Victory in Tahrir!

So much more to write about the fabulousness of the Egyptian revolution, but briefly ....

Remember I showed you my Tahrir? Here's how Tahrir was organized toward the end of the protest:

My Tahrir

That Tahrir Square, that Egypt, you're seeing in the headlines, watching on TV?

That's not my Tahrir Square.

This is my Tahrir:



The only battles I fought were against oncoming taxis, traffic, and savvy vegetable guys.

Birth pains or breakdown?

*** This blog post is transferred over from my new blog, Voracious, T.

This post is long overdue, but forgive me - I've been a little distracted the past few days.

A quick summary, just in case you're living in an ice cave but faithfully following this blog. Last Tuesday Egypt was rocked with massive protests against the 30-year-old Mubarak presidency. Inspired by the Tunisian uprising last month, civil unrest in Egypt had been growing for several weeks, and was fueled through the organizing and grievance-airing capabilities of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Wednesday and Thursday were relatively quiet (except in Suez), but on Friday the country exploded after prayers. The security police had been using water cannons, tear gas, and rubber-coated bullets (and possibly live bullets) on protesters since Tuesday, but the deployment of the military into the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez seemed to change things.


Except it didn't. For reasons that seem inaccessible to the American mind at first glance, the protesting Egyptians cheered the arriving military, welcoming them with flowers, kisses, handshakes, hugs, and vows of solidarity. Violent protests continued throughout Friday. The Cairo and Luxor headquarters of the National Democratic Party - Mubarak's party and the only legal political party in Egypt - were burned to the ground, and the flames in Cairo threatened the Egyptian Museum right next door (more on the museum in a minute).

Then things went from bad to bizarre. Finally, after days of violent protests, Mubarak appeared on television Friday early afternoon my time - the middle of the night in Egypt - and delivered this speech:



Basically, Mubarak spent 11 minutes claiming that he's always understood the Egyptian poor and has done nothing his entire life but work for them. He pointed out that the protests could only have occurred thanks to the extensive - !! - freedoms of press and assembly - !!! - that Egyptians only enjoy thanks to him and his tireless work for them - !!!!. And then, the coup de grace was delivered when Mubarak announced that he was dissolving the government and that a new one would be appointed by him on Saturday.

Cue the filling of posts with military cronies, the surrounding of foreign embassies (in my old neighborhood) with tanks, and the deployment of fighter planes into the Cairo skies this morning.

I actually had my hands clutched to my face while I listed to the live feed of Mubarak's speech. The level of delusion, backwardness, and outright contempt for the people that were exhibited in that speech were truly shocking. That sounds trite, I know, but true - the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I couldn't seem to get my eyes to focus. The sheer audacity of ignoring tens of thousands of people chanting "Go away Mubarak!" while simultaneously claiming to have your finger on the pulse of the nation ... I'm tempted to say that I haven't seen this much disconnect from reality since W's administration, but I think Mubarak wins the prize here.

It's not my intent to fully or accurately chronicle the last week's events, because Al Jazeera has been doing a masterful job of it, and the New York Times hasn't been too sloppy either. Too good a job, actually, as evidenced by the Egyptian government's forceful closure of the Al Jazeera bureau this morning. Rather, I'd like to write a bit about what I've been seeing and feeling. Which is mostly exhaustion (I've been glued to Al Jazeera's excellent streaming coverage of the events), pride, worry, and deep sadness.

I'm going to start by expressing my driving pride in the people of Egypt. To be perfectly honest, based on my experiences living there for two years, I wasn't sure the people had it in them. That's what happens when you live under authoritarian regimes for something like 6000 years - you learn to cope, and if you're a little person you move on with your life the best you can and try to avoid attracting the attention of the powerful. I wrote about this a lot when I lived in Egypt. So yes, I'm proud of their resilience and their refusal to take what Mubarak's dishing out - but I'm horrified when I think about my students being shot with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Let me clarify one thing here, so I don't give myself airs. I had a fantastic life in Egypt. I lived in a beautiful apartment in a posh neighborhood, I ate at fancy restaurants, I hired drivers to take me places, I went scuba diving when I could, and I traveled as much as was humanly possible. I taught at a private university where the language of instruction was (supposedly) English, and my students were the English-speaking elite of Egypt.

To be blunt, I did not walk like an Egyptian. But I had eyes, and ears.

I'm also worried as hell about what's going on over there, both in terms of the politics/future of Egypt and in terms of the friends and colleagues I left behind. I'm only going to address the second part here. Why so worried? Because on Friday afternoon (my Friday afternoon, the middle of the night in Egypt) the government shut off the internet and mobile phones. No kidding. So although I'm glued to Facebook and Al Jazeera, I can't get any direct news from my friends in Cairo. Thank God for Facebook, though - the band of ex-AUCans scattered around the world has been really diligent in posting news gathered first- through fifth-hand about the safety of our friends.

Speaking of social media, it's really striking that I, ten thousand miles away, probably have more information than my friends in Cairo. These events - I suppose it's only a revolution if Mubarak leaves - have been happening on television. I've been watching them. Which makes Mubarak's anachronistic conviction that he can control the flow of information all the more puzzling. Hell, if you're going to shut off the internet, you might as well wear a t-shirt that says "Evil Dictator."

All this information also meant that I could see the flames reaching for the Egyptian Museum, home of Egypt's phenomenal cultural heritage. I'm too tired to summon the words to describe my visceral connection to this museum, how it feels to have childhood dreams laid out in front of you, how many hours I spent exploring the museum. What I can tell you is that I actually cried yesterday when I saw this footage:



I can't imagine where Zahi was Friday night - I would've expected him to be laid out on the steps of the museums himself, or hiring a private army to protect the museum. Ordinary Egyptian protesters and the military formed a human chain around the museum to protect it from looters, but that heartbreaking show of solidarity just wasn't enough - the looters may have come in from the roof or the ticket office. It seems that they were arrested, but the damage has been done. Why would you rip the heads off two mummies? What does that accomplish?

My faith in humanity is shaken when I hear about things like this.

The second time I cried yesterday was when I spoke with my father on the phone. He made a few comments about watching the Egyptian events on TV, but I suddenly felt exhausted so I changed the subject. I told him about the string quartet we'd seen on Wednesday, and the play we volunteered at on Friday. My father responded by saying, "Well, I'm glad you're living a good life in California while your friends are dying in Egypt."

I got off the phone as quickly as I could, and then I burst into tears.

I'm sure he must have been joking, but his comment thrust right to the heart of the maelstrom of emotions I've been experiencing for the past few days. I've had a lot of friends contact me for my opinion on events, and I'm glad that they did. I've noticed, though, that my friends - none of these friends have lived in Egypt - have split about 50/50 on their assumption of my emotions. About half have said something like, "You must be glad you're not there!" and the other half has said, "You must be disappointed that you're missing such an historic moment!"

