Category Archives: Modern Life

Jul 24 2011
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Anecdotes, Modern Life

Mumble mumble…come pray…mumble

One of the 5 pillars of Islam is salat, or the  prayer that occurs five times daily: pre-sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset, and post-sunset but before midnight. The specific times for prayer are calculated according to the position of the sun, but if you’re in a Muslim country like Egypt and unsure about what time to prayer, there is no need to worry. You will most likely be able to hear the call to prayer from wherever you happen to be, even within the walls of the hedonistic American University of Cairo.

The adhan, or call to prayer, follows a specific format, though it might vary slightly from place to place and between Shi’i and Sunni Muslims. Here’s Cat Stevens reciting the call to prayer, with English translation.

Obviously, this is a beautiful rendition and it would be a pleasure to hear this at any time of day, every syllable tickling the ear and reminding one of God’s greatness. However, not every muezzin (guy who performs the call to prayer) performs the call to prayer with such artistry. The quality varies greatly according to the place, time, and audience. For example, the prayer at a famous university at noon on Friday will probably be more impressive than the pre-dawn prayer in a one mosque town. Those not blessed with silver voices such as Cat Stevens make due with shouting or mumbling their five times daily call to prayer, oftentimes combining the two in a mumble-shout.

I have noticed that the muezzin close to our apartment has varying quality in the level of artistry with which he announces the prayer. During the day, his voice rings out loud and proud, wavering skillfully in the traditional mournful tone of recitation. At night, however, his calls are not as enthusiastic. I wouldn’t say they manifest a complete lack of effort, but that description is not far off.

I imagine him hearing his alarm clock right around 3:30 am, and thinking, “Dangit….not this again. Every day, every bloomin day.” And then he begins, no longer the happy camper he was earlier. His encouragement to prayer becomes a series of rapid mumbles followed by slower mumbles and a few allahu akbars thrown in there for good measure. Though he says prayer is better than sleep, to me it is more than apparent that he would rather be in bed and is trying to get this whole “prayer announcement” thing over with as soon as possible. He might even be aggravated that people aren’t pious enough to get up by themselves without him having to shout them out in his gravely but charming pre-dawn voice.

I suppose it is the thought that counts, and indeed it is said that unless the intention to pray is made before the actual prayer, the prayer itself is invalid. Thus, it is better a lackluster call to prayer than no call to prayer at all. We’re all a little bit farther from the flames of hell fire.

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Jul 06 2011
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Anecdotes, Modern Life, Two minute read

Welcome to the Twitosphere

Some of you more technically savvy folks may have heard about twitter, a site that allows you to share 125 character statements with people who “follow” you or subscribe to your posts. It can be used for a variety of things: political activism, awkward online flirting, finding out about steals around town, stalking celebrities from far away, being overwhelmed by the amount of newspaper articles you will never read, sharing too-intimate and/or banal details about your personal life, etc. Others of you may roll your eyes disdainfully and proudly state that you do not tweet since you don’t think highly enough of yourself to assume others would want to know what you have to say; you are probably correct. Others, of course, simply have not had cause or time to enter the twitosphere. Regardless of my, your, or Mrs. Ackerman’s opinion on the site, it has become a pillar of the social networking age.

Tonight I had the great pleasure of sitting round a table at a roof top cafe in posh Zamalek with some twitter activists. During the revolution of Jan. 25, both twitter and facebook were used extensively in order to organize the protesters and avoid the regime’s arm of political oppression that could shut down and monitor cell phone networks and other traditional forms of communication with ease. It remains one of the preferred ways to communicate  current political or other events and there is a community and shared culture among the activtwits, or twitter activists. That word is not real–I just made it up. Feel free to use it but please cite me.

Last Tuesday, there was a tweet-up party where people  known only by their handle (name on twitter) gathered with their fellow tweeters avatar to avatar and twittered the night away, presumably talking Egyptian politics, etc. I was not present, so I only speak on what I heard through the grape vine. Ironically, or perhaps fortuitously, that very same night the clashes broke out randomly in downtown, so the whole gaggle of activtwits rushed down and did what they do best: tweet and avoid being hit by cans of tear gas.

Speaking of tear gas, one of the gentlemen present apparently recently acquired some gas masks from the trunk of a guy’s car out in Ataba, in preparation for the big demonstrations planned for Friday. He said we were welcome to come, but I think I may have made plans to sleep in and stay at home already. Alaa al-Aswani said that he was going to be there too.

The entire world of twitter and activtwits remains completely unknown to many Egyptians however. I hesitate to use numbers or “facts” because I’m unaware of them (see blog post by someone more knowledgeable), but it is my perception that there is some degree of separation between the activists of the revolution and the average Muhammad who is getting tired of the unrest. There is also the issue of class, as not all are wealthy enough to access the internet readily or tweet from their blackberries, so it remains to be seen how these two currents in Egyptian society will interact with one another.

I’ll be watching the tweets roll in from Tahrir on Friday.

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Jun 07 2011
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Anecdotes, Modern Life, Two minute read

This is how we cross the street

Crosswalks exist in Cairo. I have seen the lines painted on the ground in crosswalk shape and  a sign indicating that the area was appropriated for pedestrians to cross the street. The electric signs are a bit ominous, however, since the green figure moving across the triangle looks like he is sprinting frantically.

