Full of Korean food and trying to muster up the will to finish my reaction papers for methods and for law, I thought I'd take a break and catch my blog up. Last evening, after Phil, Ross, and I hit the juice place (I got peach for a change-not bad), we headed to the Abd el-Hadi pastry shop where we received a warm welcome and were plied with samples of the treats that are being prepared for the week of Mohammad's birthday (which falls on Monday this year). Hadi, as he introduced himself, seemed to be on top of all the goings-on in his shop. He used to be an equestrian champion of some sort and at one point even produced an aged photo of himself atop a steed leaping through the air. Phil left with a kilo of baklawa (which he has apparently since consumed in its entirety), while Ross and I settled for some of the holiday goods–peanut bars surrounded with coconut and coconut bars with pistachios in the center, surrounded by apricot. Urging us to return often to help him with his English, Hadi bade us farewell. We headed back to the apartment and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Ablavi from next door and a French coworker of hers.
Today I spent reading and writing and avoiding the increasing heat and sand outside. You can't call it hot yet, but I had to throw off my comforter last night because of how warm it got in my room. Later on, I joined Marise and Phil for Korean which was followed by juice with Ross. Further inquiring as to the mysterious pile of rubble and the hole inside of the building across the street where the butcher used to be, we were told cryptically that "they" didn't want the store anymore and that that's how the system works. God knows what that means. Seems like a drastic way to shut down a butcher shop.
I also found out that I'll be able to work on my thesis research this summer which probably be done at least in some part back in the States, maybe also in Europe. It'd be nice to find a job concurrently with the research for a month or two, but with this economy, that's probably impossible.

News:
Egypt sees its first female mayor
Resignation of Palestian PMs signal progress toward reconciliation
British parliamentarian joins aid convoy bound for Gaza
Pullitzer-prize winning author to travel to Gaza on International Women's Day (tomorrow)

Closed Zone

Watch a short film on Gaza from Israeli Yoni Goodman who was the animation director of Waltz with Bashir. Read an article on the film from the Jerusalem Post.

Inert Elevators and Desert Foxes

Google's weather description of Cairo today does not read "sun" or "haze" as usual, but rather "sand". Yes, sand. Though I'm not quite sure that's accurate for today, the change in the weather that began yesterday was an agonizing reminder that it will only continue to get hotter from here and the sand forecast means the onset of the khamaseen (also called khamsin). Apparently, right now it's in the 80s out there in the world beyond my apartment.

In light of this, purchasing tickets to Tunisia for spring break yesterday was all that much more of a joy. Lonely Planet tells me that mid-March through mid-May is the perfect time to go and we (Ross, Phil and I) are going in mid-April. Mid-perfection, in other words.

After some trip-planning and koshary, I left with Phil to Ma'adi to watch The Secret Life of Bees at a friend's. It was nice to watch a happy film that wasn't a mindless comedy, we were briefly transported out of Egypt and into the American South (which, ironically, is almost more foreign to me than the Middle East as I've never been anywhere down there but Virginia and Florida). Immediately afterward, though, Phil and I were reminded where we were. We hopped in an elevator hoping to make our way speedily to the metro stop and head back downtown. No dice. As we descended from the 13th floor, we stopped on the 9th where two Egyptian men, the shorter one in a worn-looking suit and the taller, lankier one in a tan galabayya. Strangely, the illuminated G (for ground floor) became unlit and the man in the suit pushed it again. The doors closed and we lurched to a halt. "Oh good," said I. "Oh good," laughed the man in the suit before he began trying to call out on his cell phone, realizing that the interphone in the elevator was dead. None of us were getting service in the elevator car, though. By this time, I saw that suit man was carrying in his hand and handgun in a holster. Strangely, I was entirely unaffected. Par for the course, right? There I am trapped in an elevator with a jovial armed man, his sidekick, and my friend Phil in Egypt. What else would I be doing on a Thursday night? Suit man handed his weapon to his pal and proceded to pull open the doors of the elevator car only to be met with an even more solid set of doors to the corridor. He pounded, Phil pounded. Nothing. After a few more times of the doors closing again and suit man opening them, we heard noise outside. Suit man managed to yell for someone called Sherif who apparently scurried off to some control panel somewhere and turn off the electricity to the elevator. Great. Now I'm in the pitch black with a jovial armed man, his sidekick, and my friend Phil in Egypt. I took a drink of water, pressed a button on my phone that lit up the car with a feeble blue light, and kept waiting. Soon the electricity was on. The dear little G button was again illuminated, but the car had its own ideas. We ascended to the 21st floor where Phil and I bade our new friends farewell and took the stairs all the way down. We walked to the metro only to find that the last train in the direction of El Marg had stopped. Ma3lish. We went to a grocery store, got a cab, and headed back downtown theorizing about what would've happened if we'd gotten stuck for hours or days and wondering who suit man was and why he was armed.

