A day of note(s)

I'm going to start this entry straight off with something absolutely amazing that's going on right now, even as I type this.

It's raining!

Incredibly, unbelievable, verifiably - there is water falling from the heavens. Not from an air-conditioner, or from God-knows-where (consisting of God-knows-what) - actual rain.

I was so astounded when I walked out of my office, I stood there like the proverbial turkey, gazing up into the sky. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not exactly pouring. I wouldn't go out and build an ark tonight instead of preparing for class. But the wind is just whipping through the city, carrying with it the occasional aliquot of rain. The wind was so bad last night I had to shut all the windows, and this afternoon I've moved all the patio furniture against the building to try to avoid giving a donation to the Indonesian embassy.

I also had trouble sleeping last night because Miss India and I had different ideas of what goes on when I go to bed. Finally, finally, I managed to get her to ignore me so I could get some sleep.

She had a present for me this morning, though. Not that kind of present - she seems to be well-enough trained. She jumped in the bathtub after I was done with the shower, and well, wet dirty cat feet plus white linoleum equals ....
And, of course ....

She danced on the toilet too, but I even I shrink from posting pictures of my toilet online. Call me old-fashioned. At least Fawzeya is coming tomorrow, so I don't have to clean the little love-prints myself.

Speaking of Fawzeya, another major milestone was passed today. I wrote my first letter in Arabic! It was my special request for my tutoring session this afternoon. And here it is:

I might as well have written, "Dear Mommy, I love you, and I like pizza. Love, Tiffany." I thought finishing my Ph.D. was going to gain me some dignity, but apparently I was sorely mistaken.

Now I'm off to practice my talk again before tomorrow. I'd casually invited an acquaintance of a friend to come hear my talk, mostly to touch base and ask to have coffee again. To my extreme consternation, he emailed me today and said he'll be coming for sure tomorrow - and bringing ten of his colleagues from the lab.

The theme of my stay so far has been, "What have I gotten myself into?!"

Odds and ends

Some reasonably interesting things have happened today.

It's the day after Eid, so the city has been a bit festive, and I've had off from work. Of course, I don't usually teach on Mondays anyway, but who am I to scoff at a holiday mentality? That said, I worked all weekend. I'm giving my first "invited" talk in the Biology department at AUC on Wednesday, and I still have to write up that pesky thesis of mine.

To my surprise, my home phone rang around noon. Now that KC's gone, the few phone calls I get are usually to my cell. I answered the phone, and for once it wasn't a wrong number. (Imagine how well I manage "I'm sorry, but that person doesn't live here, perhaps you have the wrong number?" in my KG Arabic.)

The caller was a friend of a friend. Maybe a week ago, I went over to this lady's apartment to meet a cat she wanted a home for. I'd been told that this was a sweet, affectionate Persian, who wanted to be an only cat.

Perfect, I thought.

So I arrived at the apartment and met Shahira, who was indeed a purebred Persian. I knew something was off, though, when my host gushed, "She's just the sweetest cat, she's got a beautiful tail, and she's only a tiny bit autistic."

Excuse me? Autism in a cat? (Take that, proponents of the vaccination theory of autism.)

I spent about half an hour listlessly waving a stuffed frog at the autistic cat. She loved the frog, but didn't even seem to realize that I was there. I was already planning how to break up with the cat - the cat that I hadn't even accepted yet.

The woman saw that our blind date wasn't going well, so she offered to introduce me to her other 5 cats. I met the other cats, three of whom were not available.

The other two were a mother and kitten. Long story short, the younger cat was sweet, affectionate, and looking for a home. But apparently I'm commitment-phobic with cats, so I told her I'd call. I didn't. So she called me. (Obviously there isn't a version of "The Rules" meant for cats.)

Would I be interested in having India come stay for a few days? Sure, why not - it'd be like a honeymoon package with a free annulment option afterward. 45 minutes later, India had moved in. She is very cute, and very sweet, and I haven't sneezed yet. She is a bit skittish, though, and entirely too much help in writing this blog. I don't think her "mommy" uses a laptop at home.

