Pictures of Egypt circa the 1800's

Some of the most beautiful old pictures of Egypt I have ever seen: http://www.life.com/gallery/55271/early-photos-egypt-in-the-1800s?iid=yaml#index/0

Cairo Politics and Egyptian Governance

View of Cairo from the top of Bab Zuweila in Islamic Cairo

This article is a great Al Jazeera op-ed piece about the political stagnation of Cairo's city governance.  It is a mirror for what is going on in the larger scheme of Egyptian politics.  Someday, when I'm a good blogger again, I will share my own thoughts on this, as well as my thoughts on Al Jazeera.

I've quoted the part of this article that I like below, but if you want to read the whole thing (which regrettably lapses into a rather out of the blue criticism of America's anti-democratic policies in the Middle East that I thought was sort of an unsubstantiated cheap shot), go to the link.

"Egypt's government: designed for dictatorship

Cairo is a city of 20 million without a mayor, without a municipality and without an effective city government that represents its inhabitants. At the final metro stop on the Giza line is an informal neighbourhood sandwiched between the metro tracks and a water canal. Mounib was once a village outside Giza on the road heading south towards Aswan.

Today, Mounib is part of the informal urban sprawl spawned by government negligence and lack of planning. In some respects, Mounib is a relatively successful informal area: The buildings are well built with a maximum of six levels allowing sun and air to penetrate most residences, and there is a tightly-knit community. Living here is not cheap; the average home costs its owners nearly 50,000 Egyptian pounds (about $8,370), yet residents lead a precarious life and their fate is uncertain. Inhabitants in informal areas live at the mercy of the construction mafia, who build illegally with the discreet approval of bribed local government officials.


Running through this dense urban area is the Zumor Canal, which once irrigated rich agricultural land. No longer used for irrigation, water has become stagnant, and with the government’s refusal to manage waste in areas such as Mounib, the canal has transformed into a trash dump and a source of disease and infestation. Further north, where the canal passes through middle-class neighbourhoods, it has been filled and transformed into a green spine. Here, like the majority of Cairo, residents police themselves. A total informal way of life pervades that includes schooling, healthcare, food supply and social services. People here are friendly and welcoming and they know what needs to be done to better their community, but there are no channels for them to officially take part in civil society and government. Although this area is part of the capital and is reached by metro, it is at the periphery of the regime’s concerns. In Mounib, nothing has improved since Hosni Mubarak passed his presidential powers to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF).


 The local government officials responsible for this area are the same as before the January 25 revolution that deposed Mubarak, despite a recent court ruling to dissolve local councils. Residents consider local government as window dressing rather than an effective mechanism to better their lives, and the government institution as a whole is viewed as better avoided. Those local government officials form the base of an administrative pyramid that leads to a presidentially appointed governor at the top. Administratively, Cairo is a divided city split into three governorates each with a governor and an army of bureaucracy below him. Governor posts are reserved to former army and police officers, typically at the age of retirement.


 'Designed for dictatorship' 


Egypt’s government is designed for a dictatorship: It is extremely centralised and tightly controlled by national policy, and local councils are void of power. Although Cairo’s three governorates have separate budgets and various departments, they largely depend on the country’s ministries, led by presidentially appointed ministers, to care for essential elements of the urban environment: housing, schooling, transport, parks, healthcare, etc. Governorate budgets largely go to paying salaries rather than public spending. There is no unified city government with elected local officials and a mandate to effectively manage the city. Instead, governors do the occasional ribbon-cutting, and make hollow announcements regarding randomly selected projects that suit their whimsy.


Cairo, with roughly 23 per cent of Egypt's population, is represented in the national parliament with only 10 per cent of the seats [Mohammed Elshahed] Local councils that should directly manage a neighbourhood such as Mounib are firmly in the hands of members and friends of the now disbanded National Democratic Party (NDP). Over the past 30 years, local politics were dominated by personal relationships with party officials. Council seats were purchased and influential families controlled entire districts. Local councils are supposed to represent citizens’ interests to the national government. Cairo, with roughly 23 per cent of Egypt’s population, is represented in the national parliament with only 10 per cent of the seats. This means that the residents of Cairo with some of the highest population density in the country are underrepresented in a parliament that is typically dominated by a single party.


Residents in Mounib, like the majority of Egyptians, have no effective means to a political voice, to participate in government or to demand from authority something as urgent as cleaning the cesspool that runs through their neighborhood. 


