Dubai

Originally, the game plan was that both the American and Arab students would spend the last day hanging out and exploring Dubai. However, on what was to be our last day in Abu Dhabi, the damn Brits issued a warning to their citizens living in the UAE, and specifically in Dubai, that they thought the risk of a terror attack was high. Of course, everyone started getting freaked out about that. So obviously, the trip got cancelled for the entire group. I definitely understand why people were concerned, but it was really frustrating, especially as nothing happened anyway.

Thing was, though, we Americans already had plane tickets to return to Cairo- from Dubai. So we had to go there anyway, we just left later at night. The drive only took about an hour or maybe an hour and a half, and it felt quick, because we were almost always surrounded by buildings in various phases of construction. The UAE, and Dubai especially, contain a ridiculous percentage of the world's largest cranes (I believe it was 70% of them are in Dubai alone). Because we'd left with plenty of time before our flight, we were able to make two brief stops.

The first was at the Mall of the Emirates, famous for the indoor ski slope, pictured here. The mall was truly incredible, despite the fact that our alloted half-hour there didn't give us a chance to cover more than a fraction of it. Katharine, Lily, and I had a great time looking around at all the ridiculous stores and taking pictures of things that we'll never be able to afford.

The entire time that we've spent in the UAE has given me time to reflect on wealth and religiousity and their juxtaposition in Middle Eastern society. Look at this picture of a woman, completely covered, walking by Rodeo Drive. In my mind, it's always seemed like it would be hard to be both ostentatiously wealthy while being religious. How can you in good conscience, waste hundreds of dollars on a Gucci or Fendi accessory while knowing that others are starving? Aren't you supposed to help them? I still haven't resolved any of this in my head, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around what seems to me like a huge paradox.

Our other stop was to see the Burg Al-Arab, literally "The Arab Tower", which is the huge 7-star sailboat-shaped hotel in Dubai (left). It really was quite a magnificent view, which it should be, as it costs around $10,000/night. I don't think I'll ever get any closer to it than I did the other night. The building just follows the tradition of everything in Dubai- crazy. Everything is state of the art, and bigger and better than anything you've ever seen before. It also has what either is or will be the tallest building in the world- it tapers off to look like a pencil at the very top. This picture (right) shows the building, but it was much more overwhelming to actually see it streching into the night sky and almost seem never-ending.

During the time spent from 11 PM to 3 AM in the Dubai airport gave me time to reflect on the differences between UAE and Egypt. And although I'm so glad I went to Abu Dhabi and Dubai and had such an important experience, Cairo is the city to which I would return if I had the choice. The buildings are older and in some cases falling into disrepair. But there is a charm about their fading glory and splendor. In general, the sense of life is so vibrant in Cairo; there is passion and fervour. It's not at all a cold or sterile city, it teems with people. And this sense of humanity is what may someday draw me back again.

One last note- the entire time I was in UAE, I didn't have to spend a dime (or dirham, as their currency is called) until the airport, where I chose to spend my money at McDonald's (I don't think the two cheeseburger meal has ever tasted so good in my life). Who was eating at the exact same place? The Iraqi soccer team...I cannot get over the irony of this.

Abu Dhabi 2

Monday morning began with all groups working at a frantic pace to complete their presentations and papers for the afternoon deadline. As the Americans in my group had met the night before to discuss our presentation and really give it shape, a lot of the remaining work fell to our Arab counterparts so that they could fill in their thoughts and opinions on the slides. So while I was waiting around, I ended up giving an interview to a newspaperwoman… IN ARABIC. Granted, my grammar wasn’t perfect. I had to mentally reword a lot of the statements I wanted to say in order to have the vocabulary to get my message across. But when it came down to it, I was able to do this in Arabic without needing a translator. There’s no way I could have done this 6 weeks ago, and it was a great milestone to show me how far I’ve come in my study of the language. Now, to figure out when I can get a copy of the paper…(Katharine has just walked in and handed me a paper with a picture of me in it…I’ll read it later to see if I’m actually quoted, since it’s Arabic and would take forever).

