Oct 29 2011
3 Comments
Fiction, Stories, Three minute read

Jasmine Yearns

In the movie Aladdin, Disney’s fantasy powerhouse translates a One Thousand and One Night’s story likely filled with licentious characters, murder, and the utter evil of mankind into a tale involving a blue genie, a sorcerer serpent, and characters wearing egregiously fluffy pants that find true love in less than 24 hours. Most people have agreed that the depiction of the Near and Farther East is spot-on and lacks nothing except for more harems scene and a speedier love and marriage process.

I bring this movie up because recently, feeling a little more adventurous than usual, friends and I decided to watch Aladdin after a successful soup making endeavor. While watching it, I couldn’t help but notice the incredible parallels between the world of the American University of Cairo and the poorer neighborhoods of this dusty city: Jasmine’s palace and Aladdin’s shabby home smacked of the walls of AUC’s Tahrir campus and the winding markets of Islamic Cairo.

I decided to flesh out this idea and undertake a partial retelling of the story (aided in party by friends’ input), in order to place it  in a more realistic setting and deflate it completely of any magic it may have once had.

Without further ado:

Once upon a time, in a city of 20 million people called Cairo, there lived a lonely Egyptian girl named Jasmine. Daughter of a natural gas CEO, Jasmine is quite wealthy and studies Literature at AUC’s new campus. The one time she saw Tahrir Square was on television, also the only place she has seen any kind of market selling food. She dresses in the latest styles of skinny jeans and exclusively wears heels that are taller than 5 inches and made out of some kind of animal.

She owns a tiny dog that she dresses in clothing like a human. Though the dog is yappy, incapable of being potty trained, and disliked by the family, her father lets her keep Dot because it was a gift to Jasmine after her mother’s death. Also he’s never disciplined his daughter or denied her anything so it would be awkward to begin now after 20 years of blind pacification.

Yet he tires of her maintenance and really wants her and Dot to get out. The best way to do this, of course, is to marry her off to the next CEO’s son she meets at the McDonald’s on campus. Unfortunately, she has proven an unwilling participant in this marriage endeavor, having watched Titanic too many times. Now, like Jack and Rose, she wants raw, uneducated love from an unpretentious commoner, a regular shab (young man) from Shubra (poorer area of Cairo).

She’s even tried to sneak off with the car and leave the suburbs in attempts to meet the common folk of her city. For her own protection, her father has prohibited her from leaving the confines of their gated community or the gates of the university. Yet she grows restless, yearning for the authenticity she cannot find amongst the waxed eyebrows and chests of AUC. One day, she takes matters into her own hands, bribes the necessary people, and gets her hands on the car keys. Little does she know how much her life is about to change.

to be continued……

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Oct 26 2011
4 Comments
One minute read

At Least We Have the Cappuccini

They don’t do the hearts, but they’re still tasty.

Each week in our Arabic classes, we take on a different theme pertaining to Egyptian society or culture. Unfortunately, the discussions branching from these themes are often depressing.

In a country that has a 20-25% unemployment rate, a weak economy still recovering from the revolution, strained gender relations, rampant urbanization with insufficient accommodation capabilities , deteriorating environmental conditions, an exploding population set to double by 2025, an increasingly tense religious atmosphere, rapidly disappearing natural resources including water, border skirmishes with Israel, a broken political system and growing disillusionment with the political process, skyrocketing food prices,  a 20% poverty rate and 40% adult illiteracy rate, and an egregious gap between the rich and the poor (not as egregious as the one in the United States), sometimes it’s hard to find something pleasant to talk about.

On that note, I’d like to discuss the cappuccino situation at the American University of Cairo: Tahrir Campus. It is fantastic. For only 8 EGP (about $1.20), you can get a delicious espresso drink that is easily just as good as the ones found at nearby Cilantro, Beanos, and Costa Coffee, all of which will set you back at least 15 EGP.

Though the cappuccino I bought yesterday was not as good as the one I purchased on Monday, I have high hopes for the drink I might be purchasing today. And this hope will persevere. I have tasted the foamy, cinnamon sprinkled froth of AUC Tahrir’s espresso machine and I will never forget the sensation of perfect harmony that seeped through my veins upon contact with the exotic elixir.