I don't know how I feel. Or rather, I'm feeling too many contradictory things. I'm glad I'm not in physical danger (there, I said it). I'm glad I have access to information because I'm here in the US. But I'm ashamed that I encouraged my students to think for themselves and to demand access to information, then walked away. I obsessively watch real people fighting to determine their future from the safety of my house in California, and I talk as if I were right there with them. My heart hurts to see flames and pockmarked buildings and burning palm trees along the streets I used to walk every day. And then I walk out of my house and try to go about my business.

I want to say, Kollena Masryeen! We are all Egyptian!

But then I hit "publish post" on my live internet connection, open my window to the rain, and walk downstairs for lunch.

To Summarize

These and other wanderings have been the high lights of the last years;

when I turn from them the sky darkens.

--Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

The Flying Cat Circus

My family grew a bit while I was in Cairo - it definitely got fuzzier. I adopted India in October 2007, and Zanzibar joined us as a tiny baby this past December. Cairo simply crawls with cats, so while adopting 2 cats was basically pissing into the ocean, at least I felt good that these two cats got off the streets.

As you might suppose, India and Zanzibar are mortal enemies. To be precise, Zanzibar is India's mortal enemy; Zanzibar's arch-nemesis is the washing machine. He's really not very clever.
















There was never any question of leaving the cats in Cairo when we moved back to the US. The question, of course, was we had to do to actually accomplish the fact. And there were multiple layers of strategy required - exiting Egypt, physical transportation, and entering the US.

Physical transportation seemed the easiest to take care of first. We booked flights on Delta - we had to get all the way to San Francisco, and we needed to avoid the UK and the EU because neither cat is microchipped. Delta has a pretty extensive website dealing with "jet-set" pets. My cats weren't headed to Monte Carlo; they just needed to get to the US in one hop. We could have taken EgyptAir to JFK and dealt with fewer restrictions, but I didn't intend to pay a pet fee for EgyptAir and then another pet fee for Delta - one $150 (per cat!) was all I was willing to shell out for those little beauties.

That's right. Delta charges $150 per pet ... the pet has to stay in the cabin between May and September (no baggage checking) ... and only 2 pets per flight (economy class) are permitted. KC had delayed in getting his flight tickets, so we ended up having to fly on separate days because the second pet space on my flight was filled by the time KC booked. Maelesh.

I took Zanzibar to the vet to get his rabies shot and to ask about the protocol for getting the cats into the US safely. Dr Rafik spent a long time explaining an incredibly detailed process to me that had appeared nowhere in the research I had done. According to Dr Rafik, I had to leave the cats' vaccination records (they have kitty passports) with him, and he would generate a health certificate for each cat. His certificate was only good for 15 days, and had to be taken, with the kitty passports, to the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture for exit papers. Those papers would have to be presented in Egypt and in the US to clear customs. Dr Rafik also wrote out a series of instructions, in Arabic and in English, with the names and office locations of the various officials we'd have to visit at the Ministry.

I picked up the certificates a couple of weeks later. Dr Rafik had gotten the year wrong on India's last rabies shot, so that had to be fixed (a simple typo that could have been catastrophic). We also had to be very careful that KC appeared as Zanzibar's owner, and I was listed as India's, so there'd be no question of proper transport of the cats. A few hours later I realized I'd forgotten to pick up the sedative that Dr Rafik had offered me for India, but I decided to just make do without it.

The Sunday after our aborted trip to Abu Simbel, we headed to the New Campus to take care of some final things. Then we decided to take the bus straight to Mohandesin to the Ministry, rather than go back to Garden City and then schlep back out to Mohandesin. By some miracle I had the kitty passports in my purse, but of course I did not have Dr Rafik's instruction sheet. We figured, how hard could it be? Dr Rafik had promised it'd be nothing like the Mogamma.

You can see where this is going. For that matter, so could we.

We easily found the Ministry of Agriculture. I'd remembered vaguely that Dr Rafik had said there were multiple ministry buildings (possibly four) and that the office we wanted was in the building perpendicular to the street, not parallel to it. Right.

We picked a building, I showed the doorman the vaccination certificates from Dr Rafik, I explained in my very simple prepared Arabic what we were trying to do. The gentlemen appeared to understand us and gave us a set of detailed directions (lots of arm waving) to direct us to the office we wanted. When we finally navigated the warren of the building and arrived at the office, we discovered that it was absolutely not the office we wanted, and the occupants of the office (usually a director) were completely puzzled as to why we were such idiots. We then explained everything again, showed the certificates, and were directed to another ministry building.

Take that last paragraph above. Repeat it four times with four separate buildings scattered among a few blocks in Mohandesin. Oh, and turn the temperature up to about 100 degrees fahrenheit and have four lanes of speeding traffic come straight at you, horns blaring. Then you'll start to get a picture of how we spent our afternoon.

At one point a puzzled director said to us, "This is the animal production department. Do you want more cats?" We also got into a huge fight with a guy who wanted to test the cats for avian influenza and couldn't figure out why we hadn't brought the cats. "Because we don't want the cats tested for avian influenza", we replied. "Then why are you here?" he responded. In his defense, it turned out that we'd been erroneously directed to an avian influenza lab. And so on.

Finally, we did actually managed to find the Quarantine Office (we did not want the cats quarantined) in a building that lacked a Ministry of Agriculture sign. This office consisted of about six people sitting around in a stiflingly hot room. We spent the next forty minutes walking back and forth between this office and the office next door. The protocol went something like this: get signature from woman in office 1. Go to office 2 to buy stamp. Get signature from man in office 1. Go to office 2 and buy another stamp. Return to office 1 and get third person to sign forms. Bring forms to fourth person in office 1 (sitting right next to persons already visited for signature). Verify with another person in office 2 that another stamp was not needed. Help woman in office 1 (with apparently no function) read her English language newspaper ("What is 'cherish'? What is 'flora and fauna'?). And so on.

Eventually all the papers were stamped and signed and ready for departure. I swear I checked them before we left the office and I swear I didn't see any mistakes.

The next day, Monday, we had our smashing coup at the EgyptAir office and our final trip to the Khan al Khalili. Tuesday we had a last dinner with friends upstairs and I made a valiant effort to finish the alcohol we'd brought to share. It was really, really hot when we made our way back to down to our flat a half hour before KC was scheduled to be picked up and taken to the airport. One last time I checked KC's stack of papers -

And saw that the people at the Ministry of Agriculture had swapped the names on the cats' papers. KC was listed as India's owner, and I was paired with Zanzibar. After a frantic consultation, KC dashed over to the Four Seasons business center and had photocopies of all the papers made, so we could show Customs exactly where the mistake happened.

