Week 10

We have finished up our tenth week here, and Harris noted a few weeks ago that he has changed from counting how long we have to stay to how long before we have to leave. We like it, in other words. It hasn’t gotten cleaner or safer or quieter, but we have changed. I suspect major reverse culture shock is in store next June, ISA.

I still remain a member of the Church of Eternal Maintenance, so this week meant a mani-pedi and massage at the N Bar—a truly guilty pleasure up the street, a lovely nail salon with lots of services that plays “Gossip Girl” dvds while you get preened, a show I never watched until being sucked in by the N Bar—and a visit to German Heidi, my hairdresser. In tribute to Gary of Northampton, my hairdresser at home, may I note that although Heidi is terrific, Gary is better and costs less (in a city where services are cheap)? There’s a reason I’ve known Gary longer than Harris…..

Islamic Museum exterior

This week is the run-up to the big Eid holiday, which everyone takes off and you pay bonuses to your bowep (apartment super) and housekeeper. The students at AUC are under the gun because it’s midterm time, and like all the other faculty, I am assigning their big midterm work before the Eid break so I can get it graded before they return. The campus has that harried, frantic, under-slept atmosphere common to every campus at midterm time.

This week’s outing was to the Islamic Museum, another AUC-sponsored trip. The museum is long on treasures and rather withholding of information for the non-Muslim. I had to take photos off the internet since it was forbidden inside, but the objects that drew our attention most were textiles (in particular, carpets), pottery, and furniture. Some were inlaid so complexly with gold and ivory that the craftsmanship was mind-boggling. The beauty of both the ancient Kufic script and the more elaborate cursive Arabic decorated everything, even some carpets.

Islamic Museum gallery

Saturday is also a big market day, with outdoor stands vending everything from fresh bread and fruits to meats.

Outdoor butcher in downtown

Fruit cart downtown

Other than that, we’ve mostly worked and nested. I’ve mentioned the glories of Luxor alabaster previously, and we indulged in some more retail therapy at the alabaster store. I think we may be full-up by now, so future visits will be devoted to buying gifts. We also succumbed to mattress fatigue, especially after a week of sleeping on a great mattress in Sharm. First, we asked AUC to replace our rock-hard mattress with something more forgiving. They readily agreed and brought…exactly the same brand and model. So, we got Emad to drive us to the showroom of MasterBed, the one and only maker of memory foam in Egypt; thankfully, Emad was there, because we really needed his Arabic skills. After a week’s wait, our mattress pad was delivered along with some nice pillows, and this princess no longer feels the pea. Not to mention how the prince is back to his Olympic-quality recreational sleeping.

Luxor alabaster lamps

A few more local observations:

When I went to the ministry of health back in August to get my mandatory HIV test (needed to obtain a work permit), I noticed lots of men with large bruises on their foreheads. Poor things, I thought, no wonder they are at the ministry of health. I’ve since learned that they sported bruising from praying, and in fact, we see men with such bruises, even callouses, all the time. It would be rude to photograph them, but it’s one of those things that remind us we aren’t in Kansas. Another thing I think about as I consider the many cultural differences is the practice, outlawed in 2008 but according to the U.N., still common, of female-specific surgeries performed on girls, Coptic and Muslim. According to the U.N., somewhere around 90% of Egyptian women have had such surgeries. Something to think about.

Stenciled street art near AUC Tahrir

We see a lot of often very artistic and exciting graffiti related to the revolution. Since we don’t read Arabic, the meaning is usually lost on us, but there are some talented future Banksy-style stencil artists out there whose work speaks loudly.

Old villa, Road 210

As I walk to the bus stop on teaching days, I pass a lot of shops and apartments, and also a few villas remaining from when Maadi was all villas. This rusticated stone creation is one of my favorites.

Our best and cheers. We depart for a week of diving next week, so I’ll wait until our return to post anything. 

Entering our third month

The Nile downtown

We have been here just over two months. Fall is clearly here and it’s lovely—the days are mild, the nights cool and breezy, and I can wear long sleeves in comfort. Not a drop of rain has fallen, but the days are shorter; it reminds us that though we live in a desert, it is pretty far north in latitude (about 28 degrees).

