A Pandemic We Can Get Behind

I first heard the news from Sam. I will always remember where I was—sitting on the couches in the library reading Cracking the LSAT by The Princeton Review—when the news came. The swine flu pandemic had touched the American University in Cairo.

Over the past year the Egyptian government has done everything in its power to ward off the specter of swine flu. Much of Egypt’s pig population—owned chiefly be Egypt’s poor Coptic citizens like the zabbaleen garbage collectors—were rounded up by the government and massacred. A friend of mine recounted how he was driving through one of the poorer districts on the outskirts of Cairo, and he got stuck behind a slow moving microbus. A long line of cars had built up and people were honk and yelling their requests for the obnoxious obstruction to be removed. The microbus bumped and groaned through the dirt road and suddenly the side door popped open and slid wide. Plump little pink pigs tumbled forth into the road. My friend said that people freaked. I pictured Mercedes and BMW crashing into each other in an attempt to avoid the pig avalanche. It turns out the opposite was true. The Mercedes and the BMWs revved their engines and tried to run down the pigs. It was like the drivers feared that, unless killed, the pigs, like zombies, would attack, smashing through windshields, ripping out throats and gorging themselves on human flesh, spreading the plague. By night fall millions of mutant humans and pigs would roam the streets of Cairo competing for the few remaining food sources.

In addition to seeming incredibly overblown, many people feel the swine flu scare in Egypt is highly politico-religious. In a part of the world where the pig is seen as unclean, taboo, forbidden, and is only owned by the Christian minority, it understandable that as a Coptic citizen one would feel directly targeted by the government’s pig eradication measures.

These are the things I hear about—pigs tumbling from microbuses, outraged Christians—but it has never affected me personally till now. When I say that the swine flu pandemic has touched AUC I don’t mean that students are dying in the hallways or that the dorms have been quarantined. From what I hear there have in fact been 7 cases of swine flu at AUC, but none of the students were seriously affected. No, I am not even referring to a physical pandemic. Rather I mean the pandemic of pandemonium.

Yesterday, by order of the Egyptian government, the American University in Cairo was shut down until October 4th. Our two day Eid break, has just turned into two weeks. It is highly inconvenient, teachers and students alike are frustrated, the semester will be seriously set back, and I know I will feel wretched when the zombie invasion begins, but sitting at my computer, on a Thursday afternoon, having slept in till 1:30PM, with the LSAT exam in a week and a half, I can sincerely state, this is one pandemic I can get behind!

TAKE A NUMBER

The office is packed when I walk in. It might be any office, Egypt Air, LinkDSL, but that is unimportant. What matters is that the well swept floor and flat screen TV mounted on a central pillar do little to disguise the underlying shabbiness of the establishment. What matters is heat which drips down men’s spines, discolors a plaid or paisley arm pit, or pools in a crotch. What matters is the hunger nestled in each belly, just below the religious guilt and social pressure. What matters is that the office is packed when I walk in.

A man indicates towards a black dispenser, a bureaucratic toilet paper roll used to wipe away fecal inefficiency and foul individuality. I take a number. I am 0664. A chime calls my attention to a license-plate-sized digital display mounted on the wall behind the counter. The display says 0550.

I stare at the display. A minute goes by, and then five. A few people enter. A few people leave. A chime. 0551. One man leaves. I do some quick calculations in my head, and follow him out. As an afterthought I grab another toilet paper number as I walk through the door. I am 0664, and I am 0667. My heart swells a little at this act of rebellion. I feel more dynamic and alive, and with that I go to run errands. I come back after the shadows have shrunken and shriveled in the ascending sun and then begun to grow again. The display says 0621. I head back out for a walk to pounder why others did not simply do the same. When I return again the display says 0658, and I go inside to wait.

Twenty minutes go by, and then the chime summons me to the polished, plywood, Promised Land. I approach the counter and show the gate keeper my number, 0664, and he nods his approval. Pleasantries are exchanged. Explanations are exchanged, and finally funds are exchanged. As I head out the door I look around.

A dusty, potbellied man on my left picks his nose. He does not hide it, neither does he flaunt it or dare those around him to meet his gaze saying, “Yeah, I’m picking my nose in public. Want to fight about it?!” It is a simple act. He picks his nose. In another dimension he might have coughed or tied his shoe.

Next to the dusty, potbellied man sits a dusty old man. The dusty old man does not pick his nose. He does not cough or tie his shoe or do anything accept stare at the ground and wonder what he is doing, an old man, in this crowded office with a distant number in his pocket. He was not there when I first arrived. He was not there when I came back from running errands. It is a very distant number.

I reach into my right, front jeans pocket, down below my tattered wallet, pull out a crumpled piece of toilet paper and hand it to him. Instinctively, he reaches up and takes it. For a moment he looks confused, not quite sure what his body has done in his mind’s absence. Then, he looks annoyed, perhaps wondering why some rude American kid has just handed an old man his pocket detritus. I smile at the old man. I am myself again, and he is 0667. In this office in, this moment it is a name with more sway than any held by old aristocracy. I walk out into the street. Behind me a chime. 0666.