The ruling SCAF has been reluctant to make any fundamental changes to the system of governance. The court order to dissolve local councils has not been enforced. There have been no rules regarding former NDP members and their beneficiaries from dominating the political arena, and the fabric of the defunct system described above is fully intact. Governors have been appointed as was done before. The NDP’s controversial Cairo2050 plan, which calls for the dislocation of millions of inhabitants in the name of neoliberal development for the rich, has resurfaced after months of speculation over its fate. 


Since February, 50 political parties have been registered and numerous political figures have emerged. Dominating public discourse have been voices from the Islamist side of the spectrum, who have insisted on keeping the conversation on issues of identity. The everyday concerns of citizens and inhabitants of Cairo such as transport, housing and waste have been conspicuously absent. When I last visited Mounib, residents were not concerned with national identity, the dichotomy between liberals and Islamists, the threat of a military regime or American interests in the region. They were concerned with the polluted canal, the uncollected waste, the mosquitoes infesting the area and the lack of official response. There is a deliberate gap that has been created between the people and the powerful, and the current transitional government is maintaining that gap."


Interesting how that last line could really be about quite a few governments in the world.... 

The Dangers, or Lack Thereof, in Egypt...

This is a nice little piece about why it is safe to travel in Egypt right now. I wouldn't have put it any differently. If you or anyone you know is wringing their hands about traveling here in these tumultuous times, here is a good perspective check.

 "In Egypt, getting beyond 'otherness'"


 **** By Greg Sullivan


As I write this, I'm in Cairo. Two nights ago, a group of protesters tore down a newly installed wall outside the Israeli Embassy. Some of the gang somehow gained access to the embassy on the 13th floor, where they ransacked the offices. This was a serious breach of international law. More than 100 protesters were injured, and three people died. Tragic.


I've been fielding emails from friends and family who are concerned about my safety. I appreciate their concern, but the incident gives me a chance to think about something more: where, when and why we travel. First let me declare my bias. My business partner Joe and I launched Afar travel magazine in 2009, so obviously I favor travel. What's more, our company is organizing a travel experience in Cairo in late October.


When Mubarak resigned and the country celebrated in February, I immediately bought a ticket to Cairo and was here a few days later. The enthusiasm, hope and pride of the people were contagious. I knew tourism would suffer for the near future, and I wanted to do something to support the people as they undertook building the new Egypt. I've been back to Cairo three more times since February. What I've experienced has been fantastic.


I have been fortunate to meet many locals from a variety of fields. They are so excited about their future. As my new friend Ghada said to me, "Before the revolution, my son wanted to move away from Egypt when he was done with school. Now, he is proud and excited about Egypt and wants to stay."


Building a new Egypt isn't easy. Another friend, Gamila, told me, "In the old regime, we had to hide our differences. Now we are free to express them, and that is both exciting and a new challenge. It may take some time to accept our differences, but in the end, Egypt will be a much better place to live."


News coverage focuses a spotlight on incidents such as the Israeli Embassy attack, as it rightly should. What doesn't make the news is everyday life, what the locals are doing or what you are likely to experience if you visit a place.


According to the Egyptian government, 2.2 million people visited Egypt in the second quarter, and none were attacked. That doesn't make headlines.


I feel safe in Cairo. By talking with the locals and asking them where to go and what to avoid, by reading a variety of news accounts, including the local ones, and by watching other people and using common sense, I move through the city comfortably. There are many other places I travel where I feel the need to be more vigilant than I do here.


Bad things happen everywhere, and there are no guarantees. According to the New York Times, 67 people were shot in various incidents in New York over Labor Day weekend; 13 died. When I traveled to New York, nobody emailed me to make sure I was OK. But when things happen in a foreign land -- and let's be honest, particularly in the Middle East -- people are more likely to assume an isolated incident is indicative of much more.


To me, that is partly why travel is so important: to get a window into places we don't know, to understand the people and culture better, to appreciate our differences and to get beyond the feeling of "otherness" that separates us.


The economy in Egypt has been hurt seriously, particularly tourism, as the world waits for "stability" to return to the Middle East. 


Another friend, Mohamed, told me he has done little business since the revolution. "This is OK," he said. "This moment is likely not to come again. We must make the most of it, for all our good." 