We had our first out-of-town houseguests, Nancy and Tom McCandlish, and now feel fully capable of hosting people. Their coming spurred me into cleaning up the guest room, formerly known as the junk room, and scuba gear is now stowed neatly instead of being strewn about. Nancy and Tom were very complimentary about our flat, which though it started as very beige, is now surprisingly pretty.

Djoser's Step Pyramid, Nancy, Tom, Harris, me

Learning from guide Ali, Dashur pyramids on the horizon

We took Nancy and Tom on a whirlwind tour of some parts of Cairo they had not already seen during their tour package up the Nile. Emad drove us and we packed ourselves into his Hyundai and hightailed it out to Saqqara to visit the first pyramid every built and some gorgeous noble tombs. The pyramid of Djoser (or Zoser) was an experiment. Instead of a mastaba (or trapezoidal structure whose walls slant inward), Djoser’s architect Imhotep had the idea of putting a series of mastabas on top of each other, each decreasing in size, each built of local white limestone. The result is a pyramid but with the appearance of steps, hence its nickname, “the Step Pyramid.” Considering this was done around 2600 BC with stone tools and no wheels, it’s even more amazing. 

Bas relief Saqqara tomb, Nile fishing; note the croc below!

The Old Kingdom tombs in the area were amazing as well. Our favorite was that of a princess, Idra. Its walls are covered with bas-reliefs, shallow three-dimensional carvings that were painted, and depict the gathering of everything the princess would need in the afterlife. Details like cattle swimming a river to be herded up, with fish beneath and a calf bleating and sticking out its tongue to its mother, amazed us. You can practically hear the honking geese, splashing fish, and lowing oxen. One thing that we continually mused over was how much effort went into making the afterlife of the rich so plush. Surely it took at least a lifetime just to create the tombs and monuments, and it’s hard for the modern mind to comprehend such a long view and shoring up such wealth.

There’s a new museum at Saqqara that contains wonderful pieces from the tombs and pyramid, from mummies to some of the over 40,000 stone vessels found underneath Djoser’s pyramid. In fact, there is so much at Saqqara that it is the largest ancient funerary area in the country, with more tombs than the Valley of the Kings.

Detail of Saqqara tomb, frightened calf and its mother

Nancy and Tom atop the Citadel

The Alabaster Mosque

After our visit to Saqqara and a leisurely lunch, Emad tore through the traffic to get us to the Citadel in Cairo to visit the Alabaster Mosque (aka, the Mosque of Muhammed Aly), built around 1848. Its style was intended to out-do the great mosques of the 17^th century in Turkey, particularly those designed by Sinan for Suleyman the Magnificent (like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul). The Cairo mosque is very grand, and indeed covered in soft reflective alabaster, but I prefer the originals in Turkey. But the view from the peak on which the mosque sits lays the city out beneath you.

Chilly for the first time!

Aboard the felucca

After relaxing at the flat from our touring, we gathered a feast housekeeper Kiki had made of kefta, tahini, veggies, potatos, cake, Egyptian bread, some wine and sodas, and went to the Corniche to step off into a felucca for a quiet picnic dinner. A young friend of Nancy and Tom’s, Radwa Khairy, joined on our sail up and down the Nile, accompanied by jazz on Harris’s portable speakers and iPod. It was so breezy and cool that it marked the first time I’ve been cold other than sitting in overly air conditioned rooms!

Then it was back to work for me, the airport for Nancy and Tom, and business as usual. Harris gave a talk at AUC on John Milton as a revolutionary, and demonstrated how his poetry was both revolutionary literature and bespoke Milton’s politics. It was masterful. BTW, we wish we could be in New York City on  Saturday, 3 December, 11:30-2:00, at the Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street (just east of 7th Ave) to celebrate Annie Fitzgerald’s life. If any reading this are going, please celebrate her for us.

PS: our favorite sighting while touring Cairo: an old pickup truck in downtown traffic with a horse standing up in the flatbed. Also, flocks of goats by the roadside in preparation for Eid. The holiday celebrates what the Hebrew and Christian Bible call the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham (or near-sacrifice) and the Qu’ran calls the sacrifice of his other son, Ismail. It’s a huge national holiday, and we are using the time to go scuba diving. Big surprise…..

