Because I have nothing more culturally enlightening to share than the fact that Cynthia and I discovered tonight that the Yemeni restaurant in Doqqi delivers to our downtown doorstep, I am going to regale you with some of the latest AUC news as covered by the student-produced campus newspaper, the Caravan.
First we have this choice comic strip wherein Americans are portrayed as green-eyed frat boys in pink polos ("dude bros", if you will), busty blonde valley girls, and hip hop-garbed black kids who speak only monosyllabically. These three archetypal Americans are shaming an Egyptian for being able to speak Arabic and enjoying Egyptian cinema. While there's a whole lot wrong with the comic, the irony is that most AUC students don't know Americans like this. The Americans that study abroad or come here for grad school exemplify a whole set of stereotypes on our own. You have the noble types who are seeking to better understand the Arab world or Islam, the know-it-alls who are here to study Arabic and treat you with the utmost scorn if you're not smoking shisha with old men in an ahwa and deploying your best colloquial Egyptian Arabic phrases by your second week here, the wanderers who are "finding" themselves in a foreign land, the go-getters who're adding studying in Egypt to résumés already replete with internships at various government agencies—they inevitably all want to work for the CIA or the FBI, the bleeding hearts who have come here to volunteer among the poor and refugees, the embittered ones that hate it here and become alcoholics, etc. etc. Most of us are some mix of most of those categories (though I assure you, I'm not an alcoholic and my Egyptian Arabic is nothing to hold over the heads of others). Only among the undergraduate study-abroaders do you find anyone approaching the stereotypes in the comic and even then, they're a rarity. The people on campus who most closely fit those caricatures? Egyptians! Upper class, popped-collared, designer brand-donning, gigantic sunglasses-sporting Egyptian kids. I swear, AUC's undergrads are more "American" than me, at least superficially. They haven't quite caught on to the idea that you're not entitled to throw trash on the ground just because some man* in a uniform following you around with a broom and cleaning your every mess. (*Or child—AUC's food contractors hired children in an move embarrassing for a university that has published research on the phenomenon.) Anyway, I'd wager their Western ways and styles come more from movies and other media than from real live Americans and other Westerners. The comic strip appearing in the latest print version of the Caravan was even worse, depicting a terribly inappropriate rendering of a Chinese man that looked like something out of a racist propaganda leaflet from a mercifully bygone era.
The actual articles in the student paper range from the informative (like the one about AUC's new connections with Columbia and Sciences Po) to the ridiculous: AUC, despite being an American liberal arts university, is too prudish to allow nude figure drawing. I guess that's par for the course, though, when there are worries about Beyoncé's scandalousness is apparently a threat to the Muslim Brotherhood. Another article, was accompanied by a photo of a bunch of bored looking AUC students protesting Israeli actions in East Jerusalem (Al-Quds), one of whom had a creative little sign with a blurry, crossed-out Israeli flag. She was, no doubt, showing her commitment to a commitment for a two-state solution. The protest, according to the article, featured a Jewish kid from New York who "surprised the crowd with his condemnation of Israel’s actions". I can hear the gasps now and the excited whispers, "Ya salaam, he doesn't even have horns!" Meanwhile, their more spirited compatriots at other universities were busy burning Israeli flags.
Anyway, that's about enough fun for today, onto (more) news.

News & Issues

Egypt

• Transport minister steps down in wake of deadly train accident
• Ministry of Endowments rents mausolea to the living
• Another story about the 'Black Cloud' for good measure
• France seeks to keep Sudanese president away from Egypt during February Africa-France summit in Sharm
• 'Egypt needs more women in power' from The Guardian
• With as much as I get frustrated with racism and intolerance in Egypt, I feel like maybe this Egyptian blogger's thoughts on racism in the US deserves to be linked to. Some points she's gets wrong, to be sure, but it's interesting to get an Egyptian take on us that's a little more serious than the comic strip I rambled on about above.

Migration and Refugees

• UN to text message food vouchers to refugees
• Fear and uncertainty for internally displaced in Pakistan

Egypt Gets It Right

  I haven't slept much in the last twenty-four hours, but prior to my insomniac night and morning, I had planned to write this entry.  I was talking to Marise yesterday about her frustrations with so much of what's negative about the Middle East and Egypt being highlighted all the time and too little of the positive getting notice.  I think this is the trend in mainstream media in general, but it's all too often the way things work in everyday conversations.  Applying the adjective "Egyptian" to anything connotes inefficiency or a lack of sophistication or lateness far too often when in reality there is so much positive about the culture and the people.  The subtlest cultural insensitivity is often the worst.  A lot of expats feel entitled to speak so tersely about their temporary (or even long-term) home, and some times you have to uncork and complain to remain sane, but I think as I've mentioned before that it's important to disentangle one's frustrations from Egypt itself.  When we're in our own countries and something bad or vexing occurs, we're not as likely to attribute it to a nationwide phenomenon, but rather the particular people or phenomena involved.  Lately I've been trying to keep that in mind here.