There may be headlines that might make some people nervous. But just as it is a rare opportunity for the people of Egypt, it is rare for travelers. I consider it a privilege to visit at this historic moment and to support the Egyptian people as they plot a new course. 


 *Greg Sullivan is co-founder and editorial director of Afar Media, publishers of Afar magazine and host of Afar Experiences, a three-day event in Cairo. Contact him at sullivan@afar.com

The Psychogeography of Cairo

Blech.  I realize my blogging frequency has reached new levels of dilapidation (sorry for that sentence, I've been reading Faulkner).  I have fleeting blog post ideas come and go, but then I feel like I ought to be spending what little free time I have on doing Arabic.  A new job and a new Arabic tutor, along with a string of close friends' imminent departures from Egypt have made it very easy for me to justify the past two mostly blogless months.  Well this is post is not really going to fix that, because I'm just going to repost something I read somewhere else.

I don't totally understand what it is as it seems to be talking about a possibly made-up one or two-man society call the "Cairo Psychogeographical Society."  They/he just walk around the city of Cairo trying to experience the city's planning "as 'non-scientific researcher' who encounters the urban landscape through aimless drifting, experiencing the effects of geographical settings ignored by city maps, and often documenting these processes using film, photography, script writing, or tape. In this way, the wanderer becomes alert to the metaphors, visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, and changing moods of the street."  I like to think I am one of those too.

The whole post is written in a very Borges-style, anyway, there are some wonderful pictures of the city if you don't feel like wading through the strange prose around them.  Here's the link to the post.

Things I did in Siwa: A lazy blog post.

Drove my own donkey cart.

Drank Araq with the oasis' only distiller.  He was blind and had the best laugh you have ever heard.  Later found out he was blind because he used to mix his batches of booze with paint thinner.  I am not blind yet.

Got lost, barefoot in the desert at night.

Found my way back to camp in the desert after seriously considering whether I might survive the walk back to town.

Napped on fantasy island.

Snacked in the room where Alexander was told he would be Great.  

Burned my skin in the salt of the salt flats.

Drank fresh cow milk with my tea.

Got a blister from racing a 4X4 up and down the sand dunes between desert springs.

Sandboarded down the steep side.

Bellydanced.

Learned to play the drums.

Picked and ate dates right from the tree every single day.

Slept on a bed of sand under the stars.

Drank water that tasted like gasoline.

Learned how to make tea the Siwi way.

Witnessed a different side of homosexuality in Egypt.

Took way too many pictures of the desert.

Did not get sunburned.

View of the eastern lake and salt flat.

Entrance to the Oracle chamber where Alexander went.

Riding along the salt lake.

Some Siwis hanging out at Cleopatra's Bath

The Oracle temple at sunset.

Downtown

Cigarettes anybody?  Ruins?

Nora and Julia, my oldest Egypt friends.

Two of the other girls at the Siwa salt resort (that is a made-up thing)

Pouring tea the Siwi way.

Hemeida pondering his desert homeland

Julia and Nora on our donkey cart!

View from fantasy island over the western lake.

A story about Dahab...

One of my "historically plausible" stories written at the new job...

Dahab, The City of Gold

Disturbed by the sudden darkness, the traveler stirs from his nap. It is mid-day, and yet the sun is obscured by storm clouds, something he has rarely seen in Egypt, even growing up in Cairo. He glances over questioningly at the Dahab local who had agreed to take him out for a boat ride on the Red Sea. In response, the boat captain silently lifts a wrinkled hand from the folds of his gallabeya robe to point toward the shore. Following the captain's finger, the traveler can see storm clouds collecting over the golden-red mountains behind the town.

As the boat captain begins to paddle them back to town, the traveler thinks regretfully about ending the relaxing boat ride so soon, but he notices how the sea around them is already getting choppy. The boat rocks this way and that in the waves, and rain drops start falling with little splashes all around them.

Back on shore, the distant thunder echoing from the mountain range makes the light rain sprinkling the town seem cinematic. On shore, the boat driver tells the traveler to wait as he hurriedly ties his boat to the pier. The driver grabs him by the arm and pulls the traveler toward the town's main walkway, and they walk south toward the bridge stretching over an empty sunken concrete lot the traveler assumed was a parking lot in the middle of town.

