Tag Archives: travel

Nov 30 2011
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Fiction, Serious-ish, Two minute read

The Rumor Mill

a captivating picture for a captivating topic

Here in revolutionary Egypt, rumors pile up faster than cigarette butts in a student bar district on a Friday night. For the most part, I’ve found it safe to assume that no one really knows or understands what’s going on in the political process. Those who claim they get it are either idiots, lying idiots, or just liars. Some people do know more than others, but they are few and far between.

This uncertainty leads to one of CASA students favorite daily activities: blind speculation fueled by sleep deprivation, emotion, breakfast foods, and twitter feeds. The results of this speculation can be quite surprising and often completely wrong, but this is nothing compared to the gems that fly around Cairo as a whole. Here’s an (exaggerated) sample of what happens.

The Rumor Mill

Fact: a small group of protesters has gathered in Tahrir and is calling for the end of military trials for civilians. There is a heavy police presence, but no violence. Some participants and bystanders are eating sandwiches. Meanwhile, a woman was going to get some groceries when she tripped on a curb. No one was injured.

(the actual occurrences proceed through the rumor mill)

I heard on twitter that the Egyptian government hired a squad of armed spaghetti aliens that entered Tahrir square  making a horrible “WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP” sound and drenching the men, women, and children there with low-grade spaghetti sauce. They’re trying to drown the revolution in bland tomato goop!

Someone else said that the aliens were Israeli and were sprinkling the victims with tiny parmesan stars of David—-the hand of Israel AGAIN!

Yeah! And my friend told me that her sister’s boyfriend’s friend’s cousin’s facebook status said that all foreigners in the square have somehow remained clean of spaghetti sauce, so they’re definitely part of the conspiracy. The universe is attacking the Egyptian people!

But I heard that the protesters were fighting back with stolen chopstick launchers they stole from the police force and that they had also commandeered a militarized Zamboni from the army and were running over valiant army officers, who they claim to be mercenary spaghetti aliens. The protesters are THUGS!

And state radio said that the concert going on in Tahrir square might cause an excess amount of noise for the next few days and that it might sound like “WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP.” It also said that the Egyptian government would never do anything to hurt its people. I think we should believe them!

But my friend saw a soggy scrap of paper on the ground that said there were a bunch of Salafis in the square wooping it up and calling for the imposition of Sharia law under the absolute jurisdiction of an infant that would be chosen by the most righteous man in the country as determined by a reality television show. I’m going to protest against them!

Don’t be ridiculous! It was the Muslim Brotherhood putting on their annual dodgeball tournament in order to raise money to buy all of the ground water in Egypt so that they can blackmail the government into giving it supreme power. I’m going to protest against THEM!

I thought I heard someone say they read an email that mentioned the possibility of class being cancelled, so we should probably stay up all night and not do homework. Woot Woot! No class!

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Nov 23 2011
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Anecdotes, Stories, Three minute read

On Your Mark. Get Set. Fear!

Milk: Gotta Have It for Coffee

Cairo, Egypt.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011: A million man protest is scheduled for 4 o’clock pm. During our classes and breaks we watch tv and discuss what is going on or eavesdrop to other’s conversations. Life, for the most part, continues as normal. At 1 pm, the director of our program knocks on the classroom door. This is unusual.

She pokes her head in and calmly states that there is a city-wide curfew beginning at 3 pm, that classes were ending early, and that everyone should go home after stopping by the grocery store and stocking up on ramen noodles.

Did I freak out? No. Did I leave more quickly than usual, make an urgent phone call to my roommate, and then speed walk to find a taxi after not taking time to say goodbye to my fellow students? Yes.

All I could think about was getting to the grocery store. I was almost out of coffee. And milk, we needed milk. I could probably buy a few cartons of milk, and then ration them if I needed to. Yes. I need milk. How could I drink coffee without milk? What if there’s no milk? I have to get milk.

This sick internal dialogue was accompanied by terrifying images of ravaged supermarkets, bare shelves poking out everywhere and not a drop of milk to be had for the roaming groups of latecomers who pick over the off brand mayonnaises and weird canned meats others have left behind. I simply knew we would get to the store and find there was no milk left, the shelves on which it was usually stocked completely empty, only the dust revealing that anything had ever been there. And then what would I do? In order to calm myself down, I made a contingency plan: “ I might have to drink coffee without milk and that’s fine.” But it didn’t feel fine. It felt awful.