Cole Verses the Netherworld: A Week Without Sleep.

And now that week was gone,
That week without sleep,
That week of one night rest and working the next.
For eight days.

We walked the streets,
Sam and I,
A celebration of semi-somnambulation.
There were things we were doing,
The silent sounds of the concert behind us,
A friend’s concert where no one had recognized me,
The expat woman grabbing me
And using me as a human shield against the guard’s
Tennis balls,
The groceries in my hand,
A hazelnut pudding for me,
A peach Freeze for Sam,
But it was the walking that mattered.

The walking and the questions,
The odd queries punctuating our conversation,
“Do you think a ‘Hello Pineapple’ backpack would sell?”
“Why ‘Hello Pineapple’?”
“Because I saw a pineapple.”

When we got home we made pasta.
We had gone shopping
Because there was nothing to eat,
We had not bought pasta,
But when we got home we made pasta,
I guess that’s how these things work.

Minority Report was on TV.
It was on TV because Sam put it there
Using the USB drive
That he stuck in the Play Station controller port.
A real discovery that.
It seemed an appropriate movie.
It seemed long.

And then it turned violent,
The sleep that consumed me,
And when I tried to awake it perused me,
Reaching out of slumber and grabbing at my face,
Grabbing at my clothes, my nose,
Reaching round and pulling me down,
And then I was back in the apartment.
But not the apartment that was,
The apartment that should have been.
It was large and every door hid another room,
A room with three beds
Or a balcony of nothingness
That extended eight stories down
To the ground two stories below.
The front was modern,
White sterile walls,
IKEA kitchen ,
Sleep Comfort beds.
But as you moved to the rooms in the rear
They transformed into antique
Four posters,
Dark wood,
And slanted attic ceilings.

And LuLu was their,
With her strange men.
They kept coming and coming,
And I knew them all,
And that made them stranger.

And I could jump,
Oh God could I jump.
I could leap and bound and spring and vault,
Hop and hurdle, soar and summersault.
No furniture could match me.
No railing was too high.

And this reality was mine,
And I would have it!
Once I awoke,
And I was pressing the pillow
So hard into my eyes I could feel
My contacts scraping my corneas.

I peered in the mirror in the morning,
A couple of pin-prick scabs on my forehead
Flared red and inflamed from the friction,
Faint bruising ran round one eye
And down the center of the same cheek.

Over an hour has passed,
And I’m still not sure I’m free.

Becoming a Brothel

It is hard to tell the exact point where one switches from a life of decency to a life of transgression. One day you are asked to carry a letter for a nice man in a tux. Then it is a brown paper bag that you are asked not to open, and one day you open your eyes and find yourself staring at the bloody crumpled face of a man you never met with a tire iron in your hand and sweat beading in your eyebrows. Or maybe you start out storing and lending like anyone else. A few deals go bad, the economy dips a little, and you can’t face the investors. You keep recording real estate which is tanking at its original price till one day nothing is left in the vaults and your clients are shit-out-of-luck. Do you escape to the Caymans or wait for the government to bail you out? Where did it all begin? Can you find a point and say, this is when we knew things had changed?

For us the point probably came when a strange Egyptian man asked Reem the time of day… and then tried to kiss her. She was sitting on the landing smoking a cigarette, a normal enough activity, and when the man paused in front of her she assumed he was trying to find the flat of a friend. The strange man asked for the time, and asked for a cigarette, and then asked for her name. Reem didn’t want to be rude, and then his lips descended.

We might have considered the attempted landing kiss a localized incident had it not happened once before. On Monday a man followed Gillian up to our apartment. She assumed he lived upstairs until he stopped in front of our door. Again, he asked for the time of day. This seems to be the code. When she said she didn’t have a watch the man asked for a glass of water and started walking into our apartment. Gillian screamed at the man and slammed the door.

But how did we gain this reputation? What has given these strange Egyptian men the impression that sin and sensuality lay beyond our wooden door?

Two of the members of our flat-family are girls, Gillian and Kaya. Neither of them is particularly promiscuous, but they do have friends that are male, and they definitely do not try to be Egypt. Gillian’s boyfriend is a marine, and he has spent the night occasionally. Kaya, despite covering up with scarves and shawls, for some reason, has been mistaken for a prostitute a few times. Once when she and I were coming home from a party some officers stopped our taxi just as we were coming to the bridge that crosses the train tracks into our part of Maadi. They harassed us for a few minutes and made rude insinuations about a young white man with a darker skinned woman going home together late at night. They demanded to see our identification but as soon as they discovered that Kaya is an American they sent us on our way. We also have a part time roommate who lives in Paris but stays with us for four or five days a month. Lauren is the sister-in-law of one of my professors, and as an artist who is recording a CD in Egypt we do not question why she comes and goes at 4:00am. Occasionally when I take a break from homework to go to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning I will hear a male Egyptian voice coming from her room, but I assume she is practicing Arabic. And Reem, who stays with us when she can, does spend some time on the landing smoking, but after all, we host a yoga studio so she certainly cannot smoke in the house.