Week 8, Sharm, and family

Morning from our room, Tiran on the horizon

Cairo has been quiet since the events of the 9^th, happily, and we left after classes on the 12^th to spend 6 days in Sharm el Sheikh, combining diving, seeing Harris’s sister Nancy and husband Tom, and celebrating (if that is the right word) my birthday. This trip was a treat, so we stayed in luxury at the Four Seasons there, notable not only for the cascading Moorish-style buildings sloping down to the beach, but for a superb dive operation, Sinai Blue. The flight to Sharm from Cairo was 45 minutes on Egyptair’s little jet, and our gear arrived no problem (always an anxiety-producer at the start of a dive trip).

Lush grounds of the hotel

Once checked in, we had the best sleep of two months—the mattress vendor for the hotel is obviously not the same as the vendor for AUC’s apartments. The hotel is gorgeous, built down a hill so steep that it has its own funicular if you don’t feel like hoofing it up and down the many stairs. Part of our trip coincided with a British school holiday with lots of families, and it was clear from the kids riding it what puts the “fun” in funicular. Its lush gardens are interspersed with fountains and pools, and the air was clean and sweet, a far cry from Cairo. In fact, we didn’t hear a single honking horn the entire time.

Tom, Harris, and Nancy (factor in jet lag for Tom and a bad hair day for Harris)

Me, Nancy, and Harris

A highlight was seeing Nancy and Tom McCandlish; they were there for a reunion of a group promoting cross-cultural exchanges between the US and the middle east. It was not only wonderful to see them, but Nancy outdid herself in bringing me swag—stuff I can’t find in Cairo, like a sticky mat for yoga, Crystal Lite lemonade, a camper’s filter for water, and cheap 16 gig flash drives. To sweeten the deal, Tom brought Harris scotch, so we are both in high cotton these days. We will spend Saturday with Tom and Nancy in Cairo, and they will stay over with us in Maadi that night, so that visit will continue.

600 HP rigid inflatable

Our main focus while there was diving, and we did 12 dives in 5 and a half days. The straits of Tiran (a nearby island) are about 15 minutes from the Sinai Blue/4 Seasons dock, so most of our dives were done there; one day, we took a 6AM boat to dive a British WW2 wreck, the Thistlegorm, and we also did two night dives on the house reef in front of the hotel. Bottom line: it’s gorgeous there. The reefs in the straits are in great condition, partly owing to the strong currents bathing the corals, and providing food for Napoleon wrasse, sharks, and pretty much everything else endemic to the northern Red Sea. Sinai Blue also owns the fastest boat we have ever been on, a vessel made for search and rescue in the North Sea, with two 300-hp four-stroke Mercury bad boys on the stern. She can go 55 knots, and we saw the speedometer a little over 45. Needless to say, speed like that comes with a VERY rough ride and a certain combination of terror and thrill.

Thistlegorm

Motorcycle in a hold of the Thistlegorm

The Thistlegorm was quite a moving dive. The ship carried supplies for the British army in North Africa when it left the UK June of 1941, a merchant ship built just the year before and drafted into service for the war. After a harrowing trip around the Cape of Good Hope (since the Med was so dangerous), up the coast of east Africa and through the Red Sea, it came to a dead halt along with its British Navy tender since the Suez was blocked by another wreck. German aircraft seeking a troop carrier happened upon it, and it was bombed and sunk quickly. Its lies in 90-100 feet of water, leaning on one side, and its holds are filled with supplies, from trucks to Wellington boots to motorcycles. The sense of loss was profound, especially as this isn’t one of those scenic wrecks covered in soft corals and colors. There were huge fish around, but our excellent dive guide (an old hand at diving the wrecks of the Scottish seas) made sure we really saw the ship inside and out.

Flashlight fish as you see them with torches off

It is worth mentioning that on our night dives, we found first a few and then hundreds of flashlight fish, a wonderful creature whose under-eye patches emit a blue-white light, and who “talk” to their colleagues with flashes. Just gorgeous.

Our final two dives were on the tops of two reefs near Tiran. Both of us noticed how spectacular the shallow reefs were, though most divers seem to be addicted to going deep, so we arranged for two tanks alone with our guide, touring around (or as our Sheffield-born guide Stuart said, “bimbling around”) in 15 feet and agog at the colors of corals and fish. It was total eye candy.