He sees that the bridge is full of locals talking and laughing amongst themselves. They lean on the balcony facing the mountains waiting for something. Even the banks of the parking lot are filling with people. Some have set up chairs and sheesha pipes. Young boys carry trays with cups of tea between the men, looking to make an extra pound. The traveler laughs—some things are the same everywhere in this country, entrepreneurial ten-year-olds being one of them.

A handful of foreigners also hang about. The traveler can pick the tourists out from the diving instructors (that group of more permanent foreign residents) by the uncomfortable looks of confusion on their faces. They can hear the storm raging over the mountain range in the distance.

Minutes pass--maybe an hour--and the traveler does not notice the steady trickle of water that has started running down the concrete of the parking lot toward the sea. Only when the trickle becomes a stream and then a river does the traveler understand that everyone is now watching the water. The rain in the town has strengthened. The men's sheesha coals sizzle as the drops make their way into the covers. No one minds seems to mind being soaked.

All at once he realizes the rushing, roaring sound approaching from the distance. An avalanche of muddy, golden water has steadily covered the planes leading from the mountain and crossed over the road separating the city from the desert. The flood is almost the same color as the ground, so from afar it just looks like the earth is being smoothed over.  The water reaches the city and merges with the puddles in the concrete lot, and soon the concrete lot is filled with a sandy, churning golden lake.

The onlookers on the bridge begin shifting over to the side facing the sea. The traveler sees golden tendrils from the sandy pool reaching slowly out into the sea beyond. It is as if someone poured thousands of tons of gold flecks into the waters as the mountain sand enters the water.

Later the traveler will have no idea how long he stood mesmerized by the shimmering golden invasion of the sea, but some time later, he realizes he is wet and cold, so he heads back to his hotel to dry off and to get dinner. The rain does not cease until late in the night.

The morning after, he is awoken early by rays of sunlight pouring through the window. He dresses and eats quickly before calling the boat captain for another ride. Soon he is sitting on the boat as it cuts through the sandy sea of gold. 

The water reflects and magnifies the shining of the sun. The water is still, and the traveler has the feeling he is gliding across a vast golden mirror. Seeing the look on the traveler's face, the quiet boat captain says to him, “and now you know why we call this place Dahab.”

*               *               *               *               *

Without cheating and going back to my blog post about it, can you guess what the word "Dahab" in Arabic means?

Feeling a little restless, I went for a walk tonight that turned into a seven hour prowl all around my new neighborhood in Dokki and Mohandiseen, across the Nile to Zamalek and then eventually to Downtown for some late night Koshary (in what seems like blasphemy to me, almost all of the Koshary places are closed during Ramadan--except for my favorite one!). I spent a good chunk of that time in my old neighborhood on the island of Zamalek revisiting some of my old haunts and just sort of observing the Cairenes as they go all out for their Ramadan night-time affairs.

As I walked around Zamalek, I remembered how big Cairo had seemed when I first arrived there almost exactly a year ago. I also remembered how confusing the island is (still) to navigate, and how lost I kept getting right in my own neighborhood in my first two months here.  For some reason, as I walked the island, I felt far less comfortable in the northern areas where I had spent most of my time when I lived there than in the southern areas where I only ever passed through.

As I discovered new shops and restaurants and cafes that I had never known existed--even in that neighborhood I thought I had so thoroughly explored--I was reminded of just how big this city really is to me still. I have walked so much of this sprawling megalopolis, and yet I have only hit half of it at best.  There's lots more to explore still.

 Case in point is the location of my new work's office (just some part-time writing for a company that is creating a project about Egypt), down in an area called Maadi.  Like Zamalek, Maadi is where many foreigners and wealthy, affluent Egyptians live and work, but it is newer than Zamalek (and therefore also farther away). Whenever I get off the metro down in Maadi, I feel completely disoriented.  Even as my cabs take almost the exact same routes to my office, I can't yet really make sense of the endless series of identical-looking, leafy, developed traffic circles.  I'm looking forward to getting to explore the new hood, now that I have a regular excuse for being down there.

Also of note about Maadi is the number of dudes you'll see wearing shorts there. Maadi is a pretty trendy place, and so it is indicative of a phenomenon I've been noticing all around the city: dudes wearing shorts. This may sound totally uninteresting to you, or it may you may read this to be some kind of slackening of social taboos, but all I really care about is that I can wear shorts and not get weird stares like I did last summer.  Cairo in the summer is as every bit as hot as you would expect it to be (I mean, I live on the edge of the Sahara, so it stands to reason). Being able to wear shorts is important. Who knows why this change has come about, but I'm not the only one whose noticed it.

