A Refectory Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day, Yanks. For the first time in my whole life, I wasn't with my family for Thanksgiving. And it's a shame, really, because Thanksgiving is hands-down my favorite holiday. Think about it. You stuff yourself apoplectic, drink yourself blind, fight with your relatives, watch idiotic football, and think, for one day in the whole year, about how good your life is. One of my Canadian colleagues pointed out that Thanksgiving is a celebration of genocide. I said, "Save it for Columbus Day, pinko!"

Right. So how did I spend my Thanksgiving this year, you ask?
I went looking for God.

No need to check your URL bars, my friends. I signed on for a faculty trip down to the Red Sea coast to visit the monasteries of St. Paul and St. Anthony. We stayed overnight in Ain Soukhna, a (reputedly) up-and-coming resort "town" south of Cairo on the Red Sea Coast, north of Hurghada.

I can't decide if I'm astonished or revolted (or astonishingly revolted, I suppose) by Egypt's construction boom. On the one hand, I'm knocked flat by the hubris of building entire cities out of the desert, de novo. Cities in a place with no water? No problem, say Egypt's hordes of engineers. I have to admire that kind of chutzpah. The problem, of course, is that these cities are being built without any sort of environmental or economic conscience. I can't help but think that golf courses emphatically do not belong in the middle of the desert. And that coral reefs are beautiful and precious, and, say, shouldn't be destroyed by sewage effluent. Silly me. So imagine my surprise when we drove by several enormous wind farms down the coast near Ain Soukhna. The wheels were actually turning, and ostensibly, power was being responsibly manufactured. Well done, Egypt.

St. Paul's and St. Anthony's are the two oldest monasteries in the world. According to legend, St. Paul, the first hermit, withdrew into a cave in the desert where his monastery now stands. After 90 years of being fed once a day by a raven bearing half a loaf of bread, St. Paul realized he was going to die. Simultaneously, an angel spoke to St. Anthony, another hermit, who crossed the desert and the mountains to find St. Paul, just in time to witness his death (the bird brought a whole loaf of bread that night). Anthony realized he couldn't possibly bury Paul on his own, so God sent two lions out of the desert to bury Paul. That, of course, is the short short version of the story. The two monasteries themselves have some of the oldest monastic paintings in the world.

It was a long drive down the coast; I met the bus on campus at 7:30 am on Thursday (ugh). We made it to St. Anthony's a little before noon. I absolutely love the desert, and so I was thrilled to be back in the middle of nowhere. It was marvelous to be out of Cairo, to be in a place with silence, and clean air with the slight alkaline tang of a vast collection of nothing. Dust, sun, rocks, monks, a few buildings, and the occasional flock of pigeons. We were the only tour group there.

We had this amazing guide, Brother Maximus, whose English was spotless and who was absolutely hilarious. I confess, I had not thought to find comedy in the monastery, but there it was. We checked out the chapels and the excavations on the grounds, as well as some of the tools of daily monastic life.

After a rather outstanding lunch, most of us chose to make the ascent up the mountain to St. Anthony's cave. I checked my guidebook as we were heading up the hill, and my heart dropped. Apparently, the summit consists of 1200 stairs. I was not happy to hear this, given my experience with the Incas. Even in November, the sun was blazing, and it was a long, hot slog up to the top. I can't imagine tourists doing this in the summer! But slog I did, and though I don't think I'd ever need to do it again, I was glad I'd made the climb.

The cave itself was, well, a cave. (Shouted up the last flight of stairs: "Hey, guys, how is it?" Shouted back down: "It's a cave!") Very small, with a very twisty, dark passage leading down into a niche that's been (somehow) outfitted with an icon and a small altar. Pilgrims leave notes written in the cave. Before the descent, I shared with the group some chili & highland whisky chocolate I had brought with me from Germany. Thanksgiving, indeed.

The hotel, The Dome Marina Best Western (yes, I'm not joking) was decent but obviously recently constructed. It was right on the ocean, though, and dinner was quite good. I turned in early, as did most of the others.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to make the trek to St. Paul's. Given that it was a Friday, the place was absolutely packed with tourists and pilgrims. I enjoyed St. Paul's much less, probably due to the crowding. I did manage to get myself blessed (take help where it's offered, I reckon), and for reasons that are still not quite clear to me, I ate a lot of bread. More paintings, more chapels, more olive presses, and a cave converted directly into a chapel. No stairs required.