After getting my proto-dependent settled, I decided to finish this vacuum battle once and for all. Too many times I have had to bow to the impossibility of finding an open appliance store at a reasonable hour. Who goes out to buy vacuums at 10 pm? Apparently Egyptians do. At least during Ramadan. I finally hit upon a solution - the open round-the-clock grocery store in Zamalek.

Zamalek's a hip neighborhood on Gezira island, a 10 minute cab drive away. I've been going there to do any sort of involved grocery shopping, because they have actual "supermarkets" instead of just individually-run stores. The small stores are great for some things, and not for others. Plus, my favorite store in Cairo, Moroccan Kamooz, is right above one of the grocery stores. What else can a girl ask?

Most days the taxis here accelerate straight at me, flashing their lights and honking their horns. Today, though, probably due to the holiday, I wasn't quite so lucky. I finally managed to get a cab to stop, and when I asked for Zamalek, the cab driver responded in good English "Where in Zamalek?" Busted. I asked for my destination, and off we went.

The driver asked where I was from, and told me I looked Egyptian. Pretty standard fare. But from there, in true Egyptian style, we went straight to the personal questions.

"Do you have a husband?" I do, I answered. "Well, where is he?" I explained he was in America.
"How long has he been gone?"

"Uh, two weeks. He'll be back soon."

"Soon? Two weeks is a long time. When he comes back?"

I lied, "Two more weeks."

"Four weeks!" The driver exploded. "He don't love you?"

Dear God. "Yes, but he'll be back soon, and I know he loves me."

"But four weeks, he can't kissing you, loving you, sexing you! How you go four weeks without sexing?"

I stammered something inane, praying that this cab would be transmogrified into some Star-Trek-instantaneous-arrival vehicle. And then came the moment I'd been dreading.

The driver fixed me with a steely gaze. "You want an Egyptian boyfriend? I'm very nice."

"Um, no thanks."

"Why? Why no Egyptian boyfriend? I'm an engineer."

Where's that Earth-destroying asteroid when you need it??? "I don't think my husband would like it."

The conversation continued in this fashion until I lurched out of the cab 3 blocks shy of my destination. I threw some cash at the driver and high-tailed it up a one-way street.

I wanted to buy a microwave and a vacuum, but even though I was walking around with a ton of cash, my budget couldn't afford both items. I settled for the vacuum, because I'd rather suffer cold food than an angry housekeeper. I mean, I promised her I'd get a vacuum soon, because I could see the disapproval - could it have been disappointment in my worth as a woman? - in her eyes last week when I confessed I lacked a vacuum.

So now I'm back home, with my vacuum and my maybe-cat. I'm having a few people over tonight for some drinks. I can only hope that my friends are less interested in my sex life than a random Cairene cab driver. At least the cat is. I think.

Thoughts after reading Dowd

The faculty lounge here at AUC has a library, consisting (I suspect) mostly of cast-offs from professors' libraries. I find this library a bit more accessible than the University's library ... mostly because it's on the same side of the street as my office. Those of you who have been to Cairo, or have read the recent Times article, know what I'm talking about here.

Just this morning I finished reading Maureen Dowd's "Are Men Necessary?" (Her answer: maybe. And if yes, it's our own fault.) I won't pretend to agree with all her critiques - of the failure of feminism, of the resurrection of long dong machismo in politics and society, of the grand conspiracies to quash female intelligence and strength.

On the plus side, though, she made me think. And God knows there are few enough media personalities or outlets out there we can say that about. (Fox News or CNN, anyone?)

I'm caught in an interesting double-bind right now in my life that makes me want to look around and think about what it means, being a woman. I'm a woman in science - strike one - and a woman living in a Muslim country - strike two. I suppose I could swing at a third pitch and point out that I'm 28 years old and living alone for much of the year, but that's nobody's fault but mine.

Shall I take the second part first? I was very concerned, upon receiving this job offer, about the prospect of moving to a Muslim country. I talked to as many women at Princeton as I could who had lived, worked, or gone to school in Egypt (about 3), and they all agreed that things could be much worse.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

But now I'm here, and I get to use my much-vaunted powers of scientific observation. And from what I can see, things could be worse. From watching television and listening to the news, I could have expected to see illiterate, over-child-birthed, burka-swathed women being beaten in the street for the crime of leaving their homes. Keeping in mind that I work in downtown Cairo at an American university and live in a pretty affluent neighborhood, I can tell you that I don't see these things.