Earlier in the evening, Phil, Camilla (the friend in Ma'adi we'd gone to visit), were purusing our university's illustrious news publication, The AUC Caravan. The content of some of the pieces in it is often good, even if the writing or framing of problems on campus are a bit off. One article, though, conveyed sheer absurdity. If you're down for a laugh, the article, entitled "Desert fox raids AUC campus" is full of gems. The title itself, alluding to German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's operations in North Africa during the Second World War, is a ridiculous hyperbole. "I did not see the fox, but if I saw it, I think that I would not come to college again," was the compelling testimony of one student while a construction worker was quoted as saying, "Even if there were lions on campus, we will keep working." Brilliant! Then why isn't the campus finished? The comments on the article are just as comical as the piece itself.

It's nice to have a bit of levity to make living here just a bit better, but it's all too easy to forget that there are people, presumably in greater Cairo, still locked up without charge. Human Rights Watch came out with another article on the situation of Diaa Eddin Gad and other activists on the 4th. He has been held since 6 February. I guess all I can do for now is blog and send letters.

This morning, my landlord's brother came over to talk to my Ross who in turn woke me up saying something about signing a document. It's the question of taxes again. Now they're asking us to outright lie in writing, claiming that we pay 1400 Egyptian pounds less than we do. We politely declined pointing out that being dishonest with government agencies isn't the sort of thing that puts foreigners in good standing with their host governments. Perhaps Dr Rizk should just lower our rent to that level. Then everyone would be happy (and honest). I just hope they don't forge our names on a legal document. Oh the joys of renting in Cairo.

News:
Rapists sentenced to death by hanging in northern governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh
Russian diplomats cause row on EgyptAir flight from Cairo to Sanaa
Ancient statues uncovered, the latest in a string of significant archaelogical findings this year

I had law class yesterday during which we discussed the International Criminal Court's issuing an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan. He was just in Cairo a week ago, but now, in theory, every time he sets foot outside of Sudan, he risks arrest. In retaliation, he expelled ten aid agencies working in Darfur. More suffering for the Sudanese simply because he aims to conflate NGOs and colonialists and intergovernmental organizations.
After class, Marise, Mallory, Michelle, and I grabbed dinner at Estoril, a Lebanese place downtown before heading to Mohandeseen where we were looking to avail ourselves of the sales at Benetton. Unfortunately, we couldn't find it right away and after several phone calls and passing such stores as "Naïve: Accesories for Ever", "Wild", "Tommy XXL", and the stores where "brand names" mysteriously cost 7 and 9 Egyptian pounds respectively, we arrived at a darkened three-level Benetton only to find it had just closed. Instead we went to a drive-in juice place on the way back downtown. I had delicious sobia and that was that.

