usual to my surroundings. I even snapped some photos of the Christian and Muslim cemeteries we pass that have always fascinated me. The mausolea of the city's cemeteries make them look like small towns (and in many cases, they actually are). Past them are awful monstrosities of new construction, cheap glass and metal affairs pretending to look futuristic but succeeding only in looking prefab. AUC, incongruous with its environs for a lack of garishness, is an oasis (literally, really).
Last night's bus ride was less pleasant: I found myself relegated to a fold-down aisle seat that would be illegal in the States, no doubt. However, I eavesdropped on an interesting conversation between a French student and an Egyptian student. They talked about Islam and, while agreeing with her religion's restrictions on marrying non-Muslims, the Egyptian student expressed skepticism at the fact that in Islam men can marry non-Muslims, but women cannot. They talked about antiquities and the situation with the Louvre, and the Egyptian student spoke about her visit to the British museum where she took in the Egyptian exhibits. She concluded that the artifacts were better off there because of the ability of the British Museum to preserve and maintain them. I'm sure Zahi Hawass would be chagrined to know the feeling existed in one of his countrymen.

News & Issues

• Fatah agrees Egypt's Palestinian unity deal
• AUC awards 57 scholarships to students from across Egypt
• NPR: "Artifical Virginity Device Sparks Backlash" (listen to the story here)
• Government-sponsored poll reveals Egyptians think corruption problem is going from bad to worst

Clearly, living along a river that snakes its way through a vast desert, Egyptians have a certain appreciation for water. Ancient Egyptian culture was deeply informed by a dependence on the River Nile. This is something I'd learned in history class long ago. In college, however, the research one of my professors conducted in water policy led me to understand what a vital role water plays today in international relations and conflict. It was therefore with great interest that I read about Israeli FM Lieberman's visits to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, home to the two most important sources of the Nile. This while Egypt and the other Nile Basin states are attempting to resolve their differences over water use issues. Though I'll refrain from Biblical allusions, it looks very much like Israel is trying to use water as a means of leverage over the Egyptians.
What made me think so much about water today wasn't anything on quite so grand a scale: My flatmate Phil purchased a couple of bottles of Hayat brand water for me before my return to Egypt. He prefers it, apparently, for its taste. I am a Nestlé Pure Life man myself it having been recommended as a reliable clean and neutral-tasting choice. I'd always been a little leary of Hayat. Phil and I debated the finer points of the Egyptian bottled water industry (while we weren't in our rooms, noses to the grindstone, working on our theses) agreeing that Baraka tastes the least pleasant of the major brands. With all of the discussion and my admittedly unsupported claims that my brand was healthier than his, I decided to check into the matter further. Such a riveting topic apparently hasn't warranted much journalist attention or blogging lately, at least not in English, but I found an article from early last year referring to Ministry of Trade and Industry tests. The results (probably interesting only to potential consumers of bottled water in Egypt) were that only seven brands were both fit for consumption and accurately labeled for mineral content, etc.: Aqua, Aqua Siwa, Aquafina, Dasani, Mineral, Nestlé, and Siwa. Schweppes, notably, was considered unsafe. Unsafer still are other sources of water in Egypt. Some 40% of Egyptians drink contaminated water that leads to typhoid outbreaks, kidney failure, and thousands of deaths a year. Recent water shortages across the river in Giza have forced local residents to pump their own water only to discover that it is contaminated with sewage. If anyone finds more recent material on bottled water in Egypt, do let me know.

News & Issues

–Egypt

• The South Cairo Criminal Court has sentenced two US couples to jail in a high-profile illegal adoption case and is expected to hand down a ruling in another major case centered on defective blood products.
• AFP reports on the closure of AUC and other foreign universities and schools suggesting that the measures being taken by the Egyptian government may be in line with WHO recommendations.
• The government has taken an important step in tackling the un-Islamic practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Authorities arrested a 69-year-old man after his circumcision of an 11-year-old girl left her hospitalized.
• A US NGO, Freedom House, is accusing Egypt and others of using their positions in the UN's Human Rights Council to limit the protection of human rights. Find Freedom House's "The UN Human Rights Council Report Card: 2007-2009" here in .pdf format.
• Resurgent 80s fashion trends apparently don't jive with Grand Mufti Gomaa's sensibilities; stretch pants are a no-no, but loose-fitting trousers have been deemed ok in a recent statement following the controversy over trouser-wearing Sudanese women.

