Islamic Cairo, Service Learning, and More

Hi all,
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.

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!

Cairo

It's been a couple days, which I've spent getting acclimated to our surroundings here in Cairo. Arabic class has continued to be a great experience, and I've slowly been able to practice my Arabic while out in the community; for instance, today we went on a search to find a new power cord for Brett's computer, and we were able to ask for and get directions in Arabic. Definitely a big step up from what I would have been able to do even a week ago.

Another thing that we've been working on is trying to put our service projects together. The original idea was that we'd be helping local businesses by creating websites for them, so that their products would be available to more people all across the globe. We've hit some snags, though; for instance, one of the sites we were supposed to help already has a website up and running. The other "snag" seems to be the issue of child labor associated with that same site, which is a carpet-making shop. My class was unfortunately unable to visit this site along with the rest of the group, so I didn't see what the conditions were like, but apparently some children are employed; as part of the deal, they go to school for 4 hours in the AM, get 2 meals a day, and work for a few hours, getting to keep wages too. I'll come back to this in a second.

The other place we might be working is called Stabl Antar. It's a poorer community set in the outskirts of greater Cairo. In a two minute drive, we went from seeing a Mazda M-3 to seeing dirt streets lined with trash, and bread lines (the pictures show scenes from the drive up). I have to say, and I don't mean to be callous in saying this, but I was expecting the community that we arrived in to be much worse off than it was in reality. I myself have seen people living in much, much worse conditions (one example- Batey Libertad was well off by the standard of bateys in DR, and it was worse than Stabl Antar).

Given all this, it was very interesting to listen to others speak at the debriefing meeting. I was very turned off by what seemed to be the majority opinion. Basically, everyone was saying how horrible it was and how they'd been turned off by the whole thing. The consensus seemed to be that although we might still work their, we'll more or less be judging them with our noses held high. I have several problems with this:

1- If your nose is in a perfumed hankie, you can't even smell the shit you're in, pardon the language. Let's tackle the full reality of the situation before we judge it.

2- These kids could have it so much worse. Like I said, I've seen worse myself. In many places all over the world, there are kids who don't even get the opportunity to go to school. Work is the only thing they know. And furthermore, they only get to eat if they can scrape together the money for a meal. I wish every kid in the world could enjoy the kind of childhood where they didn't have to worry about their next meal and if it would come, or where they could have fun and play in the yard instead of sewing carpets for hours. For those of you that know me, you know how much working at HSTF in the afterschool affected me. I love kids and I think that helping them is the best way to improve the future of the world. That said, these kids, while they still have far from an ideal upbringing, are still better off than many of their counterparts. In sum, I'm not saying we shouldn't help these kids or shop in which they work. What I object to is the attitude of the majority of this little American bubble- I understand that the group is concerned with the welfare of these kids, but to get to the heart of the matter, the imposition of our own values and judgments will not help us.

On to happier subjects, we experienced a (nearly) historical event here: RAIN! It was a very brief shower the other night, but I'm pretty sure it'll be the only time we see it on our trip.

We've been doing a bit of exploring every day that we're here; the other night we went to Mohandiseen (a neighborhood across the Nile) for dinner and walked home, and today we went to another spot in Mohandiseen in a futile attempt to find a computer cord for Brett. Along with all this exploring comes taxi rides. The picture here shows the six of us that went to dinner at Al-Omda the other night...yes, crammed into one taxi (if DR people are reading this...yes...exactly like a concho, only more expensive). Today's taxi ride, though, was ridiculous. First in a funny way, then in an I-fear-imminent-death way. Let's just say it involved driving backwards through many blocks as well as burning rubber and a near-incident with a Mercedes. I can safely say that although the cabby gave us his card, we will never be calling him.