Sudanese reggae band

In this case the reasons behind the change are pretty unimportant to me, but some people do think it's a reflection of a freer society post-revolution. Then again, I get the feeling that a lot of people, be they Egyptian or foreign, are perhaps trying to ignore some of the more worrying trends in Egyptian opening society by overemphasizing the encouraging ones.  No ones want the revolution to have been in vain.*

*Well...some people might argue that the Egyptian army would like for it to have been in vain, perhaps...

I did have a notable conversation with two doormen in my wanderings of Zamalek that sort of touched on that notion of Egypt's opening society. (N.B. Doormen in Egypt live in the entryways of flats, and are responsible for a number of tasks involving general upkeep of the apartment and parking in front of it.  They pretty much just hang out in the bottom of their respective apartments most of their days.)  They were both from a town near Aswan, in the far south of Egypt (natives of this region are Nubian, a relative of a Northern Sudanese ethnic group, and they also speak a totally different language from Arabic that has roots going as far back as Ancient Egyptian civilization. The two men were sitting out on the sidewalk in their pearly white galabeyas  (better image) enjoying the perfect temperature of the night air when I nearly stumbled right into one of them. In that awesome Egyptian way that still baffles me slightly, he shoved a cup of tea in my hand, as if that's exactly what I was trying for in the first place, and after the second it took me to realize I had absolutely no other plans, I accepted the tea and sat down with the two.

The Arabic they spoke was different from the Egyptian dialect I knew (it sounded a lot like the Sudanese dialect my friend in Damascus once described to me as "Arabic being spoken with rocks in their mouth"), so my understanding was not exactly at its best, but we all made a good effort to get our points across, and we managed to have a fairly interesting conversation.

The older man, Omar, was really intent on my understanding that Egyptians pretty much love everybody. The words he was using to describe this are part of some oft-heard tropes coming from Egyptians which I think reflect a kind of head-in-the-sand mentality though. He talked about how he likes Jews, Christians, Egyptians, Americans, Israelis, and whoever else, because we are all humans and part of a larger extended family. An admirable sentiment, with which I couldn't agree more, but no matter how wonderful I find Egyptians, I don't think that is really the general feeling here (or anywhere else, for that matter).

"Raise your head high, you're Egyptian"

Wanting to press the issue a little, I asked about the violent sectarian clashes that had been going on a few months ago (and sort of forever) between Muslims and Copts in Cairo and Alexandria. Their answer was one of the most overused words in the Arabic political vocabulary: fitna.  The word has no direct English translation, but itt comes from the root having to do with temptation and is something like chaos or tribulations stirred up between people.  It is also the name used for the first Islamic civil war for leadership of the Muslim community after Mohammad's death.  As you'd expect, it's a charged term.  (You can also read the informative, if grammatically mistake-ridden wikipedia page for a more detailed explanation of the word.)  Don't be fooled though: if it sounds like a very specific and evocative answer, it's not.  Fitna has been blamed for problems in Muslim countries for centuries, because it implies no one is really at fault, and absolves the government of actually having to do anything to solve the underlying problems while vilifying the incidents in strong language.

So then I asked who they thought should win the presidential elections.  All I got was that they don't like Baradei, because he doesn't know what it's really like to be Egyptian since he lived abroad for so much of his life.  That's pretty much old news, so I asked what they thought about the army, and of course they said it was pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread, that the army and the people are one hand (a common revolutionary chant), and that the Egyptian army is integral to Egyptian society, because they didn't interfere with the revolution.  They pointed to the armies in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen, and now even in Britain have supported the regime with violence against the people.

(Of course, grouping Britain in a group of brutal Middle Eastern dictatorships is a stretch for a long list of reasons, but an article I read in Aljazeera today about how California mass transit police had the cell phone services of everyone in their stations blocked in order to--get this--inhibit protesters from organizing a demonstration against police brutality in one of the stations.  Now I don't think it's much of a stretch to make a comparison to how said brutal Middle Eastern dictatorships used the same tactic on larger scale in their attempts to disrupt protest movements.  Of course, those movements were actually aiming to topple their respective regimes, begging the question, why could California police act in kind toward a potential demonstration that had decidedly more peaceful motives?)