And that is probably the key point, the yoga studio. It never struck me as odd until strange men started showing up and harassing my friends. However, I suppose standing on the street in Egypt and seeing groups of mainly western woman coming and going from a certain dwelling, often with a couple guys accompanying them might look a little suspicious. Doing homework on the inside, as a youth from a liberal community in Wisconsin, the reason for these mysterious goings-on seemed very clear; yoga classes attract a largely female crowd and haven’t yet caught on with most Egyptians who generally have more important things to be worrying about then the form of their downward dog. But now I can see the other side.

It is hard to tell where to go from here. While it is nice that the community is finally getting to know us, being known as the town brothel is not quite what I had hoped for. The worst part is that now I am starting to see our apartment as a brothel. The attempted landing kiss just took place this morning and already the image has crept into the back of my mind and nestled in amongst the half-forgotten errands and movies I mean to watch sometime. I look at the beer bottles on the dining room table and think brothel. Dim light seeps out from under a bedroom door and I imagine I hear the whining of over-burdened bedsprings. I pass the living room on the way to the kitchen and my mind paints half-naked woman draped over the furniture their eyelids drooping languidly with the boredom of a long day. One smokes a cigarette, another picks bits of food from her teeth, while a third strokes her leg pondering if it is time to shave, and all of them wait. They wait for a strange man to barge into the apartment and ask for the time of day.

A Guest’s Week in Cairo

I flew from London to Egypt on a nonstop service, landing late on a February evening. As the plane sighed and began to descend, the southern coast of the Mediterranean came into view, illuminated by setting sun, glowing in the center of my porthole. A golden cloud of sand was suspended out over the wine-dark sea, which, I imagined, had originated thousands of miles to the south, having tormented the 80-odd million citizens of Egypt before enveloping the super-tanker that was resting in the sea below us. We followed the western edge of the anciently fertile delta of Alexandria, circled Cairo a few times and finally landed; I haggled a taxi, who I paid in the small bills of three different currencies, and then there I was, in Cole’s dining room.

Egypt is kind of an upside down country. The Nile flows from the southern border, where it sneaks in the back door (dropping its famously fertile silt in a giant fake lake called Nah-sir, I mean Nasser, which, the US failed to the fund in the ’50’s because we felt threatened by youthful Gamal); meanders up dawn the length of the country and dribbles out at the top, into the Mediterranean. The alluvial fan is at the top not the bottom — this leaves me confused regularly.

Furthermore, adding to my feeling of inversion, Egyptians and their drivers fail to follow the traffic laws — the only non-divine laws which are patently and unquestionably just. The term circus becomes more abundantly rich; cars wear their collection of dings proudly. When a flow of cars seeks to split and merge with other stream, a hundred blood pressures rise as vans full of bodies vie for a little space between hulking brown truck and hulking Hummer H2.

I suppose the readers of this blog deserve a sort of independent review of the American University of Cairo. I can’t review the school itself — I’ve only been a student for a few days, attending what my handlers describe as only the best classes, professed by only the finest professors — all corn-fed Americans. There is, however, the new campus — a shimmering feat of architecture and fundraising, (USAID paid for $100 million of it). I suppose I am qualified to talk about that, at least.

Besides for its circumstances, the campus is unexceptional — built with a certain cleverness on one hand (lots of shade), and a certain lack of for sight on the other (location; dozens of fountains?!?), characterized by the liberal use of ceramic tile which will cause many future Americans feel as if they have truly arrived in the Arab world, and feel compelled to give generously. The influence of artistic/propaganda movements like Constructivism and Suprematism upon the architects is also on full display when one walks between the three or four story buildings — one feels a little uncomfortable being alone, like maybe one did something wrong even when one didn’t.

The new AUC campus, its location, conception and execution have drawn sharp criticism from the students who I have met, Egyptian and otherwise. Each critic had his or her own way of pointing out the usefulness of the new campus as a symbol of all that is backwards about the administration of the school; a desert temple to their folly. I suppose I would say the same things if I were a student here — there’s nothing like seeing wasteful people doing wasteful things to stir up resentment towards them — but the campus could be much worse (its location, maybe not.)

Expatriated Americans abound, as do Europeans and Canadians. Upon several occasions I have forgotten that I was 6200 miles from home, I was so surrounded by familiar clichés, political views and prejudices. As I have discovered, Cairo is somewhat famous for its concentration of expatriates. One night, I even took in three Americans sing a cover of Wagon Wheel as their cultured audience sipped alcohol under tacky Christmas lights. Cole and I, feeling a little too at home I think, wandered outside and watched a 12-year-old Egyptian tennis prodigy return serve after serve from her hired coach as her father looked on and we talked with ourselves about being from the midwest. (Sidenote: I noticed yesterday that if you draw the shortest line over the surface of the globe from Viroqua to Cairo you can, your line passes directly over London provided you use a thick-ish marker.)

