Category Archives: Anecdotes

Oct 12 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Humorous, Lists, One minute read

We are a Bunch of Nerds

the resident nerds of tahrir

Next semester, we students of CASA have the opportunity to take courses that are not solely focused on language and have academic content as well. Moreover, we get the chance to suggest courses ourselves. Since we are all a bunch of nerds, there has been a flowering of emails suggesting all kinds of courses that we could take…subjects you couldn’t even imagine, like a course focused on the fantastic animals described in pre -17th century Arabic travel literature.  This is the stuff of nerd paradise.

I have decided to hop onto the feverish academic bandwagon and offer a few course titles myself, so without further ado, may I present to you

CASA Spring 2010: Course Suggestions

1. Inequality Manifest: Spoiled American Students and Their Experience in Egypt

2. Pant Usage in Post-Colonial Egypt and the Tailoring of a Transformation

3. Applied Poetics: Arabic Poetry’s Place(s) in Your Daily Life

4. Advanced Reality Grasping: Calling a Spade a Spade

5. The Effect of Unicornic rule on Imaginary Arabic Literature

6. Fountains on the AUC Tahrir Campus: Why?

7. American Arabic Students and the Contemporary Blog Post

8. Cairo: Fragrant and Musical, or Stinky and Noisy?

9. Hadith and Blogging: What the Prophet Said

10. Intermediate Time Machine Installation and Usage

11. Arabic Grammar Nerds: Their Function as a Social Phenomenon

12. CASA Students: the Relationship between an Unhappy Home Life and the Rate of Expatriation

13. Improvisation: Telling People Why You Study Arabic

14. Arabic: What Do the Squiggly Lines Mean?

15. 15th Century Egyptian Embalming Techniques: a Practicum

16. Advanced Media: Building Effective Emotional Barriers to Bad News

17. Your Parents and Medieval Islamic History: How to Make Them Care

18. The Healing Qualities and Mystical Powers of Advanced Arabic Rhetoric

19. Vowels: Accessory, Amenity, or Need?

20. Horseback Riding, Power Lifting, and Calligraphy

21. Pharoanic Hygienic Standards: a Practicum

22. The Futility of Love: Arabic Literature Expressing Hopelessness and Loss

23. Arabic Media: How to Fold Newspapers into Planes and Hats

I, along with the rest of CASA,  look forward to an academically enriching semester and one that will no doubt be extremely useful in all our personal, professional, and facebook  lives.

Tagged , , , , ,
Oct 09 2011
11 Comments
Anecdotes, Two minute read, Wedding

Bride’s Sisters Need Attention Too

Far right is getting married. She’s a few years older now.

I saw my (triplet) sister in a wedding dress for the first time about 30 minutes ago, via the pictures my mother sent of the shopping trip my she and my sisters embarked on without me.  I realize I’m in Egypt, but would it be too hard for them to wait an unreasonably long time so I could give them advice to ignore when I came home for Christmas? Is that really too much to ask? According to my mother, it is. And so I’m left living the experience in 2-D, alone in my room in Cairo, looking at the beads and white fabric and wondering what the what is going on.

Seeing my sister in a wedding dress was surprisingly weird and emotional even if I wasn’t present in the flesh.  And thus the news of  “my sister’s getting married” continues its slow journey from theory to reality.

She really is going to get married. There will be a color-schemed wedding with lots of friends and non-friends and food and drink. Her last name is going to change. Eventually she’ll go off and live with her husband and there will be a life together in a place no one knows (hopefully not Oklahoma), and I’m going to be moving in with them after I get back from Egypt (probably not true). Her life will be permanently altered in a way that I won’t be able to understand until I myself am married, and there’s always going to be that weird guy hanging around at our house or at her bungalow, apartment, or shack.

All I can say is that if this wedding dress picture experience is any indication for the future, I’m going to be a complete wreck at the wedding and will alternately be using her dress to dry my tears or begging her to explain what happened over the past 21 ish years that brought us to this point. Weren’t we going to be kids forever? Can I please move in to the apartment next to them/spare bedroom to be a part of their married life? Are honeymoons really just for the couples or can sisters come too? How big of a deal is this? Can I handle it? Can she handle it? Can the caterers handle it?