The best part of the trip to St. Paul's, by far, was this photo op. This young man had just gotten himself a toy machine gun at the monastery gift shop (again, I'm not making this up), and was gleefully firing it while his mother took his picture with Jesus. Check out the look on his face!

We returned to the hotel, had lunch, and then horsed around on the beach for a few hours. It's amazing how relaxing that still can be for me. Plenty to see - there were lots of jellyfish on the sand, shells, snails, barnacles, crabs, and sea urchins. I had a very good time. Eventually it was time to get back on the bus and head back to Cairo. I was very glad I'd gone, as strange as it was for me to spend Thanksgiving away from my family. At least there were palm trees.

Germany in November

Last weekend I took advantage of my teaching schedule and jetted off to Germany for a few days. I went to visit a friend, drink beer, eat pork, buy clothes, and eat pork. Oh, and drink beer.

Don't get me wrong, Egypt's a great place. This is probably the first and last time in my life I'll have anything resembling money. In their hearts, the people are good, the city is constantly balanced on the edge of chaos, and every single day I see something I'd never have imagined. A car full to the windows of pastries? Check. A monk driving a bulldozer? Check. Two cats fighting under my feet while I stand in the middle of the street trying to have a quiet cell-phone conversation? Triple check.

But there are things a girl pines for, like a decent draft beer. Or clothing that shows more than my eyebrows. I drafted the above resolutions, bought my plane ticket, and headed out Thursday afternoon for Germany. I'm enormously entertained that I've moved to Egypt and gone to Europe twice in four weeks.

The cab driver I called showed up 20 minutes late, then spent the entire 45 minute drive telling me why I should marry him. Of course, I was not happy about this, but at least there was no talk of "sexing." I was trying to save a little money by calling a yellow cab, but it's not worth the 5 bucks or so I saved over hiring an AUC car and driver. Experimentalist, thy name is Tiffany.

Par for the course, airline travel-wise, until I made it to Stuttgart. I was squinting out the window into the dark, when I noticed a strange phenomenon illuminated by the wing strobe lights. It can't be, I thought. You have got to be kidding me.

You've guessed it, of course - it was snowing. And I don't have a coat in Egypt. Fortunately, Deb had her head on straight and brought a coat, gloves, and a scarf to meet me. I also decided I'd wear almost all my clothes all the time. I looked ridiculous.

To my intense gratification, I spent Friday shopping in Stuttgart. H&M, Zara, and a mysterious German department store all robbed me of too many euros (thank you, GWB). From there it was on to Heidenheim, with a castle, goats, Italian food, German food, wine, a market, and the Autobahn! I drove on the autobahn! Cross that off my list of things to do in my life.

I ended my trip in Munich. We stayed at one of these euro-hip hostels, which was actually quite nice, and the price was a relief. Our room had 6 beds in it, and there were only 2 other girls. Oh, and I spent approximately an hour in the room. Because right after we shed our bags, we headed to the Hoffbrauhaus.

Very, very weird place. The beer only comes in two flavors - light or dark - and in one size: a liter. We sat at a long table with two German men who were in town for an actuary conference. Yes, you're picturing the conversation correctly. Occasionally the band broke out into a rollicking two-step tune, and old men grabbed young blondes and danced around the hall. I sure got my beer fix, although I was trying to be responsible, since I had a plane to catch.

Inexplicably, the Hoffbrauhaus closes at midnight. All my ignorant American assumptions about German culture were pushed out into the cold Munich dark along with the patrons of the brew hall. We ran into a few nice Scots, found a hotel bar, and I had one more (small) beer. I finally got back to the hostel at 2:30, and I knew I had to be up and about at 3:30. In the morning. In the dark. The cold snowing German Sunday night dark.

I admit it, I bummed 50 euros off Deb and took a cab. My bag weighed a ton - I'd crammed it to the top with pork, cheese, new clothes, and chocolate. No way was I struggling down to the subway in the dark and trying to read German subway schedules. I got to the airport and got checked in ok. I even managed to get to Rome without incident, which is a nice change for Alitalia.