My first week in Egypt ended with a visit to the pyramids, west of Cairo, with Dina, Cole and Dina’s family’s driver. I was struck by their hugeness, although according to my companions I was too awe-filled. As one approaches on the freeway, the pyramids possess only a two-dimensional gigantism — like when the disk of the harvest moon appears on the horizon; you know, you just know, it’s not going to look that big after it wheels into the sky, it’s probably just an optical illusion — big by way of being surrounded by little things. The pyramids appear the same way, smooshed into the sky by yellow-brown pollution and sand, foregrounded by Giza and a endless warren of half-finished brick buildings. But when you finally get there, and their edges pop out to form volume and suggest mass, they only seem bigger — not elegant, not holy as the Parthenon felt, just very permanent and determined against the sky.

Whatever elegance is lost on account of the pyramids can be found in the Great Sphinx, and her tremendously expressive tail. About the size of a large midwestern barn, the sphinx is, in its own right, a moving work of the human spirit. The lighting, however, is permanently, ‘a little too much’. I got a headache looking at it for too long.

After having all of these thoughts and seeing all of these things, Cole and I were deposited back at his apartment, sunburnt pink and a bit jaded, Dina notified us that we were invited to go with her and her family to ‘their place’ on The Red Sea coast, an invitation fraught with intrigue, history and political wrangling. Tune in next time!

- SJH

Spelling Exposure

It was an awkward enough text message to beginning with. He is a good friend of mine and one of the most honest and amiable people I know. Yet, it seems like the only time we ever speak is when it is about money or business. In this case it was both. He works in the Student Services Center at the American University in Cairo, and he is sort of my boss. Last semester he got me a job as an AUC tour guide.

Being a tour guide is a good job. It doesn’t take up too much time. There is essentially no collateral work, and at a campus that is half finished it is actually a bit of a challenge. And the pay is good. I get about $18 for a one hour tour. I also think I am a good tour guide. I speak loudly. I am enthusiastic about many of the architectural and academic intricacies of my school, and when the Egyptian high school students behave like third graders I do not rip their arms off and use the bloody appendages to shackle their wandering legs. However, I do go back and forth between trying to drive kids away because I don’t want them at my school, and, if I like them, trying to drive kids away because I don’t want them to be disappointed. But this is not what made the text awkward.

It was an awkward text message partly because, self-conscious about seeming like a jerk, I did my best to make the message sound unnecessarily nonchalant, and at the end I tacked on an out of place “let’s hang out sometime here.” It was a sincere exclamation, but its chief purpose was to sandwich the actual business content of the message. The top bun of the sandwich was the cheery opening “Hey Guindy!” And that was where the real problem began.

It was a problem because “Guindy” wasn’t exactly his name. I noticed this just as I hit “send” on the key pad.

If spelled phonetically it might be “Gindy,” but I didn’t think wasn’t right. I had typed in a series of keys and then hit the button that cycles through possible combinations. The printing had long since worn off my phone—no I not one of those people; it is a used phone that I got from a friend and the buttons were already quite faded—so I did not know exactly which letters I had hit. When the phone came offered my Guindy—capitalized no less—I deferred to its authority. But as soon as I sent the message I realized this spelling made little sense.

It is hard to express the level of angst that this predicament caused me. I realized how foolish I looked for misspelling his name, but I would look obsessive compulsive if I wrote him back just to say that I realized the mistake. And come to think of it, I still wasn’t exactly clear on the correct spelling. Dina, sitting next to me and navigating in and out of Ring Road traffic, thought it was “Gendy” and laughed at me for being so concerned. So naturally, I didn’t mention that my question to her was just the tip of the iceberg. What if he actually thought, that I though, that this was how he spelled his name? Then he would be put in the awkward position of having to correct me. What if he thought I didn’t know how to pronounce his name? I reassured myself that he had heard me say it correctly on multiple occasions. Worst of all, what if he just shrugged it off with the old “Well, he’s American. He doesn’t know any better.” The questions were endless.

The simple answer was either write him and correct myself—“*Opps, I meant Gendy”—or buck up and wait until the occasion where he brought up that I had been misspelling his name… but I am something of a social coward. Give me precipice between two buildings, and I’ll jump it. Give me a country flirting with civil unrest , and I am there. But give me an introduction between a good friend and an acquaintance I have known for years, and I will urgently need to use the bathroom, leaving the two to introduce themselves. If there is no bathroom present I might go into a coughing fit, holding my left hand over my mouth and gesturing with the right from one to the other as if it say “It’s OK, go ahead without me.” This is easier than admitting that I don’t remember either of their names. Give me anything with the subject of farting, and I don’t even know where to start. I am not even comfortable with the terminology. In middle school if I had ever broken wind loudly in class I would have had to drop out of school. If I had just transferred to a new district the shame might have followed me.

Once I was at a hotel swimming pool with some friends and one of my buddies came over and squatted down on the lip of the pool. Like usual most of us had forgotten our swimming trunks, and my friend was in his boxers. He was asking about something, maybe the room key or temperature of the pool, and only a couple seconds went by before awareness swept through everyone like a wave. His testicles were showing. Squatting on the side of the pool his boxers had snuck up his thigh, and now both his balls hung like a pair of cherries out of the left leg opening, dark, hairy and shriveled looking. And all of us were bobbing around at just about ball height.