I didn't hear anything from KC the next day, so I assumed everything was fine. At 11 pm I wrangled India into her carrier and headed for the airport. As I entered the terminal, a military policeman barked at me, "Cat? Papers?" I responded, "Yes" and kept walking. Clearly I'd been in the country too long.

At Delta's ridiculously extensive security counter I forked over the $150 for the cat, checked my bags, and walked onto the plane. The flight from Cairo was one of those cattlecar planes (I think a 767). I was two or three rows from the back, on the aisle. Being on the aisle was good; it meant that India was subjected to more of the traffic in the aisle, but it meant I could get her in and out more easily. During the flight I draped a blanket over my legs and over the carrier, making a tent. We do this a lot at home - India likes sleeping under the covers. I think it helped keep her warm and sensory deprived. She really did not like take off or landing, but in general she was well-behaved during the flight. It was uncomfortable for me, and one of the flight stewards offered to move her up front, but I declined and kept her with me. The plane was noisy enough that I'm pretty sure I was the only person who could hear her when she cried.

Four times during the flight to JFK I took the bag into the lavatory and let her out. I tried to do this while most people were sleeping. She was shaking like a leaf and she looked like a rabbit, with big rolled up dewy eyes. She wouldn't drink any water and she would only eat a few bites of her dry food if I held it in my hand and put it right under her nose. All she really wanted was to be cuddled, which was really pathetic. She was trying to purr but she was shaking so hard she could only produce odd little sounds, but she constantly nuzzled me and made her scratchy paws. She didn't fight very hard when it was time to go back in the bag.

At JFK I checked the "transporting animals" box on the customs form. The passport control guy looked at India, looked at the form, and told me to keep walking and someone would stop me. The woman ahead of me in line had a cat too (she was the reason KC couldn't fly with me) and she told me that she'd never bothered to go to the Ministry of Agriculture; she just had the vaccination record and the certificate from her vet. After passport control I got my bags and went through customs. Nobody stopped me. I even handed my form - with the checked box - to a customs officer who waved me through.

I rechecked my luggage, then headed back through security. Here I had to put India's carrier through the scanner and walk through the metal detector with her in my arms, which I stupidly did with my cell phone in my pocket (so I had to do it twice). Everyone in line, including the agents, was cooing over India and so they helped me get her through (she still managed to scratch my arms up through my jacket). At JFK I tried to find a bathroom that had dividers that went to the floor, or a single-person bathroom, but I couldn't find any, and the janitors said they were all open on the bottom.

At the gate in JFK I got permission from one agent to preboard and then was told by another that I couldn't preboard with a pet. Again I was about 4-5 rows from the back on the aisle. Before the flight took off I took her into the lavatory and she drank a little water and ate a little food, but still wasn't interested in her custom-made litter box. People were always using the bathroom on the flight to San Francisco, so she stayed in the bag for 6 hours. At SFO there were still no separate bathrooms and no one asked for any papers on that end either. So we just walked out of there.

All told, India was in the bag for almost exactly 24 hours. She was unsedated, surprisingly well-behaved, and didn't create any biohazards during the flight.

All that effort, and the papers didn't even get checked once. KC said that his customs agent did look at Zanzibar's rabies vaccination record, but that was it. Yeesh. Now I have a contraband cat.

Leave one out

This story is so bizarre, I'll start with the end of the tale first:

So we went to the office, spoke with an agent, signed a form with the manager, got a full refund in cash, and left within 15 minutes.

Right. Now that you've heard the end, let me back up.

Back in May I alluded to a "hair-raising adventure" with EgyptAir. But things didn't even start in May - I started working on our trip to Abu Simbel back at the beginning of April.

Bottom line, KC and I wanted to see Abu Simbel before leaving Egypt. The Abu Simbel site is a set of two temples built by Ramesses II in the far south of Egypt. In fact, the temples are located so far south that when the Aswan High Dam was built in the late 1960s, the resulting Lake Nasser would have submerged the temples.

Eventually, someone figured this out - that building the dam (which may or may not have been an ecological catastrophe) would endanger literally dozens of pharonic sites in Upper Egypt. I need to do some more reading about this, because it's quite a remarkable story. The Egyptian government and UNESCO got help from institutions around the world to actually move the two temples at Abu Simbel (and some other sites too, like Philae) to higher ground.


Ever wonder why there's a complete Egyptian temple inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City? It was a "thank you" gift to the museum for working on the UNESCO project. Thanks for your help - here, have a temple. We were going to wreck this one anyway.

On the other hand, diving these things would be fantastic ... but I digress.

We wanted to go to Abu Simbel. I had enough EgyptAir frequent flier miles to get one free ticket to Abu Simbel, and it seemed a good use because generally that's an expensive ticket. I called the EgyptAir hotline and got put through to the rewards desk. I explained to the helpful woman that I wanted one reward ticket and one regular ticket to Abu Simbel on a particular day in June. She typed a bit, and then gave me the reservation number and told me to go down to the EgyptAir office and pay the taxes on the tickets.

"The reservation is confirmed?" I asked.
"Yes madam, no problem."
"The ticket has been issued?"
"Yes madam, just go pay the fee."
"You're absolutely sure this reservation is ready? Because I don't want to go all the way down there and find out I don't have a ticket."
"Don't worry madam, you have a ticket."

So of course I went to the Adly Street EgyptAir office and - brace yourselves - of course there were no damned tickets. I'd walked into the office and saw a desk with about 30 representatives, and there were no other customers (shockingly). An agent waved me over to his desk. When I saw his face, I said, "Oh, I remember you! You used to be in the Tahrir Office!" And to my complete and utter surprise, he responded, "Yes Dr. Tiffany, I remember you."

I almost passed out. This guy had seen me once in January and he remembered my name. That type of thing would never happen in the US. If you're in the Adly Street EgyptAir office (over near Midan Opera) look for the guy with the round glasses and thin bristly mustache. He's the one you want.

Anyway, I freaked out at this guy for a few minutes, and then settled down to business. He's a great agent - smart as hell and efficient. Eventually he constructed a delicate series of reservations for our trip, but unfortunately both seats were waitlisted. I was told to keep checking the waitlist on the airline website and to come to the office when the seats came through.

Three weeks later, the reservation for the two tickets was still waitlisted. I figured enough was enough - EgyptAir was offering a fare of LE 837 (USD $150) round-trip including taxes. I went back to the office to just pay for the tickets. Imagine my surprise when a new agent told me that the reservation I'd made was only in my name - KC's ticket didn't exist.

This precipitated an hour-long argument, and I'll gloss over the details. The most frustrating aspect was telling the guy that not an hour before EgyptAir's website had listed KC's ticket. The agent responded that that wasn't true because his system didn't have it. Fine, I said, open up the internet and I'll show you.

Apparently this was akin to suggesting that we sacrifice his firstborn son. The agent protested that he couldn't possibly do that. I pointed to the Internet Explorer icon on his desktop and said, "Click on it." Back and forth, back and forth, and finally a manager came over.

