Category Archives: Three minute read

Jul 28 2011
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Anecdotes, The Cairo Metro, Three minute read

Transportation: A post in three acts

As the daughter of a doctor, I would venture to say that I feel like 20 percent of our lives are spent commuting. Sometimes mortals like to enrich this transit time by reading, listening to music, or bothering other commuters with forced conversation. In Cairo, however, this is not possible since chance of death or severe injury during transit jumps from 80 percent to 100 percent should one lose focus on self-preservation. Transportation in Cairo will never, ever, be relaxing.

Today I had the pleasure of using three different kinds of transportation, most of which have already been discussed here and yet not exhausted due to the layers and layers of stress and discomfort found in all of them, layers that continue to be peeled back like the proverbial modern Egyptian woman who wears tons of…layers.

Act one: Rebirth on the Metro

Always in a class of its own, my Metro experience today was particularly moving. Switching trains at Sadat in order to head south, I felt my personal will fade away as I was sucked onto the woman’s car in a mass of bodies. While on the train, I was held firmly in place by the bubbly behinds of the ladies in front of and behind me. It was an intimate experience. Between me and the door was a group of perhaps 12 women, women I thought I would either need to squish through or shove aside in order to get out. Apparently there was a third option. As the train reached my stop, I was reborn as we, the mass of woman, formed one being and squeezed ourselves through the aperture of the metro car. To carry the metaphor further, all of us were also hot and sticky as we parted our separate ways. Too much?

Act two: If you can’t see the bones being crushed, do they still make a sound?

After partaking in the most delicious Mexican food this side of the Arab World (including Lebanon and Jordan), we were faced with the task of making it back home from Heliopolis, a faraway land filled with the richer segments of Egyptian society. We had arrived by a busy 8 lane highway and we were to leave by the same 8 lane highway, but in the opposite direction. This meant we had to cross the first 4 lanes (hell), make it to the grassy median (purgatory), and then cross the next four lanes (hell) to safety (paradise). It was nighttime, only 70 percent of the cars had their headlights on, and they were all going fast, about 70 miles an hour if my feelings are right. The speed, nighttime, and invisibility of the cars heightened the terror of the what could have been a normal highway-crossing experience. We made it to the median safely, and as we finally breached the last stretch like little black ants, I watched the lights rush towards me and imagined hearing my bones crunched against cold steel as the truck behind the headlights made contact with my unprotected, human, body. But we made it to the other side and hailed a cab, only to experience near death again all too soon.

Act three: Misfortune and self-interest

We were speeding along back to Doqqi on one of the many Cairene overpasses that look eerily similar to the skeletons of concrete giants when all of the sudden, we heard a screech, glass shattering, metal impacting, and more screeching. And then we saw the car wreck in front of us as our taxi driver skillfully slowed us down just in time to avoid hitting anyone. He stopped the car, got out to help yell at people, and then got back in and nosed his way into traffic that had been further bottlenecked into one lane, down from three. No one was hurt in the wreck, which made me feel better about the fact that my first thoughts upon seeing it were a) I’m glad that wasn’t us b) I’m glad we’re close to the wreck so we’ll be able to get through faster and c) I hope the meter wasn’t messed up when he stopped the car. Cairo does something to your priorities.

I have yet to ride any animals in Cairo, the most prevalent of which are donkeys and horses, as opposed to camels. I have also not ridden any form of bus except for the yachts rented by AUC, so there is still ground to break in the depths of Cairo transportation.

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Jul 26 2011
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Serious-ish, Stories, Three minute read

Dear Diary: I flew today

Dear Diary,

I found myself somewhere new today. It was in Cairo I think, since everyone there still spoke Arabic and no one was wearing shorts or kissing in the street. I also saw some young men holding hands, another indication I was in the Middle East.

We entered what someone said was an old house but I think it was actually a castle since it was big and musty and had a windy staircase with uneven steps. There were a lot of locked doors too, as well as nooks and crannies, so it was definitely a castle.

The big feasting hall/courtyard was filled with chairs and dim light, and at the front was a kind of wooden plateau that was smaller than natural plateaus. There weren’t any chairs on the wooden plateau, probably because it is well known that wood does not go well with wood.

I gathered we were supposed to sit down, but it was hard to find a place because of all the chairs. Someone then thought it would be a good idea to sit on the chairs themselves so that’s what we did. I had a bad feeling about this idea, and was especially nervous since the guy in front of us kept peering behind him out of the corner of his eye. Every single time he saw us, he was surprised that there were people sitting on the chairs, despite his own chair sitting hypocrisy. I suggested that we move somewhere out of the way of the chairs but no one listened to me.