Working with the Arab students has been an interesting experience in terms of efforts made. I have to say, and I don’t know if it was because we felt the pressure of being the first Westerners at such a conference, but the American side of my group pulled together and worked hard to get everything done well by the deadline. I don’t feel that we saw the same level of commitment from our counterparts. Maybe it’s just because they are used to these conferences and the way they work, or perhaps they anticipated delays in the timetable (my group was originally supposed to present Monday around 1:30 PM, and our actual time was about 5 PM Tuesday). Also, within our group, we all had to relinquish a bit of the control we might have liked and make concessions back and forth; one side might have liked a different background for the presentation, for instance, but on issues like that it’s important to have give and take and understand that the other side might have a completely different opinion on what flows best. You have this in any group work, obviously, but I think especially in this situation where everyone really wanted to get along and have harmony that compromise was an important factor to recognize.

We discussed so many different things in the dialogue that I can’t even begin to reiterate them- we bounced around from overly sexual images like the Paris Hilton commercial for BK to the portrayal of female leaders in both worlds. I just wanted to share a few of the most salient points.

The first was the focus in the Arab world (and this doesn’t mean everywhere, but in general- the Arab world is comprised of many diverse nations and obviously no statement will be applicable in every one of those cases) on responsible journalism; there is much less of a focus there on yellow journalism and dirt-digging. I’ve written about this before, about how tabloids and such are also a product of the wants of American consumers. But this is a different issue- I’m talking how Fox and MSNBC and the rest of the syndicates focus more on Hillary breaking down and crying or taking a tequila shot than on what she actually thinks. This is not as much of a phenomenon in the Arab world, and I wish we would head in that direction. I feel that as American citizens it would improve our world view to have less junk media (remember how Anna Nicole Smith was on the news for three weeks straight? That’s exactly the kind of crap news that makes the rest of the world see American citizens as insular unconcerned self-centered idiots- why weren’t we talking about Iran’s nuclear program or how to move forward in Iraq more than a dead model? No disrespect to the deceased, but if we don’t have bigger concerns than her...no wonder we’re where we are today).

This is a great segue into my next point- the fact that in the U.S., we don’t readily have access to international news media. Media all around the world is biased, it just happens. But we can’t just accept the word of American news stations if we actually want to have a comprehensive world view. This problem is a chicken and the egg problem- networks aren’t making international channels easily accessible (affordable might be a better word; I don’t want to pay a huge chunk of money for a better cable package just for BBC)…but that’s probably because American consumers don’t demand more channels. Anyway, we need to start looking outside of our country too for information.

Into the last point- the Arab world receives a lot more news and information from us than we do for them. They know so much about our country, our culture, our politics. How many of you reading this know the capital of Tunisia off the top of your head? It’s ok- I don’t either…but shouldn’t we be more aware? Coming here, it’s obvious that the Arab students don’t expect us to know jack about their countries and cultures. Or, at least, they don’t expect us to know much. It also seems that they assume we come with negative stereotypes that need to be broken- and this is the negative stereotype they have about us. I would actually say that the Arab students, because of this came to the conference with more preconceived notions than we did, because those of us here right now tried to come with an open mind. We also realized that we don’t know much, so we tried not to form preconceptions of veiled women or men in headdresses. Hopefully we helped to change their opinions of the American stereotype in that regard (also, not all the stereotypes they have of us are bad- many of the Arab girls told me that they love the image of the independent American girl and themselves try to live like that as well).

I can’t reiterate this enough- get rid of whatever notions you have of people in the Arab world, except for recognizing that they are people too. Every country here has a different history and a different culture- don’t think they are all the same. But at the same time, we are all humans, and that’s the most important thing.

After a ridiculously long day, we went down the street to an old palace which has been converted into a hotel and museum. We went to see a Picasso exhbit, which was really cool despite my relative lack of interest. Considering that I sometimes bash my own country’s culture, I’d like to point out something positive. You know how there’s that stereotype of the rude American? Not that some Americans aren’t rude, but I’m really happy to say that yesterday, the groups of people murmuring or outright conversing while our museum guide was speaking were in the main not Americans. I was actually surprised at how rude I considered the Arab students to be during the exam. Perhaps the concept of rudeness varies from culture to culture; in fact, I know it does. But I was glad to see that as Americans we represented ourselves well in that matter.