I would have died.

Instead, he burst out laughing, along with everybody else, readjusted his boxers, and dove into the pool. I have never told him that I look up to him for taking this public exposure like a champ. That would just make me feel more pathetic.

It isn’t that I am afraid of people or crowds; I get along well with both. It is just that I have a lot of paranoid phobias relating to social situations. One of these phobias is spelling. I don’t fear my spelling itself. It is quite benign, sitting at home in a box. I fear people finding out about it. In grade school I perfected the art of the “vaeiouwaeioul” one character just jumbled and ambiguous enough that to the liberal mind it could look like any vowel in the book. Often when I am hand writing a “quick spontaneous note” I will type it up first, just to make sure I don’t do something stupid. When my family finally got around to buying a computer—which had spell check—it was like being liberated from a cage of anxiety and evasion.

Names are an especially sour spot. Names need have no official spelling. The same pronunciation might be Katherine or Catherine, or someone could decide to spell it Kathorynne just to be avant-garde. There are names that are one way for boys and another for girls like Aaron and Erin. And then there are the deviations, like someone deciding to be novel and spell “Hannah” without the second “h” or Julie with a double “e.” What is that all about, and how are you supposed to know? People say things like, “Well is it German or the Russian?” Common people, my spelling is bad enough as it is; don’t burden me with geography as well. Name spellings become even more difficult when transliterated from a foreign script like Arabic.

And of course names aren’t just tricky, they are also personal. No one gets given the cold shoulder for misspelling “volcanoes,” but try throwing an “ie” into “Charlene” after 3 months of dating and you will be lucky if you still get a shoulder, cold or otherwise.

My heart goes out to grandparents.

Starring at the screen on my bulky, old, gray Nokia, I suddenly had an idea. I couldn’t apologize for misspelling his name. That would be ridiculous. And I couldn’t do nothing or he might think any number of things. But, I could make him think it had been a simple slip of the thumb. I quickly brainstormed a new issue to write him about.

I eventually composed, “oh gendy, ill also get you my schedule when i get home so you know when i am free.” Feeling satisfied with myself for alleviating my guilt I hit “send.”  The animation of a letter being thrown across the screen popped up and the “sending…” meter slowly filled.  When it gave the “Message Sent” signal I hit back, to the message, and then back again.  There in my address book, right after “Garf” and right before “Gillian Knox” it said “Gendi” with an “i.” The seeds of doubt and unease blossomed anew.

Three Friends, Two Girls, One Night, Zero

#A note to readers: The following passage mentions sex, not its occurrence, just its existence.#

I am not sure what the girls found a greater disappointment, the slowly building realization that I was, as I had plainly stated, quite assuredly not an oil worker, or the sudden and surprising affirmation that I had no intention of sleeping with them.

The night was cool, which was something I had not experienced in Lagos or Bayelsa, and the air felt clean and soft not like the burning-garbage-mixed-with-clothing-worn-four-days-too-long-and-laced-with-a-humming-mosquito-out-there-somewhere-searching-for-ripe-flesh to which I was growing accustomed. It was dark, almost 11:00, but a darkness that felt like deep space. That is to say, it was quite clearly dark, but it was a transparent dark, like water, that exists between you and your surroundings which are all quite visible. Across the large dock, down the pipe-railing-ed walkway to the shore, past the parking lot with the white Toyota Hilux were the lonely dancing lights of a white, fortress-like bar and restaurant whose only occupants were the staff and perhaps a couple unknowns using the toilet. One light, projected from the second story deck turreted with tables and chairs, spun and twirled over the parking lot in a teasing pin prick that shifted blue, red, yellow, green, blue disappearing and reappearing like a shy electron.

It was hard to say where the guys were. Well no, it was easy to say where they were. They were gone, which was exactly where they were trying to be. I had checked for Matthew in the shadows behind the big, metal, crane-like machine in the far left corning of the dock. Moments before he had been sitting in the shadows, feet up on the railing thinking perhaps of the political and academic duties that awaited him in Bayelsa, or perhaps the presence of two strange women reminded him of his own affections cast aside briefly and ineffectively at the outset of this road trip. Now he was gone and the shadows were empty except for the alluring offer of a hiding place.

Brea, whose smile and outgoing nature had brought me the news that “Some girl wants you to meet her younger sister” just as we were leaving the bar where we had only spent five minutes, was also missing in action. Matthew and Brea had been talking about girls for the last three days. My plan was to act as the puppy dog in the park, the catalyst in the relationship reaction. The boys had the opposite idea, although they both knew that I had no interest in picking up anything more than a few CDs and a book or two. However, when the droopy-eyed girl introduced herself as the owner of the bar, despite the fact that we were already piling into the van to head back to the hotel, it seemed like too good an adventure to pass up. The girl lead us through the bar and into the back room which was quiet, and well lit, and had a turned off television mounted in the corner.