We took a taxi home and didn’t even stop by our apartment before heading to the corner store to get the necessities. Unlike the wasted aisles in my day-terror, the store seemed quite normal. I didn’t have to elbow any portly twelve year olds to get the last roll of Choco-Biscuits, and there were no flocks of mothers screaming at each other and their children while fighting over the last bag of rice. I bought two cartons of milk  (the long-lasting kind), and refrained from buying another. I was just so relieved it was there. I began to suspect the other people didn’t know about the curfew. They weren’t going to have any milk later on if they didn’t get smart. They also might be arrested for violating curfew.

We, on the other hand, went home and unpacked our groceries and prepared for a movie marathon complete with coffee and choco-biscuits. Curious, I checked the news to see what it said about the curfew. Interestingly enough, it said nothing.

I poked around a little more, searching in English and Arabic Western and Egyptian news sources, and found zilch. And then I went to the Twitter and searched “curfew.” Bingo. I discovered a slew of tweets deriding the curfew and alternatively begging others not to spread ridiculous rumors or mocking them for doing so.

Thus we found the curfew was, in fact, not real. I was glad I’d resisted buying 3 cartons of milk because then I would have really felt foolish. The lesson? Be careful about spreading rumors, including this one.

P.S. I am not one of the American students that was arrested. I’m not writing this from jail. They were all dudes anyways.

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Nov 22 2011
1 Comment
Serious-ish, Two minute read

Egypt: The Plot Darkens

AUC bookstore, Tahrir: this place got burned a little bit

Classes today took place on AUC’s campus in Zamalek, an island in the middle of the Nile, since the Tahrir campus was busy being mildly attacked and then looted.

In the meantime, I enjoyed sitting on the couches in an environment not unlike a hotel lobby, watching the madness of Tahrir on a big screen television during breaks between classes. Only a five minute walk from that square, one of my friends has been holed up since Saturday, forced to listen to gunshots, finish his homework, and watch TV all day while catching the occasional whiff of tear gas. It’s amazing the difference a couple of miles can make.

I could talk about current situation in Tahrir, about how over 30 people have died and over 1000 have been wounded, about the resignation of the civilian government and the short-lived cheering in Tahrir that was silenced by increased gunfire from police and security forces, about the kind of tear gas being used that is both new and particularly vicious, about the hopelessness I saw in the eyes of my Arabic teacher as she said it was now clear the military has won, about the desperate calls for medical supplies and food down in the square, about the use of live ammunition against protestors throwing rocks, about the contradicting news reports and constant confusion about what’s actually happening on the ground etc. But I’m not really qualified to do so. If you’re interested, Al-Jazeera has a live blog that’s good, though sensational at times. It is not a terrorist organization like I thought it was in high school. The Guardian also has good coverage.

But I can say some things that rely little on fact: A classmate today reminded me that even though (as of then) 20 people had died in Tahrir, about that many die every day in Assad’s continuing assault on his citizens in Syria. It struck me as particularly sad that the value of lives could differ so much in their recognition across borders.

There was a song that Conan O’Brien used to sing on his show during election times and it went a little like this, “Yay boo yay boo it’s lots of fun to do! If you like it holler yay. If you don’t you holler boo.” There’s been quite a bit of yaying and booing going on about whether or not the protestors are doing right or if they’re just messing everything up by fighting for freedom. But regardless of how you feel about that issue, the reality is that people have died and others are injured. Their lives should not be considered worthless, even if you don’t agree with the cause they died for.

I, and many others, hope the violence comes to an end, but I hope it does not come at the expense of the dream of Egyptian democracy, and dignity should certainly not be a casualty as well.

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Nov 20 2011
6 Comments
Anecdotes, Two minute read

Not This Again

This McDonald’s is currently (Nov. 20) a war zone

I could blather on about my vacation in the Sinai Peninsula where I gazed for hours across the cobalt waters to the rocky mountains of Saudia Arabia, land of the free, but some stuff has been going down in Egypt that it might not hurt to mention. As such, I’ll save the blather for later.

