It's been a few days, and so much has gone on. Last Saturday, those of us in the Arabic 2 class, as well as a few of our more adventurous compatriots from the Arabic 1 classes, took a tour of Islamic Cairo (PLEASE visit my photo site in a day or two to see a ton of pictures with my detailed explanations of their significance...some of the architecture we saw was really gorgeous and worth seeing). We were led around by an Egyptian-American woman who is an expert on Islamic Art and Architecture, and she works under Zahi Hawass himself. She was a great leader, and really kept us on our toes with questions. During the day, we visited three mosques and a sabil-kuttub. The sabil-kuttub was a style of building that involved a public well on the botton, with a Quaranic boys' school on the upstairs floors. The whole idea for this was kind of cool; these buildings sprung up from a quote of the Prophet Mohammed, which said something to the effect of "The two best things you can do are provide water for the thirsty and education for the poor". So in effect, they were really important buildings in the community and were created in order to help the less fortunate members of society.
The mosques we saw were all stunning in their own way. My favorite by far, though, had to be the first, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. I liked it for its lack of ostentation; you can see the difference between the very plain picture on the left and the elaborate mosque in the Citadel on the right. If people weren't even supposed to display pictures of animals or humans in mosques because they were too distracting, why make mosques that are so ornate as to inspire awe and divert the worshipper's attention to more
earthly matters? Our guide, Iman, replied to this question from me by saying that the second two mosques we visited were built for rulers, not commoners. The mosques would have been used not only for worship but as a means of impressing both the people of Egypt as well as foreign leaders. I, however, then have to doubt the true piety of such leaders. Palaces are for impressing foreign leaders, not the place where you are supposed to worship your god. So the Mosque of Ibn Tulun appealed to me the most because its austerity revealed a 
place more worthy of contemplation and true spirituality. Unrelated to its status as my favorite mosque, we were able to climb the minaret of Ibn Tulun; check out the amazing cityscape of Cairo behind me (the smile was plastered on my face, since I was not a fan of the heights as we climbed the outside staircase). Also, it was very powerful to see the multitud of minarets soaring into the sky. The view from the Citadel was also amazing, but the pictures were terrible by comparison.After Islamic Cairo, our entire NU group went to dinner at the home of Abduh and Hayyam, Prof. Sullivan's friends. Hayyam's cooking was kwayyisa owee, or really good. I finally had the chance to try koshary, a savory Egyptian staple composed of rice and noodles, topped with tomato sauce. Simple, yet delicious, as Brett says. After that kind of meal, we were pretty much done for the night.
Sunday, our Arabic 2 group had off of class unlike everyone else, so we went down to the American University at Cairo, practiced our Arabic with Navenka, Prof. Sullivan's counterpart here in Egypt, and visited the Yacoubian Building, a residential building which inspired a recent blockbuster novel by the same name (incidentally, this was our pre-Egypt reading assignment, and we may be able to meet the author during our stay here). Following this little jaunt, a few of us grabbed some DELICIOUS shwarma near the campus, and set off on a futile search for a computer cord for Brett. This was followed. for some of us, by a stop in a shisha den. This was an awesome, authentic place down near the Midan Tahrir in Cairo. I'm pretty sure that they must not get too many female customers, because Julia and I were the recipients of a good many stares. But it was just a great place to sit around and talk to people.
Monday was pretty much jam-packed; maybe not time-wise, but in terms of all the reflecting that I've been doing since then. In the morning, we fanned out through the Greater Cairo area to begin (and for the most part, complete 50% of the work for) our service projects. I chose to go to the Kattan Carpet Training School, which had been the place under suspicion of being a child labor site (after all the stink that people had raised about it before, there was no other place I could choose). Even now, after a few days of mulling things over, I'm not quite sure how to articulate all of my thoughts on the idea. More or less, this hand-woven carpet business has been in place since the later 1800's, and just within the past year they've begun a program with kids in a local area (a very poor local area). The place is called Stabl Antar, and the deal for these kids that are chosen is that 5 days a week, from 9-5, they are bussed to the "carpet training school", where they receive instruction and practice in this handicraft. On Thursdays, they have the choice of going to school, and Fridays they have off, as it's the holy day in Islam. The kids also receive meals- sometimes koshary or fuul, or occasionally meat.
Like I've said before, I would wish for any kid that they'd have the luxury of growing up without having to work, instead of pulling a full time job when they're 10. On the other hand, the kids legitimately seemed to be enjoying their work here. We had the opportunity to talk to two of the children there, siblings names Aiya and Hamaada (aren't they adorable?), and both of them actually seemed very eager to be done talking with us in order to get back to work (the cynic in me says that this is because they get paid to work, not to talk to us, but according to one of the women in charge at the factory, they get paid by the day and a slight decline in productivity for 15 minutes wouldn't affect their salary). As you can tell from that parenthetical aside, I definitely haven't resolved my own thoughts and feelings on the issues. I guess what sketched me out the worst was actually the woman that we spent a majority of the time talking to
, the granddaughter of the man who began this enterprise over a hundred years ago. She came across as very defensive although she wasn't being attacked, which made me feel that she had something to hide. Furthermore, she was making a distinction to us between the fact that they run a "government registered carpet training school" and a place of "child labor". The idea is that, because the kids are working on artistic products, and receiving career training at the same time, this doesn't fall under the auspices of child labor. Again, my cynical side wants to come out, because a big part of me says this: 1) Kids are working. 2) These children are getting paid. 3) They are working a full 40 hours a week. I would still call that child labor- regardless of the fact that this very well might be the best possible option for these kids. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that these kids very might well be on the street if it weren't for this training school. But let's call a spade a spade. Anyway, the rest of our project is to do a write-up on them, which will then be uploaded to the web in order to give this company more of an online presence.