  After a post-dinner game of Risk, I found myself too tired to give such an entry the proper attention, so I planned to wait until morning.  Unfortunately, I lay awake all night anxious about a meeting I was to have with my landlord, about finishing off the semester, traveling home, getting my thesis research done, etc. etc.  By the time my landlord showed up forty-five minutes early just as he'd done last time, I was in no mood to deal with him.  He did, as I'd feared, trying to snake his way into more of our money and this time, I didn't have Marise and her family around to help me out.  He left a contract, but is going to return at a later date to pick it up, signed and for the deposit.  I won't explain the whole interaction, but I was so livid and felt so beat down that I wanted nothing other to be home in that moment.  In my mind, there were no weasely landlords in America, no shabby problem-ridden apartments, in fact, nothing at all but family, friends, and relief.  This, quite obviously, is not the case.  

  After he left, I was still unable to get to sleep, so I breakfasted, showered, and slumped into a living room chair feeling victimized and angry.  I continued to feel this way all the way until I met my friends Amanda and Katie at Tahrir Square whence we headed to lunch at the French cultural center in Mounira.  Seeing friends I'd not seen in along time and walking and chatting, it finally occurred to me that the weather was absolutely perfect.  Sunny and breezy and beautiful, Egypt seemed a little less like it was conspiring to impoverish me.  I'm not becoming some kind of categorical Egypt apologist and I stopped believing long ago that it was even worth trying not to resent the problems around because it's somehow culturally insensitive, but I can say that things that used to bother me terribly don't get to me as much anymore.  I never thought that I'd adapt to the degree I have, but I am ten times less stressed out than last semester save for the landlord-centered flare-ups.  And since adapting, I've been able to appreciate even more the things that I'd already begun to like and notice other things to enjoy:

  The cohesiveness of the extended family here is impressive.  I'm sure it can be stifling at times to have to try and live up to the expectations of scores of people, but knowing that you have just as many people to help you out when you're in a bind is something that doesn't exist the same way in a lot of other places.  And furthermore, families are always willing to take other people under their wings.  Even if it's not always the help you're looking for or the way you think you'd like to be helped, there's a wellspring of good intentions and a willingness to help solve problems. There's a warmth and openness that I haven't seen in the same way too many other places.

  The positive side to all the disorder and informality and lateness is an immense flexibility.  People are willing and able to step outside a given role to assist you and to find a way around formal barriers.  It's as if everyone is in cahoots.  I'm sure some of it is disingenuous, but the kind of finagling people have done for me personally to get things squared away with AUC for example are deeply appreciated.  If there's a will, there's a way.  Unless of course Allah doesn't will it, then ma3lesh.  

  There's a kind of vibrancy in the fabric of Cairo that is also rare.  You never feel alone.  I think this must be the value placed on the family writ large.  People are always together socializing at all hours of the day.  Unlike in Europe, things don't close early.  You can run to a juice stand at 11 at night if you feel so moved or go the corner store or for koshary or to the cell phone shop long after the sun's gone down.  It's easy to make friends with Egyptians if you're looking to meet them.  Again, quite the foil to Europe's reserved social processes, it's easy to find yourself swept up in a sea of invitations from new friends if you make the slightest effort.  Above all, they don't want you to be lonely or feel left out.

  The combination of people you meet here is like nowhere else.  Though New York and Paris are diverse, Egypt mixes people together in different proportions.  As a nexus between the Middle East and Africa it is unlike any other place in the world.

  I count myself lucky to live here; to benefit from the warmth of the Egyptian people; to be challenged by the things I find upsetting in such a way as to be forced to examine my own values in a way I wouldn't in the West.  Every infuriating interaction or gesture of goodwill is a unique opportunity for growth that I've never have had if I hadn't come to be a part of this crazy, beautiful city.

Links:

Wall Street Journal photo journal, "In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood plays defense"; over a dozen Brotherhood members arrested

Israeli strengthening border barriers in an effort to curb irregular migration

Egyptian-American groups urger Obama to bring up reform with Mubarak