–Islam

• Will the real Islam please stand up? Daily News Egypt reprints an article that first appeared in Arab News tracking the multiple forms that Islam has taken in practice in the past century and its possible trajectories.
• Sana from KABOBfest also recently examined the complex relationship between Islam and modernity in her blog noting that the two are far from antithetical.

One of the things I was struck by when I returned to my neighborhood (Bab al-Luq) was not a bus or a taxi, but the progress made on a particular building whose entrance is on Fahmy Street which opens into Falaki Square a block west on Tahrir St. from my apartment building. I'd passed by the concrete structure many times on my way to classes, initially presuming it was a parking garage. Later minarets began rising from from the structure and I thought to myself, "Another set of loudspeakers tinnily calling the devout to prayer five times a day?" Lo and behold, when I returned, at the top of these "minarets" were Coptic crosses. A new church had been built downtown. Or I should say, is still in the process of being built. When I walked by the other night, there was a large depiction of Mary and either Jesus or a saint of some kind made up, of course, of lights. It looked like a giant Lite Brite creation. This was just after iftar had begun. Muslims were in the same street under tents enjoying their meals after having broken their fasts paying no attention to the wooden screens with crosses on them and the service or other kind of gathering going on inside.

Given the recent fatwa prohibiting the construction of new churches in Egypt, I was surprised at the lack of resistance in the community. Then again, as a non-Arabic speaker, I am not particularly integrated in my community here. But there have been no protests, not so much as a suspicious glance that I've seen. The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar had already declared the fatwa to be in error, but sectarian tensions in Egypt are already a problem without it. The recent arrests of Christians for not following Ramadan restrictions threatens to inflame them further, but perhaps the example of convivencia in the heart of Cairo is cause for a little optimism.

Also upon my return, I was exposed to a more light-hearted picture of peaceful religious co-existence. My flatmate Phil introduced me to CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairie, a program about a small Canadian town where a Muslim community rents out an Anglican parish hall to serve as their mosque. Canadian cheesy in the best way, the show still manages to bring compelling issues to the fore, causing people to stop and think. Plural marriage, gay marriage, wearing the burqa, dating, terrorism, Islamophobia, and more are addressed in the series that is well worth watching online if, as a non-Canadian you don't have ready access to CBC. If you are in Canada (and I may here be overestimating my readship), you can watch full episodes here.

Yesterday, though I wasn't fasting, I began iftar in the traditional way, by eating a date. My flatmate Phil and I joined friends Shannon and Eric at the Yemeni restaurant on Iran St. in Doqqi for the meal. After the dates, we had soup, sahawiq, fasuliya (a fried bean dish) with eggs, and a potato dish and the meat-eaters had fahsa, all to be eaten with rashoosh (Yemeni flatbread).
Meanwhile, in Yemen itself, recent events have caused a great deal of turbulence. Thousands upon thousands of displaced people have been moved to IDP camps.

After dinner, I returned downtown for the class I recently switched into, Migration and Refugees in International Relations. I have to say that my first impressions of both the professor and the class lead me to believe it could be one of the best I'll have taken here at AUC. We discussed the impact of migration and globalization on the concept of the nation-state and what that meant for the field of international relations.

Later on, I headed back across the Nile to Mohandaseen to Cedars to hang out with CMRS colleagues. I sipped on a spicy ginger drink while the rest of the gang enjoyed shisha. When we piled in Marise's car to leave, we got to see the full gamut of Cairo's flashy new traffic signs. Neon lights, the darlings of cab-drivers, have now come into official use, presumably as a means of drawing attention to under-heeded signs and traffic lights. The funniest of these is the crosswalk sign. In most other countries, the sign depicts a man calmly crossing a road. Here in Cairo, there is a man composed of green lights shown running like a bat out of hell across a glittery white crosswalk. Running is indeed preferable to lingering in Cairo traffic, but sometimes staring down a bus is just such fun.

As many struggle with how to remember and interpret the events that happened eight years ago today, the direction of relationships between the US and the Muslim world and between non-Muslims and Muslims in the US itself are brought to the fore. Al-Ahram Weekly examines these both through the optimistic lens of Dalia Mogahed, an Obama advisor, and in light of the still-difficult realities many Muslims face. Prejudices and confusion about Islam and Muslims are still a major obstacle to peace and understand. To find out more about Islam, check out the BBC's religion page.