They weren't really giving me much to work with, so I let them change the topic (inevitably it turned to the usual "I want to go to America; how do I do that?"), and they offered me some dates and a date-milk juice thing that they insisted would make me strong and healthy.  Luckily, I like dates, and I also happened to be carrying a croissant I had bought from a nice bakery on the island, so I happily insisted they take that in return for their generosity and openness.

So what is the point of this blog post?  I don't know.  But I did find a private rooftop pool nearby-ish my place that only charges 40LE for the day, and that is probably going to be my new favorite Ramadan hangout spot, I think.

Cairo sunset from a downtown rooftop

A Friend and Two New Blogs from Syria

Giant Assad poster on the front of the Syrian Central Bank.  I may have posted
this picture already, but it's just so...so propagandistic.

My friend and former landlord from Syria was in Cairo last weekend, and he brought with him some chilling stories about what life has become in Damascus.  He had left Syria in a rush about a month and a half ago without warning anyone.  A friend had skyped with him and he had a big bandage on his head, so we knew something was wrong, and indeed the next day he booked it out of the country.  Syrian security forces now randomly scoop up citizens to extort and fear money or confessions by tactics of violence, though my friend's arrest may or may not have been random.

Pro-government marches of students (who likely had no
choice) were a common sight even while I was there.

He had been sending news reports and pictures to old friends at Al Jazeera and the BBC, carefully rotating internet cafes to avoid being caught, but given his activities, it was not entirely a surprise when one day he heard the sound of boots running outside the cafe.  Seconds later a host of soldiers barged into the cafe and went straight for him.  He force-shut down his computer to get rid of any evidence of his illicit transfers, but they noticed the suspicious activity, and seemed to have come for him anyway.  They bludgeoned him in the head with a rifle and dragged him off to a jail cell.

Knowing they probably didn't have any hard evidence against him, my friend played the part of a scared innocent until the guards floated the possibility that he could bribe his way out.  For about $3,000 (obviously a huge sum of money by Syrian standards), he was allowed to escape.  Aware that the conspicuously large bandage on his head would probably attract the suspicion of another band of security thugs, my friend liquidated what of his assets he could, arranged for his family (his parents and siblings - he has no wife or kids) to stay in Turkey, and then he fled to Lebanon the next day.

Flyers like these were all over Damascus.
This one says "A thousand congratulations
for the love of the people [i.e. Assad]"

Since then he has been living between Berlin and Geneva with friends trying to get a job helping refugees through the UN.  He came to Cairo for an interview to be a sort of go-between official between the UN and Somalian refugees.  Yeah, he actually wants to work in Somalia, but he has done a lot of work like that before, and that's all another story.  Even though he can't help his country anymore, his desire to help the underprivileged has not been dampened.

But when I met with him in Cairo, the recently healed wound on his forehead still just visible, there was a kind of sadness just barely noticeable whenever he would fall silent.  His usually goody, absurd sense of humor seemed ever so half-hearted and distracted, and you could tell he is worried.  It doesn't help that he is originally from the city of Hama, one of the most violent cities in Syria right now, and the city that was massacred during the regime of Hafez Assad, the current President's father.  In the end though, my friend was lucky to have the ability to get out of Syria.  Not all of his countrymen have the same connections that he does.

The Stalinist-esque motivation for citizens to  decorate their cars,
shops and everything else with pro-government propaganda
was in full swing by the time I left.

Then there are the foreigners who are trying to get back in to Syria.  They are a small group, but they exist, those few with connections to the balad a-sham who can't stand the iron curtain of secrecy that has been drawn around it as the situation continues to deteriorate.

In that vein, here are two blogs written by anonymous foreigners who initially left Syria but have since come back.  I don't secretly know who they are, but even if I did, I wouldn't tell you any more information than that.  It's obviously not safe for them to be blogging from Syria right now, so anonymity is key.  All I'll say is that from what I've read, they're both quite good, writing on a wide range of topics related to the situation in Syria in admirably concise posts.  I highly recommend checking them out for a more intimate picture of what life in Damascus is like right now.

A Cup of Cardamom (Cardamom is the spice that Arabs and Turks mix into so-called Turkish coffee found everywhere in the Middle East)

The Ajnabi ("Ajnabi" is the Arabic word for foreigner)

This kind of thing would really only happen in Damascus or Aleppo.

Fiwanees: Ramadan Lanterns

The year is 969 AD (358 AH). The ruler is an older man shuffling along with his cane clicking on the stones of his newly founded capital. His white robe rustles in the hot July breeze.