All of the sudden, the lights in the courtyard dimmed and music began from the front of the room, where the plateau was still lit up. Something had definitely gone wrong…how were we supposed to be able to see and talk to each other through the darkness over the music? Were we in a no-holds-barred modern protestant church service? But then musicians wearing white and carrying drums took the plateau (possibly the ghosts of the castle musicians) and I lost all consciousness of time and space.

The next thing I knew, I was smiling as we were exiting the building, the faint din of clapping still ringing in my ear. To my great surprise, I found I was carrying my camera and that the button on it was still warm. I turned it on to gather clues as to what had transpired and found I had taken tons of horrible pictures and videos of what may have been beautiful things. The ghosts on the stage had twirled and played the drums, floating and rocking back and forth, and then others took the stage that wore fantastic costumes of all colors, the most important part of it being a Christmas tree skirt that flew straight out from the dancers’ waists. And the dancers became a swirling mass of colors that was always striving upwards with their hands and with their bodies. It’s not clear why…maybe they were trying to communicate with a higher being, and that being was someone who lived upstairs that loved jazzercise in the mornings and they were politely pleading with them to stop.

If the quality of the video had been just a little better, maybe I would be able to remember what I felt when I was watching the dancers twirl and twirl and twirl, their faces bordering on rapture but still conscious of the audience, the movement of their skirts mesmerizing every eye. But I can’t, so from what I can gather, blobs took the plateau and bounced across it in a rhythmic but imprecise manner. Though it sounds unlikely, apparently this was what we expected since everyone was happy afterwards.

I was getting into a taxi when I remembered something and shut the door instead. I stepped away and started spinning around gradually faster until I slowly became airborne, the exhaust fumes from the traffic on the highway pushing me higher and higher. I called down, “Smell you later!” as the polluted air pushed me home.  It had only the faintest traces of teargas.

By the way, this was at a Tanoura performance, the Egyptian version of a dervish dance/ritual that is closely associated with Sufism, or mystical Islam. Sufism focuses on seeing the face of God or achieving unity with God.

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Jul 23 2011
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Anecdotes, Humorous, Three minute read

Noodle Haste Makes Taste Waste

Post-feasting.

For the past few weeks, everyone in our program and their brother had been raving about the Uighur restaurants in town. During break time all I would hear is “Uighur this, Uighur that, noodles noodles noodles!” And to be honest, I was getting pretty fed up with it, as in hungry, as in wrathful that no one had been inviting me on these noodlespeditions even though I’d made it expressly clear from the beginning of Uighur-mania that I would love to go sometime and eat unwarranted amounts of cheap food.

First of all, what’s a Uighur? And is that a ooo–aye—gar? Or a uh-ee-ga-hur? Or maybe a gweer? Is it style of serving people, like those restaurants that serve everyone in the dark so they can know what blind people’s lives are like? Is it the cuisine from one of those countries in Europe that only rich people know about (credit: 30 rock)? Is it one of our rare capitalized adjectives like Friendly or Happy? In answer to these questions: Uighur is pronounced exactly as it is spelled and is exactly what it sounds like–Weegur as in meager and it is the name of an ethnic population in Chinese that is Muslim. For an low quality, confusing article on Wikipedia about Uighurs, click here. Otherwise, suffice it to say that there is an ethnically Muslim population in China known to English speakers as the Uighur people, and there is a community of them in Cairo because many come to study Arabic and/or Islamic studies at Al-Azhar university, one of the most preeminent institutes of Islamic scholarship in the world. They come here seeking spiritual knowledge and we go to them seeking delicious noodles. It does seem a fair exchange.

We finally organized a trip to this Uighur restaurant and I was not only invited, I was the guide since the original planners had to back out due to a shotgun invitation to a wedding. I was not a great guide. We ended up both taking a taxi and phoning a friend only to find the restaurant we were looking for was closed. Luckily, there an open one about 10 feet away, though we had heard rumors that this one was not as great. After eating my meal, however, I believe whoever said that should have their tongue cut out and served to the patrons of that restaurant as payment, since the food was awesome.

The restaurant contained four tables with enough room for perhaps 20 people and a kitchen the size of the bathroom in my apartment. It was full when we first got there, so we waited on the steps outside the almost open-air restaurant next to an empty baby carriage and a bowl of peeled garlic cloves. Traditional ingredients?

A table opens up and we shuffle in to the beat of a young man stretching and slapping fresh dough on the counter in the kitchen right behind us, his bare hands massaging the very noodles we were about to consume. Before we sat down, I thought it was a good idea to take a picture of the guy making the noodles since I, being tacky and foreign, consider normal things very interesting. I ended up taking a bad picture of noodle guy as well as offending the owner of the restaurant, who was not crazy about having tourists taking pictures of him like he’s in a zoo. I spent the rest of the night trying to get back on his good side by smiling a lot, but this never worked out to my advantage since he would say things like “There’s none of that left.” or “64 pounds” and I would just grin and say okay, clearly not understanding what he said until a second later when I felt like an idiot and was still on his bad side.