News & Issues:

Egypt
· 155 arrested in southern Egypt for not fasting during Ramadan
· TV serials during Ramadan intended to foster patriotism
· Thinktank CPA speculates on succession

Migration
· Outburst by Republican congressman focuses more attention on irregular migrants and their place in the US healthcare debate
· US soldier seeks asylum in Canada claiming sexual-orientation based persecution

Hello from Chicago

Instead of letting my blog lie completely fallow for the summer and inspired to think of my home away from home away from home by some tasty falafel I had at Sultan's Market in Chicago (where I'm visiting friends), I'm going to include a couple recent news stories coming out of Egypt. Over the course of the summer and especially when I return to Egypt, I plan to maintain my blog though it will transition from a project undertaken to keep Rotarians, friends, and family informed to something with a more general appeal. Stay tuned!

US Federal court reverses ban on progressive Islamic scholar
Murder of Egyptian woman in German courtroom leads to outcry
This article is from earlier in the month but bears reading. Find further background here.

UNHCR study suggests that Islamic law has influenced international refugee law

  After a Methods class focused on a few of the controversies regarding people trafficking and how to define it and legally address it, I hopped a cab to the fringes of Ma'adi to get some shopping done at Carrefour with Erin. We lingered for quite some time, overwhelmed with the fluorescent-lit consumerist fairy tale.  Each of us picked up some household goods and some edibles by the end of our shopping excursion.  Believe it or not, it was an exhausting experience.

  I'm back at home finishing off a bottle of ISIS brand doum juice.  ISIS optimistically describes its flavor as gingery, but I myself think that Egypt's gastronomic strengths lie elsewhere.

  Now that the EU has issued travel warnings for the US, I'm thinking I've picked quite the fine time to return home.  Egypt is apparently moving all of its pigs (admittedly, not very many) to a 238-acre plot in 15th of May City far away from residential areas.

Other news:

The Muslim Brotherhood is distancing itself from a debate over Shia and Sunni Islam.  Egypt is a majority Sunni country that has recently experienced tension with Shia countries and groups like Iran and Hizbullah.  The two sects differ over the legitimacy of certain of Muhammad's successors, but the rift often goes far beyond theology.

An ancient necropolis discovered at Fayoum oasis yields dozens of artifacts.

An Egyptian delegation in DC paints a picture of Egypt that Egyptian-American students and others aren't quite prepared to accept.

  I trekked to and from Zamalek today to have some lunch and run errands.  At Café Arabica, my French friend Antoine was introduce to the joys of oatmeal.  I myself had my old favorite, fiteer with roasted bell peppers and haloumi cheese.

  Other than that, I've gotten another quarter of my Migration and Development about gender and people-trafficking and its relation to economic development.

News:

Members of an alleged Hizbullah cell may face life imprisonment or death.  A lawyer for the suspects says that reports denying they have been tortured may not be true.

Egypt's religious endowments minister encourages all able Muslims to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic) to "show the whole world" that the city is "something that concerns all Muslims".  Jerusalem is considered by many Muslims to be the third holiest city in Islam.

France's international news network, France 24, is launching its expanded Arabic-language news service in Cairo on Monday.

Individuals detained and jailed in Egypt Twittered their experiences from their cells.  Twitter, a micro-blogging service, was instrumental in the release of a UC Berkeley grad student from an Egyptian jail last year.

  Voilà, another entry where the news will be meatier than the description of my day.  Cynthia came home after being released from the hospital.  She's been taking it easy on the living room couch and I've been trying to be as helpful as I know how.  Other than that, I got through a quarter of a paper for Migration and Development, tweaked my thesis proposal, and corresponded with some sources for my thesis research in the States.

News:

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt supports Hizbullah in row with Cairo.  While the Egyptian government is pointing fingers abroad at the likes of Iran, Qatar, etc., the largest (and officially illegal) opposition party is embroiling itself in the tension by expressing its disagreement with the administration.  With the president vowing that Egypt will "hit with an iron fist anyone who messes with its national security", it is unclear whether the government will ramp up pressure on the Brotherhood as well.

Coptic Church provides conversion certificate to Muslim-born Christian.  This is unprecedented in a country where conversion is no easy process if not formally banned.  The convert is trying to get his identity documents changed to reflect his new beliefs.

American president Barack Obama's envoy says that the two-state solution is the only solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Meanwhile, word is spreading that Egypt is threatening to abandon its role as mediator between Hamas and Fatah. American Secretary of State Clinton is not optimistic that the two factions will reach a unity deal in the near future.