(Let me break in here with another installment of "idiotic things I find funny." Check out the ziplock bags I bought in Germany. The eagle-eyed among you will spot the comedy. Not exactly high literature here, but I need another picture.)


Then, in Rome, I was on a plane with a bunch of Serbian belly dancers who were coming to Cairo for a conference. No, I don't make these things up. Yes, they were very nice. We boarded the plane half an hour late, and then, as we were literally on the runway, the pilot decided our plane wasn't safe and took us all back. Alitalia dumped us back in the arrivals terminal, so we all had to go through security - AGAIN.

The EU has all these signs posted in airports saying that it's forbidden to bring meat, dairy, or agricultural products into the EU. My bag, as I've previously indicated, was full of pork and cheese. And while I didn't expect the Italians to give me trouble - I was taking the stuff out of the EU, not into it - I was damned if I was going to let anyone take away my booty. I pictured myself sitting on the floor of the airport, eating 4 pounds of cheese, 3 pounds of pork, and 30 euros of chocolate. It was not a pretty picture. Fortunately, the airport staff were busy dealing with 300 pissed-off transit passengers, and weren't particularly interested in my increasingly smelly bag.

Bottom line, I got back to Cairo 2 hours late. Once again I had that intensely odd sensation of coming home to Cairo. I wasn't mad about the delay, because I knew I had no connection to make, with a customs greeter and a car waiting for me at the other end. Didn't matter how late I was - they'd still be there.

Of course, once I got home, I discovered that the delay did matter a bit - I had to air the cheese out of all my new clothing. And now it just smells like Cairo.

E-rep

It would seem that I've finally arrived on the Cairo blogging scene.

I went to a party Tuesday night (yes, I know, decidedly un-me like activity), and to my surprise, everyone was asking me about rabbit.

"Hey, Tiffany, great recipe! How'd it turn out?"

"Hey, Tiffany, hilarious! I mean, what were you thinking, buying rabbit?"

"Hey, rabbit-slayer, kill anything this week?"

Yikes. I was trying desperately to remember when I'd told my colleagues about this blog. I must've had that "I could've sworn I'd put my pants on this morning" look on my face when finally the party host came to my rescue. Turns out my blog had been linked to another blog - and the guy running the other blog actually intends people to read his. And thinks that other people actually want their blogs read too.

Apparently I'm marching to the beat of the weirdo drum. I remember, what, seven years ago, there were dire predictions that the internet would turn us into a hive of hermits, each of us jacked into a single virtual outlet from our filthy, food-stained caves. Now we've got social bookmarking this, and blogging heads that. Seems to me that in order for these sites to appeal, you have to actually care what other people are doing, thinking, or browsing. Where is the anti-social world I was promised???

Yes, I realize, I'm a terrible hypocrite, blogging about how self-aggrandizing blogging is. Sue me. Or better yet, lambaste me in cyber-space. But most importantly, stay tuned.

Same bat blog, same bat ... blog.

Through the rabbit hole

I had a terrible day.

I had to confront 5 - yes, five - students in my classes with plagiarism. They'd cut and pasted each other's homework assignment. Now it's bad enough that they did this, but they'd chosen to cheat wrong answers written with bad grammar and punctuation! The human brain is one of the greatest pattern-detection devices ever (even mine), so of course I was going to notice this. Anyway, I was very upset. I know this had nothing to do with me, but I felt like I'd been completey taken advantage of. Believe it or not, I'm not great with confrontation, and so I felt terrible the whole day, dealing with the students. At least I wasn't angry anymore.

And yes, I'm going to report them.

Then I came to home to my spotless house (Wednesday again, thank God for Fawzeya) and I had a whole rabbit waiting for me. With a head. And eyes in that head.

Incidentally, the faint of heart and/or stomach might consider stopping here.

I'd bought the rabbit - along with some onions and spices - yesterday at the organic kiosk run by AUC's desert development center. I figured, hey, why not - fresh organic rabbit, at about $3 a kilo. When the man handed me the package, all I could really see was pink flesh, so I thought, great, it's even butchered!