Nay, though our theme next week be prison literature, or the one after that infanticide, still will the hope churn in my belly for the sweet 45 minute break I have at 10 o’clock, during which I might escape, if just for a moment, from the ever oppressive reality and bury myself in the delightful embrace of the one thing that has never let me down: spending money on coffee in order to lift my spirits.

Some might say I’m ignoring the bigger picture here, and that the fact I can afford to spend 8 EGP on coffee at the most prestigious university in the country without batting an eyelash is an indication of a wider, more troubling social phenomenon. To them I say, “Want a sip?”

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Oct 25 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Stories, Two minute read

The Coffee Grinder Saga, Part 2

(This story is continued from yesterday….when I left you I was debating whether or not to plug in someone else’s coffee grinder of unknown current needs into a 220V outlet, a decision that may or may not lead to disaster)

After hesitating briefly, I decided I didn’t need anyone’s help and boldly plugged the coffee grinder into the 220V outlet and flipped the switch. Pop!…..(silence). These are the sounds that came from the machine; they were not the sounds of coffee beans changing into a powdered state.

And just like that, with a friendly popping sound, my life had changed. It seemed the universe was laughing at me.  Why hadn’t there been an earthquake to indicate the scale of the fiasco? Lightening bolts and pigs flying? A flood and a plague of locusts? The catastrophe didn’t seem real. I imagined that if I ran away, the whole problem would disappear as fast as it had surged into existence.

But I didn’t, and the appliance didn’t magically start working when I tried turning it on and off and putting it into the other outlet. It was, as they say, “fried.”  Then I  thought, “It’s just a coffee grinder…how expensive could it be to get a new one?” Even as I thought this, I knew in my heart of hearts that it could be very expensive. I had felt how heavy that machine was. I had seen KitchenAid Pro-Line written on its stainless steel side. This appliance had not been meant for the grubby hands of semi-dedicated Arabic students. How had I dared touch the cooking tools of my superiors?

$250 dollars from KitchenAid.com. That was how much this machine cost. 250 smackaroos, big ones, green backs, etc. That’s approximately 1500 Egyptian Pounds, or half of my monthly stipend, or 375 pounds of falafel sandwiches. My heart sank thinking about all those truckloads of sandwich.

If I could just go back and infuse myself with a desire to go to bed early, or afflict myself with a horrible illness, or make me love learning about voltages and currents, then we wouldn’t be in this situation. And yet, here we are. Here I am. And I will foot this bill like the semi-dedicated Arabic student that I am. Hopefully it can be repaired, but if not, I will cross desert and sea in order to bring back another one. And after that, even though I shouldn’t, I will feel entitled to use it whenever I want to go over even more frequently to the apartment filled with expensive things that break all too easily. Someone else, of course, will plug them in.

My Arabic teacher always thanks us for making mistakes so we can learn from them, so here are some takeaways from this experience so far:

1. Voltages matter.

2. There are some things no amount of education can cure.

3. Expensive things break as easily as cheap things.

4. Running away is always an option.

5. The value of money is relative.

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Oct 23 2011
5 Comments
Anecdotes, Best blog posts, Stories, Three minute read

The Coffee Grinder Saga, Part 1

possible bane of my existence

Have you ever done something you regretted so much that you would give anything to undo it? Have you ever wanted nothing more than a time machine in order to go back and roofie yourself to prevent something horrible from happening? Have you ever felt remorse welling up in the pit of your stomach, a veritable fountain of bile waiting for any excuse to spew?  Many of you will not be able to relate to the dire circumstances I have found myself in, but I will relate them nevertheless.

Last night, in a fit of delirium, I thought it would be fun to go over to the apartment my friend was apartment-sitting and take advantage of the espresso maker there by having a late night coffee. Little did I know that only 2 hours after suggesting this idea, I would rue the very moment I ever thought of the words “go,” “espresso,” and “tonight” in the same sentence.

In times past, I relished going to said apartment in order to enjoy its civilized air, an air that comes the breath of a person living off a real salary and not the peanuts of a student stipend. This apartment has nice things in it: mixing bowls with rubber on the bottom, a digital oven, a flat screen television, etc. In hind sight, these were all indicators I should never have been there in the first place.