He walks the streets of his people without fear of attack or death. After all, his subjects revere him for his military might and tolerant rule. Perhaps he feels he is too old for that to matter anyway. He just wants—despite, maybe, the disapproval of his trusty advisors—to be out with the moon and the night in his city and to enjoy the solitude of being an old person surrounded by youths still indifferent to time’s passing. The children scramble about him, playing and singing like they wanted to in the first place,but they make sure to keep his path lit. Some, the older ones, know who he is, but some are just moved by that unknown generosity born of youth and innocence.

Maybe at first the parents were irked when the king insisted they let their children tramp about at night outside their supervision—and with the good festival lamps no less! They had been telling the children not to play outside at night all year, and then the new caliph had come in and told them he liked it when the children lit his way just because some irresponsible parents' child had done it for him once.

Then again, a king—and a divinely inspired one at that—is obviously not to be countermanded.

But nothing ever goes wrong with the children, and soon enough the parents find themselves smiling at the sight of the serene old monarch strolling about, looking up at the moon quietly, surrounded by these jubilant lights, bouncing, hopping, climbing, jumping and traipsing about him as he takes his walk. The city is young and still small, so the parents can follow the king’s path from the tops of their buildings, watching him and his youthful entourage like a cloud of fireflies making its way through the streets.

And without anyone knowing how or when, the lights the children carried became part of the holy month tradition in the City of the Caliph's Victory. Each year the parents start hanging their children’s lights on their doorways when the king starts making his pre-Ramadan nightly sojourns. They begin to associate the month with light and youthful expression, so that after the king dies, they keep up the habit.

Muslims traveling to the new capital city observe the festive lights of Ramadan in the City of the Caliph's Victory, and soon the tradition spreads. And though so much of it takes place in the dark, after the hot hours of fasting, Ramadan becomes a festival of lights. Long after the ruler's walks ended the lanterns of generous children come to light the way for all the faithful into the holy month.

*             *             *             *             *

A fanoos.

I recently had cause to buy a Ramadan lantern for a friend who is getting married.  Around the same time, I was offered a job writing articles related to Egyptian history and culture, and so with the lanterns on my mind, I chose to write about them for the project.  In my attempt to make a slightly more interesting article, I wrote a kind of historically plausible story which may or may not end up fitting into my work, but seeing as how it is the first day of Ramadan today, I thought I would post here what I wrote.

In the weeks before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, travelers will see distinctive lanterns, called fiwanees, adorning the streets, stores and homes in most every city in the Muslim world.  Ramadan is a month for increased meditations on faith, family and charity, and because the people fast during the day and then sort of feast and party all night, lights are an important part of the tradition.  The traditional fanoos lanterns usually consist of a highly stylized bronze or tin metal cage with colored glass surrounding a light. As the symbol of Ramadan, these lanterns play a big part of in the imagery of one of the Muslim world's most important traditions, but their origin lies further back in older Egyptian customs.

Lighting in the Mohammad Ali Mosque. These are not
fiwanees, I just like this picture.

Historically, they say that fiwanees (the plural of fanoos) are the modern, more elaborate versions of the torches Egyptians lit during pharaonic times to celebrate the birthdays of their ancient gods, and of the Egyptian Coptic Christians community’s Christmas lanterns after that. How the lanterns then were passed on to become symbols of Ramadan is a classic tale in the Muslim world today.

The story holds that Muslims began adopting the lanterns when a 10th century Fatimid caliph (khalif), Al-Muizz Lideenillah, developed a habit of nightly walks through his newly-established capitol city, named in honor of his victory over Egypt, al-Qahira, or "The Victorious,"—or Cairo. His walks always happened in the nights leading up to Ramadan because the month begins with the sighting of the first crescent moon of the ninth lunar month. Every night the caliph would descend from his palace and walk the streets, looking for the crescent moon following the new moon. Because the streets of the city were mostly new and unlit, legend has it that the children would walk with him, carrying the same kinds of celebration lanterns used by their people for millennia before them to light the king’s way.  I thought of that story and the above is what came out.  The parts that seem like facts, the dates, some of the city details, etc. those are all verified, and then I just filled in the rest with a little bit of poetic license.

