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.

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.

Instant Karma

I stared in disbelief and the left front wheel, which stuck out at a forty-five degree angle from the car held on only by the shock absorber. Dina’s Fait stations wagon looked like a bond car which had accidentally started to fold in its wheels for submarine mode while still on dry land. The second problem was, with the damage contained to the front left side of the car and bottomed out half way into an intersection, none of the cars coming from behind us or from the right could see that we had been in an accident, and so they just assumed we were idiots and made a point of telling us so. Night had fallen an hour before, and in the street-lamp-lit Cairene half-gloom you, if you climbed up on the curb, could experience honking, yelling, light flashing cars stretching for half a kilometer in either direction. As each set of two cars would squeeze by and yell at us, Dina or I or one of her friends who showed up later during the two hour wait for a tow truck would point at the severed wheel and the angry driver would nod knowingly as if to say “you poor, poor saps.”

The actual accident had occurred almost a kilometer before the intersection. Dina and I were driving home from school after staying late at the library finding books for our upcoming papers. As we cruised down the homestretch of highway into Maadi listening to U2, I stretched out my seat built and pushed across the seat divide to lay my head on Dina’s shoulder. I said jokingly, “Don’t get into an accident now.” It was mere moments after this position became uncomfortable and I had readjusted in my seat that a scrawny Chinese kid in a new silver Mitsubishi, without looking where he was going, pulled unto the highway from a U-turn gap in the barrier. Dina didn’t even have time to scream, much less brake. I clutched the armrest as the impact hurled the driver’s side of the car into the air. For a moment we both thought the car would flip, and then it fell back down on all four wheels and we screeched to a halt.

Dina climbed out furious and confronted the kid. Around us you could hear glass popping and scraping as cars sped around the scene of the accident. The kid, whose name I do not recall, was nice, but showed not a fraction of remorse. Half a second later and Dina would have been in the emergency room, and he never even said he was sorry. Every now and then he would glance quizzically at the crumpled siding at the front of the car, half-connected, bouncing up and down and he would give a “well that’s Cairo” shrug. He said he knew a mechanic near so we started up the car which drove relatively fine until the intersection, at which point the wheel broke off.

Later I mentioned Karma and Dina responded that when she told her parents they would say she deserved it for driving alone with me.  For those of you who read my last post, you know this is not what I meant.

Mansheit Nasser

A small girl with a broken arm in a sling made from strips of white cloth picks her way between the rocks collecting crushed, empty water bottles. I think, isn’t that interesting, after all this she has the time and concern to clean up trash. Then I realize, maybe she actually needs the bottles to put water in, and I feel guilty and stupid for both thoughts.

This little girl with her makeshift sling is the second sign that something of significance has transpired here. The guards standing around awkwardly with riot garb and plastic shields to ward off the glare and contempt of those that have gathered and telling me that the area ahead is mamnuaa “forbidden” is common to any normal day’s exploration. No, this is not the sign. Were it not clear of rubbish and debris and not just slightly too straight and crisp, like a new haircut, the mountain of rock surrounded by houses could have fit naturally into any informal, Cairene community… so neither is the rock itself a clue. The first hint of catastrophe is the atmosphere.

The scent of solemnity still hangs in the air, and afterimages of what has been seen or heard or felt burns in each set of eyes, blinding, overlaying all present perception and leaving their owners in a zombie-like daze. Walking from the dirt of the last intact alley onto the crunch of the first shards of rubble had been like entering a vacuum. Suddenly all the lumbering, honking, bustling, braying sounds of the city vanished, replaced by a sobering silence of straight faces and stiff backs. The cliff had fallen crushing the world beneath it into a thin sheet of city, sound and self which only the gods could ever unpeel and re-inflate.

* * *

An hour earlier they had tried to keep us from this place, the police and the plain cloths men, back at the road block to Mansheit Nasser. They had doubted that I was really a student. They had doubted that Dina was really an Egyptian.—“Ismik eh!?” “Dina,” She replied. “Dina eh?” “Dina Yehia.” “Dina Yehia?” “Dina Yehia Mahmoud Salah el Din Mustafa Amin,” she rattled off like it was a tongue twister she was proud of having mastered. That had shut them up briefly.—They had told us it was dangerous. They had told us we were not wanted, that the people would be hostile towards us, attack us, throw rocks and slander.