Eventually I realized the stupidity and futility of my efforts. I asked the manager to cancel that reservation and make a new reservation, which I'd pay for in cash. 10 minutes later all was settled and I walked out the door with my paid, confirmed tickets.

Or so I thought. [cue ominous music]

This past Saturday we dragged ourselves out of bed at 4 in the morning, tossed a few things in the backpack, and headed for the airport. After our airport taxi catastrophe on the way back from Dahab, I'd called City Cab to arrange for transport both ways from the airport in a metered taxi. We got to the airport around 5 am ... and that's when all hell broke loose.

The security guard looked at our itinerary before letting us through the security checkpoint BEFORE the area where you can actually check in. This is normal in Egypt. What was not normal was his refusal to let us pass, and his claim that the flight didn't exist. He directed us over to the EgyptAir ticket counter.

The guy at the ticket counter said this wasn't his job and sent us over to Customer Service.

The guy at Customer Service said this wasn't his job and sent us over to the ticket counter.

This is where things started to get ugly.

We told the customer service guy that we'd been sent to him by the ticket guy. He walked with us over to the ticket counter and lit into the ticket guy, screeching at him in Arabic. Finally it was determined that yes, dealing with ticket issues is in fact the job of the guy at the ticket counter.

We found out that our 6:00 am flight had been cancelled and we'd been put on the 8:45 am flight instead, which would get us to Abu Simbel at 11:30 am - with a return flight departing at 2:15 pm.

Of course, this was completely preposterous. We were tired and really, really angry at this point.

So the recriminations began. We were incensed that EgyptAir had made no effort to contact us before we arrived at the airport on the morning of our flight. The agent claimed that we had given EgyptAir no phone number to contact us. I pointed out how absurd this was, since EgyptAir had been calling me on my mobile phone for 2 years. They even called to tell me when the Tahrir office closed! The agent told me I was lying and I'd never given them my mobile number. There was a lot more shouting at that point.

At some point through my red haze of fury I realized that KC was doing something very clever. He was basically running through a checklist of things that airlines (in the US at least) can't do when they cancel your flight. For example, he asked if our flight had been "cancelled" or "rescheduled." The agent said "cancelled" (not good for the airline). KC asked for a copy of the cancellation policy of the airline. The agent refused to give us one (really, really not good).

The agent scored his only point when he demanded, "What do you want me to do?" Because of course, what we wanted him to do was to schedule a plane just for us, leaving at that exact moment. We found this much funnier later.

We decided that we just wanted our money back. The agent refused, saying we had to go to the office that had issued the ticket. OK, we returned, give us a piece of paper showing that we'd actually gone all the way to the airport before figuring out we were screwed. The guy handed me a blank piece of paper with the words "EgyptAir" printed on them. I gave him my most pissed-off withering glare of derision and he went in the back and printed out an itinerary that had the airport office letterhead.

And then we had to find a taxi to get home. We managed to find a different metered taxi, but the police prohibit the drivers from picking up passengers in front of the terminal (you figure this one out - for the fixed fare scam?) so we walked down the ramp toward the highway with the taxi following us until we were out of sight of the police.

Yesterday we went to the EgyptAir office to get our refund. We girded ourselves mentally - we prepared our extensive set of documentation - we worked out the good cop/bad cop routine - and we ticked off our set of arguing points. We were called up to the desk - and our agent was the "new" agent who'd told me in May that KC's ticket didn't exist.

"Do you remember me?" I asked him.

"Yes - Abu Simbel frequent flier. How was your trip?"

[beat]

"Actually, that's why we're here. We got to the airport and found out EgyptAir had cancelled our flight. We'd like a refund. Here's our original itinerary."

"Please wait here, I'll be right back."

The agent stepped away and we settled into our chairs. He was gone for about 10 minutes, walking here and there through the office. Finally he came back and said simply, "Come with me."

We were ushered into a manager's office behind the ticket counter. I thought they were bringing us back there to bludgeon us to death for asking for a refund. Instead the manager came around the desk, shook our hands, and boomed, "Congratulations!"

For what? we thought. Being the first EgyptAir customers to get a refund? We stared at him blankly.

"Congratulations on your country!" He beamed at us.

We thought, Great. What have we done now?

"Congratulations on your football! America very good!!"

Ah. America had just beaten Egypt in some big soccer game. Of course this was just about the furthest thing from our minds at this point.

We signed a paper and were sent to the cashier's desk. We showed photocopies of our passport - and 3 minutes later we were handed LE 1674.

To repeat how I began this long sordid tale:

So we went to the office, spoke with an agent, signed a form with the manager, got a full refund in cash, and left within 15 minutes.

I was convinced I was having a coma dream. This last trip to the EgyptAir office is by far the weirdest thing that has happened to me in this country.

And now we have to come back to Egypt - because we haven't seen Abu Simbel.

Last Day at the Khan

The past few days have been filled with too many lasts - or lasts for now - for me to want to risk a tearful gooey blogpost slide into nostalgia.

This morning we said goodbye to our washing machine, which moved up the street to a friend's place. To be specific, the guys from the university showed up, disconnected my washing machine, moved it out of my flat ... and then dumped the machine outside my friend's flat and left. Without ringing the bell, let alone actually installing the machine. For some strange reason in Cairo the washing machines don't belong to the flat but to the tenant.

We tied up a few loose ends in Garden City, then headed to the EgyptAir office to deal with our aborted trip to Abu Simbel. More on this later - because our episode today was, by far, the strangest experience I've had in Egypt.

And if you've been following this blog, you know that means a lot.

Then we made our final pilgrimage to Islamic Cairo. First we headed back to Tentmaker's Bazaar to say goodbye to our friends there. In two years I've really come to value the Egyptian concept of shopping and shopkeeping. I've been buying from Mr Magdy (in the covered part of the bazaar) and Mr Ayman (just past the bazaar) for two years - and taking my friends to them. After about 6 months of this, I realized that both these gentlemen acted mortally offended if I passed by their shop without dropping in for a cup of tea and a chat. Even if I wasn't interested in buying, I was welcome in their store. I don't think I ever spent less than 20 minutes with either one of them, even if I didn't spend a cent.


So how much can two people buy in 30 minutes at Mr Ayman's store? Today: 19 scarves, 5 bags, and 2 big applique wall hangings. I'm especially pleased by the one up above, an unusual applique with a fish / Red Sea motif. Mr Ayman does great work; I frequently see new patterns in his store before any of the others in the bazaar, and usually a few weeks later I see them everywhere.

I'm not usually into these pictorial pieces; I prefer the calligraphy and abstract works. But I saw this fishy scene and knew I had to have it. Fortunately KC agreed, and we went ahead with our rather staggering purchase. In the end the damage came to LE 1000 (USD $178.60), and no matter how hard KC haggled, we couldn't budge Mr Ayman any further (although he did give us an extra bag of our choice).