These days you see the lamps everywhere in the Middle East before and during Ramadan, but nowhere more so than in Cairo. Today they’re more often than not gaudy abominations of plastic gold and green made in China, but you can still find the real ones to buy in the sprawling outdoor market of Khan el-Khalili, and most families have at least one of the nicer metal ones. Every year droves of the lanterns start appearing in the weeks before Ramadan, and everyone who knows the origin story reflects on the tale of children with the fiwanees, lighting the way into the holy month.

Time for a Change

(Pictures below!)

I've had about four different posts stewing in my drafts box for the past two weeks, one about Israel, one about feminism in Egypt, one about Middle Eastern food, and one about the recent political changes in the region.  But for whatever reason I just haven't been able to finish any of them up. Frankly, I've been feeling disconnected from Egypt recently.  I went to Tahrir last week, where there was one of the biggest demonstrations since Mubarak fell, but I left feeling sort of nihilistic and nonplussed.  I've been a little more plugged in this past week as Tahrir continues its transformation into 24-hour street protest festival complete with music, snacks, and souvenirs. Regardless, it's been sort of a slow transition back into Egypt since returning from my trip, and I've concluded that my "job" is a big reason behind my ennui.

To summarize my recent existence, I've been pseudo-supporting myself these past weeks in Egypt by writing how-to articles for the internet (putting my college degree to good use!).  But being forced to spend my days at home in front of my computer for most of the day, reading and writing about things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything going on here, just consumes too much of whatever parts of my brain are normally so stimulated by the language and the life around me.  So instead of really savoring this great time in my life, I often am finding myself sort of restless and discontented.

I don't get to go out much, and when I do, it is usually with the small network of English-speaking friends with whom I like to maintain my friendships. That or I am hurrying to take care of some errands quickly, so I can get back home to work.  If it weren't for the shakshouka (if I get around to finishing my food post ever, you'll know more about that), that I regularly order from the sandwich stop near my house, my life would not really be all that different from how it might be in the States.

I could go to cafes and working from there, just for the sake of getting out, but the only ones that have internet tend to attract the crowd I normally am hanging out with anyway, while the more balady (not perfectly translatable, but it means something like "local" and "cheap") ones won't have internet.  Plus, I'm living off of some decidedly low funds, and I can't just go out and get coffee everyday from the nicer cafes with internet, so those Starbucks-like prices don't fit into the budget.  As a result, I stay home, insulated from the world around me.  And so while I can do this for a while, because I knew this is what I was getting myself into with the whole open-ended stay-in-Egypt plan, I know it is not sustainable forever.

What's more, because my day is already dominated by sitting in front of my computer writing, the motivation to sit in front of my computer and write for the blog takes a definite hit.  So, there's no doubt, I have to get myself a better job than this.  Sure, that ever-curious part of me does enjoy learning trivia all day about tonic water, vinyl record technologies, orange-stealing penalties in Florida, and the whole list of other totally unrelated topics that my job has made me learn all about, but I have to take advantage of my time here.  Not "I have to" like "I should."  "I have to" like if I don't, I will lose my shit.

Plus, it would be really be nice to not have to live on such a strict budget.

So basically, I need to get myself a job that connects me to Egypt more, and this is my anxious stand-in post to make up for recent blogging absence.  This past week has been better as I'm finding ways to speak a lot more Arabic during the days, and I'm reading a really neat book of short stories written in a mix of classical and Egyptian Arabic both.  I also played an awesome game called Rahala which was like Trivial Pursuit but exclusively for the Middle East, and I won, even beating a native Egyptian (I actually am putting my college degree to use, hooray!).  I finally have a nice little schedule where I get up, study vocab during breakfast, write an article, eat lunch while watching Arabic news, write some more, and then try and read some of my Arabic book.  It's not school or working with a tutor, but it's ok for now.  Life works its self out.  Now I just need to get out more with a real, substantive job.

To that end, I've got some plans and a few buns in the fire (I know I messed that phrase up, but I've decided to leave it for its comic value) that I don't want to jinx by saying them out loud here, but there are some possibilities that I'm letting myself feel a little excited about.  I'll keep you posted, loyal reader(s).

Aaaaaand here are some more pictures from my time with my parents in Egypt.

Souq on the walk to Khan el-Khalili

Shoppers in front of a tower seen on the same walk.

Graffiti painting being done in the back streets of the Khan.

View of Al-Azhar Mosque from half-way up its minaret...right before my camera died....