Tuesday morning, we were granted a few hours’ reprieve from the conference, and all 60 or so students went on a tour of several important places in Abu Dhabi. The first was the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. It was the biggest mosque we’ve seen and far away the most elaborate. In fact, the ablutions centers were downstairs and those alone could supposedly hold 500 people, whereas the mosque itself has the capacity to hold 40,000 worshippers. Insane. Our experience there got me thinking a lot about Islam and the underpinnings of the religion (or some interpretations of the religion) once surface values are questioned. As girls, we were not allowed to enter the grounds without a headscarf and our arms and legs completely covered. OK, this isn’t terribly unusual and I don’t generally have much of a problem with it, although it was a bit unfair because some of the guys were wearing T-shirts with no issue. Then, to enter the inner sanctum of the mosque, us girls also had to put on gallibiyas, because even our loose-fitting clothes revealed too much about the shapes of our bodies. Even this I might have stomached; at that point I said to Mary that perhaps the underlying assumption in Islam is that men are weaker than women and need the women to be completely covered in order to worship without distraction. Mary said to me that she took a different view, that one of the underlying pretexts perhaps was that women are just so inherently sinful that they must be covered to be in a holy place, in order to hide some of this. And once I found out that women had a separate prayer room anyway and still had to wear gallibiyas there, I kind of agreed with her. Because if even while it’s just you and Allah (no men present) and you as a woman must still cover yourself completely, it’s not just an issue of your flesh being distracting to other humans. It’s that you are a sin and must be covered to be decent in the presence of God. So I’m still struggling with how I feel about this religion, because as we’d talked about with Mostafa, interpretation also plays a big role in religion, and not every mosque is like this one.

Next we visited the Abu Dhabi University, which is rather small right now but I’m sure will be a booming center of education in the Gulf within the next twenty years. We were given a presentation at the U, but exhaustion and the heat affected many students in the group, both Arabs and Americans alike, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t nod off sometime in the middle of it. Our final stop of the morning was the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies. This place basically monitors the news all around the world and makes recommendations to the UAE government on policy issues.

After a two hour rest, the final two groups presented their conference material. Saving the best for last, our group closed the conference. I was really happy with the way our presentation went, although it was difficult to cover an entire day’s debate in a 20 minute debriefing. We sparked some interesting comments and discussions afterwards, too, which was important. Closing remarks were made by both students and professors. The general tone from everyone was that this conference brought everyone together and helped forge new important ties between Arab and Western culture. I have to echo the sentiments expressed by everyone; this was such an amazing experience for me to have the chance to reflect on my own culture, both the positive and negative aspects, and especially to be exposed to the ideas of those from such a drastically different area of the world. Although studying abroad in the Dominican Republic in general was important in directing me down the right path, this conference was one of the two single-most important and impactful experiences I’ve ever had.

Our final group activity in Abu Dhabi took place the next morning, and was a visit to the General Women’s Union, which is a conglomerate of different women’s workshops that create products like palm leaf woven rugs, embroidered shirts, and other such things. This union was one of the brain children of the same woman who sponsored our conference, Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak. We received such hospitality there, as in all aspects of our stay here in Abu Dhabi. We also were able to try on traditional United Arab Emirates dress. Notice the gold mask-type thing on my face. Many traditional women there still wear these, and we received two different explanations for the significance. One person told us that these were simply a form of expressing modesty, by covering the face. But the other interpretation is that, when you look at the shape of the covering, it resembles a unibrow and mustache. So this person told us that it’s actually a way for females to demonstrate strength, by taking on these masculine features.

The final hours of my time in Abu Dhabi were spent enjoying the most comfortable bed I’ve ever known, as well as jumping on said bed and packing up. Saying goodbye to the Arab students was hard; although we’d only know them for a short time we were really able to connect on deep levels. Nassima from Algeria cried when we said goodbye! Once again, I have to say how great these people all were, how welcoming and accepting, and I know that they felt the same about us as well. I don’t think this conference could have been better, unless it was to have spent more time in Dubai like we were supposed to….see my next blog.

Abu Dhabi: The Beginnings

Abu Dhabi has nothing but fascinating and mindblowing since our arrival yesterday afternoon. At the airport, we were immediately ushered into a wood-paneled VIP lounge filled with luxurious couches, golden ornaments, and enormous mirrors. Instead of going through customs or immigration, we sipped chilled fruit juice and waited in the lounge while our luggage was collected and our passports stamped. Then we were promptly escorted to two waiting vans and driven to the Intercontinetal Hotel. At first, I thought they had mistakenly taken us to a palace (incidentally, this is an old palace right down the street from our hotel). Considering the chandelier-illuminated elegance of the lobby, I think my mistake can be easily forgiven.