When I walk down the street in Cairo, the vast majority (maybe as much as 90%) of the people I see on the street are men. I rarely see women walking alone, although first thing in the morning downtown, I see business women hurrying along. Nearly every women I see is veiled to some degree. I imagine the ones who aren't are foreign, or Christian, or very upper-class.

I see three "categories" of veiling. Many women (especially young ones) wrap two scarves over their hair. The scarves are lovely, and while these girls are covered head to toes, with very little skin showing, their outfits leave little to the imagination. Is it still modest, even wearing three layers, to wear clothing that fits like another skin? I find this dichotomy puzzling. The typical "uniform" here seems to consist of a thin, long-sleeved undershirt (black, white, or nude), a tight, brightly colored tunic made of synthetic fabric (often with ruffles on the hips and butt), full-length jeans (frequently tight), two bright headscarves, and a face full of makeup.

I've been told that the donning of the headscarf in recent years has risen in popularity, due to a desire for young people to express their Muslim identity. I respect expressions of religious or cultural identity; I just don't understand how flaunting your goods in every other aspect bolsters that identity. Unless it's some new, "burka babe" identity. Entirely possible.

A second category of women, frequently older than the first set, wears a headscarf that resembles a nun's wimple to my eyes. The scarf is usually black, brown, white, or olive, and it's folded low on the forehead, above the eyebrows. The scarf reaches down to the woman's waist in front and in back, so her whole torso is covered by the cloth. These women are usually wearing long loose dresses, but I've seen this type of headscarf over more Western-style clothing on older women who look like professionals.

And finally, the picture I'm sure most Americans have of veiled women: what I think of as the "full veil." These women are in black from crown to heels, although the black can be accented with black embroidery or beads. (I saw a fully veiled Saudi women at a swank restaurant on the Nile when I first arrived. I've never seen someone look so glamorous - considering I couldn't really see any of her.) Their face veil is loose and folded on the top, which ends up looking a bit like bat-wings, especially when they walk. The face veil comes to the bottom of the neck, with small slits for the eyes. Their robes are full, black and voluminous, and these women also wear black gloves - in all weather. I confess to having had the appalling manners to watch one of these fully veiled women in a restaurant. I couldn't figure out how she was going to eat wearing the veil. I guessed that she wasn't going to eat at all, but she did - by passing each spoonful of food under the veil, leaning forward to try to keep the cloth out of her mouth.

So why, oh why, do these women decide to dress as they do? There could be some logical fallacies in the question itself, like my use of the word "decide." I read an appalling passage in Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" describing the teenaged bride's first encounter with her burka, thrust into her hands after her wedding by her abusive husband. However, I think the democratic idealist lurking in me refuses to believe that all these women have been bullied into wearing the veil. And I did, after all, point out the veil's symbology in Muslim identity. Maybe the question is inappropriate because these women don't perceive an "issue" with the taking of the veil. Sweeping generalizations, how we do love thee.

I'm not a sociologist - or an anthropologist, a religious studies scholar, or a Muslim. I have very few answers, only more questions. But I am willing to play devil's advocate on one issue.

There are always men loitering on the street here, frequently in groups of three or more. And many, many of these men have appalling manners. Vocal sexual harassment on the street is so normal that I can usually block it out. Yesterday I went for a walk along the Nile by myself - it was a holiday, and the weather was lovely. Big mistake - all the teenagers were out loose, and I got so tired of being harassed by gangs of ill-mannered thugs, I finally just went home. And more than once I've covered my face to deflect comments on my looks, my body - to deflect my objectification. It doesn't work very well, but it does make me think again about why women choose to veil themselves.

Don't these boors realize that every woman they harass on the street is someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's sister? And when their mothers, sisters, and wives go out, they're being treated with precisely the same disrespect? How can these people reconcile their strongly-felt cultural sense of duty and familial female honor with this street-gutter, testosterone-driven, vulgar behavior?