Despite my cultural faux pas, we managed to order five dishes by pointing to pictures in a literal photo album of the various offerings at the restaurant, dishes that still contained surprises since tofu and chicken look surprisingly alike and temperature levels do not translate well through photography. All the dishes we ordered were delicious, however, and were not unlike the more authentic Chinese food I’ve tasted in the states. This wasn’t any Panda Bowl, China Buffet, or Happy Garden. And the noodles! Oh what noodles! We ordered a soup with beef and lo-mein like noodles of unfathomable length, and I would just stick my fork right into the midst of it and start twirling until I had a veritable skein of noodle yarn in my hand and then like the pagan kings of old I would rip into it and feel the tender noodles break off around my hand until there was a little noodle graveyard right in front of me on the table.

I committed another critical error, however. In my noodle haste, I forgot how much I like to be able to taste the food I eat, so I decided it would be a good idea to shove a torch of noodles at near-boiling temperature into my mouth. Instantly I felt the outer layer of my oral cavity wither and die. It was worth it, though, worth the pain of that moment and every other mouthful. I don’t regret anything and I hope to be back to try that other restaurant and see how it compares to its cousin. We also paid only 15 pounds each for the meal…that’s less than 3 dollars and less than 24 Moroccan dirhams.

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Jul 20 2011
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Best blog posts, Humorous, Lists, Three minute read

34 ways to express cowardice when confronted with a difficult test

The end of the summer portion of the CASA program is near and we are currently in what might be called finals week. Normally, final tests have some relation to the material presented throughout the course of study, measuring the cumulative progress of the pupil. In the case of the tests of Professor Harb, however, the test has no purpose aside from inspiring fear and hopelessness among her students. Let the incontinent student beware:  you might need a fresh pair of pants after glancing through the exercises on the test and realizing no amount of studying would have saved you from the ensuing humiliation.

In other words, Professor Harb’s test was difficult. After finishing the 2 hr and 15 minute long affair, I rose from my seat and limped to her desk to turn in the test, my left foot having fallen asleep while my brain was being crushed by the Arabic language. Cackling at my pain, she says, “What, you can’t even walk?” I whimper, “The test was hard….” She gets up from her chair, walks around the side of the desk, slaps me across the face, and says, “Shame on you. The test was not hard.” I made up that last portion, but she might as well have slapped me. With the one exception of the entrance exam for CASA itself, this was the hardest Arabic test that I have faced in my life, but it is over now and there is nothing left to do in Prof. Harb’s class except for doodle and drool during the 2 hours I have with her tomorrow.

But in all honesty, Prof. Harb is great and she’s probably one of the best professors in the program and I’m happy to be in her class because I learn things and she loves teaching. She considers us her children and I consider her a non-hostile life form, so it’s not like I’m unhappy in the class. But the test was hard, so here are possible routes of action I thought for the future (read: fall) when faced with a similarly difficult test.

1. Stealthily climb out the window and down the side of the building.

2. Jump out the window and end it all.

3. Jump out the window and onto the pergola 20 meters from the side of the building. Climb down the pergola to safety.

4. Hide behind a curtain.

5. Hide under your desk.

6. Hide under someone else’s desk.

7. Hide under professor’s desk.

8. Go to the bathroom for the entire class period.

9. Hide behind the projection screen and hope she doesn’t see your feet.

10. Camouflage yourself by putting the wastebasket on your head.

11. Plead insanity.

12. Plead stupidity.

13. Sit for a while and try to take the test, then pretend to realize you’re from a different class and don’t belong amongst the test takers.

14. Pretend you’re someone else and only look like the student who was supposed to take the test.

15. Kill the professor.

16. Kill the other students, then the professor.

17. Kill yourself, then the other students, then the professor.

18. Close your eyes and hope it all goes away.

19. Close your eyes, lift your hands towards heaven, and offer the test as a sacrifice to God, pleading for Him to consume it with an all consuming fire.

20. Set the test on fire yourself, claim your classmate did it, then run out of the room screaming.

21. Make a paper airplane out of the test and then set it on fire.

22. Eat the test instead of taking it, claiming to have misunderstood the exercise.

23. Return the test to the teacher with a spit mark on it saying you found it insultingly simple.

24. Report the test as an incident of abuse.

25. Report the test as an act of terrorism that inspired fear in the heart of an American.

26. Use the test as a diary to talk about your feelings and hope that’s good enough.

27. Explain that you never actually learned how to read.

28. Hide the test and say you lost it. Repeat as needed.

29. Sprinkle soil and grass seeds on the test, moisten with water, plant in the earth and watch it grow the answers. Harvest answers and turn in the test.