A bit of background for everyone at home: The reason we’re here is because the Sheikha (Princess essentially) of Abu Dhabi (one of the seven emirates in the country called the United Arab Emirates (UAE)) is currently the President of the Arab Women’s Organization (AWO), which is under the umbrella of the Arab League. The AWO is hosting this conference, which is to be the First Annual Arab-Western Youth Dialogue on Women’s Issues. This conference has occurred in the past, but only with Arab students. We are the first westerners EVER to take part in this. So, I’m kind of a big deal (yes, an Anchorman reference). But seriously, there have been a lot of people from the press here, and apparently a few articles are being written up about us in newspapers here.

So…as we were waiting for our room assignments, we each received a letter from someone in the Arab Women’s Organization. In effect, the letter told us that while we are staying here, all the meals are on the AWO’s tab, as well as our laundry. And our rooms…wow…check it out. Just ridiculous. Not that I’m hung up on fancy things, but in comparison to Siwa especially and even our lovely digs at Longchamps in Cairo (hell, compared to any hotel in which I’ve previously stayed), this is amazing…check out the amazed “Abu Dhabi” faces of Katharine and Pat.

After a few hours of resting, we enjoyed an icebreaker dinner with our 30+ Arab counterparts. As opposed to the dialogues in Egypt, which began rather stiffly, we dove right into conversation and enjoyed a two-hour dinner full of non-stop conversation. It set a really great tone for the formal dialogues to come the next few days, because we were all able to become very comfortable with each other very quickly.

Sunday morning began with the outlining of some rules, and then we settled into 7 groups, each dealing with different spheres of interest, from health to education to media, which was my group. Once in our groups, the intent was to highlight subcategories that affected women. So, in the media group, we decided to talk about these subtopics, among others: stereotyping of women in media sources, presentation of female leaders in the media, and the creation and perpetuation of feminine stereotypes. In our group, there are four Americans (Cynthia, Molly, Sonja, and myself) as well as four Arab students ( Nassima from Algeria, Amina from Sudan, Reabar from Syria, and Azza from UAE). We were charged with discussing all of our subtopics, and putting together both a presentation and paper reporting the findings from both the Arab and American sides. Now, our of each different group (health, education, media, etc), an American and an Arab moderator were chosen. Guess who’s the American moderator for our group? Yup. This means a little bit more responsibility: Azza (the Arab moderator for the group) and I will be responsible for the presentation and the paper. While a lot of pressure, because I want it to be spectacular, this is also a great chance for me: the papers which we write are going to be published in a booklet by the AWO. It’s kind of a big step up from being published in the State House newsletter to the docents. So I’m pretty stoked.
We spent the entire day from 9-6 discussing our topics and findings, which I’ll write more on later. The group dynamics were really great; I felt like we had a good balance between the two sides and were able to communicate with a minimum of misunderstandings or disagreements.

After all the hard work that we put in, several excursions were organized for us. On the advice of one of the Arab girls, I chose to make the trip to the Marina Mall. I have never seen such a place; King of Prussia just doesn’t compare. It definitely doesn’t have an indoor ski slope, and this place did (although it is currently closed). Unfortunately, it also meant that I couldn’t afford most of the products, but we had a good time walking around, especially since Nassima came with the group I was in, and we were able to continue dialoguing as we shopped.

Back at the hotel, we enjoyed the buffet…oh my god. The food here…unbelievable. Honestly, I lost four pounds during my stay in Egypt, and that was without watching what I ate or getting much regular exercise…I’m pretty sure that I could easily gain it all back in the next few days at this hotel. Also, today I felt like I was just eating every hour- but that was actually because the conversation and interactions were so interesting that time was passing much faster than I realized.

The most important thing that I want everyone to take from my blog, though, isn’t how luxurious Abu Dhabi is. Please understand that all the Arabs that I’ve met here…well, they are just like me. Maybe they come from different cultures and different religions. A lot of the girls wear the headscarf to show this, whereas I don’t even believe in a god. But all the people I’ve talked to want the same things- more understanding across cultural boundaries, more respect for each others’ common humanity, more ties with one another, improved communication around the world. I think too often, especially since 9/11, that people around the world focus too much on their own country or culture. That doesn’t matter. I have more in common- much more- with the other students here than I do with George Bush. I want to tell one story about this, which will hopefully help to demonstrate this.