“Would you like anything to drink,” she asked?

“Do you have gin and tonic?”

“Sure.” I got the impression she had no idea what it was. “I’ll grab you one.”

She left, and after a few seconds Brea slipped out after her. She returned with two “gin and tonics” and nothing for my three friends sitting at the flimsy tables around us. Brea leaned close and told me not to drink anything, so as we talked about business and school and waited for her sister, I sipped slowly at my drink, letting the fluid climb the straw till it touched my tongue and then fall back into the glass. Later Brea would tell me that he had watched her dump some powder into my drink.

The sister arrived. She was a giant compared to her sibling, and appeared to be riding a level of intoxication to match her stature. She was dressed in an unflattering, leopard print halter top, and a matching train-conductor hat. She seemed distracted and unconvinced of her need to be here, but when I brought out my camera and suggesting taking a picture of the sisters and Brea she warmed up quickly, pressing her mouth against his cheek when I took the shot. I said it was blurry and took three more. Brea winked at me conspiratorially. Matthew suggested we move to the riverside country club which we had visited the day before, so we all piled in the van. The van seated sixteen so each of us had claimed our own seat early on in the trip. I stretched out my legs on my seat, forcing the girls to sit with Matthew in front of me and Brea behind me.

Matthew’s younger brother went into hiding as soon as we reached the country club complex. Matthew told me he was scared of girls like this.

He had reason to be afraid. When the restaurant on shore began playing Nigerian hip-hop the tall busty sister immediately tried to get me to dance. There are two popular schools of thought on how you get a guy to dance, and each appeals to a different type of male. The first is to walk up to the guy, stretch out ones hand, and say, “would you like to dance.” The second method involves sticking one’s crotch in his face, gyrating it around violently and then turning and giving him a lap full of wobbling buttocks. If one is lucky one’s thong stretches like a “Y” out from one’s pants. If one is luckier still no thong can be seen, forcing the male to wonder if the reason he sees no underwear lines is because one is wearing a thong or because one is wearing no undergarments at all. Tall-and-Busty favored the latter approach.

I told her I would teach her to waltz.

Oh yes, he had reason to be afraid. When we sat back down, the smaller droopy-eyed girl decided to engage me in conversation. There are two popular schools of thought on how to impress and capture a guy’s attention through conversation. The first is to proffer cleaver insight on subjects like existentialism or slightly dorky classic movies, such as “I think the fact that Camus chose to make the murder victim in The Stranger an Arab says a lot about French society at the time.” or “In the first Indiana Jones film, don’t you think Indi, being as smart and observant as he is, would have noticed and objected to Jacques having a pet snake before getting into a tiny plane with him?” The other is to talk about how one likes to watch or film one’s boyfriend with other girls, and throw around vocabulary like “licking” “stroking” “biting” “wet” and say things like, “It is no problem at all, you know? Maybe if it get really good I even touch little bit, or join in some time.” Droopy-Eyes favored the later.

Her broken, Nigerian English made the words seem at once more vulgar and absurd. It was painfully obvious the conversation was tailored for my benefit.

I told her about Middle Eastern History and Egyptian economics, and followed it up with a lecture about the value of self respect within a relationship.

Every so often one of the girls would try to re-vulgarize the conversation, but each time I was ready with a, “and even though Egypt has bills smaller than the 25 Piaster, they always just round to the nearest 25. This is like 5 cents, which is interesting because even in the USA where the GDP per capita is ten times that of Egypt, people had a hissy fit when talk circulated about getting rid of the penny. This really says something about the different perspective of the two countries towards money. Well, and of course penny is a symbol of the American Dream and the Protestant Ethic. You know, ‘a penny saved is a penny earned,’ and the idea of getting that first shiny new penny as a boy and building it into a fortune. That sort of thing.” The girls never stood a chance.

I enjoyed playing dumb to their flirtation and the excuse to hear myself talk, but eventually even a wind bag like me looses steam. The novelty was starting to drain out of the situation, and perching on the railing was beginning to wear a grove in my butt. Droopy-Eyes’ eyes were really drooping and Tall-and-Busty was starting to sag, so I began looking around for the boys. As I got up and made towards shore I was stopped suddenly by Droopy-Eyes asking “So are you going to sleep with us tonight?” Her tone was matter-of-fact like someone asking a colleague “Will I see you at the game Tuesday?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t want to sleep with us? Maybe tomorrow?”

“I’m sorry. Maybe next time.”

The girls got up and followed me back to the van where we found Matthew’s brother and a moment later we were joined by Brea and Matthew carrying a can of Smirnoff Ice. When we got back to the bar the girls evacuated the van like it was infested with rats and yelled a quick goodbye without even turning their heads as they ran inside. They had to make up for lost time.