And to an extent, it was. The fur was gone, and they'd helpfully gutted most of it and removed the ears. (Incidentally, knock the ears off a rabbit and you've got a cat. Apparently the butchers here usually leave the ears on to prove that what you're buying is really a rabbit. But I digress.) When I opened the package this morning, my meat delight was looking back at me.

I got home this afternoon, feeling wretched, and realized I needed to take this rabbit apart. Fortunately, I'm a biologist, and I've got plenty of experience dismantling animals. Just not in my own kitchen. So I put on my apron, got out my biggest knife, and, well, got to.

I started by taking off the head, and let me tell you, once your food isn't looking at you anymore, it's much easier to deal with. I wasn't going to eat the head, so I figured, while I was at it, I'd make stock too. Into the stock pot went the head.

Next, I bent the spine back and broke the ribs to flay it open. The butcher had very thoughtfully left the liver and kidneys in. Now, I'm not a purist - I don't eat organs. So, I got my sharp, little knife out (pining for my scalpel), and into the stock pot went the organs. A few bay leaves, some garlic, and pepper, and it was off to the races for the stock. About half an hour later I noticed that one of the eyeballs had popped out, probably from the heat, and was floating around, but hey, I guess it's just more rabbity goodness.

I quartered what was left of the little beast. India was unduly interested by this whole process, even after I pointed out to her the similarities between her and the little fuzzy I was dismantling. I snapped off as many of the ribs as I could get to easily, and dumped those in the stock pot too.

Then it was on to the marinade. I'd originally wanted to cook the rabbit with white wine and mustard, but I don't actually have any white wine. Egyptian wine is ... um, perhaps best used for cooking, but liquor stores are full and far between, and Egypt doesn't seem to produce dries. I finally settled on beer as my best option. Egyptian beer isn't the finest, so I don't feel bad about using it to cook (it's basically Heineken).

I used white vinegar, cider vinegar, olive oil, beer, salt, pepper, bay leaves, rosemary, roasted garlic, and onions. And now my kitchen smells fantastic - the pot o'bunny smells great, and the marinade for the rabbit smells very good too. I'm going to continue on with a recipe for beef braised with beer and onions that I've gotten out of my mom's old Time-Life international cooking series (the Provincial France one). Unfortunately, I'm short on cookbooks here, as well as ingredients, so I didn't bother looking something more elaborate up online.

Now I've got half a bottle of beer in me, I've successfully dealt with a whole animal, and I still have a class to plan for tomorrow. All in all, this day has turned around nicely.

West-ern echoes of Princeton

Tonight I went to a lecture Cornel West gave at AUC. West is currently a visiting professor at AUC. Those of you in the Princeton community might remember the academic snafu a few years ago when Princeton poached West, possibly the pre-emininent Black American scholar, away from Harvard.

Ahem. It was quite the thing at the time.

I went to hear West speak more out of a sense of curiosity than any deep-held opinions about his work. I confess, I have read none of it. My formal education has been rather light on philosophy and cultural studies.

West - "Brother West", as he frequently referred to himself - delivered the Edward Said memorial lecture. West began his lecture describing Edward Said as the greatest American democratic intellectual, a direct descendent, so to speak, of Socrates. Throughout the lecture, West referred to Said's writings, and his habits, and his boldness of voice.

I had never heard of Edward Said. But I stayed the course.

The provenance of West's oratory style was instantly identifiable. He wore a black, severely cut three-piece suit, his gestures were expansive, and his voice frequently thundered from the pulpit - sorry, podium. West described Socrates as a "strange brother." He quoted text expansively, from philosophers, poets, "Brother Jesus," "Brother Muhammed," and "Brother Socrates."

I was tickled by West's constant references to pop culture, which for him consists of Stevie Wonder, Arethra Franklin, and Duke Ellington. The audience - mostly white, mostly American - tittered along obediently at West's references to these musical giants. I had to repress the vicious urge to rise to my feet and challenge any one of the twenty-year-olds in the audience to whistle a Stevie Wonder tune. Hell, name one.

I was occasionally exhorted to "de-SOC-ra-tize SOC-rates" and remember the "funk." I felt like I was in the twilight zone. What on Earth was Egypt's elite - and America's privileged traveling youth - doing listening to this rhetoric? And I had the extremely ungenerous thought that it must've been difficult for West to keep it real while Harvard and Princeton were squabbling over him. And during his extensive educations at said institutions.