No one uses these crosswalks. Most of the time they don’t exist, especially at major intersections.

Allow me to paint you a picture: it’s 8:30 in the morning and you need to cross a busy street lined with Cairo life: shops, kiosks, carts, and people. It’s already hot outside and you’ve begun sweating. You can see your destination through the polluted haze on the other side of the road, and you know that you must take your life into your hands before you reach it. You approach the highway. Cars, motorbikes, and busses zoom past you. If you’re lucky, there is another poor soul taking the same route; strength lies in numbers. Too often, however, you must go it alone. The cars will not stop of their own initiative, and the only traffic light you’ve seen in Cairo was broken. You see a gap…someone had to turn. You rush forward through the first “lane.”  Suddenly you’re trapped in the middle of the street, vehicles whirling around you. Another gap…you hurry to the safety of the median and forget to look to see if there are cars coming from the other direction. Out into the street you step with over-confidence and notice row of three cars rushing towards you, but one of them quickly slows down to let you by. You give them a deft wave of the hand as if to say, “That’s right. You best slow down.” Suddenly you’re almost hit by a motorbike that came out of nowhere…your hair swooshes in the air from its draft and you’ve lost your breath and need a new pair of pants.

And that’s how you cross the street. Is it dangerous, yes. Is it fun, sometimes. It helps if you scream silently to yourself. I don’t think the cars will actually hit anyone, but traffic statistics tell me otherwise.

Towards the end of the year, I want to start a competition to see who can get the fastest car to stop for them. There will be no surviving losers.

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Jun 06 2011
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Anecdotes, Egypt, Modern Life, Two minute read

Post apocalyptic mall from the desert future

American University in Cairo: new campus

Classes start tomorrow. Thus ends my brief stint of living like a posh Cairene, going out to cafes all the time and wastin’ my stipend like I’m Cleopatra. I went to a place called Mosaic tonight and enjoyed a lovely grape sheesha with a plate of hummus on the side and hibiscus tea to drink. There was enough left over for lunch tomorrow. SHABAM.

My roommate and I got semi-lost on the way back from said cafe, but it wasn’t for too long and we got to see the other side of Doqqi: poorly-lit streets, slightly less well off neighborhoods, cats crawling on garbage piles, kids zooming by on scooters, clotheslines, dark stairwells…. Not too shabby.

We had our orientation out at the new campus of the American University in Cairo today, which is probably the most bizarre place in the world. First of all, it is surrounded by a sea of half built buildings in the desert, part of the “New Cairo” everyone is talking about (I think). The two workers I saw out there will be hard pressed to finish this century, but at least they’re a team: one to hand the bricks, and the other to carry.

AUC’s campus is also massive, most of it consisting of long marbled courtyards beneath gaudy eastern style arches. The campus was nearly empty except for us and the employees of random Western-style food outlets scattered in nooks of the eerie flat-faced buildings shimmering in the heat. The sound of the fountains and the wind in the gardens only accentuated the emptiness of the place. I got the feeling I was on a campus designed and implemented according to what the future might be like if everything was based on faux-eastern mall architecture right before there had been a huge climate shift. Spooky. Alternately, it felt like the campus had been discovered well preserved in some sort of dome in the middle of the desert as a relic of a by-gone era of aliens more advanced than us.

The ride out there took about an hour and 15 minutes both ways in over air conditioned buses outfitted with wifi so you can fulfill your dream of forgetting you are actually in Cairo/that you are one of the miserable beings who is in thrall to the commute to a campus designed for a world that does not exist and almost vomit inducing in the level of its opulence.

Thank goodness we’re at the Tahrir campus.

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Jun 04 2011
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Best blog posts, Humorous, Lists, Modern Life, One minute read

Me no workie well in coffee shop

My life has recently consisted largely of spending time in Cilantro, an upscale coffee shop/café/place to get wi-fi. Despite the large number of pounds I have spent here, I feel my time has not been well served for the following reasons, in addition to the basic fact that I don’t work well in coffee shops.

1. I order a latte and get hopped up on caffeine which makes me jittery, nervous, paranoid, and prone to distraction.

2. I am surrounded by people that I want to stare at and/or talk to.

3. There is a window that I want to stare at.

4. Cars are honking and the wind is blowing and these things are distracting

5. I drink my latte too quickly and then it feels like I’ve done everything I want to do, resulting in restlessness and procrastination of everything I’ve remembered I have to do

6. I forget to check my to-do list because I’m distracted.

7. I feel continually underdressed. I will never fit in clothing-wise anywhere except for gas stations in the south or christian potlucks hosted at apartments.

8. I go with people I know and have conversations with them. After each conversation I’ve completely forgotten what I was doing, where I am, and what my name is.

9. I feel guilty because I’m not speaking Arabic/doing anything with Arabic. The weight of the guilt makes it impossible to get anything done.

10. The internet doesn’t work.

A good part of coming here is partaking in the wisdom of previous Cilantro customers, some of which is written on the wall in faux-graffiti style. One lovely patron said the following gem: Sometimes you love someone somewhere in sometime; which you can’t do anything 2 stop it….but it exists.

But what do you do if that person is not “real?” Or if he’s Conan O’Brien? I NEED TO KNOW MORE!

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