Tomorrow's (today's now that I'm posting this) schedule includes a 6 hour tour of Islamic Cairo; it's for the Arabic 2 kids (my class) as well as a few Arabic 1 kids that want to hear some more Arabic spoken (the majority of the tour is still in English though). After the tour, we are going to a feast at Abduh and Hayaam's (I'm so excited, since I was sick the first time). I think today we did some good preparation for the tour; a few of us sat in the El-Sawy Cultural Center here on Zamalek between 11-2, which is when everyone goes to mosque (Friday is the holy day in the Islamic religion). The Cultural Center is right next to a mosque, so we could hear the sermon and the prayers (the picture shows a night shot of the Arabic script on the side of the mosque). I have no idea what was being said, but the sounds alone are beautiful and invoke a state of meditation within me. I'm sure that me not understanding it is in big part why I think it's beautiful (in addition to the fact that it is more musical than prayers in Christianity). A few of us were talking about the negative reactions we'd have if local churches started broadcasting their sermons for all and sundry to hear. It's really a remark on the cultural differences between our country and Egypt; here's it's just the culture that religion, which we consider part of private life, is really part of the public sphere. Anyway, I was also able to get a sound recording (the best that I've taken to date), and as long as I can edit out the bit of talking at the beginning, I will post here shortly.

On a last note, mosquitos suck.

Settling in at the Longchamps Hotel

Here in Cairo, I’m in my new home, the Longchamps Hotel. It’s awesome, there’s no other way to say it. We have free internet, balconies, nice rooms, and friendly staff. Plus, you can do so much with the name (breakfast of longCHAMPIONS, anyone?). The 9 students in Arabic 2 plus Oscar are staying here, and our class is also in the breakfast nook. Hooray for waking up at 9 AM. The other 25 students here in Cairo are staying at a slightly less awesome hotel, and have to travel to AUC every day for class. Admittedly, their situation does have some advantages, like being forced to get out in the city more often. But I’m not too worried, as I want to go exploring anyway. This picture above shows me, Brett, and Katharine figuring out a cheap authentic place to eat dinner tonight! Al-Omda, here we come.

Monday was our first Arabic class, and I loved it. Our teacher, Nermine, is intense but a sweetheart at the same time. She’s doing a good job of picking up the pace where Dominic left off, and I think I’ll learn a lot this semester (aka for the next 4 weeks).

We also had a meeting down at AUC (American University at Cairo) about the expectations for the service work we will be doing this semester. Things still don’t seem to be hammered out too finely, so who knows yet exactly what I’ll be doing. Wednesday after class we are going to see one of the sites where I might end up working. A lot of people from the group are really angry about the changes that are taking place, like the hotel switches and the undefined service projects. It’s just one of the lessons of working and living in a developing nation, I think- you need to go with the flow and make the best of things, and it will all work out in the end. There’s no use in complaining, so just do what you can. I think a lot of the complaining also stems from the fact that many of the students in the group are either young or haven’t travelled much. That’s all fine and well, and this will be a great experience to open their eyes. After my experiences in DR, though, it’s a little different- I especially miss my group there, because everyone from the get-go was really eager to dive into the culture and enjoy each experience for the lessons that they taught us. I am glad that I have a little core group of my own forming and that we can go and do our own thing and make the most of our time here.

On a final note, I had dinner Monday for under $3 American. It was a delicious pasta dish with cooked vegetables and spicy tomato sauce, and it probably would have sold in the North End for at least $15. My level of excitement was pretty high. Next thing on the list? Going with Oscar to the shwarma place he discovered downtown and getting a crazy sandwich for L.E. 8 (~ $1.60 American). MMM. Also, because we are trying to save a little cash now that we’re back in Cairo, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches has become an integral part of the day. This is my roommate Katharine working on our daily sustenance.

Today (Tuesday), Arabic class was awesome again- I feel challenged, yet not to the point of frustration. Also, after class a few of us went to drop off our laundry (what we didn’t wash in the tub, at least…)at a nearby place and wander around a bit, and we were able to practice a little speaking with the locals. It was a thrilling moment when I was able to ask “Where are the children’s books in Arabic?”