When arguing proved useless we circled Dina’s aubergine Fiat station wagon out of the congested barricade, navigated around a temporary metal fence, and parked out of sight of the policemen in front of a large work vehicle. The barricaded intersection swarmed with microbuses, pedestrians and officers. Vehicles piled up and released as the officers questioned and inspected the private cars entering the area. As we walked back to the intersection we saw two city buses loaded with people zoom through the road block. We walked up the street and hailed every city bus for ten minutes, but they were all continuing along the highway. Finally, we walked up the highway to a smaller road heading into the thicket of houses and picked our way through streets and alleys until we reached the side of the cliff. From there to the rock fall was easy. As we climbed up the rocks to a small plateau a number of guards tried to stop us and turn us back, but residents standing on the plateau chastised the guards and beckoned us to continue.

* * *

Dina talks intently, sometimes almost aggressively, with a man who introduced himself as Hisham. The man is skinny and dark with a patchy beard, close cropped hair and large, sunken eyes. He wears dusty shib-shib ‘flip-flops,’ gray sweatpants, and a dark T-shirt. At the front right of his belt line is a large bulge which makes it look like his hip has popped out of its socket and reminds me of a wearable insulin regulator but which I later witness to be packs of cigarettes tucked into his pants. I listen to the conversation picking up a phrase here and a sentiment there. I stroll around the small plateau watching the small throng gathered around the rock edge which drops off to the dozers and hardhats below. I return to Dina to be informed that Hisham has elected himself our guide, and will show us some of the houses.

As we walk past a boulder the size of a Winnebago Hisham points and murmurs “Taht… nas” ‘beneath… people,’ and pointing at another “Taht… nas” and at another. He tells us that crushed in the rock fall were many of his friends, his sister and his sweetheart.

He shows us in a few houses, and then takes us to the roof of a three story building with a good view of the broken rock mountain. The roof is home to a handful of goats and pen full of chickens. As we look around trying to digest the scene around us, we are joined by a swarm of five little kids. The smallest, Nadr, has a swollen eye and a gash across his left brow. The side of his face is slightly bruised and there is some orange coloring around the injuries that I think might be disinfectant. He smiles and laughs, giggling when the girls pick him up or hold him still, but grows uncomfortable and squirms desperately if they hold him too long.

I am surprised when Hisham asks if I will take pictures. I had wanted to but thought it would be inappropriate. Hisham asks if I can get the pictures into the news papers. I say maybe the school newspaper and that I will put them on the internet. He tells me to put them everywhere. I set to work documenting my surroundings and Dina continues her conversation. At one point while I am taking pictures of a small girl named Malak who proved to be both a saint and a scoundrel and quickly came to command both Dina’s and my affections, a second man emerges onto the roof and scolds me for taking pictures of the children, but Hisham says no, there must be photos of everything.

As the sun begins to set we are invited to share iftar, the breaking of the day’s fast, with Hisham and his family. Dina and I each say that it is up to the needs of the other, but it is clear to both of us that we will stay.

While Dina prays I am given more of the tour. In each room Hisham will point at things—a hose bringing water into the kitchen, a wall that has been repeatedly patched and re-plastered, a ceiling made of cracking, buckling timber, a broken bed with dirty sheets, a balcony door hanging off its hinges—and at each spot he makes me take a picture and says something that in my head sounds like “See, and deny it.” I can not determine what he means by this or even if he is speaking English or Arabic, but I take the picture and thank him.

When the meal is ready we sit down on carpets that have been spread out in the street. A woman disappears into the house where Dina was praying and emerges with hard pillows which they insist we sit on. Some of the kids leave and when we ask about them we are told that they are Saydi, from a different part of Egypt, and that the two families do not eat together. It seems an odd segregation to uphold when they have both just shared the same tragedy. The sun sets and we are brought some water and a dark, sweet and tangy drink called tamarhindi. A tray of food is placed on a stand at the center of the carpet. The tray holds flat bread ‘eish baladi,’ two shallow bowls of macaroni with some red sauce, and two bowls with thumb-sized wedges of meet. Everyone is very happy, impressed and a little amused when I eat the meat. It is mushy and crumbly and at the same time as chewy as gum. Many pieces have a thick, stretchy, white lining on one side. I discover that the best strategy is to chew until the piece begins to break down and then take a bit of bread and swallow the bite whole. After her first piece Dina has been tactfully avoiding seconds. I am later told that the mystery meat is goat spleen.