News and links:
Details on the charges against and the arrest warrant for al-Bashir
Egypt calls for suspesion of arrest warrant
Iran says will press Interpol to help it arrest Israelis for alleged war crimes in Gaza
Somali pirates free Egyptian ship held for two months

Chinese Organ Breathing

For the second day in a row, I managed not to spend any money. I made eggplant and sun-dried tomato spread sandwiches, packed them up like a middle school "cold lunch", and headed to Greek Campus to meet my classmates who were eating and reading for class and chatting. We had an excellent guest lecturer, Dr Marisa Ensor, who talked about how international law pertains to migration.
Immediately after class, I joined my flatmate, Ross, on Tahrir Square where we were picked up by Khaled, a Rotarian from the Cairo Royal club. He whisked us to one of the riverboats, Le Pacha, where we had quite an evening. Over delicious Egyptian hors d'oevres Ross and I chatted with Mona, a young lady who is going to North Carolina in April as part of Rotary's Group Study Exchange program. She'll be serving as a cultural ambassador for Egypt while gaining professional experience in an American accounting firm. The members of the club were attentive and interested in us and in the several other guests; there were visiting Rotarians from Lebanon and Tunisia. Graciously, they held part of the meeting in English. Even the evening's speaker, a maxillofacial surgeon-turned-homeopath, conducted half of her lecture in our language. It was on methods from alternative medicine for dealing with stress. Calling herself a "homeopath, reiki master, and reflexologist", she was certainly the product of exposure to the world at large. Most of the ideas she shared, including "Chinese organ breathing" in which she involved the club in a breathing exercise meant to vent all one's anger out of the liver, are things that I don't subscribe too, but I was fascinated with the liberal way in which she spoke of religion and spirituality. Religious pluralism was the order of the day and it occurred to me that non-sectarian Rotary clubs sometimes are able to bridge deep divides between practitioners of different religious. And tonight, they were connected by chuckling at some of the speaker's explanations of ill health. She enumerated the criteria for the WHO definition of a healthy person and one audience member interjected "mish Masri" or "not Egyptian". In other words, being Egyptian disqualified you from being considered healthy. Though it was a joke, I certainly buy into pollution and precarious road conditions being more of a threat to the average person living in Egypt than negative electro-magnetic heartwaves. The lecture stretched on for much longer than the president of the club intended, but included singing and stretching and lots of crowd interaction, so Ross and I and our fellow ambassadorial scholar, Ambereen, were thoroughly entertained. The generosity of Cairo Royal was exceptionally warm. In the course of this one meeting where we were fed a delicious meal and given special attention, we were also given two separate invitations to Rotarians' vacation homes on the Red Sea. The president even said she'd make arrangements for our transportation there. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it, but I was moved by the show of kindness.
Khaled dropped us back home and, driving through Falaki Square we saw a gaping whole in the side of the building that houses the souq and the Truman store and the honey shop and the "exlant tourism" restaurant. Ross had seen a police vehicle there earlier, but didn't know for sure how the hole got there. Hours later, there were still people milling around a pile of rubble that looks like it used to be a butcher shop. With the cautions about security issues, we couldn't help but speculate, but I haven't found any news on the subject, so I'm thinking it was faulty construction or an errant vehicle careening into the building or something. Instead of worrying too much, Ross and I came home and, like nerds, played Civilization IV together for a while. I had Twining's jasmine green tea and McVitie's ginger nuts in a fit of Britishness.

News and links:
Forbes article on the Internet and Egyptian society
Egypt detains and releases Internet activist
US reduces aid to Egypt, maintains funding for Israel