I'm snacking on some frozen peas while taking a break from a reaction paper for Comparative Migration Law that I began yesterday in the courtyard of the Greek Campus. My friend Cynthia, who shares my affinity for frozen peas, joined me there to get some work done and to walk her turtle, a recent gift from some of the Sudanese guys she works with. As the sun and its warmth began to wane, we left AUC with the intention to reconvene later.
We met up with Antoine and took the metro to Ma'adi where we met Phil, Marise, Marise's mom, and Marise's friend Sean who's visiting her for a few weeks. We ate at Lucille's perhaps not the most representative choice of the kind of food Egypt has to offer, but Sean graciously indulged our desire to have faux-Mexican and American food. Antoine, who's never been to North America, was unacquainted theretofore unacquainted with the delights of nachos and so stole some of Cynthia's while enjoying a barbecue burger. Because Marise's mom graciously treated the whole table to our meals, a contingent of us continued on to Zamalek to have chocolate fondant.

Today has included more academic reading and paper-writing, although I joined Ross at his window for the first spotting of the sleep-disrupting rooster of doom who apparently stalks the area hemmed in by our building and those adjacent. I include, for your Where's Waldo?-esque pleasure, a photo of the crowing fiend amid the piles of trash and debris which, depressingly surround makeshift homes and crumbling smaller apartment buildings. My backyard, as it were, is not exactly enviable.I've just finished reading an article in The Christian Science Monitor that my friend Reham posted to Facebook. It talks about terms "not to use" with Muslim. While I find the article interesting, and certainly feel that there are ways to engage people from outside one's own faith or belief system that work and others that don't, I think it would've been much better for a Muslim to write up such an article.

News:
A mob in a village in southern Egypt set fire to homes belong to Bahá'ís
To read more about the situation of Egyptian Bahá'ís, click here. For a joint press release responding to the incident from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, and others, click here.
Palestinian unity talks in Cairo founder
Criticism over Al-Masry Al-Youm's "shoddy journalism" after paper publishes article suggesting that AUC was providing Egyptian state secrets to US

Bevet Breizh!

You linguists out there will have caught that my title is in Breton, not Arabic. It means "Long live Brittany!" more or less. Brittany is the region of France where I spent my junior year of college and also the birthplace of crêpes and their savory counterparts, galettes. Why on earth am I talking about this when I'm residing in Cairo? Because today, I went to lunch with my Egyptian friend, Reham, and fellow American, Rebecca at the French Cultural Center. Though my cheese and mushroom galette with salade verte more closely resemble a cheese quesadilla, the French-speaking staff and a Breton flag lifted my spirits. Even better, while my (dessert) crêpe itself was lackluster, it was filled with crême de marrons, or chesnut spread in English. This was the halawa of my France days--I ate it allll the time with yogurt, on bread, or by itself. I plan to stock up during my extended layover in Paris on my way back to Cairo in January.
Prior to my lunch outing at 2, I had been up for hours already, having been awoken by the maddening doorbell-ringing antics of yet another Egyptian wanting money. The trash man, the man who "cleans the floor," and the landlord are all bereft of any concept of doorbell propriety, pushing the button incessantly thinking it will somehow hasten us to the door. To cope, I only answer the door when some knocks (inevitable my American or French neighbors) or when someone rings once (or twice if I'm feeling tolerant). More than that and they're out of luck. Anyway, the morning sunshine and Ross's company were the upsides to the decision I made to get up and going, capitalizing on my early-rising misfortune as an opportunity to reset my body clock. Running on four or so hours of sleep, I felt eerily optimistic and pleasant and productive. I even scrubbed down the kitchen sink. God knows why. It was in this mood that I polished up my outline for class today and then set off on the twenty-minute walk to Mounira, where the French Cultural Center is located. I lugged along my big camera and snapped photos along the way and, as I neared my destination, was suddenly swarmed by school children. I spoke to them in broken Arabic and they shared their few English words with me: "rabbit, carrot, nose, donkey" and other very useful vocabulary items. It occurred to me after a few minutes resting against a wall by the Center that next to it was a girls school. Headscarf-wrapped heads popped out of screenless windows on the top floor and giggles erupted. If you're tempted to envisage young Egyptian ladies as somehow demure and reserved, you're quite off the mark. I was the object of blown kisses accompany by kissy noises, dramatic princess waves, and even notes dropped from the window. The notes, sadly, were all blown off course by the wind. One girl yelled "Oh my God" rhyming God with flood, likely the only English phrase she could think of to get my attention. After this, another roar of giggles. Reham and Rebecca rescued me after about a quarter of an hour at which point we enjoyed our quasi-French food and had really good discussions about Islam and Christianity, theology, the Qur'an, gender roles, and more. I'm thankful that Reham's excellent English gives me a view on Egypt and the Islamic world that my obscenely rudimentary Arabic cannot afford me.
I had a hard time staying awake in class because of my fatigue, but was glad to be able to turn in my outline. I'll have feedback next week and then be able to get started on my paper. Afterward, I declined some invitations to go out, grabbed koshary, and headed here, to the apartment, to send some pictures along for the Rotary newsletter. After some readings for an irregularly scheduled class I have on Saturday morning (the one I'm presenting in), I hope to hit the sheets early.