She probably doesn’t realize this, but her wedding is a big life change for all of us, especially her. I wish I could be there as she picks colors and doilies, but I suppose the random blog post is going to have to do instead. And yes, she’s probably mad about me blogging on this topic. But luckily she rarely reads my blog, so maybe she won’t find out about it. Let’s just keep it a secret between you and me, okay? I’ll let you know how the wedding goes. I’m co-piloting, by the way, so it will be in safe but emotionally unstable hands.

Tagged , , , , ,
Oct 06 2011
4 Comments
Anecdotes, The Cairo Metro, Two minute read

I Am the Shwarma

200 people fit in here

I thought I had beaten the topic of the Cairo metro to death, that all the humidity, sweat, inexplicable haze, and involuntary contact with strangers had been discussed to its furthest extent. But I was wrong, pathetically wrong, and today I touched, tasted, smelled, and saw the depth of my ignorance.

Though I did not think it was physically possible, metro use has increased due to strikes on other forms of public transportation. Practically, this means the metro cars turn into a more treacherous, sweaty, place than they have been. People and children under 4 feet tall stand a good chance of suffocating should they dare to ride.

This morning, the women’s metro car rolls up, and it is already stuffed to the gills. I can almost see a puff of steam emerge as the doors open and a few fight their way off the train, leaving just under enough space for me. I and a few others shove our way on, our body masses absorbed into a greater entity created out of metro riders like a giant shwarma leg. A woman had to suck in her stomach in order for the door to close, and I thought to myself, “the fate of this entire train just depended upon the extra 3 inches of that woman’s newly concave stomach. Lord help us.”

For the next 6 minutes, I was tossed about like a baby at a potluck. Though I wasn’t holding onto anything, it didn’t matter since it was impossible to move independently of the nest of people I was firmly snuggled into. As a result, I was pushed against my will several times into a woman standing next to the door. I thought she realized I was powerless in the matter, but finally, at the stop where we and 80 percent of the train were exiting, she said, “Why are you pushing me?! I swear I’m getting off!”

Had I the language skills, I wish I could have cooed, “Yes, friend. I am pushing you because I alone out of the countless women here in the car can move of my own free will and I have decided to use this power to pester you, oh chosen one. I am glad you are ignoring the kinetic thread of female bodies behind me that might transfer energy and placed blame directly on me for your discomfort because I am, in fact, completely responsible. I am also malicious and worthy of your hatred.”

The metro doors open at Sadat and “plop!” a mass of women is spurted out onto the platform. Someone hits me in the back, and I’m not sure whether it was on purpose or whether they had temporarily lost control of their arm because of metro fever. As I was ascending the escalator  I thought to myself, “I’ve got to blog about this.”

Tagged , , , , ,
Oct 04 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Humorous, Stories, Three minute read

Reptile Wrangle!

she lives!

The characters:

Two perfectly sweet Arabic students. Both have teddy bears at home in the states (one against her will), and both love animals a reasonable amount.

One bowab (see previous post) and one bowab’s brother. Both are respectable gentlemen currently employed in the cleaning of said Arabic students’ apartment (don’t judge us. you try dealing by yourself with the relentless, powdered Cairo that coats your toothbrush).

One large, squirmy gecko. It is a wild animal, and like my sisters, it has the ability to climb on walls and hide behind curtains. If it were to be squashed, one would need more than one paper towel to wipe up the gecko goo.

One set of living room furniture, including a coffee table, a dining table, a couch that pulls apart into sections, and curtains. There’s also a bookshelf but we don’t talk about it. I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it.

The setting:

Time: Post 6 o’clock coffee and snack break.

Weather: The autumn mildness is setting in and one Arabic student’s bed was cool to the touch when she got back from class today. It was bizarre but not unpleasant.