There's a newspaper here that once a week has an English-language edition. I've stopped buying it, because I find the hypocrisy in their political position sickening. (Apparently a "fair and balanced media" isn't something people here even pretend to.) One of the editions I did pick up early on, though, had an "article" (opinion piece, more like) framing the Egyptian male as a victim of unemployment and a barrage of Western pornography. The Western pornography is piped in by the new prevalence of satellite television, and how are the honest working men of Egypt, poor oppressed darlings, supposed to fight it? And since their wives won't behave like the sluts they see on television, the poor suffering man is receiving even more mixed signals, leading to his vulgar behavior on the streets.

My heart bleeds. Rivers, oceans of sympathy.

You want to frame the high unemployment rate as an underlying source of social unhappiness? Fine. I'll buy that. But the sheer idiocy and misogyny of blaming pornography and "frigid" (i.e., normal, ordinary) wives for the socially-accepted disrespectful behavior of men? Never.

After September 11, I was so angered by the behavior of media outlets like CNN that I stopped watching the news. The only televised news show I've watched in the last 6 years has been "The Daily Show." Hell, I haven't even owned a television in the last 3 years. Here's my point: I thought the news media was hurting America, so I stopped watching.

You think pornography is hurting the cultural underpinnings of your society? Then stop watching pornography. Go pay attention to your wife and children instead. I don't support censorship, but I sure as hell believe in self-control and self-responsibility.

Wow. After this enormous rant, I don't have the energy to start talking about women in science. Maybe another time. But dear readers, do post your responses to my voluminous post here. Maybe Ms. Dowd can get all of us thinking - and talking - again.

All's well that ends well

I've had a really frustrating day.

Things started out well enough - I got up early and finished writing the exam for my darling students for next week. I think the exam is harder than the last one, but doable. I'm even giving them choices on which essay questions to answer. Nothing like giving the victims a little extra rope, wouldn't you say?

The woman I've hired to clean my apartment came at 10 with her daughter. I feel a bit odd, hiring a maid, but I've finally had to accept that I just can't do a good enough job on my own. The Sahara is too mighty a force to battle, even though I'm one person in this enormous apartment. I don't even use four of my rooms on a regular basis, but the dirt just gets all over everything because I cool my apartment by leaving the windows open in the back of the apartment. I have no doubt that even if I closed the windows, Egypt would still defeat me.

I left after 10 and walked over to the local branch of the reputable appliance chain to buy a vacuum. It was hot and muggy today, and walking up the main street is always an exercise in dirt, pollution, and dodging cars and motorcycles driven by mad Cairenes. I got to the store at 10:30, and there was a man standing in the doorway. I tried to come in. He told me the store was closed.

I had what I suspect is a typical American reaction. "I'm here, you're here, and I've got a lot of money on me. So what's the problem?" But Egyptians are motivated by more than the almighty pound, so I marched away from the store, thinking nasty thoughts.

I cut through to the back of the parliament building here to explore a little on the way to my office. Big mistake. The street I was heading for didn't actually come through to where I was. And the front of the Turkish embassy is a madhouse of pedestrians, vegetable vendors, cars, mopeds motorcycles, donkeys, cats, and all other things that make Cairo such a gem. I was hit not once, but twice by passing cars. One guy actually stopped - well, slowed down - but the other one just clipped me and kept going.

All week I've felt that this city is out to get me. Two days ago I was walking to work, thinking about my class, and BAM! I tripped over a paving stone and ended up on my hands and knees on the sidewalk. I ground up one knee pretty good, and bruised the other, but at least I didn't rip my pants. Thank God I was wearing jeans and not a skirt, or my dress pants. On top of everything else, I chipped my pedicure. Not amusing. Of course, if I'd been walking in the middle of the street like a normal person, I wouldn't have tripped over the ripped-up sidewalk. Such is life in Cairo. And when did I start worrying about my pedicure, for crying out loud?