But within all this demagoguery, there were some true pearls. Call them seeds, rather; West brought up a few points that I continue to think about.

For example, he described the necessity of a "death" to come to self-realization. Educational death, world view death, whatever you want to call it. That moment when the world "under your feet turns to PUDDING." I found this idea very interesting. The effort involved in throwing over one's view of the world, and society, and one's place in it, is truly considerable. I struggled, in graduate school, to really figure out what was going on. To grow up, I suppose. And I think West's analogy with death is quite apt. Death is irreversible - and likewise, the butterfly can never be a caterpillar again. So metamorphosis, of itself, is as directional a transition as death. Once you see the world in a new way, you can't un-see it.

West also brought forward the idea of using one's own life as a tribute to someone else's memory. He pointed out that imitation is not the way. Rather, if a person truly wishes to pay homage to someone else, he should internalize the person's driving spirit and make it into something new and unique. I liked this idea quite a bit.

Overall, I'm glad I went to the lecture. He definitely gave me some things to think about. But I don't know that I'll attend tomorrow's talk - I'm not sure I can go through another hour of the gospel. Then again, my hard wooden seat didn't have a cushion - and the brain is not entirely insulated from the rear.

And speaking of inspiring students to find their own voice and to learn to think critically on their own ... I caught 3 students cheating today. Blatantly. But that's a story for later.

Back again

Well, I haven't written in a dog's age, have I?

A few quick updates - everything's going well. My classes are moving forward - how are we only halfway through the semester? Meeting twice a week sure incurs a lot of lesson plans! But at least I think we've gotten over a hump. My students have "figured me out", and now they're doing better about handing their work in on time, putting in effort, etc. A few have dropped, but not quite as many as I'd have thought at the beginning of the semester. Some of my students are even Googling me - and of course, the Mars stuff is coming to the top!

Last weekend I met KC in Barcelona. We had a very nice time - although if the AMERICAN DOLLAR WERE WORTH ANYTHING it would've been even better. Thank you, George Bush. I mean, the CANADIAN dollar has parity. That should bring us shame as a nation. So we spent most of our time eating (pork, liquor, and seafood) and enjoying the architecture in Barcelona. Let's just say, I'm glad to look at Gaudi's designs for OTHER people's houses.

We ate at Ferran Adria's brother's place in Barcelona, and it was great - the Spanish sure know how to make fried food. Needless to say, we didn't go to El Buli - but we apparently missed being in the restaurant with Ferran Adria by only a day! Oh, well. Our lifelong quest for the "best" meal (read: most expensive?) in the world continues.

My journey back to Cairo was a bit hairy - on the Barcelona end, if you can believe that. Bottom line, I didn't manage to bring back the kilos of pork and wine I'd envisioned. I did use my full Egyptian duty-free allowance in Cairo, though. It was intensely weird coming "home" to Cairo. I was glad to be back - the weather was better, everything was cheaper, I had a driver waiting for me - and yet it's the first time I've come "home" here.

I went to a "Halloween" party last night. The Egyptians don't celebrate Halloween, but a few University people had gatherings. The Ams in Cairo call it "Halal0ween." I didn't make it to the costume party, but I did have 4 glasses of wine and a screening of "Young Frankenstein" to make my evening. And pizza! There's a place in Zamalek called Maison Thomas that serves - wait for it - pork products! Coincidentally, I'd been there yesterday afternoon and thought the pizza smelled wonderful, so I was thrilled to discover that's where the party's pizza was coming from. Some of the options are albeit bizarre - blue cheese? chicken "luncheon"? - but we did our best. It was pretty good.


I was in Zamalek to go shopping. I got this cool piece of art from a gallery - an artist had found an old woodblock of a tunisian warrior on a horse and gussied it up a bit. Weird, but cool.

Also in the category of "weird" in Egypt - check out this product label I found at the market:

Perhaps THIS is the source of the poor suffering Egyptian man's sexual frustration? His wife is using anti-horniness cream! Maybe the wives should be using it on the husbands ... it's a Dove facial product meant to, I think, even out skin tone. Then again, Viagra was originally intended to treat a heart problem ....