Red Sea reefscape

But there was one very sobering event I learned of while away: Annie Fitzgerald, a vibrant professor in Trinity’s American Studies graduate program, and wife to my wonderful boss Paul Lauter, had a terrible fall and died of fatal head injuries. As Paul so eloquently put it, the light of his life was extinguished. Thankfully, we spent a wonderful evening with them in August, and will always remember Annie as the joyous force of nature that she was.

So that was week eight. Back to work in the morning, good luck, and good night.

All seems fine

Just a short posting to say things are fine here after the events of yesterday when lives were lost in Tahrir Square. Ironically, I was at work all day yesterday and had no idea anything had happened until Andrew emailed us to see if we were okay. We are, like everyone here, sick about the violence and strife, but like everyone here, hopeful for a peaceful transition. However, we are hewing to the State department guidelines to avoid downtown, large groups, demonstrations, and so forth, and to expect travel delays. 

Cairo Investigated 2

On Saturday, 8 October, we went on a most unusual bus trip whose focus was on Cairo, the city and its growth. Associate Provost at AUC John Swanson, a former Michiganite who has lived here 30 years, conducted it and if he took breath, we didn’t notice! As we began in Maadi, Swanson pointed out how the area became a retreat for rich Europeans and Egyptians in the 19th-early 20th centuries, who built villas and planted what is now relatively lush vegetation. The name “Maadi” came from an ancient pre-dynastic agricultural civilization dating from about 3900-333 BC. Who knew?

This is what we breathe

One of Swanson’s themes was the changing course of the Nile, which has moved east over the past 2000 years, and thus, changes in the city and its settlements. What was most striking to us was what we saw standing atop the escarpement of Muqatta Hills, a wealthy settlement just outside Cairo. Its main allure is its elevation, not that high compared with some places—maybe 85 meters above Nile level—but with one huge advantage over the city. Its elevation means that the prevailing winds (more or less north to south), which sweep over the Nile valley and keep Cairo impressively smoggy, keep Muqatta Hills air clean. The “view” from the top was less a view of the city than of the air. All we could think was “that’s what we breathe everyday.” Some put Cairo just below Mexico City in air quality, some put it third—but it’s bad. Yet there are gorgeous days (like the end of September when we went to the Pyramids) when you can see for miles.

Informal city east of the Nile

Informal city from the air

Another feature of the evolving city is class and location. Other than the Nile valley, Egypt is a desert. As the population grows, as people come from the country hoping for education for their children and economic opportunity (and are usually disappointed), the population of Cairo grows daily. It’s somewhere between 20 and 25 million. Folks who come from the country live hand to mouth—there is a respected occupation of picking up garbage, going through it, and recycling, for example—and the city has seen a ring of what are called “informal cities,” what we might call slums, grow up like mushrooms. Informal cities are unplanned, tightly-packed areas of shoddy buildings jam-packed with people.

Those who can afford to leave the city do so, and increasingly, they are moving to the desert. New Cairo, where AUC is located, is but one of many desert communities that are increasingly stratified by income. Since there is no water, and it must be pumped 25+ kilometers from the Nile, the costs of living in the desert are high. As a result, those who decamp there can pay the tab, usually those who work in the private sector and make between $10,000 and $20,000 USD per year—not affluent by American standards, but very much so by Egyptian standards. The New York Times has reported (as have many other observers) on this growing trend of the middle and upper-middle class moving out of the city into what are essentially gated communities. The official figure for average income of Egyptians is around $6000 per year, though Swanson pointed out that many economists regard this as far too high, suggesting instead $2000-4000), if this gives perspective.

Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Square

Yet the core of the city remains a lively and vibrant area, crowded and a bit crazy, despite the movement of the private sector class to the desert. We ended our trip in Tahrir Square, with the Egyptian Museum and, of course, its more recent history. This is not to undermine the seriousness of Cairo’s urban challenges (air quality and crowding in particular), nor to suggest that the informal cities are not extreme and challenging places to live. Now we know why this is not Zenith, Ohio.

PS: The coolest cell phone towers are giant reinforced steel palm trees. I hear LA has them, too.