Another normal day in Cairo, as if there is such a thing. I step out into the sunshine, put in my earphones to try to drown out the ceaseless honking and the cries of the bikya men. My sunglasses shield my eyes from the bright sun while shielding from my glares the drivers of black and white taxis plowing into the intersection of Nubar and Tahrir streets despite the commands of traffic cops, nearly committing a dozen or so acts of vehicular manslaughter each. Unfazed, I weave through the crowd on the southwest corner waiting for buses they have to have a running start to board since the drivers often don't bother braking. I pass the area where men gather to pray when the calls from the loudspeakers beckon them five times daily, past the post office where I sheepishly try out my Arabic a handful of times each month in order to procure stamps for post cards and letters. I pass the banana cart where Fahmi Street empties into Falaki Square, noticing with curiosity and concern that the windshield of a car parked by the string of banks there was smashed in. Things like that just don't happen in Cairo. I tell myself it must've been an accident as I glance down at the old women selling vegetables from their unchanging perches on the sidewalk across from the man who shines shoes. I pass covered ATMs and a police post, a florist and a fruit stand and then dodge a group of idle men gawking at a flatscreen TV with a football (soccer) game on in the window of the new Truman electronics store for the opening of which the entirety of Falaki Square was illuminated with multi-colored lights, a special tent set up and some kind of religious ceremony held. The restaurant next door bills itself as and "exlant" Egyptian "tourist restaurant" but I've never seen a tourist inside. That they also advertise delicious brains for sale might dissuade a large majority of them. On the same block are the entrance to the Bab al-Luq souq where one can buy produce and meat if you don't mind braving pools of blood and narrow thoroughfares and a dedicated honey store. Varying my routes as I learned to do from my summer with the State Department (though I suppose blogging about them in detail defeats the purpose), I sometimes turn left and head down Falaki Street, pass the Isis corner store where I occassionally buy bread, and make a right into one of the three entrances to the Greek Campus where I have all of my classes this semester. I meet friends in the courtyard and chat or read for class depending upon how studious I'm feeling. Other times, if I take an entirely different route, I grab fuul and ta3mayya at Canary and grin at the same employee who always laughs with me as I get lost in the shuffle of hungry Egyptians. Or maybe he's laughing at me; I presume I do look quite goofy rather often.
Methods class today revolved around proper form in conducting efficient and ethical surveys. Wording, we learned, is everything. Clarity and sensitivity respect the interviewee and contribute to accuracy. The class is divided into groups who will be working on different projects. I was please to have been assigned to a group with my friends Cynthia, Brandy, and Reham. We'll be conducting a survey on the family life of Nigerian economic migrants.
Determined not to spend any money today after yesterday's indulging, I had both lunch and dinner at home. Eggplant and sun-dried tomato spread on 'aish, salad, dates, and halawa made a fantastic lunch, while my dinner of penne pasta with tomato and onion sauce accompanied by peas and carrots was unimaginative, but tasty as usual.
Well, hopefully my little slice of life narrative wasn't overly boring. With the spate of violence recently, I actually prefer a bit of boredom. The US Embassy sent out a message to the expat community today saying of the events that they "do not appear to be connected, but there is some indication that additional incidents are planned".

News:
US invites Palestinian bloggers to cover Sec. State visit to Egypt but Egyptian government bars one from entering the country
Mixed reviews of the diplomatic efforts surrounding the rebuilding of Gaza
President Mubarak's son, Gamal, visits US

March Mirth

Today was one of my most favorite days in Cairo. I was productive, getting work for law class done, paying my rent, mailing post cards, etc. and I had a full day after all of that. After getting koshary for lunch, Phil and I trekked out to City Stars where I stocked up at Spinney's and found a nice hoodie on sale at Benetton. A metro ride and then a cab ride got us there, and chatting with the Coptic Orthodox cab driver was really interesting. We talked about America and how he perceived it as a place where people of many religions peacefully coexist. He also talked about the sometimes-uneasy relationship between Egypt's Muslims and its Christians.
For dinner Cynthia and I joined our Norwegian friend, Benedicte, in Zamalek at a place called Crave. I was blown away by the service, the quality of the food, the ambience, and every other category of restaurant satisfaction you can think of. It was literally the best meal overall during my half year in Egypt.
Cynthia and I talked about the recent violence in Southern Sudan and how illogical it is that there are efforts to repatriate Sudanese now living in Cairo who originate in the area. There isn't sufficient stability to support an influx of refugees back home. She and Ben and I reveled in the fact that we'll all be in Cairo together next fall. I'm still really happy with the decision I've made to pursue my Master's here.

News:
Another human case of bird flu in Egypt
American attacked in Khan al-Khalili unfazed, says event was isolated
Egypt may significantly up its export prices on gas destined for Israel