One stereotype that many Americans have about women in the Arab world is that the majority of them are sheltered, in every connotation of the world, and that someone who would be veiled would be more reserved than an American girl. Not true. Two of the girls today, who both wear conservative clothes and are mutahaggiba (wearing the headscarf) took a walk to the mall. On their walk, they were climbing up on the grass to be near trees, jumping electrical boxes, and cavorting around the streets of Abu Dhabi doing things that I or any of my American friends would do normally too- just having fun, being young, and enjoying life. Just because they might believe in another religion doesn’t stop them from living life to the fullest. I know this story might not even sound like a big deal- but that’s kind of my point, that we are so much more alike than people realize. People here in the Middle East think and worry about the same things as those in America: raising their children, providing for their families, owning a home, preparing for the future, the safety of their families and their country, etc. Once we start seeing each other as people and not as one of “the others”, we’ll see a good deal of improvement in the world.

Marsa Matruh and Siwa

Monday morning we embarked from Ciaro to Marsa Matruh, a small town 6 hours away on the Mediterranean. Three hours of beautiful napping later, I awoke to the nauseatingly strong aroma of gasoline. Apparently, the gas filter was broken. Thankfully, this occurred pretty much as we were passing through El-Alamein, so while the bus was fixed we stopped to check out the World War II Museum there. On the way out of El-Alamein, we also had the opportunity to visit the cemetary of soldiers from the allied nations. This was a very emotional experience for a lot of the group, as it was history that we’ve all studied and were able to understand on a deeper level. The many graves spread out among the sand, with some cacti and a few purple flowering trees between them, made a strong impression on me. I thought about how different the soil in this, their final resting place, must have been from the lands from which the soldiers originally came. It was shocking to realized how young the soldiers were; many of them were only 22 or 24. I’m that age, and I know I’m not ready to go yet. Although, as one epitaph read, “Not in vain”. My thoughts then immediately went to the Americans today dying on another foreign sandy soil. Would they and their families say the same thing?

Marsa Matruh was extremely relaxing. As I said, it was a small town, and although I was curious about it, I spent pretty much all of my time there lying on the beach and relaxing for a change. It’s soon time to return to my hectic American lifestyle, so it felt good to take some time out for myself.
The next morning, we headed south for three hours toward the Siwa Oasis. Well…it would have been three hours if the bus didn’t break down in the middle of the desert. We spent two hours stuck somewhere between Marsa and Siwa, mainly looking and mirages and trying to stay cool. I’d never known before that you can see mirages without being dehydrated and hallucinating. As I learned, mirages have more to do with heat waves and their reflection than too much time spent in the desert. Just for fun, though, Mary and I decided to walk towards a mirage just to make sure that it wasn’t water. Since it kept disappearing and reappearing without ever looking much closer, we’re pretty sure it wasn’t water. This, at least, kept us occupied for some of the time, and believe it or not, it was cooler standing under the hot sun in the desert than being on the bus, mostly because inside the bus the air carried a great deal more humidity.

So we finally arrived in Siwa and promptly dove into our pool, which was in reality a natural spring. The water was wonderfully cool and not salty, a refreshing change compared to the high salinity of the Mediterranean. After a shower and dinner, we took a brief walk around the town.

Siwa is an area of Egypt which bears little resemblance to Cairo. It is much more conservative, and Siwans have more in common with the desert Bedouins than residents of the capital city. The language and food are also different in this area of Egypt. Being there, we saw very few women at all, and the few we did see were completely covered. Furthermore, we noticed that their style of covering themselves was different from that which we’d seen in Cairo, as you’ll note in the picture (speaking of the pictures, credits for the Siwa shots to Pat…his camera was broken so I lent him mine, affording me the chance to really look around with my eyes and not be stuck behind a lens the entire time). Although I really enjoyed our time in Siwa, I felt that it would have been difficult to stay there much longer, since as an American woman who doesn’t speak the local language, fitting it was not an easy matter.