Which is the cell tower?

Cairo Investigated 1

arches into my office

AUC plaza

After a short trip with colleagues to Ain Soukhna (a resort area near where the Suez Canal meets the Red Sea)—a trip that balanced meetings about curricular matters with drinking and eating with our buddies—we returned to business as usual. My students at AUC are giving me a lot of pleasure, and to my surprise, my art history survey course is the most fun. Last time I taught it was ten years ago, back when slides were in use rather than PowerPoint, so I’m re-inventing the wheel with new PPT presentations. The students make it worth it. They pepper me with questions, many of which I have to answer “I don’t know,” and are filled with energy and life. As I walk to my office, through campus plazas and arches, it’s great knowing that a room full of eager, challenging, and smart kids await me.

My wonderful class

Harris and I are officially residents now. We picked up our passports from the Fulbright office with official residency visas inside good through early June. Getting the visas involved producing an official copy of our marriage license to prove that though our last names are different, we are legally married. Thankfully, my brother Bruce is super-efficient and obtained the license, sent it to Fulbright, and we are now legal. Ironically, Egyptian women don’t usually take their husbands’ names. Go figure.

Khan below the Citadel

First act as residents was to be tourists, and with our friend, guide, and driver Emad (pronounced “eye-med”), we went to the Street of the Tentmakers in the Khan al’Khalili, the fabled souk and shopping maze. It’s situated right below the Citadel, an early 20^th century fortress whose walls include limestone removed from the sheathing of the pyramids; its center is the Alabaster Mosque, an enormous attempt to out-do the great 16^th century mosques designed by Sinan for Suleyman the Great in Turkey. Ironically, the neighborhood at the base of the hill of the Citadel is El Khaleefa, a poor area with winding streets no wider than a small car, teeming with people, animals, smells, and life. Some of the “streets” are no more than three feet wide, filled with obstacles and mud, and festooned with stuff for sale (lots of it impressively colorful, tacky, and sexy clothing!).

Harris and Emad

Street of the Tentmakers

Did I mention tacky?

Some of our loot

Getting into decorating

Emad went to high school there, and as he drove his taxi, all I could think was his car was threading the streets like threading a needle. Once we arrived near the Street of the Tentmakers, and parked, Emad trotted us to his friend Hany’s studio. Hany has spent his life sewing splendid appliqués, a skill he learned from his father, who learned it from his grandfather. He showed us a piece in its first stage, its design drawn with tailor’s pencil; after months of work, the end results are breathtaking works of art that marry Pharonic motifs with traditional arabesque geometries and sometimes quotations from the Qu’ran. As we sipped mint tea and Turkish coffee, Hany brought out piece after piece. We were so dazzled that we spent far more than we’d planned, and our flat is bedecked with gorgeous fabrics. Two are quotations from the Qu’ran involking God’s name with a line asking for protection. Not only are they beautiful (I think of Kufic script as jewelry for the language) but the motif of protection in our home seems wise. The only condition was that those two pieces never touch the floor. 

Hany at work

Living in a largely Muslim culture always makes us think. I had the temerity to give a lecture to my survey class of the arts of Islam, which I had written originally after 9/11 for my students at UConn as an attempt to counteract ignorance about Islam. My students added a few observations to my points in the lecture, but it was afterwards that was special. One student put it well: “Muslims’ actions don’t reflect Islamic teachings these days.” I’m learning from them, probably more than they learn from me. In the future, I hope to talk with the women in the class about wearing the veil—why they choose to do so, what it feels like, and how they see the veil and feminism—since I know most of these young women are serious feminists.

On Saturday, we are taking a tour of Cairo guided by a provost from AUC, John Swanson, whose passion is the history of the city. I am going to post this before his tour since I strongly suspect that the tour will yield its own posting! Plus, in 8 days, we see Harris’s sister Nancy and husband Tom in Sharm el’Sheikh, and Nancy is bringing me swag from the states. Cheers to all.

PS: learned a new text/email abbreviation: IBM, for insha’allah bukra malesh (God willing, tomorrow, no penalties, my bad—“malesh” is pretty flexible in meaning)

Future University; couldn't make this up!

PPS: there is a postmodern monstrosity near AUC called “Future University.” You gotta see it.