Random Thoughts

Recently we were talking about The Yacoubian Building and the idea of martyrdom in Islam. Someone said that a follower’s devotion to accomplishing this is almost so powerful as to be sweet. On one hand, I agree to a certain extent; feelings that strong brook no argument, and their strength and purity are innocent in a way. But on the other hand, I almost feel as though martyrdom is a cop-out. I feel very strongly dedicated to certain ideals as well; in fact, almost to a high degree of religiosity. But instead of killing myself, I’d rather work to make my ideals actually come to fruition. I don’t mind sacrificing other things, like larger paychecks, my free/private/personal time, even my sanity (oh, afterschool at the Kennedy…). But why give my life? More inspiring than ending it would be to create new possibilities out of it.

Perhaps my inability to understand martyrdom is partially linked to my skepticism of any religion. There are certain things about religion that I enjoy, because of their ability to inspire my own spirituality. For instance, we were buying cell phones at dusk the other night, and the call to prayer began to ring out through the air. The beauty of the moment coupled with the ululations of the cryer’s voice invoked in me a strong current of peace. However, religion as a whole does not appeal to me because I hold logic and self-determination sacrosanct, and I feel a strong disinclination towards giving myself up to this higher thing when I can’t fully trust or believe in it. Going along with the whole IAF major and greater degrees of perception, although martyrdom contradicts my own convictions, during my time here I would like to improve my understanding of this concept and a person’s reasons for carrying it out. Something that has impressed deeply upon my soul during my time here already, short though it has been, is the connection to the past that Egypt has. Both the call to prayer and our time at the pyramids, but on an especially deep level the temples that we’ve seen recently, invoked this strange longing within me for eras long gone. This is because the sheer magnitude of time (the longevity of time, if you will) is something that demands with respect without requiring that you surrender yourself to it. For me, these approach the most religious experiences I’ve ever had, because I can appreciate this thing which is larger than myself without losing myself to it or in it.

Luxor

We very quickly discovered that Luxor was a very touristy area. It’s virtually impossible to walk down the street more than a few feet without being asked to go for a sail on someone’s felucca, ride in someone’s horse carriage, or eat someone’s peanuts. I think in general the best strategy is to more or less ignore people and say as little as possible. After a nap and a terrible Jackie Chan movie (but one of those movies that’s also great in its terribleness), Julia, Ben, Bret, and I went out to eat and discovered an awesome dinner place. I haven’t laughed so much in a while; my abs still hurt from it. Following dinner, we were joined by a few others for some sing-a-longs, political discussions, and more laughter. It feels really nice to be finding my niche with certain people and having a good time in general.

The next morning was kind of a whirlwind of activity, beginning with the now-famous Valley of Kings, where (among many others), Tutankhamen was buried. For $8, we were able to see the body (and I do mean body; all his mummy wrappings were gone) of this once-great king (although, since he died by 20, let’s think about the fact that he is currently famous for having a really rich tomb…). His body was very well preserved, and VERY short; maybe 5’2” tall. The gold outer sarcophagus is as awesome as it looks, too. In the Valley of the Kings, though, every other tomb that I wanted to see (Ramses II- the famous Ramses, Horemhab, and the Amarna Cache) was closed. We made a cool discovery; Rebecca, Julia, and I ended up wandering into the tomb of Siptah, which had incredibly well-preserved hieroglyphics all through the entrance of his tomb. The outermost sarcophagus was also still in the burial chamber, and it was so big that it could have been a room unto itself.
I have to say that, for having read so much about Egypt and Valley of the Kings, I was disappointed to some extent. There were so many tourists there, and because of this the area (obviously) doesn’t look like it did thousands of years ago. I guess I should have expected that. But in my mind I was still picturing these well-hidden catacombs and a long trek through the desert to reach them. My bad. Futhermore, most of the loot is in museums, so I’ll have to wait to see more mummies and whatnot. Also, if you are all wondering why Tut’s pic isn’t posted here, it’s because no photos were allowed in the tombs…boo.