News:
In wake of row over whipped Egyptian doctor, Egypt halts doctor visas to Saudi
Egyptian president to visit India for the first time in a quarter century
Egyptian bystanders, emergency services duped by German art installation at Goethe Institut

An Inexplicable Energy Outage & Religion with Reham

Feeling better-rested than usual, I was prepared to start the day off on the right foot. I wandered, half-awake, down the hall to turn on BBC World, as usual, but without effect. I peered at the remote control, but couldn't see much since the closed shutters and doors blocked out the sunlight. I got up to turn on the overhead light. Nothing. Surely a fuse must've blown. I check--nope. So it was that our apartment (and ours alone in all the building) was without power all day. I can help but indulge the suspicion that Ahmed, furious about his altercation with Catherine and her comrades was seeking revenge and that it got botched in the process, our apartment being mistaken for theirs. That's just speculation, of course. Fuming, I ate my muesli with yogurt from the fridge that was warming up again, just as when the motor broke down not so very long ago. I showered, grabbed my things, and stormed off to Costa Coffee where I half-heartedly read the required readings for Refugee Law today. At 3, my friend and classmate Reham joined me. We'd begun discussing Islam and religion in general the other day and had decided to get together again to discuss more. This was put off in favor of venting, which both of us did. Eventually we reached the topic at hand and discussed the similarities in our religious over mediocre mango "Frescatos". We also discussed the propensity for Copts to have favored John McCain in the American presidential race, their identity and Egyptian identity in general. We touched on extremism and Ibn Taymiyya and the concept of Islam having a detailed plan for temporal governance while Christianity was differently focused. We spoke of saints in Christianity and a similar practice in Islam and found that we hold in common a disagreement with the ideas of praying to the dead and worshiping people instead of or in addition to God. Reham readily admitted that Mohammad was simply a man who was dead and could be of no supernatural service to mankind any longer, a huge distinction between Mohammad and Jesus that those who would seek to compare them cannot reconcile. The life of Mary (or Maryam as she is known in the Qur'an) is treated far differently by the Bible than it is the Qur'an (as are a great many things). Reham and I found it interesting that many Christians and Muslims across the spectrum agreed on a whole host of social issues, but that it is theology that divides us. Next time we meet, we hope to delve into that theology a bit more.
We were off to Refugee Law after that. The topic today was exclusions clauses of the 1951 Refugee Convention--reasons for revoking or denying a person refugee status. After our three-hour class Phil and I went to the Thai restaurant in the Semiramis Intercontinental only to find that the half-dozen or so empty tables were apparently all reserved. We then trekked (somewhat circuitously as I tried to remember how to find my way) to Kowloon for Korean food. Tomorrow night is my night to teach English in Ain Shams after which I may be having a friend cut my hair. God only knows how that will end up.