The next morning, we woke up and visited the Mountain of Death (to hell with Mount Washington). We were able to see several tombs that dated back to the pharaonic times and were well-preserved. Following that, a few members of the group took a dip in Cleopatra’s (algae-covered) Well. Then we visited the ruins of two temples, which was interesting but pale in comparison to all we’d seen in Aswan and Luxor.

After an afternoon spent relaxing, we headed out on what was definitely one of the collest experiences I’ve ever had. We went on a 5-hour desert trek, beginning with some crazy jeep rides over enormous sand dunes; these pictures just don’t do justice (as usual). The experience was a bit like a rollercoaster…minus the safety features.
After stopping at a few picturesque areas, we arrived at an oasis in the middle of nowhere. We were legit miles away from the nearest town. And in the middle of nothing but sand, green stalks were rising up from a blissful blue-green pool. Although the water was calm (as it was an oasis), while swimming it was possible to feel the currents, indicating the water source of the oasis.

From there, we went briefly to a hot spring, aka nature’s hot tub, and soaked our feet while inhaling the pungent aroma of sulfur. Some more dune running brought us to our final stop of the day: a huge dune for sandboarding (Sara, you would have LOVED this!). It didn’t go so well for me, as the picture demonstrates, because I mostly went down the hill backwards on my rear. I ended up with about a pound of sand in my pants. And walking up the dune again was maybe the most exertion I’ve ever had in my life; when I reached the top I was breathing like I’d run a marathon. All in all, one of the coolest things I’ve tried in a long time!

From this location, we also watched the sunset over the desert. This was beautiful and intense because we were the only people around for miles. The isolation and sense of smallness felt was very powerful.

Thursday we trekked back to Marsa Matruh, where I again fully enjoyed the pleasures of the beach. Late at night, after dinner, a few of us took another swim in the Mediterranean, which felt even warmer at night than during the day. We swam out to a raft to sit and enjoy a brief astronomy lesson from Oscar. We saw so many more stars than we’d seen in Cairo, but I bet it would have been even better in the desert.

We swam back in to find Lily and Katharine on the beach with a new friend, who was the son of the hotel owner. We were told by him that swimming at night is actually prohibited, apparently because drug running by sea is a problem on the coast. According to him, although swimmers are just yelled at to return to shore, those who take boats out at night might be shot at by law enforcement. Good to know…

Friday, after our bus ride back to Cairo and a few hours of resting, Katharine, Lily, and I met up with our boys Karim and Mostafa. First, we went to a famous koshary place downtown called Abu Tarek. Then we went to a concert on the Nile by a group called Wist El-Balad. Literally, this name means “the center of the country”, but in common parlance it is taken to mean downtown Cairo. Anyway, the group is very popular and we were lucky to get tickets to the show. It was a great way to spend our last night in Cairo.

Welcome to the Cairo Zoo Club...

We’ve become really close to a group of Egyptian guys, so have gone out with them probably 5 of the past 8 nights. The other night, we had a surprise birthday party for Basem and Kareem. We ended up playing Spin the Bottle. HUGE cultural difference here- unlike in the States, this does NOT involve kissing. Basically, you spin, and whoever the bottle lands on, you ask that person a deep, thoughtful, or personal question- the whole idea behind the game is to get to know people better. We talked about everything, from having tried marajuana to what we don't like about Egyptian culture. Mostafa and I got into an interesting discussion on Israel and Palestine too, with the end result that we just want peace. A bunch of idealists, aren't we?

Lily, Katharine, and I were curious about why the guys liked spending so much time with us Americans, so we asked about that. And it's really cool- basically, they want the same thing as we do- to meet people and better understand them and to make connections with other cultures. Hanging out with them has been the best part of the dialogue, and this will make it incredibly hard to leave Cairo in a few days. Katharine and I were debating whether we should just fake being sick in order to skip out on the trip to Marsa Matruh and Siwa so that we could stay in Cairo and just hang out with them, although this probably isn't too realistic.