We managed to talk our way into the fantastic Qalawun complex over in Palace Walk, precipitating a massive fight between the caretaker and a nearby policeman. Some baksheesh to both parties got us out of there in one piece, but it was a bit strange. The caretaker really really did not want us there, even though we were willing to pay and the site is technically open. Why would you spend so much money restoring a monument and then forbid anyone to see it?

Along the same lines, why would you have UNESCO and your government spend millions of dollars to save the temples at Abu Simbel and then arrange the flights so people can only spend an hour in the temples?

Ah, the mysteries of Egypt.

And Mr Ayman's deets:
Stitched Like an Egyptian
Ayman Molokhya
Original Appllique [sic] Art Work
18 El Khiamia st., Babziwela - Cairo
Mob: 012 100 6756
molokyaoneonly@yahoo.com

Pithy Egypt

Back from Dahab and gearing up for a grueling last few days in Egypt! More on all these things later, I hope, but first ...

I thought I'd share another NYT article about how Cairenes find peace in this crazy city.

I feel like Cairo is always balanced on the knife-edge of nonchaos. At any given moment, the whole thing could go careening into madness ... and yet, somehow, it doesn't. Every day.

Case in point, last night we flew into the new terminal at Cairo Airport. Terminal 3 itself is quite nice overall - it actually looks like a modern terminal in a developed nation. Even the airport website seems to be in good shape.

Our catastrophe happened when we tried to get a taxi home. Normally I reserve a car from the university, but with the flu-mediated university shutdown I wasn't able to make the booking. In an effort to be helpful (warning warning warning!!!) the government claimed to have standardized taxi fares.

Yeah, right. All they've done is given free rein to the taxi sharks to try to fleece tourists. Some of these drivers had the gall to ask for LE 100 to Garden City and LE 70 to Heliopolis (the airport is in Heliopolis!). For the university car, I pay LE 60 (that's for a private, air-conditioned smoke-free car with seatbelts and a driver who carries my bag). The airport has standardized fares to LE 80 to Garden City. The "shuttle" is actually a private car company that has the word "shuttle" in its name (we discovered this about 35 minutes into our taxi search). Going downstairs to departures to look for empty taxis wasn't any better. And we never have been able to find the 2 pound downtown bus.

After almost an hour we found one of the new metered white cabs who was willing to take us to Garden City. We experienced the usual amount of traffic - and when we arrived home, the meter read LE 33.50. That's right. 34 pounds from the airport to Garden City. We were so pleased, we gave the guy 40 pounds and took his phone number.

Summary: Egyptian government tries to make things better, instead makes a bad situation worse.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes, the article. Here are my favorite bits:

...In a difficult environment, Egyptians know how to make do.

They know how to ignore what they cannot change and improvise where they can. They drive the wrong way down one-way streets, are blind to traffic lights, never voluntarily wait in line and regularly circumvent a government bureaucracy that is less than user-friendly. They are not trying to be rude; they are just fighting to get by.

Technically, setting up on a bridge is illegal. But this is Egypt. Who cares about technicalities?

Indeed. I guess that just about sums it up, doesn't it?

... “It’s calm, it’s not crowded, and there is clean air,” her mother said. Her younger brother, Muhammad, 11, said he liked it on the bridge “because this is where the car accidents happen.”

Summary: Egyptian system bad. Egyptian people good. Very good. Except for little Muhammed the accident-lover.

I'm glad to know there are things that I'll be missing about living here.

Hysteria update

I just received this message from the US Embassy:

This Warden Message alerts U.S. citizens to the latest information regarding human cases of 2009-H1N1 Influenza. The Egyptian Ministry of Health has reported eight confirmed cases of H1N1 virus in Egypt. Seven of these cases are students from the American University in Cairo, all resident in AUC’s downtown Zamalek dormitory. AUC has suspended classes and campus activities through Sunday morning, June 14, 2009, and all residents of the Zamalek dormitory are currently in quarantine, are being tested, and will remain under observation for one week. Cairo airport has also instituted new health screening procedures and they can be found at http://egypt.usembassy.gov/consular/pa060809.htm

Yowza. So my not-to-be-trusted source was correct; the poor blokes in the hostel are under lock and key for a week!

I am so glad I live in Garden City ... thank heaven for small miracles. At least for me - not for my less fortunate friends!

You can read the University's official news release here, if you're interested.

Oh, and I received an invitation to a "swine flu soiree" later this week. Gallows humor - but at least I have the choice of attending!

La vie en oink

All hell has broken loose today, thanks to two university summer students who've come down with influenza A (H1N1).

The university, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to close until Sunday. I'd like to know whether those two students have actually been to the New Campus yet, and whether the university actually talked to any of those biologists they pay to think about, you know, biology.

One of the university dorms is locked down in quarantine, severely irritating two of my friends who are supposed to be heading for Dahab tomorrow. I'm going to gloss over the fact that I myself was in that building just a few days ago, along with my brother-in-law, who has since returned to the US.

That's right, I'm a biologist, and I'm saying that this quarantine is useless. It's alarmist and pointless, and cramming together a bunch of otherwise healthy people is not the way to ensure that everyone stays healthy. Physically or mentally. The university could be using this time to actually clean the building - as I understand it, influenza virus is quite fragile and can be destroyed by things like bleach and soap - but no, that would actually make sense.

I'm not even under quarantine and I feel like clawing the walls.

How does this affect me, you ask? Well, since the university announced the "problem" this morning, the university staff has been leaving campus in droves - and that's before the university decided to close officially.

Which means that people are not doing their jobs.

Which is driving me crazy. Tomorrow I'm supposed to have the two surveys of my flat, and they were both moved up by 8 hours, so I've spent my day today trying to do some pre-packing (hahaha) which is what I should've been doing tomorrow.

And no one's answering my emails or phone calls regarding the few remaining things I have to do before I get on that jet plane for California. And that's including picking up a $2500 check and closing my Egyptian bank account.

Guess what, guys?

When that plane leaves the morning of the 24th, I'm going to be on it. Whether or not my papers are signed, or my flat is packed, or my DSL has been cancelled.

My departure date is set. Period.

Reckon they're going to start culling the Americans?

Obama can't win

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - no matter what Obama does, he just can't win.

He can't live up to his own hype - who could? Here's an obviously intelligent man who's walked into one of the most difficult jobs in the world at one of the worst possible time in history. The world is still in love with Obama, but I cynically find myself wondering how long it can last, once everyone realizes that he's a plain old mortal.

Of course, everyone here is talking about Obama's speech yesterday. I managed to listen to the whole thing using the White House's streaming website, and I admit, I was impressed.