News:
Omar bin Laden ends up in Qatar after being refugee asylum in Spain, Egypt
EU, US officials meet with Arab leaders to discuss Iran
Nile, source of conflict among Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya

Cairo Sunrise

I'd never have imagined during my 7:30-10 PM Intro to Forced Migration and Refugee Studies class during which the fluorescent light seemed to be boring into my soul and amplifying my rooster-induced fatigue that I would not get to bed until the following morning at 6 AM. However, receiving a couple of different invitations that later, happily congealed into one, I ended up at a rooftop bar in Doqqi with some friends from class as well as some friends of my TA. Things winding down there, but all of us still thoroughly enjoying the good conversation and laughter of the evening, we headed back downtown to Odeon which was packed with expats and Egyptians alike. By the time the sun came up, I'd interacted with Americans, Egyptians, Canadians, a Burdundian, an Italian, a Swiss guy, a Dutch classmate, a Slovakian, a German, an Austrian, a half-Brazilian-half-Egyptian, a Brit, and Heaven knows what else. The fascinating conversations I get to have with people from around the world are worth my being here in and of themselves.
While it may have been evident in earlier blogs when I hadn't gotten into the swing of things that I was a bit lonely in Cairo, I was suprised at how many people I knew and chanced to bump into (the expat community is rather tight-knit). I was getting phone numbers, invites to upcoming cultural events, and assorted shindigs left and right. Now to remember to balance my new-found social life with hitting the books. I plan to do so quite heavily between now and when I head to Zamalek to meet Hany, the found of Better World.
I know I previously mentioned it, but I found it telling that both of the founders of the NGOs through which I'm teaching English were former Rotary Scholars. Rotary has a knack for choosing driven and innovative young folks to represent them around the world. I only hope I'm up to the task as well! Tonight, also in Zamalek, I have a Rotary fundraiser to attend, as I mentioned previously. I'll report back on how that goes either tonight if I return home at a reasonable hour or tomorrow morning.

On a slightly less pleasant note, I heard this morning on the news that in swing states, there are DVDs of the documentary movie "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West". I hope to God that those of you reading this from central Illinois aren't finding these in copies of the Journal Star. This movie has more to do with scaring voters into voting on security issues than about informing them about the threats of extremism. These threats are very real, I won't deny that, but they should be addressed rationally and without villyfing Islam. It is precisely efforts like these that aim to "inform" the American people that foster distrust between us and the Islamic world. This distrust can ferment into something far more nefarious, which is why I am so thankful that Rotary and other organizations have programs to promote international and cross-cultural understanding. If any of you has questions about Islam or the way it's practiced where I'm living, please email me. If I can't answer your question, I'll find someone who can.

News of and Information on Egypt:
A fantastic description of Cairo and its attractions by British newspaper, The Times
Russo-Egyptian relations becoming firmer?
The story of a Rotarian who traveled to Cairo and his commitment to the fight against Polio
Egypt to be a guest at the next G8 Summit

An "Early" Morning

After going to bed following the previous entry, I squeezed in something like seven hours of sleep, waking up in time to head to the AUC business support office (why they call their visa processing assistance office that, I have no idea). I was all prepared with my passport, a photo, and the fee to get my student visa. For their part, AUC had processed my enrollment certificate. Too good to be true, everything's falling into place! Oh, expect for the government. The Ministry of Education or some other ministry hasn't yet given "student approval" or something to that effect. The lady assisting me suggested I get a three month tourist visa for 12LE. I said, "So I'll have to pay 12LE on top of the 62.10LE simply because the government isn't processing everything in a timely manner?" Not technically, I found out; or at least, not yet. I have until the end of September or so until my current visa expires, so I declined to throw more money (no matter how little) at the government than I have too.
Anyway, I should return to the previous topic of my last entry. The conversations I had were wonderful. The elections came up, of course. One Rotarian told me how he found it interest that, in his view, CNN and FoxNews swayed the American people so much. He said that the American election, like an unfolding drama, was the source of endless entertainment and intrigue.
With another Rotarian who'd lived in France as a child, I discussed, in French, the role of religion in Egypt. She explained that, in her view, Egyptians are very religious of their own accord, insisting that society didn't constrain them, but they believe as fervently as they do out of individual sincerity. We also discussed the affinity between Christians and Muslims as theists in the face of atheism, agnosticism, and secularism. I think many American Evangelicals would find they have a lot more in common than they expect with Muslims (and indeed, some have). On the ride home, religion was brought up again. We talked about Mohammad Abdu and the comparisons he drew between European Englightenment principles and Islam. Also discussed was the idea, central to Islam, that the Qur'an is only the Qur'an when it appears in Arabic–everything else is just a translation. Interestingly, my interlocutor admitted that he struggled with this since the Qur'an itself explains at great lengths that Islam is meant to be for all people. Other conversations touch on just how social Egyptians are and how this was affected and affecting Egypt's drive toward development. Egyptians who become high-powered businessmen and -women are unwilling to sacrifice their social lives and so get by on less sleep. A wife of one Rotarian who'd lived for many years in the States explained that she preferred living in Egypt because when Stateside, she didn't find the level of social interaction she was accustomed to: her American friends were busy with their jobs and their kids' afterschool activities during the week and were thus only available weekends. Unheard of in Egypt! Here, you make time stop for you and leave other things undone so as to be with friends. Alone time isn't valued much here either. I told Laila that my friend Maged called me one night when his parents were out of town (in Alex) and wanted Ross and I to come spend the night or hang out because he didn't want to be alone. She said she thought Egyptian men were "spoiled" in that way, always expecting to have someone around. Women, though not liking to be alone, were more equipped for it than men, according to Laila. Of course, these are often generalizations, but fairly reasonable ones, I find.
Just as stimulating as the conversation was the delicious food! New things I tried include 'amr al-deen, a drink made from sheets of apricot; mahamra, a spicy sauce made with peppers and walnuts; and konafah, a dessert served primarily during Ramadan made with shredded filo dough. Also, and I'm warning my vegetarian/pescetarian comrades not to read on, I had my first shawarma in Egypt. I'd had them in Denmark (of all places) and in the States, but not here this time. By the way, if you're hankering for a shawarma and you're in Peoria there're several places to get them. Nearly Bradley, there's Haddad's and in North Peoria, there's Pita's Mediterranean Wraps.
Oh, and all this talk of food reminds me of another topics of conversation–fasting. One Rotarian joked that all of the indulgence of iftar and sohour kind of negated (or at least made up for) fasting during the day. Some of the desserts are so rich that they appear primarily during Ramadan and much less frequently throughout the rest of the year. Not that I subscribe to the idea of fasting during Ramadan for any religious reason, but to try and understand what's going on around me, I'm going to try it for today. I refuse, however, to go without water, as the Muslims must.
So, instead of eating, I'll be reading (all day!) until my 8 PM Intro to Migration and Refugee Studies course.