Amongst the fineries of this apartment are an espresso machine and a coffee grinder, two appliances that go together like Cairo tap water and hair loss. In my ignorance, I thought I knew how to work both of them. Step one: plug them in. This proved very easy to do with the espresso machine. I just plugged it right into the converter box that adapts the electric current for appliances made to work elsewhere i.e. the U.S.

Having plugged in the espresso machine, all I had to do was grind up some coffee beans. There was only one knob on the KitchenAid Pro Line coffee grinder, so the actual grinding part seemed essentially fool proof. Unfortunately, the machine was dealing with no mere fool. I am a fool with a college degree and a passport, a fool of the most dangerous kind. You see, the converter box had two sockets: one labeled 110V and the other labelled 220V. The numbers appeared to be meaningless afterthoughts, more decoration than anything else, but I soon found reality to be quite different.

I went to plug the coffee grinder in. The only plug open on the box was the 220V one, and I thought, “Well, I might as well try it to see if it works.” There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First of all, why didn’t I check to see what kind of voltage the appliance itself called for? Even if I had the pathetic excuse of not knowing where to look, any dum-dum can check the bottom of a machine where these nuggets of information are usually hidden. Second of all, I had unknowingly begun playing Russian roulette with electrical outlets, one outlet leading to freshly ground coffee, and the other descending to a coffee-less pit of despair and self-loathing, a pit that can easily be avoided through the least amount of research. I didn’t even ask my friend for his opinion even though he was standing literally a foot away from me.

I went to plug in the coffee grinder and…..now that you’re burning with suspicion, this story will be continued tomorrow. It will involve international statecraft and the fall of capitalism, so stay tuned.

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Oct 22 2011
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Two minute read

Autumn: It’s a Meteorological Miracle!

The sun used to be evil. Now it’s just unfriendly.

A “season,” according to Wikipedia, is “a division of the year, marked by changes in weather, ecology, and hours of daylight” that results from “the yearly revolution of the Earth.” What Wikipedia doesn’t say is that seasons, despite occurring yearly with little variation, are miraculous. There’s a quote by someone I can’t remember that goes something like this, “The winter is cold, and the summer is hot. Every year this news hits the people of Britain like a thunderbolt.”

I’ve never heard anything more true. While growing up corn-fed in Oklahoma, I was accustomed to knowing what season we were in from the headlines on the front page of The Daily Oklahoman: “It’s Cold Outside”  for the winter or “It Sure is Hot Out There” for the summer,” and I used to mock this bizarre culture of weather fascination. Couldn’t they see it was always the same? But after traveling 1/3 of the way across the world, I have become one of the shell-shocked masses. Something has happened that I didn’t dare to believe would come to pass: the weather here is cooling down.

This change in weather is a subject of daily wonder for me. It’s as if I’ve never experienced the changing of the seasons before or undergone a full rotation on this earth. Maybe I’m undergoing a radical paradigm shift from viewing Cairo as a place that is always hot and unbearable to a place that is somewhat cool and semi-bearable.

Whatever the reason, I can’t stop talking about it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this weather is awesome. Right now it’s 75 degrees, I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt, sweatpants, a scarf, and loving life. I even have goosebumps right now, and they’re not because of extreme dehydration, heat stroke, or a food-poisoning induced fever.

If I’ve seen you within the last three weeks, odds are I’ve exclaimed something mundane like, “This weather is soooo nice!” or “This weather is soooo beautiful!” or “I love this weather!”  I may have even said all of them. And I’ve seen you more than once, I’ve probably said the same thing to you again without shame, even remembering perfectly well that we had talked exclusively about the weather the last time we spoke.

The reality is that I will continue to talk about the weather as if it were an interesting subject, even though I know it is not. But the fact I no longer want to throw myself under the nearest moving vehicle when I’m in the sun is a miracle, pure and simple. Last week, I lounged in full reach of the sun’s rays and napped. Had I tried doing that a month ago, all that would have been left of me after fifteen minutes would be a puddle of pinkish goo and a Pilot Precise V5 pen. The times are a changing and it’s wonderful! Let the news ring from every building top, balcony, minaret and steeple: AUTUMN IS HERE!  AND I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT!

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