I was impressed by the strength of his language, if not always for the content. I thought his seven - was it seven? - speaking points were well-chosen, although I hadn't anticipated a discussion on women's education. And I was surprised to hear his forceful statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because he had to know that no matter what he said, someone was going to get pissy.

And yet he did it anyway. Cheers. How did he put it?

But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors.

I had dinner last night with a senior university official who was present at the speech, and she described it as a love-fest, with people whistling, and cheering, and calling his name throughout the speech.

Watching the video, I didn't get that sense through the entire speech - in fact, there were several places where it seemed to me Obama paused, expecting applause, and none came. As I recall, those were in the portions of the speech pertaining to Iraq and to Israel.

I was also surprised to hear that Hillary was there! I haven't heard one single word about her in weeks!

The university official also said that Obama wasn't introduced, he just walked onto the stage and some people weren't ready for him. Which is odd, because I distinctly recall hearing "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States" come over my connection.


Awhile ago I blogged a plea to Obama to highlight similarities rather than differences in his speech, and to point out to the world that since we made this mess, we can fix it. I was very moved to hear:

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

The New York Times has run a series of "Arab" student responses to Obama's speech. Imagine my shock to recognize the faces of three of my former students smiling back at me! The first three students are former pupils of mine. As I recall, one of them is Egyptian, one Jordanian, and one (the third) is Palestinian.

I'm still struck by the issue of "Arabness" in Egyptian identity. Call an Egyptian an Arab and you've got a fight on your hands. But as soon as the Palestinian issue comes up, it's "our brothers" this and "we Arabs" that. I'm constantly perplexed by this. You could stretch the point further by highlighting the fact that Iranians and Afghanis aren't Arabs either (I recall a moment at a dinner party in my former institution where one professor, with a merlot-red tongue, called my Persian adviser an "Ay-rab." It was a bit shocking). I suppose it has something to do with the perception of a foreign, evil "other" ....

But what do I know? I'm just a lowly biologist.

I feel like just as I'm beginning to get a handle on the depth and complexity of my questions about the region, I'm leaving.

And I haven't even begun to get started on the answers.

Five, not three

It's five helicopters, not three!

They just went over the house again (slightly to the east this time), heading toward Heliopolis. I'm assuming Obama has finished his tour of the pyramids and is headed back to the airport?

Wow. Five giant grey military helicopters. I wonder who's in the other four?

I can't believe my camera is broken!!!

Cairo's big day

I've been sitting here in my study watching and listening to the White House's streaming broadcast of Obama's speech here in Cairo.

From 11 am onward I've been sitting back here, trying to find a site that was broadcasting the speech. I don't have a TV, so I couldn't just flip on CNN.

Eventually I discovered the White House site, and to my pleasure my atrocious internet connection held up all the way through to the end - although the picture froze every few seconds, the audio came through just fine.

I found myself impressed with Obama's powerful language - I guess we're committed to a two-state solution now. I admit I don't know quite what our stance was before, since I feel too ignorant and biased to have any reliable insight into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The speech ended, the stream shut off, and I was wandering about the apartment, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my afternoon.

And then ... my brain finally registered a sound that I think I'd been half-listening for all day ....

Helicopters!

I flung open the doors to my balcony, scaring a few lives out of my cats, and I darted out onto my balcony - burning my bare feet on the blistering-hot tiles that have been baking all day in the Cairo sun.


Three (or maybe four) enormous gray military helicopters came into Garden City on a low approach. I ran back into the flat, cursed my broken camera (from Mt Moses, more on that later), and snatched up my cell phone and my field glasses. I took two pictures but forgot to save the second photo in my excitement.

Two of the helicopters continued their low approach over the Nile, but the third helicopter made a series of low circles over the American embassy up the street, swinging alarmingly close to my building in the process. I certainly didn't need a sniper taking potshots at the lunatic in the red tank top hopping up and down on the patio!

Finally the third helicopter pulled up into a high approach and dropped out of sight over the Novotel in Zamalek. I have no clue where they were heading (why Zamalek?) but I immediately called a buddy in Zamalek and gabbled at her to go out on her balcony.

Since I was here during the election I don't have much of an emotional investment in Obama - and I feel like the only human being on Earth who says that. But there's just something about knowing that the leader of the free world, America's darling, is only a few hundred meters away in your backyard!


I'm hoping the helicopters will swing back this way to take him to the airport in Heliopolis. I'm keeping my cell phone, my field glasses, and my sandals right next to the door to the balcony, just in case.

Boy my feet hurt!

We all know it's wrong

So why is it still happening?

The government-mandated useless, ignorant, backward, religiously-motivated pig slaughter is continuing in Cairo (make sure you watch the video and the slideshow with this article). I've blogged about this so many times, and had so many conversations about this absurdity, that it's hard to believe I can still get angry about this.

Stupidity makes me angry. Ignorance makes me angry. Waste makes me angry.

And of course, I'm infuriated by the incursion of medieval mentalities into daily life.

If there were no public health consequence - if the government weren't lying through its teeth - if an already-oppressed minority weren't scrambling for their very existence - I'd say, fine, kill the pigs. Knock yourselves out. You don't want to eat pork? That means more bacon for the rest of us.

But I just cannot stand the hypocrisy of this whole thing. I doubt there's a single person in Egypt who truly believes this government gives a damn about its citizens - especially its Christian citizens. Why doesn't the government just dispense with the "we want life to be better for the zabaleen" bullshit and say the truth, just this once?

"Sorry, guys," the propaganda machine would bleat, "But, well, with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt - which of course we support so we can show America we have an enemy and deserve their funding - there just isn't a place for you Christians any more. So you can either piss off now, or you can slowly starve to death. Your choice, really. I wouldn't count on help from any neighboring countries, though. Or those NGOs. We really enjoy screwing those foreigners over."

I feel like a child who's suddenly realized that you can get punished for something you didn't do. What do you mean, life isn't fair? That governments are stupid and corrupt? That no matter how good a person you may be, you can still get shafted by someone who doesn't even know you exist?

I fervently believe that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people can exist. Even after this past administration, I still want to believe that the American government can be a good, just government, a model government.

And I desperately want to believe that Egypt isn't locked into its current path. I want to believe that the faces I've looked at in my classrooms will rise above their heritage and decide what's important. Would I like those things to be the same things I value? Of course! But at this point, I'd settle for a "things right now are wrong and we're not going to stand for it anymore!"

I want to look in people's faces and see a belief that what they do matters. That voting, and education, and struggle mean something - not necessarily in the short run, but in the Grand Scheme of Things. And even if, like me, they're not quite sure what that means, at least there's an intimation of pride and hope and honor.

Every once in a while I've gotten a glimmer from my students that something I've said has gotten through. Something about bias, or logic, or critical thinking. That glimmer is frequently extinguished when I read too many homeworks - do they even read what they write? - but I have to believe that things will change for these people.

I have to. Otherwise, what's been the point of the last two years?