Coming home from the birthday party, we encountered some unpleasantness at the hotel which upset me a lot. Some of the Egyptian guys had come back with us so that they could burn us a CD with Arabic music, and we all headed up to the central meeting spot, AKA Katharine’s and my room. After about 2 minutes, we got a call from the front desk of the hotel saying that the Egyptians had to leave! We went downstairs and talked the guy into letting us all sit on the porch, at least, but it was still the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. First of all, it’s their country, why can’t they come in the hotel? And who is the hotel to regulate what friends we bring to our rooms? Finally, it just made me feel bad because I was a tourist staying at this hotel and essentially supporting this policy in a financial way. Definitely such bullshit- that’s one thing here that I really hate. The country’s economy depends a lot on tourism, so tourists are catered to, with the result that Egyptians are denied the same rights in their own country. There has to be a better balance between these conflicting influences.

Last night at a cafe, after Karim had left, it was Mostafa, Katharine, Lily, and I sitting in a cafe downtown, and we got into talking about religion some more. All of us American girls are either atheist or agnostic, while Mostafa is Muslim. But it was still really cool because we could ask him anything we wanted. So we asked him what thing about Islam he would change if he could, and he gave, what I thought was the best answer possible. To paraphrase, he wouldn't change the religion itself but the way people interpreted it. I think that's the problem with most religions; people interpret them too strictly or hide behind a religion to say that they are pious, but don't carry out any of the meaningful teachings behind their faith.

Along these lines, we saw a woman performing a fire-eating act, which, if memory serves me right, I've never seen before. Apparently it's sort of a sacred thing, passed from parent to child, and so after her act she was saying that she did it for food and whatnot. So everyone in the cafe was tipping her, but keeping the money clenched tightly in their hands and passing it to her without letting the money show. Mostafa told me that it's done because if you give alms to someone in a showy way, then you are not perceived to be doing it from the goodness of your heart- you are doing it because you want others to see that you are giving money. But if you do it discreetly, then it means that you are doing it because you are genuinely good and want to help the person to whom you give money.

Last night we went out to the Cairo Jazz Club, which was a really fun experience. It was jazz but then with some Egyptian rhythms and instruments thrown in, which spiced it up a lot. It was another great night in what’s been the most fun week in Cairo.
Besides hanging out with our Egpytian friends, we’ve been busy doing a lot of last-minute stuff before we leave Cairo. For instance, we took our Arabic teacher out to dinner at her favorite restaurant. I miss her already! Friday night, a big group of us ate dinner at Sequoia, a really nice place on the tip of Zamalek, and watched the sun go down over the Nile. This was more or less a good-bye dinner with the engineers, because they unfortunately won't be going with us on the rest of our travels :( Also, Katharine, Lily, and I went to Al-Azhar Park yesterday, which is where our group debriefing will be held today. It’s a ginormous park, an oasis of green in the middle of brown, dusty Cairo. We walked in and nearly collided with a wedding procession on the way out. That was fascinating to see- everyone was singing and clapping what I presume is a traditional song, since everyone knew the words. And within the wedding party, you had women dressed in a variety of ways, from mutahagibba, meaning wearing the head scarf, to women with skirts slit almost all the way up their thighs. And yet they were all brought together to celebrate the same occasion.

Our visit to the park coincided with an environmental awareness festival. This was extremely ironic, considering Cairo is one of the least green cities in the world (literally and figuratively). We were able to see some school kids putting on a play (so weird because the play was in English, as were a lot of signs around the area…I’m not sure how great of an idea that was on the organizers’ part).

Being at the park also gave me a renewed appreciation for just how enormous the city of Cairo is. Hearing a couple muezzins simultaneously reciting the call to prayer against the backdrop of this sweeping cityscape was a poignant reminder of where we are right now.

One other interesting note is that twice in the past few days we’ve seen street fights right on Zamalek. One time it was just a brief incident with one guy throwing a rock at the other. But the first time, it was a drag-‘em-down, knock-‘em-out kind of event…and it took place in front of a member of the tourist police force, too. I mean, we were seeing a guy get shoved on his face in the middle of the street, and the cop was doing nothing about it. I guess it’s his job to worry about tourists, and not Egyptians, but that seems like bullshit. It gave me half a mind to walk near the fight so he’d have to do something about it, but by that point the fight had finally dissapated.

Tonight we have dinner at Abduh and Hayaam’s, then the park debriefing. Tommorrow we leave for Marsa Matruh and Siwa, to return next Friday for another few hours in Cairo. Then Saturday morning, it’s on to Abu Dhabi and Dubai until the following Thursday, and Friday is our return to the United States. With all this travel, I don’t know how much more I’ll be able to write, but wish me luck!