When we reached the hotel there was a game on TV and a dead cockroach in the corner. Matthew and I had sweet talked the cute receptionist into letting the four of us share one small room. I stripped down to my boxers and collapsed on the wall side of the bed. When I woke up around 3:00AM the lights and the TV were still on. Matthew was on the floor. Everyone was asleep but stirring uncomfortably. I went to the bathroom and urinated. My boxers were damp with sweat and I tugged them away from my skin and shook them a little hoping stupidly that they would dry. I stumbled back to the bed and Matthew said something I couldn’t make out. I hoped I had remembered to plug in my mobile, and then I was once more asleep.

To Bayelsa and Beyond

Is it a good sign or a bad one for the state of a country when a man comes and gives a prayer for your bus before it leaves the station?

When we passed the first one on the side of the road it took me a moment to realize that the pile of chicken wire, corrugated iron and garbage was in fact a car. Even then I had to squint and tilt my head to make out chassis, frame, door.

Some were overgrown with rust and grass. I wondered if the government had left them here intending them as a warning, a poetic speed limit marker that even an illiterate driver could read. However, it was the “fresh” ones that really got me thinking. I have never thought of automotive crashes in terms of ripeness of the slaughter, but these reeked of freshness. There was the unmistakable impression had you been five minutes earlier you would have heard the pop of glass and the crunch of metal. Some were still clouded in the odor of petrol and burnt rubber. Many were still ringed in crystal shards that had not yet been swept up, or blown away by the wind, or scattered by speeding tires. Others were still surrounded by stunned, although not entirely surprised, people.

I found my mind defensively rejecting the obvious reality of each wreck. I would ponder how could you ever generate enough force to crumple a car like that without someone driving, or, why would they drag cars all the way from the dump way out here to litter this highway. The reality was that of course these cars had not been dragged from anywhere and of course there had been a driver inside, probably a number of passengers as well, and now, almost assuredly, they were crumpled and in pieces just like these vehicles.

At one point we passed what might have been a small Fiat or Datsun. It looked like an accordion that had been put through a blender. There was no paint left on the reddish-brown metal, and gray-green moss or lichen had started spreading atop the rust. There was no glass remaining anywhere on the car. The sheer completeness of the wreck took my breath away. I wondered what could possibly have done this. Twenty yards further was an overturned tanker, similarly colored by rust and moss, on side of the cab was smashed in and seemed to exhale, “PWAugh!” like a boxer hit by the final, sweeping upper cut which lifts him off his feet and onto his back. There were gapping, jagged holes in the sides of the tank and I wondered if they were from sliding or an explosion. My first reaction was, “Go Fiat! Way to take out a big guy!” and then I felt guilty and a little tense.

Adeola told me that the Lagos-Badagry Express way which goes past their university is the main highway that runs to Benin, Togo, Ghana and beyond. However, on the way from Lagos to Bayelsa, I feel I have found the quickest road out of Nigeria.

Finally Nigeria

I would like to extend my deepest apologize to all my family and friends who will not be reading these words because they have lost all faith in me over the three months that have passed since Guy Fawkes Day. One thing led to another, and another thing led into exams. Christmas found me in Wisconsin, and January lost me in Nigeria, and now I have finally found myself back in Egypt. For those of you who were unaware of my trip to Nigeria or aware but barely, here is a very brief overview of my trip. In the next week, I will attempt to paint in certain details as time and memory allow.

My journey to Nigeria has roots stretching back to August of 2007 when complications in my planning led me instead to South Africa. I traveled to South Africa a second time last summer for a human rights law moot court competition. Befriending two of the Nigerian teams sprinkled water upon the dry and cracking seeds of my old plan. After nearly seeing my second attempt to make the trip to Nigeria felled by a serious of visa debacles last fall, I finally got my paper work in order a couple weeks before Christmas.

On January 9^th I took off to one of the sweatiest countries I have ever visited with a small backpack containing three extra pairs of pants, four t-shirts, three pairs of boxers, three and a half pairs of dirty socks, and one very rumpled button up shirt. This minimalist wardrobe was inspired by my new religious leader… ALITALIA. Alitalia Airlines promotes a rigid anti-materialist doctrine whose chief commandments are:

1. Thou shalt not have thy baggage.

2. Thou shalt not be able to file any sort of effective baggage claim.

3. Thou shalt be in a completely different country when thy lord finally finds thy baggage.

4. Thou shalt be unable to contact any office in any relevant country.

5. Thou shalt not receive thy baggage until thou contacts our office in a relevant country.

6. Thou shalt not be surprised when it all happens a second time.

My time in Nigeria was divided between two main areas, Lagos and the Niger Delta. In Lagos I was visiting my friends Romola and Adeola, and in the Niger Delta (specifically the state of Bayelsa) I was hosted by my friends Matthew and Ebi.

A few things were constant between both the sections of my stay. My hosts went to painful lengths to make me feel at comfortable. They forbade me from working, opening my wallet, or ever knowing the healthy and natural feeling of hunger. They protected me like a mother who fears that hypochondria might be a genetic ailment protects her child. They surrounded me with a spirit of religious zeal and faith unlike anything I have ever known.