I attended the general lecture for my course today. Picture an auditorium, cooled to Arctic proportions, intended for 600 students, and filled with 400 teenagers who'd rather be doing God-knows-what than actually paying attention. The lecturer was engaging, although the topic was a bit obtuse - philosophy of science, starring Popper, Kuhn, and Feyerabend. I hadn't even heard of the third guy, and I found his theory a bit social-sciency for my tastes. But did my students listen quietly? About half of them did. I snapped at quite a few others, including some kids from other sections that apparently sit with my students just to talk. I remember when I was in college, I slept through the lectures I didn't listen to - I didn't talk. And I sure didn't have a cell phone to fool around on. I suppose this is where I grunt and write, "Hmph. Teenagers."

I left work early to stop back at the vacuum store on my way home. I got there at 4:10 and the store was CLOSED. AGAIN. I'd left early to beat iftar, which doesn't happen until about 5:30. So I was more than an hour early, and the store was closed. I fumed some more and walked on.

I stopped by the local grocery to buy a few things for dinner. The guy put my floor cleaner in with my 6 eggs. Guess how many whole eggs I had when I got home? I suppose it could've been worse.

So I got back to my apartment, loaded down, thinking about all the work I have to do tonight before class tomorrow morning, angry that the damned stores here are never open when people who actually have to work can shop ... and then I opened the door. And stepped into my pristine, beautiful, clean apartment. I felt like crying. They'd even cleaned the balcony - I didn't realize that my railings were white! Everything looks so beautiful, I thought about calling my friends and having a party. I won't, though - too much Popper awaits me tonight.

I sat out on the balcony, had a gin and tonic, and watched the feluccas sail by on the Nile while the sun set. I suppose I'll never have this experience again in my life - coming home to a beautifully clean, spacious, free apartment, and admiring the world-class view of one of the great rivers in the world. I think I'll have to enjoy it while it lasts, and be grateful that I'm living in a country where the American dollar is actually worth something - and I can afford to ask for help.

Islamic Cairo : October 6

Day two of the great weekend travel-rama : Islamic Cairo.
Today's trip was one I signed up for through faculty services at AUC. My upstairs neighbor runs these programs, and since they're all or mostly free, I've managed to make 2 out of 3. We got on a bus at 9 am and headed to Islamic Cairo with a member of the Egyptology department in tow as a guide. Going on tours with academics is a double-edged sword, but this woman did an excellent job of catering to our intellectual curiosity without deluging us with minutiae.

First, we went to the Nilometer. We got there first thing in the morning, so the breeze coming off the Nile was still lovely. The Nilometer is right on the tip of the island of Rhoda. I knew that we were going to see a device that measures the height over the Nile (sometimes a cigar is just a cigar). I had a mental image, of course, of what this thing would look like - something like an ancient toliet bob, I think I had in mind. You know, with pharoahs or something. Never mind that the city of Cairo didn't exist in pharaonic times. Or that the Egyptians have been, throughout history, a remarkably practical and resourceful people.


This thing was huge, and absolutely beautiful. The Nilometer itself is a deep shaft in the ground, carved and fronted with beautiful white marble. The Arabs (not the pharaohs, this was an Islamic device) had appropriated two ancient columns, stacked one on top of the other, and marked them with slashes to measure the rising floodwaters. The shaft itself contains niches and carvings and stairs, along with inscriptions of Quranic verses along the tops.

But over the top ... the Arabs later built a dome over the top of the Nilometer, and painted it with exquisite images of flowers, abstract designs, and calligraphy. As I entered the building, I heard the breath go out of the person in front me. I skirted his stock-still form and had the breath knocked out of me as well. I had no idea - not the slightest! - that I was approaching a thing that melded utility with indescribable beauty. What a perfect surprise in the early morning.


The last time I remember feeling this stab of shock was when I wandered into the Pantheon as a freshman in college. I was ambling around Rome, trying to not look too American. I turned my back on McDonald's and followed a group of chattering people into a marble building - and had the breath taken out of me. Most of what I remember is the space - transitioning from crowded, grubby Rome into an empty heaven guarded by a blazing eye. The Nilometer inspired the same sense of surprised awe in me.