First of all, let me state that I get most of my news from one person in our program who posts things on her facebook to the tune of one article/video/link every minute. Since she’s a self-described revolutionary socialist, much of this media leans slightly towards the left, but it’s more informative than the only website I read daily, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Other sources of news include hearsay, rumors, eavesdropping, and the occasional article I read online in order to confirm or debunk the current event foam I pick up throughout the day.

That being said, I do know that there were violent protests today in Tahrir square, far away from where I live but right next to where I go to school. Whereas the most interesting thing I did today was drink coffee with only milk instead of milk and sugar, one of my friends described to me a scene of protestors building barricades and being shot at by security forces that he saw from his roof. I said, “Oh that’s really interesting.” and went on to describe a cheese sandwich I had eaten earlier.

But seriously. Tahrir has once again been scented with blood and tear gas only 9 days away from parliamentary elections. Police forces entered the square last night to try to clear out the remnants of protestors from the million man march that was held earlier, but instead of everyone going home and straight to bed, violent clashes broke out and have continued today.

What does this mean? Well I’m not sure, but based on my limited knowledge of politics, elections, and democracy I would say that violence is not a great sign, especially not in addition to the general atmosphere of confusion and depression that has characterized the public sphere as of late.

Personally, I expect more tension and violence as we approach the election date. I don’t expect the situation to improve, and I foresee increasing disillusionment and growing apathy. I don’t mean to sound overly optimistic, but this is just my general feeling.

On the other hand, I probably won’t be going to Tahrir to protest anytime soon so I think I’ll stay pretty safe. My real wish is for a delicious Thanksgiving feast in addition to the flowering of Egyptian democracy and a peaceful brunch tomorrow.

P.S. Same source said that as of 12:51 Cairo time, things are still pretty crazy in Tahrir.

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Nov 16 2011
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Best blog posts, Humorous, Three minute read, Travelling

Get Out of My Desert

We found it first.

(My trip to the incredibly beautiful White Desert continued, with more details and complaints.)

Civilization either exiles you to the desert or it wastes your sanity until you seek the desert as a refuge. For me, the desert was the latter: an escape from the mouth breathers and the metro pushers, the exhaust sniffing and the car evasion that scents my daily Cairo existence.

In the White Desert, rolling over the dunes and scrabbly rockscapes in the Jeep, I felt like not only had I escaped from it all, but “it all” was actually fake. Cairo, along with the entire world and its issues, was only a dream that paled in comparison to the stark reality of desert life and the landscapes formed by nothing but geological upheavals over the past couple of millennia.

Occasionally I would sink into reveries and imagine myself as the first person to have ever walked on this rock, or touched this grain of sand, or fallen down on this boulder. These thoughts, however, were likely folly. We were not alone. Other “people” had somehow found out about the White Desert. Was it the fact it’s a national park? That it’s discussed in detail in the Lonely Planet guidebook? That there’s a separate guidebook for the Western Desert of Egypt that outlines the nooks and crannies of the White Desert? The real reason will probably never be known, but the fact remains that though we spent much of the time by ourselves during our desert escapade, we did come across an unfortunate amount of intruders.

In theory, these humans were normal, fine people. Yet I despised them nevertheless. First of all, upon spotting another group in the desert, the air becomes electrified with tourist tension. I resent the other with a passion approaching my love for mushy, hot cereal. The other group is a reminder that my experience is not singular, that others have seen these things and taken better pictures than me. It’s kindergarten all over again: “Kids, you need to know one thing. You’re not special. There are 7 billion people on this planet. Your main purpose in life will be to serve as a statistic for marketing purposes. Half of you will divorce.”

Second of all, eco-tourists are filthy creatures that create waste, both natural and artificial. Despite encouragement from many reputable sources, including Lonely Planet, many tourists do not even attempt to burn their toilet paper after doing their despicable duty. Friends, let me tell you this: toilet paper does not stay buried in the desert for long. Like your shameful secret of eating 3 bags of peanut butter M&Ms before bed every night, it will be blubber to the surface. There’s nothing more unpleasant than realizing what you thought was a pristine campsite is littered with the unspeakable trash of inconsiderate patrons.

So, if you must disturb my desert, please remain quite shameful about your bodily functions and do everything in your power to prevent others from knowing that you have ever done anything so embarrassing.

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