Location: The living room, slightly disheveled and in the midst of being cleaned by the bowab and bowab’s brother.

Who’s hungry: No one. Large sandwiches were eaten just a few hours earlier.

Begin scene:

One roommate squeals. She has seen a large slithering thing in the apartment. The other roommate is not surprised; she saw that gecko last night. They both huddle near a corner of the room and make a fuss about the wildlife in the house, attracting the bowab’s attention. Quickly, he thinks of a solution and removes his shoe. Upon realizing his intent, the Arabic students’ shrieking becomes louder as they both imagine how disgusting it would be to see a gecko of that size squashed on the wall. Also, geckos are cute.  The bowab ignores their humanitarian and “yucky” concerns equally. “He’ll just come back inside,” he says, determined to crush the gecko that is scurrying across the wall.

The living room transforms into a gladiator’s arena, the gecko its target.  The bowab leaps onto the dining room table. He aims his shoe at the gecko darting across the wall and misses. Now he apparates to the other side of the room and tries to flush the gecko out with a broom. Now he yells at his brother to stop being lazy and help him. Now his reluctant brother is tearing the couch away from the wall in order to apprehend the gecko that has crawled underneath it. All this time the Arabic students clutch each other helplessly and pray that there won’t be a huge stain of lizard innards to look at or clean up.

In the midst of the prevailing chaos, the pleadings of the Arabic students and the acrobatic feats of bowab and brother, the gecko escapes from the room onto the balcony, to the disappointment of some and great relief of others, namely the gecko herself.

End scene.

Postscript:

10 minutes later, the bowab invites Arabic students to go to his village in Upper Egypt (hint: south of Cairo) and visit his family and an old monastery, church, and Roman ruins.  Will there be more geckos to kill?

Tagged , , , ,
Sep 26 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Stories, Two minute read

Look Right Into My Ocular Spheres

5 “lanes,” 40 mph traffic, no respect for crosswalk, hospital on the other side. Impossible? No. 

An update on my daily street-crossing life:

I see you. You’re sitting in your car. You’ve got your buddies with you, all lined up in a pretty little row like pretty little ducklings lurching around in giant metal cages made of steel and glass. I see you too, Mr. Motorbike Delivery Man. I know your kind; you’re the most lawless of all. You believe you can fit anywhere, especially the foot wide corridors between moving cars that young pedestrian lasses like me like to squeeze through.

But let’s all admit the hard truth: I need to cross this street and you’re going to let me do it. It’s something none of us want to think about, but it’s reality. What you all don’t know is that I’ve got a secret weapon, a hidden asset, an invisible advantage, a clandestine tool. And I mean invisible in the figurative sense, since it’s actually as plain as the nose on my face, the arms on my sides, or the goose on my head. I’m talking about my eyes, friends. That’s right: My peepers. My lookey-loos. My soul-windows. My ocular spheres. Too many synonyms? No apologies: the power that lies within my seeing globes deserves an inappropriate amount of description.

With this weapon in face, the crossing begins. My eyes are refrigerators, and the eyes of every driver in Cairo are magnets. My gaze sweeps across the expanse in front of me as I hop down from the curb. My vision pierces the car closest to me. Schlooop! We have made an avatar-like connection. The deepest desires of our hearts are now known to one another: you want me to get out of your way, and I want to live. Paralyzed by the power of ocular bond, you let me pass in front of you. I look to the next car and the connection is made again, equally powerful, and equally effective. Eventually, moving car by car, I reach the other side of the street no worse for the wear, though this cough isn’t getting better.

Discovering this power was the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my entire life, aside from emergency delivering a litter of baby platupuses in a bathtub. After weeks of perfecting the stare, I feel more confident than ever when crossing the street, especially in the height of traffic. Furthermore, I have gained moral ground because the driver, should she hit me, will have my piercing gaze emblazoned on her mind for the rest of her commute home, and that’s gonna spoil dinner.

May I have continued success in this daily activity, because the only other alternative is injury or death.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →
Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started