From the Nilometer, we crowded back in the bus (jump seats had to be lowered) and headed over to the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As. This is an old, old mosque. Given that it was Ramadan, we had to be extra polite while we were there. In fact, we entered the mosque - leaving our shoes at the entrance (I heard more than one bowling joke). A man with glittering hard eyes stood under the arch and handed a hideous green robe to every woman. We had all covered our heads with our scarves, but apparently this wasn't enough. We had to be swathed, head to toe, in sweltering acrylic robes, with full sleeves and a hood. My hem dragged on the ground, and I was so irritated by this treatment that I didn't close the front of my robe. I was wearing jeans, socks, and a short-sleeved shirt, and I had my head covered with a scarf. As far as I was concerned, I was more than decent.

Long story short, we spent a very few minutes inside the mosque itself. Apparently during the last 10 days of Ramadan, men who want to experience their religion more deeply never leave the mosque. They stay and pray, forsaking work and their families - who bring them food every day. We were very uncomfortable having tourist-talk in front of these men, so we exited as rapidly as possible. This is - according to some - the oldest mosque in Cairo, but it's been rebuilt a few times. And it has a charismatic sheikh, so the people come for worship.

Our next stop was the mosque of Ibn Tulun. We passed some rather imposing Islamic edifices on the way to Ibn Tulun, but we didn't stop. We stayed outside the mosque at first, and headed for the minaret. We climbed onto the roof first, admired the architecture and the view, and then most of us headed on up the minaret. This minaret is special, because the staircase is on the outside. The view was spectacular.

When we came into the mosque proper, the first thing that struck me was the size of the thing. It's enormous - and apparently not as full as al-As, because the sheikh is less charismatic. But what a thing of beauty! It seemed that every architectural element was considered as a true marriage of form and function. The early Islamists had an eye for beauty and delicacy. Such stucco work, and cunning placement of arches and columns to create an illusion of open air! Our guide pointed out masterpiece after masterpiece, in stucco, in wood, in architecture. I don't know that I ever would have found this place on my own.


We were still in the mosque when the call to prayer sounded. This is the first time I've been privy to this even from the inside. To my surprise, there was a live man giving the call; I'd assumed that it was a recording, since it's broadcast through loudspeakers. You can hear a small part of the call in this video clip above.


Next door to Ibn Tulun is a museum that's been made of a house that was formerly occupied by a well-placed British doctor. It's called the Gayer Anderson house (apparently he was), and it made me want to rush out to Khan El-Khalili and buy everything. The good doctor had excellent taste, and was quite the collector - I imagine many of his objects would be illegal to buy today, given the provenance conscience our society has grown. I especially enjoyed his collection of birthing chairs. Ugh.

In my own mind, I'm trying to reconcile the beauty of the Islamic monuments I saw today with what's going on in the world. I don't pretend to have a perfect social conscience, or to be completely resistant to the rhetoric that our "leaders" are pouring into our ears. What I know is that today I saw a culture of beauty and elegance, a perfection of form melded with the aspiriation for perfection of soul. But I also experienced first-hand a blanket treatment because of my gender. And I recall the Taliban destroying the beauty of the buddhas on ideological grounds.

I don't know. I just don't know. But I think that's part of the reason why I came here.

Trip to Fayyum : October 5

It's been a really busy weekend! I was hoping for a quiet weekend, because I've been pretty stressed out. It's hard to be relaxed teaching when you're making up the syllabus only a few days ahead of actually teaching it. At least it'll be better next semester. That is to say, at least there will be a whole new set of problems next semester.

Friday I tagged along on a field trip that a Graeco-Roman studies class was taking. The instructor is nominally my boss - but he's also an engaging, erudite man with whom I've spent quite a bit of the last 6 weeks. He asked if I wanted to fill up some space in a bus for a trip he'd organized to the Fayyum, and naturally, I agreed to a free trip! The trip started at 8 am, and was long, hot, and very dirty, but it was a good time nonetheless.

The Fayyum is an agricultural region outside Cairo that's been cultivated for the last few thousand years. The center of the region is a lake, which is a bit of a dead sea, because nothing feeds into the lake. It used to gain water when the Nile flooded, but since there hasn't been any flooding since the dam was built, the lake is just getting saltier and saltier.