Other than this the two halves of my trip were fairly distinct. During my time in Lagos I lived at the Lagos State University campus with Romola and her father, who is a science lecturer. I spent my time visiting law classes, getting to know the campus, meeting Romola’s friends, going on little outings, having conversations about polygamy, fidelity, homosexuality, scripture and politics, and in general getting introduced to Nigerian life and society.

When I arrived in Bayelsa I was first put up in a hotel as my hosts thought I would be uncomfortable staying at Matthew’s place. On the contrary, staying in a hotel when I was in Nigeria to visit friends felt awkward and uncomfortable, and as soon as I switched to Matthews charming little abode I felt right at home. We spent a couple days in Bayelsa and then took off in Matthews brand new student union van for a road trip around the Niger Delta.

I am aware that this has been a bland overview of one of the most amazing and crazy countries I have ever visited. I will do my best to add some color and contrast in the coming days.

Guy Fawkes Day Protest

“Kouchery! Kouchery! Kouchery!” I have never been big on chanting, but I joined in with the clapping and smiled wide at the change of slogan. “Kouchery! Kouchery!”

The gathering of people had now grown to the size of a large swimming pool. Most were sitting on the dusty stone ground, but around the periphery remained a constant crowed of standers peering in with interest or amusement, enjoying themselves enough to stay but not supportive enough to sit down. “Sit! Sit! Sit!” would become the chant every few minutes as those stalwartly sitting sought to summon those still standing. After an hour it became apparent that this was a protest about getting people to sit not a sit-in about getting people to protest.

Kat, Rebecca, Gillian and a few others had been working on this protest for a month. They had tried to talk with the President of AUC, called the newspapers, met with USAID, and finally taken to the streets… or the court yard in front of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) building. The agenda was tuition hikes, the corporatization of AUC, the mistreatment of staff, the food monopoly, the horrible food quality and price, shuttle bus service issues, the unfinished campus, the egregious student housing situation, student apathy, and the denial of these problems by our university.

The protest had been a long time in the making and it was good to see so much support. It was hard to tell how many of the students really cared about these issues and how many were just there for the sensation of it, but that was unimportant. People were here. The dream was here. When two of the petitions that predated the protest were passed around almost everybody signed.

Some of the organizers gave speeches from the center of the sitters, and then two of the teachers from the anthropology department talked. Finally, the floor was opened up to anyone with a complaint or a cry. It took about four people before one fiery character suggested storming the president’s office.

It is a dangerous business to create a monster, and then tell it to behave. The attempt to rally and unite AUC students had been surprisingly successful. The problem comes when you spend a month arranging a protest, setting an agenda and a plan, assembling a crowd, saying you speak for it, and then you find out that the agenda and plan of the crowd may not be the same as yours. Have you gotten too close? Have you made it personal? When an organizer yells “No! Stop! If you march on the president’s office you will ruin everything. All our plans will be wasted.” you have to wonder. You have to wonder if you are really a body being represented or simply a fuel being consumed, a tool being employed for its mechanical advantage. Was it your plan to put together a crowd that would grant someone else a ticket to see the authorities and push an agenda across a table, and was it your agenda that was slid across that table? Or, when you heard the chanting, saw the crowd and sat down in its ranks, was it your plan to feel involved? Was it your plan to skip class? Was it your plan to make a speech and let yourself be known? Was it your plan to demand rather then suggest change? Was it your plan to march or scream, to grab the administration by the collar and insist upon accountability, confession, and change? Did you care about legitimacy or respectability or rather destruction, explosion, severed limbs and lambasted savagery excusable later only because of the crowd? Or maybe you just saw a friend and thought you would sit and chat.

It is dangerous business to say you represent a protest.

The crowd grew. People pulled in giant umbrella awnings for shade. Factions arose and fell. At times it was chaos and at times suppressed. Once someone had spoken once or twice you could see them moving to a new sphere of importance, and suddenly they no longer had to sit amongst the rest of us. They stood in the middle or around the shade umbrellas with organizers and the others who had been initiated. They would peer around at the sitters and go back to talking. The fiery character formed a small cadre who stood and debated with each other and sometimes had to be hand-on-shoulder-ed or stern-word-in-the-ear-ed or sympathizing-but-serious-grasp-of-wrist-ed. It was hard not to view it as a microcosm of a revolution—initiated by idealogicians, fractured by interests and interpretations, and eventually degraded into chaos awaiting resolution or leadership. At one point we were ‘76 Iran unsure of our identity and ideology; were we struggling students or spoiled urban upper classes? And then we were swept into ‘82 Lebanon reduced to factions, passing briefly through ‘87 Palestine wondering what our leaders were doing in Tunisia.

By 3:30 PM the crowed had dissolved. Kat had returned from the president’s office empty handed. Parliament still stood. Some lost interest; others had to get to class. Only a core group remained to debate events and discuss the path ahead. A committee was created. A mission was determined. And people went their ways. Everyone agreed the protest was a success. AUC students had united and participated in a manner not seen in many years. But, no one was really sure what the success meant. Was it a first step? Was it just an experiment? Was it a sign of things to come? Was it a fleeting HAZZAA surrounded by an administration packing earplugs? Hopefully the next two months will tell.