Monday night we experienced our first actual "Dialogue"; we met with a group of Fulbright Scholars here in Cairo, and split into four groups of about 15 people to discuss whatever it was that came to light. Although I felt that our fifteen-person group was a bit too unwieldly, I really enjoyed the dialogue experience. One of the most interesting parts of my group dialogue was actually the thoughts that my fellow Americans have on the United States. Now, all of you reading this know how I feel about our President, and some parts of the American culture/attitude, but I still love our country for many things. One of these things happens to be capitalism (I don't like when the desire for profit leads to exploitation, but that's a whole other story...). So somehow, at this dialogue, we got into a discussion about American media; for instance, we were asked why it was so biased, etc. I responded to that question by saying that as a country, a lot of us realize that every outlet will put their own spin on things, but that's why those Americans who want to full story also look to other sources, like the BBC or Al-Jazeera, in order to get a more rounded version of the story. Then, others in my group responded and started going on about how media companies are controlled by rich corporations and rich people, and that explains both media bias as well as the fact that Britney Spears can be found in media sources as often as something actually worth reading. Let's wait and look at this for real, though, America. The reason such stupid topics are so widespread in the media is because, for reasons unfathomable to me, a large segment of the American population actually wants to read that drivel. The news sources that publish articles about useless celebrities are supplying the demand- study economics with D. Voigt someday. If we as a nation wised up and stopped caring about this crap, the media might respond to that and give us real, carefully investigated news instead. Again, I'm not always a fan of the media or rich corporations, but if you have a problem with it, DON'T FEED INTO IT.
Like I've said before, I would wish for any kid that they'd have the luxury of growing up without having to work, instead of pulling a full time job when they're 10. On the other hand, the kids legitimately seemed to be enjoying their work here. We had the opportunity to talk to two of the children there, siblings names Aiya and Hamaada (aren't they adorable?), and both of them actually seemed very eager to be done talking with us in order to get back to work (the cynic in me says that this is because they get paid to work, not to talk to us, but according to one of the women in charge at the factory, they get paid by the day and a slight decline in productivity for 15 minutes wouldn't affect their salary). As you can tell from that parenthetical aside, I definitely haven't resolved my own thoughts and feelings on the issues. I guess what sketched me out the worst was actually the woman that we spent a majority of the time talking to
, the granddaughter of the man who began this enterprise over a hundred years ago. She came across as very defensive although she wasn't being attacked, which made me feel that she had something to hide. Furthermore, she was making a distinction to us between the fact that they run a "government registered carpet training school" and a place of "child labor". The idea is that, because the kids are working on artistic products, and receiving career training at the same time, this doesn't fall under the auspices of child labor. Again, my cynical side wants to come out, because a big part of me says this: 1) Kids are working. 2) These children are getting paid. 3) They are working a full 40 hours a week. I would still call that child labor- regardless of the fact that this very well might be the best possible option for these kids. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that these kids very might well be on the street if it weren't for this training school. But let's call a spade a spade. Anyway, the rest of our project is to do a write-up on them, which will then be uploaded to the web in order to give this company more of an online presence.Monday night we experienced our first actual "Dialogue"; we met with a group of Fulbright Scholars here in Cairo, and split into four groups of about 15 people to discuss whatever it was that came to light. Although I felt that our fifteen-person group was a bit too unwieldly, I really enjoyed the dialogue experience. One of the most interesting parts of my group dialogue was actually the thoughts that my fellow Americans have on the United States. Now, all of you reading this know how I feel about our President, and some parts of the American culture/attitude, but I still love our country for many things. One of these things happens to be capitalism (I don't like when the desire for profit leads to exploitation, but that's a whole other story...). So somehow, at this dialogue, we got into a discussion about American media; for instance, we were asked why it was so biased, etc. I responded to that question by saying that as a country, a lot of us realize that every outlet will put their own spin on things, but that's why those Americans who want to full story also look to other sources, like the BBC or Al-Jazeera, in order to get a more rounded version of the story. Then, others in my group responded and started going on about how media companies are controlled by rich corporations and rich people, and that explains both media bias as well as the fact that Britney Spears can be found in media sources as often as something actually worth reading. Let's wait and look at this for real, though, America. The reason such stupid topics are so widespread in the media is because, for reasons unfathomable to me, a large segment of the American population actually wants to read that drivel. The news sources that publish articles about useless celebrities are supplying the demand- study economics with D. Voigt someday. If we as a nation wised up and stopped caring about this crap, the media might respond to that and give us real, carefully investigated news instead. Again, I'm not always a fan of the media or rich corporations, but if you have a problem with it, DON'T FEED INTO IT.
Since last Monday, we've had another week of class, seen the movie "Yacoubian Building", and I've been up to some other adventures, most interestingly our time at the U.S. Embassy and the Arab League (diplomacy centrals...?), so stay tuned for more updates!