We started out at Kom Oushim / Karanis. We picked up a heavy police escort as soon as we entered the Fayyum. The level of security at these sites seemed completely out of proportion to the number of guests that come any given day. And, well, let's just say that I wouldn't count on these men to protect my life in a shoot-out. They're just not paid enough. So when you look at my pictures and see men, bored to tears, handling automatic weapons, you know why they're there.


Karanis was a village (think around 250 BC), and not much remains. We're not talking pharaonic grandeur here. The Fayyum was built up by the Ptolemaic dynasty - the descendants of Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy. But the desert itself lends a majesty that the crumbling mud brick walls can't overshadow. Pottery shards just lay scattered over the ground - pottery from a few thousand years ago. It's weird, seeing artifacts treated so carelessly by the excavators. I can only imagine that the sheer number of these pottery fragments makes missing a few pointless. Speaking of imagination, a lot of that sense was required on this trip. Ordinary people build in mud - only pharaohs build in stone.

There were two nice temples of Sobek here. Sobek was a god who had a crocodile as one of his aspects - makes sense, as the Nile was populated by some truly enormous, man-eating crocodiles. Rumor has it there are still a few trapped above the dam, but no one I've met has seen a live one. Anyway, the Egyptians used to mummify these beasts and put them in their temples to invoke the god. We also saw an ancient bathtub, decorated with a lovely floral motif.

Next stop - Qasr Qarun (remember, don't pronounce those Q's!), previously known as Dionysias. There was a large stone temple here, also to Sobek. More of this temple is extant, so less imagination was required. It was beautiful, and spooky, but apparently not even a lick on the Karnak temples (which I've yet to see). What happens to a god's house when the god moves on? Does anything stay behind? Even the crocodile mummies were gone from this temple, but I still found myself wondering.

We went up on the roof - a bit of a harrowing trip, up a dark staircase full of holes. But the view was lovely, and there was a cool relief of Sobek up the top. The wind came hurtling out of the desert, and I could just feel the grime building up between my toes - inside my Pumas. But I think this stop was the high point of the trip for me - the temple was really beautiful. Less imagination required.

We were supposed to head next to a place called Teudjoi, but when John asked directions from the tourist police, they made comically horrified faces. Teudjoi has only been opened to the public in the last 6 months, and I think the road is slow in coming. John decided wisely, I have no doubt, to not tempt any gods who might have been offended by having us as houseguests. We were, after all, about 50 foreigners in a big air-conditioned tourist bus.

Instead, we went to see the pyramid of Amenemhet III at Hawara. This pyramid - which was built after the Great Pyramids at Giza - is built of mud bricks. It's hard for me to imagine why this giant step backward might have happened. The pyramid is there, though, and it's pretty plain to see the mud. There was a beautiful raptor hunting on the pyramid. The bird would hover, completely motionless in the gusting wind, then arrow down onto the surface of the pyramid. It hunted the whole time we were walking around the pyramid in the blazing sun. The fluidity of the bird was in stark contrast to the slowly decaying mound of bricks.


The day was getting long - and we were getting dirtier, hungrier, and thirstier by the minute. I'd brought a couple liters of water and some trail mix, but empty bottles notwithstanding, a bathroom-free world works only for men. John decided to call it a day - after we'd gone to the pyramid at Meidum on the way back to Cairo.

This pyramid seems to be a bit of a mystery. No one really knows who built it - although it sounds as though every archaeologist has a pet theory. What seems clear, though, is the transitional nature of the pyramid. The inside was built like the step pyramid of Zhoser, but the outside was smooth, like the Dashur pyramids. Furthermore, the pyramid has completely collapsed at some point in the ancient past. The outside of the pyramid slid down, so the inside is what shows, and the outside of the pyramid looks like a pile of rubble around the base of the structure.