Forget Pharaoh, ID Card Chaos, and AUC's Desert Digs

Forget Pharaoh
When I came to Egypt the first time, I came to understand the Egyptians more fully and in an new light, certainly one that contrasts with the conventional perception of Egyptians. During a lecture entitled "Egypt and the Egyptians" that Ross and I attended, this came up again. The lecturer referenced Charlton Heston films, Anglo-American fascination with Egyptology in the 19th Century, etc. to paint a picture of how many in the West think of Egypt. Pyramids, papyrus, hieroglyphs, and mummies are doubtless some of the first things that spring to mind when an American thinks of Egypt. This is largely the extent of what we learn about this cultural crossroads and largest Arab country in the world during our years of primary and secondary school. The reality here is something else entirely. The lecturer mentioned that tour groups he's spoken to are often flabbergasted by what appears to be the Egyptians lack of interest in their "own history". Indeed, you won't see many Egyptians flocking to the pyramids or to the Egyptian Museum (incidentally, a very short walk from my apartment), but that doesn't mean they're not proud of who they are. More important to them though are their currently cultural identities as Egyptians--both Muslim and Copt. The best analogy I can come up with has to do with the pyramids themselves: Originally, the pyramids were encased in highly-polished white limestone, very little of which is visible today because the bulk of them were carted away to be used in the construction of mosques and palaces in the area following the Arab invasion. In much the same way, parts of the past have been taken and incorporated into something new, forming a synthesis. So for me, while I plan to visit the pyramids again at least once and am also fascinated by the ancient Egyptians, my primary cultural focus here is the vibrant, complex, and modern Egyptian culture; Sunni Islam and Coptic Christianity; Arabic; post-colonial progress and social realities; and the people I meet on the street. A last comparison to my own life: while I find things like Stonehenge (built roughly the same time as the Great Pyramid) and am interested in what my remote ancestors the ancient Celts, or Germanic peoples or Romans did, I would be a bit confused if someone trying to get to know European and European-American culture stopped at that. So I say, forget Pharaoh for a while and read about Hosni Mubarak's long and storied place at the helm of the county and the political realities here, listen to some Amr Diab, challenge yourself to see whether you know all five pillars of Islam, and if you've never heard of the contribution of Egyptians to Christianity, read up on the Copts.