From Valley of the Kings, we went on to Deir Al-Bahri, the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut. She literally stuck it to the man (or men) by building her temple into the cliffs in front of the Valley of the Kings burial area. The view is so impressive, and as usual, the camera does no justice in capturing the area, but check out the picture on the right nonetheless.

Next was Medinat Habu (the Ramesseum), which was a temple of Ramses II..or III? I loved this place because of the sheer size and how overwhelming the scale was. It dwarfs you and in a way is an ego check. Although, apparently it wasn’t an ego check for Ramses: he portrayed himself to his subjects as being divine while he was still alive and ruling the country (usually pharaohs weren’t thought to attain divinity until after death), and images in the temple show his sons making offerings to him as though he were part of the pantheon of gods.

Our final morning stop was the Colossi at Memnon, by Amenhotep III (the father of Akhenaten, the rebel/heretic pharaoh who only believed in one god). Quick stop but again the sheer size was impressive. We were also told that previously an entire temple was behind these statues, stretching back to the road in the distance (if you can’t make it out in the picture, it’s really far).

After some rest and showers, Luxor Temple was our final stop for the day, and we went right before dusk. The sun was setting as we toured this giant complex, and because of the time of day and the beauty there, this was definitely my favorite site of everything we’ve seen, with the Philae Temple running a close second. Something about the size, the beauty, and the knowledge of what care and effort went into these constructions demands from me a certain awe, admiration, and even reverence and devotion.

The picture to the right is about as close as they came to pornography in the temples. Showing two people seated on a bed holding each others’ elbows was tantamount to showing their sexual union, and this one shows the mother of Amenhotep III mating with Amun-Ra. The pharaoh had this depicted to show that he was of divine descent and therefore had the right and duty to rule Egypt.

May 10 we made our final stop at the Karnak Temple in Luxor. This was dedicated to the worship of Amun-Ra, the most important god in the Middle and Late Periods of the Pharaonic times. A.K.A., this temple was a BIG deal here for a very long time. I know how many times I’ve mentioned size. But this place was as big as my high school, if not larger. I’m not even bothering to show a picture of this because any image that I took will just diminish the impression you should have of it. I also want to make the point that almost every single temple or statue that we’ve seen in the past few days had been buried in sand and/or silt for centuries between their final days of use and their rediscoveries in the past few centuries. In most cases, they were very close to the Nile, and years upon many years of successive floodings evertually covered them up, only to be found once again. This kind of endurance and passive existence through the millenia as they bear witness to everything around them gives me tingles all over my body. Being in them, I almost felt as if these places themselves had souls, perhaps because of all the emotion once vested in them. But their grandeur was awe-inspiring, and the reverence I feel for the greatness of these places makes me think that had I lived in those times, I would have been much more likely to have been religious.

The afternoon was spent at the pool, where Julia and I met two really nice Irish brothers now living in England that we talked to the rest of the day. This Dialogue trip that I’m on is obviously supposed to help us enter into conversations with Egyptians, but this was also a great opportunity to exchange opinions with two cool people. The topics of coversation ranged from music (generally agreed the the Brits led the music scene back in the day and those same groups are still good) to learning languages at a young age (it’s a good thing) to movies (apparently Keira Knightley is “rubbish”) to opinions on George Bush abroad (he’s a joke, albeit an unfunny one) to the idea of PC-ness in modern society (it’s going too far sometimes) and finally to the English majority having to bend over backwards to accommodate its growing minority population (this reminds me of a book I read called Londonistan, which I had originally thought to be a piece of alarmist conservative junk but apparently is based off of some grains of truth).

After taking the midnight train to Georgia, or at least the sleeper train from Luxor to Cairo, I’m in my home for the next four weeks, an awesome little place called the Hotel Longchamps. It’s quaint and cute, with gorgeous balconies and best of all, free wireless! Now to upload all of these outdated blogs, get some groceries, and rest up for classes tomorrow!