The guards at the pyramid were more interested in closing up for iftar than in humoring a bedraggled bunch of foreigners, so we didn't go inside. Actually, I learned my lesson at Darshur. KC and I took some houseguests to the Red Pyramid, and we all descended the steep, slick, cramped shaft down to the (empty) burial chamber. There was nothing else down there, although the stacking of the blocks of the pyramid from the inside was admittedly cool. It was a long, hard, cramped slog back up the shaft to the opening, then a wobbly descent down the side of the pyramid. I couldn't believe how shaky my legs were, but the resident squash player had shaky legs too, so I didn't think much of it. I thought a lot about my legs the next day, though - and the next, and the next, for a week! I think the position you have to take going up and down the shaft puts really strange stresses on the legs. I could barely walk up and down stairs for a week without fear of falling. Needless to say, I wasn't going down the Meidum shaft.
Then it was back to Cairo and Ramadan traffic. I was so filthy, I took a bath when I got home. I took my shoes off, and a cascade of Saharan sand ended up on my bathroom floor.

In Egypt, fun is a dirty, dirty business.

Learning Arabic

I had another Arabic lesson today. I meet with my tutor twice a week for an hour and a half each time. These free Arabic lessons are part of my package as a foreign hire here at AUC.
I've never had a particularly hard time with language before. I studied Spanish in school, and it's stuck with me fairly well. I lived in Spain for about a month when I was in high school. The Oklahoma City bombing happened while I was in Madrid, to give you a frame of reference. And when I was in college, I had a roommate whose family was Galician, but she spoke Castilian spanish - the same dialect I'd learned. My other roommate was culturally Portuguese - but genetically Korean, which led to some funny moments in Portuguese restaurants. Viv spoke Spanish too, so every once in awhile we'd watch TV in spanish together, or chat to keep ourselves going.
Over the past few years in Princeton, my Spanish practice was mostly restricted to speaking to illegal warehouse workers who ended up in my ambulance. Practical things, mostly, like "Where does it hurt?" and "No, I won't tell the police." I spent a memorable week in France a few years ago, dutifully attempting to speak French. Apparently I went the entire week without using any verbs - but things seemed to be moving along, and I was pleased with my ability to fumble along in a language after hearing it for a few days.
But these Arabic lessons ... phew.
Arabic has two versions of the letter "A", one of which is made waaaaaay back in the top of the throat. I've had a cold the last few days, and that sound has been torture.
It gets worse, though.
There's more than 1 "z" - but one of the "z"s becomes "th" which ends up "dh." The letter for "th" goes to "t", and one of the two "k" sounds isn't even pronounced. It turns into a glottal stop, which in my mouth comes out as a cross between a burp and a poor imitation of a sound a native Australian would make.
There are "heavy" and "light" consonants of "s," "d," "t."
My true area of disaster, though, is the realm of the "h." There are - I'm not joking here - 4 permutations of what we call "h" in English. As far as I can tell, they're primarily differentiated by how much they hurt my throat to pronounce. It seems that I can't tell much of anything, though, because I can't hear the difference when my tutor pronounces them, and even though I think I'm doing what she's doing, I'm clearly not.
"Oh my God, habibti," Negla says, shaking her head and removing her crooked glasses from her nose. "Oh my God, do you know what you just said?"
Inevitably I've made some hilarious mispronounciation, along the lines of "I am a snake" instead of "I learn." Or curse words instead of "to read." I struggle to make the sound she's making, but I can't hear any difference. Worse, I can't say the sounds differently.
I've learned most of the letters by now. The excitement! I'm learning to read and write! So now when Negla spells out the word I'm supposed to be saying, I can see all the letters. But I still can't make the right damned sounds - for the consonants, any way. Nobody actually writes out any vowels, and I guess this system works if you already know what the words should be.
And don't forget that spoken Arabic in Cairo is completely different from Arabic in other countries, and written Arabic is classical, so it's not even the way I would speak. If I could speak. Coherently.
So I make my way through Cairo, chatting amiably with taxi drivers and waiters, making polite small talk with shopkeepers. I'm so often mistaken for an Egyptian - apparently I have Egyptian "features," whatever that means - that the phrase I use the most is "Please excuse me, but I only speak a little Arabic." I suspect that I leave scattered behind me a breadcrumb trail of linguistic gaffes that are visible from space.
Ah, well, so I'm hilarious. I suppose it's not the first time - but I do feel more than a little silly.