ID Card Chaos
Forgive yet another installment in "Wow, now this is efficient...not," but really. Today was the day I finally set about getting my AUC identification card. The scene: a dedicated building for "student services." Inside are three different areas 1, 2, and 3. Just inside the door there is a man who's sole task it is to print out numbers for people--the kind one takes from a red dispenser when waiting to order a cut of meat, for example. Thankfully, because Ross told me that going to counter 1 was worthless (it's apparently an information counter where you're directed to return to the number man to get a number for section 2 and wait all over again), I knew to ask the man for a number for section 2, the "cashier", who's sole duty in my case was to stamp a receipt. Not listening to anything I said, the man foisted off on me a number for line was. I politely told him I was there for my ID and needed to get to the cashier. He proceded to tell me that the ID section would be down until two. Why on earth he felt the urge to lie through his teeth when I could see people progressing through the ID line and being issued their IDs, I have no idea. I ignore him, went straight to the cashier without a number and had my tuition receipt stamped. I then came back and said "I need a number for the ID line." Again, he told me it was down. To my exasperation, Ross came up right after me and asked him for a number and he gave him one, which he gave me in turn. Once at the ID section, I had to wait for who knows how long as an elderly gentleman hunt and pecked his way across the keyboard, yelling crossly in Arabic at giddy Egyptian undergraduates. When a number in the possession of someone who'd given up long ago would flash on the screen, the man would wait and probably would've waited for all eternity if not for the polite insistence of the people in the waiting area that he should skip to the next number. After what seemed like (and what may literally have been) hours, I got my ID. This would've taken no more than fifteen minutes at Bradley. Patience is a virtue they say.

AUC's Desert Digs
Ross and I ate koshary for a late lunch and then headed home to get our belongings and check email before returning to AUC's old campus. Once there, we boarded buses that would take us far into the desert, to the dazzling new campus for a vaguely explained "welcome event." This turned out to be rather poorly organized as well, with no one giving the herds of American students instructions on where to go or what even would be happening. The positives included getting a complimentary galabeya (though I'll never be caught dead in it, it'll make a good gift for someone at home), delicious Egyptian food (including fiteer, which is like calzone but lighter and flakier), chatting with some other students, and sneaking off and wandering the unfinished campus. The whole thing is rather behind schedule, but it's quite beautiful. Considering how gaudy the other buildings are that one sees on the desert road along the way, this place is truly a tasteful feat of aesthetics. Photos on the website don't do it justice, but you can't really convey via pixels a beautifully breezy desert evening with dragonflies buzzing past as the sun sinks behind the sandy horizon. Unfortunately, this was interrupted by obnoxious music at first. Indicative of the Egyptian perception the Americans are lascivious and sex-crazed, inappropriate (and at times even explicit) music blared from a stage set up at a lovely outdoor amphitheater surrounded by palm trees. I wondered to myself whether they chose this aural pollution to make us feel more at home or if this was simply the unimpressive musical taste of the unfortunately acroynymed SOLs (Student Orientation Leaders). Mercifully, a Nubian band and dance group took over. I really enjoyed the music, but I do think the Nubian dancers made a mistake in inviting to the "dance floor" the newly-minted international AUCians now donning galabayas en masse. It degenerated into some kind of strange desert dance party which I left after a while, embarking with my flatmate upon the aforementioned exploration of the campus. A DJ later took over from the Nubians and it soon became clear that what was scheduled to be a five hour event had little form or focus. No speakers, no campus tour (we weren't even allowed through the gates that led to the rest of the campus), and no information. It came as no surprise that when it was announced that some of the buses were leaving an hour early for those that wanted to return to Cairo in advance of the formal end of the event, nearly everyone if not everyone made a mad dash. On my bus were none of the semi-helpful SOLs that had at least given us water on the first ride. We thus had no idea that this bus was heading to Zamalek (rather than the AUC old campus we'd departed from) and didn't realize it until we had already gone through Tahrir Square (the location of the Egyptian Museum, down the street from "home".) I made my way to the front after a couple of other irate students had asked the bus driver to pull over and asked where the bus was going. "Zamalek," he said. "La," I said and moved to get off. He told the people in front of me that they couldn't disembark there, but we all new we had to get off there and did so anyway. Perhaps a dozen people streamed off the bus, to the consternation of the driver. More excellent organization and communication. Ma'alish, I say though. It doesn't really bother me. The evening was, on the whole, enjoyable, and I grow to love Egypt more and more everyday. The best thing, I've learned in my week here so far, is to expect chaos and be thankful when even the slightest semblance of organization shines through.