And I'm not really the one who should be angry here. I'm leaving. Soon.

So many Egyptians are already angry. If we all know it's wrong, why are we still doing it?

Millions of peaches

Peaches for free!

Well, almost. Two days ago, after another hair-raising adventure with EgyptAir (what does it mean that their internal system can lose reservations that their website still displays???) I decided to blow off some steam and shop for a dinner party at a nearby souq.

I wrote about this souq before - it's a bit out of the way for me, so I don't go that often. And by "out of the way," I mean, "across the street." Those of you who have seen Qasr El Ainy know what I'm talking about - somewhere between 4 and 8 lanes (these concepts are fluid here) of moto-mania. It's not impossible to cross at this point, but there are vegetable guys who don't require me to take my life in my hands on this side of Qasr El Ainy.

It's been horrifically hot the past few days, with the beginning of the week absolutely excruciating. On top of the heat, the power went out in my flat for about 20 hours, throwing me back to the Stone Age. I actually used the salt lamp I got in Siwa as my light source for the night. The weather's cooled down a bit, but it's still well into the 80s and 90s most days.

So after my tussle with EgyptAir, I took the Metro back to Saad Zaghloul to get my dinner-party shopping done. I was so hot, so tired, so sweaty, so dirty that I couldn't stand the thought of turning on my stove. Fortunately, in Egypt the produce is so brilliant that cooking isn't really required for a good meal.

The first thing I saw were peaches. Tons of them. Peach avalanches. I'd eyed a few peaches the other day while having dim sum in the Four Seasons (not worth the money, in my opinion), but I'd ended up stuffing plums in my purse instead. If it were possible to eat sex, I think, then that's what eating a good ripe plum is to me. Positively carnal.

I decided to pick up a few peaches for dessert. I settled on 6 peaches that weren't rock hard or already rotting, but when I handed them to the vendor he looked puzzled. I finally figured out that choosing the number of fruits you need is strange - they expect you to buy in kilo increments. I kept trying to explain that I just wanted 6 peaches - these 6 peaches - and I'd pay whatever they cost (which ended up being LE 1.50, or 27 cents US). I'm not quite sure why this was so strange, but I ended up repeating this conversation through the whole souq.

My big splurge came next. I found a vegetable guy who was selling kilos of the most perfect little cherry tomatoes you've ever seen. With a twinkle in his eyes, the guy announced his price, which precipitated a startled "Eh da?" from a nearby patron. I fixed my eyes on his, tacked a smile on my face, took a deep breath to prepare to hurtle myself into my haggling routine ("my husband will beat me if I pay such a price") when the other patron cut in with a flood of Arabic. The vendor, seemingly defeated (but still grinning) cut his price in half, and I accepted it. I paid an outlandish LE 5 (90 cents) for a kilo of perfect fresh cherry tomatoes. Mesh. I would've given him the LE 10.

Yellow and red peppers - check. Cucumbers - check. Cilantro and dill - check. Three pounds, two pounds, and 50 piasters, respectively. I passed on the seafood, although I was sorely tempted by the fresh crabs. I knew that I'd spend the whole meal thinking about the legions of flies that crawled all over the seafood in their tubs of ice on the street.

In the end, dinner was a super-simple affair. I made a raita with yogurt, tomatoes, cucumbers, cilantro, and cayenne pepper. I whipped up another yogurt concoction with various Indian spices. I split the cherry tomatoes in half (I always forget that smaller foods require more, and more careful, knife work), sprinkled them with sea salt and basalmic vinegar and folded in a few handfuls of chopped dill. The red and yellow bell peppers here are so perfect, I just sliced them up and made a side of sun-dried-tomato olive oil, which I served with the cucumber slices. I rounded the meal off with a brie, some beef grisson (I wasn't crazy about the texture, but I tried to compensate by plating the meat in the shape of a fish in a shell bowl, complete with a tiny cherry tomato eye), crackers, and a few fiteer (round flaky bread).

We ended up eating out on the balcony with a bottle of French wine followed by lemongrass tea and a shisha made hazardous by the rising wind. The lemongrass tea was surprisingly good and required zero effort. All I did was put a handful of lemongrass leaves (from the desert development center) into my french press, poured boiling water over them, then put the whole thing in the freezer for a few hours.

But since we were sitting outside, the star of the meal was the Nile. I'm really going to miss this place - there's a strange glamor to my life here that I don't think I'll ever find again.

Take a bow, Egypt

We're number 2! We're number 2!

I'm sitting on my couch catching up on the latest Influenza A information to prepare for an interview I'm giving on Tuesday. It's for a campus-affiliated news magazine, but I still don't want to look like an idiot. Or, you know, start throwing chairs.

[Spoiler alert to any of my students: skip the next paragraph! And why aren't you working on your final?]

I've also been working with some of my colleagues on a short set of questions to give students to figure out whether they've actually learned anything from our class. We delocalized the situation - Egypt's not the only country screwing up, after all - but my fervent hope is in 30 years, one of my students will be running some sort of Supreme Council here and will make the right call.

I found this article from Discover magazine on the the five worst governmental responses to the Influenza A outbreak. It's been a few weeks since this article ran, so maybe it's time to resurvey the field.

Egypt came in at #2, behind (ahem) Mexico. Here's the shout-out:

2. Slaughtering Every Pig in Your Country
Second place goes to Egypt, whose government decided that since the virus originated from pigs, the best way to keep it out is to kill every pig in your borders. So that's what they did. This week, Health Ministry workers began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs unfortunate enough to reside there—a number that would have been far higher were Egypt not a predominantly Muslim country.

Unfortunately for the government—and the pigs, and their farmers, and the Egyptian citizens who will gain nothing from this pointless massacre—killing pigs has absolutely no effect on the transmission of the virus. "The crisis today is in transmission from human to human. It has nothing to do with pigs," U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech told the AP. Though it's certainly a good week to buy pork chops in Cairo.

Wrong, buddy! You can never buy pork chops in Cairo! At least, this trained observer has never noticed any. I don't think even Gourmet Egypt goes so far, and for sure the very few places in Cairo that sold pork pulled the products (which would have brought their weight in ex-pat gold, I don't doubt).

And yet, and yet ... Egypt is still going ahead with its pig slaughter in the face of international ridicule. Way to stick to those idiot-guns, my dears. In their defense, the government is trying to spin the whole thing as a public health initiative. Check out this article from Al-Ahram; my favorite part is where the unhygenic filthy rotting pig corpses - haram! - are shown to be the victims of vehicular pigslaughter. My question to those spinsters is, oh, really? Then why now? Why not a year ago? A year from now? Five years from now? And most importantly, do you think we're stupid???

The kicker, of course, is that so many of us are ignorant. I can't figure out why people have started trusting the government now, of all times. Convenient adherence to religious doctrine and economic expedience (can't really imagine to whom)?