30. Vomit on the test. Repeat as needed.

31. Say you appreciate the offer but you really couldn’t take a test today. Make sure you’re sincere.

32. Claim a religious reason: Arabic tests are considered an abomination on the 20th of every month according to Leviticus.

33. Try bargaining with the test; talk it down from its level of difficulty.

34. Stir up philosophical questioning amongst the students, aiming for a mass walkout: “What’s the point of all this anyways? In a few billion years when the sun blows up and the earth becomes a potato chip, who will care how we did on a stupid Arabic test?

35. Take an aspirin and then take the test. Obtain a tissue for the ensuing nosebleed. Schedule an MRI to make sure everything is still okay up there afterwards.

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Jul 15 2011
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Best blog posts, Humorous, Open Letters, Three minute read

Open letter to the pile of mush I ate today

The innards looked kind of like this but redder. It did taste good.

Dear substance I consumed,

The path leading to you, a “shekshooka” sandwich, was filled with guilt, yellow-bellied behavior, and poor decision making in general. Though the time we had together was short, I would like to thank you for showing me the depths to which my dignity can plummet through the mere act of food consumption, depths I never knew existed. I am now more acutely aware of the pathetic human condition.

My thinking capacity weakened by the mid-day heat, I wander in a daze most closely related to that of tranquilized animals before they are slaughtered. Friend suggests getting something to eat, and I agree with the docility of a lamb, embarking on a journey soon to end with me shoveling goop into my mouth out of a plastic bag.

At the inevitable sandwich place, I crave something on the “lighter side” of Egyptian street fare. I have forgotten this is a side that does not exist. Regardless of other contents, the main ingredient by weight of every dish is oil and/or mayonnaise. In my woefully doomed attempt to avoid eating mostly oil, soybean or otherwise, I order you, a shekshooka sandwich, which I imagine to be a spiced omelet shoved into bread. “What could be healthier or lighter than an omelet?” I asked myself as blissfully uninformed as someone wondering why her mother is making such strange snuffling and grubbing sounds outside the tent. I soon find out the actual shekshooka is remarkably unlike an omelet.

Things go sour from the start, as my order is promptly lost and I have to wait a solid ten minutes (as opposed to the usual one minute) to begin what would ultimately be one of the most dehumanizing activities I’ve ever engaged in. Wasted by heat and restaurant crowd exhaustion, I am no longer hungry and desire only to consume you and finish with this business once and for all. Finally, I see you being prepared: a cup of oil and a few eggs thrown into a pan, a fork mashing it all together with disdain.  Mr. Man scrapes your pulpy substance out onto a plate before slopping you into a round of Egyptian bread that is then thrown into a small plastic bag. Here you take your final form and instantly begin to deteriorate, the thin exoskeleton of bread doing nothing to prevent the hot egg mixture from infiltrating its every pore and beginning to escape. As I cup the plastic sandwich casing, I feel your liquid innards struggling to break free. My heart fills with dread. There will be consequences but no looking back.

With both hands I lift you, dear sandwich, to my jaws and begin to devour you, the sensation closely related to what a bear must feel when it digs into the intestines of a freshly slain deer. The preliminary bites are mostly bread, but I then reach the heart of the mess, my hands supporting you in your plastic cocoon that prevents your complete disintegration. Were I to pump you in my fist a few times, you would instantly become the consistency of baby food. Knowing this, I proceed with caution, as I hope to retain some form of dignity when I polish off your last morsels. I have hopes of removing you from the plastic bag while savoring the final bites…

Alas it is not to be. Though your flavor itself is delicious, I only continue the grotesque task of eating you through sheer determination. As I near your end, there is no longer any distinction between the outer bread and your greasy innards.  You have become a homogeneous mush filling up the right corner of my sandwich bag, its tip a pocket of red oil for contrast that reminds me of my pre-sandwich naivety.  The sight turns my stomach, to be frank.

Unwilling to concede defeat, and despite being disgusted at what I have become in the heat of competition, I proceed to consume you in your entirety. You, since you are a sandwich, cannot appreciate how shameful it is to eat mush out of a bag. Indeed, it is impossible eat in such a manner and retain the same level of self-respect, knowing full well I am one step away from eating out of feed bag strapped to my face. As I use my fingers to invert the corner of the bag and thrust your last remaining particles-a veritable oil slick- into my gaping mouth, I swear to myself I will never stoop this low again.

A new day dawns tomorrow, one in which I will eat with a fork, or a spoon, or even with my hands, but never again will I feed as a common pack animal or wild beast. The obvious exception is if I am, in fact, tucking into an animal I have just chased down and slaughtered. So thank you, shekshooka sandwich, for inspiring me onto new heights after showing me the very nadir of human existence.

Eternally yours,

Emily

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