Here's a quick case in point. Last week I attended a conference here in Cairo that vacillated between being a useful discussion among peers to a social-scientist-hippy-lovefest (no offense intended to any rigorous social scientists out there, of course). I held it together pretty well, I think, by not participating in many discussions.

I finally blew my stack in the afternoon on the second day. I was in a break-out session with a few people, and the topic of scientific thinking and the flu outbreak came up. Someone (erm, it might've been me) pointed out that this current event is the perfect case study for our students. I was interrupted by an Egyptian doctor. Let me say that again: doctor. She said, "Well, but you really have to contextualize this issue. I mean, we are in Egypt."

Mouth engaged before brain and I slammed back, "I don't care what country or what context you're talking about. PIGS - DON'T - CAUSE - THIS - FLU. All this context business is nonsense - you might as well throw out all the red paintings in Egypt, that'll have the same effect on the spread of this disease." Fortunately cooler heads prevailed before she could respond (and I, no doubt, could throw a chair).

Yikes. I'd better calm down before this interview on Tuesday.

Misadventures in Tailoring

I've just lost three hours of my life that I don't get back.

It all started out innocuously enough: I wanted to get some clothes made before I left.

Seems simple, right? All the expats here have their darling tailor, and all you have to do is ask around, get introduced to the tailor, and boom! Personalized-clothing heaven! Right?

Wrong. For me, anyway.

Around 11 this morning I packed up the clothes I wanted copied and headed up the street to my friend's place. She and her husband also wanted some tailoring done, and they've got a car (be still my heart!), so it should have been the perfect storm.

Over at the fabric store in Zamalek, I picked up something like 8 m of fabric for LE 390 (that's $69.50). I'm quite happy with the fabric - I picked out three different ones for shirts for KC, and two sets of fabric for dresses for me.

I realize that I've whitewashed that step a bit. What really happened was my friend's husband drove us around the entire island of Zamalek 2 or 3 times looking for parking, before dropping us off down the street from the fabric store and continuing to circle until we were finished.

It turned out that my friend M had a run-in a few years ago with the tailor I was going to suggest (on recommendation of another friend K). The short-short version of the M's story is the tailor did something badly, and when M asked that the work be done properly, he refused to do it. According to M, she was just supposed to say "maelesh" that her waistband was 2 inches too short. As you can imagine, this didn't work out and she's never been back.

So we figured we'd try out another tailor who does work for our friend L, an exacting woman who never looks less than chic. I called L to ask for directions, and she told me something along these lines:

You need to head over past the Ministry of the Interior behind the old campus - it's the faux-pharonic building with the attack dogs. Go a little further until you see a cafe that's only for men, then take a right. Walk down this street (don't walk on the sidewalk, it's not safe) until you come to a rundown little alley. You'll know it's the right one because there's a concrete balcony on the street level. The shop has metal doors; you might need to bang on them to get someone to let you in. Oh, and did I mention that he doesn't speak any English?

Discussions of this nature, incidentally, are routine in Egypt.

Wonder of wonders, we managed to find the tailor pretty easily. We were even luckier - he had a friend visiting the shop who had flawless English. The store was tiny, sweltering, ill-lit, and full of cigarette smoke, but it was definitely a tailoring shop.

Then everything started to come unraveled (pardon the pun, couldn't resist).

M wanted a pair of pants made smaller in the hips; she'd brought another pair of pants of the same brand that were one size smaller. All the tailor had to do was make one match the other.

After about 15 minutes of heated exchange with M, the tailor refused to do the work. Apparently, it was too much work - and M's assurances of adequate compensation wouldn't sway him.

I was next at bat. I pulled out one of KC's dress shirts and laid it on the tiny table, precipitating a flood of agitated Arabic.

Oh no, madame, the tailor's friend gasped, oh no, you need an expert for this!

I was confused. I was pretty sure KC'd bought the shirt at Target or an outlet store or something like that. "An expert in what?" I asked.

The response was quick: shirts.

I didn't even bother showing the guy the dress I wanted copied.

We stalked down the street, grousing, but forced to admire the tailor for refusing to do the work rather than doing a bad job.

And then, because we hadn't wasted enough time already, because we weren't yet hot enough, or thirsty enough, or frustrated enough - we decided to go back to Zamalek, to the tailor within shouting distance of the fabric store.

This we proceeded to do, through all the downtown Cairo traffic - and wouldn't you know it? The tailor wasn't in! Won't be back until 5:00 pm! (Insha'allah)

[sigh]

Cairo wins again!

Classified

Anyone know where I can get an oud in Cairo?

Another no-win for Obama?

And another big mess for us, no doubt.

Obama is coming to Cairo! For various, apparently logical, reasons, Obama has chosen to come to Cairo for his "first" address to the Muslim world.

My first reaction, of course, is to think oh no! It's going to be a huge mess, security-wise; I have no doubt that Mubarak does not want to be held responsible for anything happening to the world's new darling. And when it comes to overblown irrational responses to phantom threats, Egypt's expert.

I really wish they'd given the date of the speech; I sincerely hope it won't be anywhere near the time I'll be traveling. In fact, if I could get out of Dodge entirely (at least for a few days), I'd be much happier.

Hang on - this article seems to think that the speech will be given on June 4. I wonder if that's the correct date.

There were a few interesting points in the article, but I'm most intrigued by this one:

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who met with Mr. Mubarak on Monday in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik, has tried to promote the idea that Arabs, Israelis and Americans have a common enemy in Iran and should first unite against that threat.

I don't want to sound like a raging hippie, but isn't the fabrication of a "common enemy" what got us into this mess in the first place? Aren't we, as a global civilization, past this cold-war mentality yet?

Obviously not. It's very disappointing.

While we're busy attributing all divine goodness to Obama, why don't I throw in my two cents. Mr. Obama, could you maybe try fostering a spirit of unity and humanity in your message? Point out that we're all human beings, and that - since we've fabricated our differences - we have the power to stop all this waste once and for all? Maybe even go so far as to say that the US is committed to a future of peace, and that we've learned our lesson from the past 100 years or so?

Dream on.

If it looks like a duck ...

And quacks like a duck ...

Then it must be time to slaughter the pigs.

700 down, 349300 to go ... and only a few members of a repressed minority disadvantaged.

My favorite part of this article reads, "The government denies the slaughter has anything to do with Muslim distaste for pork and maintains that new, hygienic pig farms using imported animals will be set up in two years time."

Yeah, right. If the new establishment runs on Egyptian time, we're looking at 30 years minimum - and everyone here knows it.

In other news, the weather here has been terrible. Oven-hot winds have been kicking up so much sand, I could barely see the river from my flat today. The usual rolling vistas of construction visible from my office window were obscured in a flat beige haze.

There's a metaphor here somewhere, and I'm reaching for it.