The assembled group of about ten people all find Dina and I quite amusing. They ask if we are married or engaged or live together. We tell them no we are just friends from school. When Dina goes inside to help with dishes the men switch to grilling me on weather I smoke, or drink whisky, and they are very disappointed when I again say no.

We drink tea and then say our good byes. They ask if we will return. We say we hope to, and we mean it. Dina and I are escorted back to the highway by the kids, a small boy on my shoulders and Malak and another girl named Dunya dragging Dina by each hand. They talk about when we will come back and visit. They talk about how Dina will adopt them and they will all live together in an apartment. We leave the kids a block from the highway, and walk back to the Fiat in relative silence. I ask Dina if she is happy and after an uncertain silence she says that she is happy she made the trip. It has been six days since the rocks fell. Each day we told ourselves that we would come, and each day we pushed the thought behind a growing stack of reading assignments, schedule snafus, school woes and apartment dues. When we finally came we did not find a fallen cliff but rather a community resolutely standing upright, and a moment of glaring perspective.

We turn the car around and drive back up the highway, craning our necks as we pass the place where we snuck into Mansheit Nasser, paying it our condolences and committing it to memory. The days have passed, and the stack of readings and errands once more dominates our vision. We are like the little girl with the broken arm, or Nadr with the torn brow, struggling to absorb the situation despite its immediacy. We feel the pain, but it is fleeting and then forgotten. We smile and life goes on.

—To Malak, Nadr and the rest,

May the breath of God re-inflate your luck and your lives

And thank you to Dina Yehia for seeing the excursion to fruition

Where the Path Goes

Little, green lizards dash across the red clay ground dodging under the scrubby evergreen bushes to avoid my crunching feet as I chug and puff up the mountainside. I have no idea where I am, but I can see the tall-steepled church far down the valley Qadisha, so I know where I need to be in two hours to catch my bus. The Americans (one of which had been on my plane to Beirut) I met on the road said take a right when I got to a “Y.” So naturally, when it looked as though the road would split up ahead I veered sharp left up through some orchards, heading for a peak a half kilometer up.

It is not that I am bad at following directions, I just have trouble staying on paths. Off the path has so many more lizards, and cool rocks, and things to jump off of, over, between, through, under. Of course, if I stay on the path I will see something beautiful or interesting or spectacular, that everyone before me has seen. And, if I leave the path I may not see these things—if there was something beautiful or interesting or spectacular off the path chances are someone would have made a path to it. But how can I know for sure. How can I know what the pictures do not show, what the guide books do not describe, what the reviews do not rate.

Much of the time, when I finally reach a place that sells a ticket or has an entrance it is fascinating and has things to jump off of, or climb, and I regret wasting time taking the roundabout route, but at least I know what I am regretting. At least I know the roundabout route and know what it holds—and after all, the entrance with its ticket booth is clearly marked on the map; I can always come back.

Luxor

In 15 minutes I leave for Lebanon. I will be there for all of spring break (April 18^th to 28^th). As I will no doubt be quite busy, I can not guarantee that I will post anything this week. So, here is a different entry about spring break. It is an entry about last year’s spring break written by Adam Cox on the one year anniversary of his visit to Egypt. Enjoy!

(p.s. They did in fact end up charging us 11 LE extra for the bananas and sugar cane.)

Adam’s Entry, pt. 3 of 3

Some of you may remember two additions to this blog that I wrote a very long time ago. I ambitiously labeled the first one Part 1 of 3, thinking—although not entirely confident—that I would be able to follow through and actually write three parts. It’s not much to ask of myself, right? Oh well, about a year later here is the final installment.

I just consulted my pile of train tickets, calling cards and travel brochures, to find out that exactly one year ago—April 4^th 2007—I was arriving in Luxor, Egypt with Cole and Sam. I knew the date was close, because my birthday is in a couple of days, and it was the day after we returned to Cairo. It’s a happy coincidence because I had wanted to write about Luxor for this entry, and now it’s a sort of anniversary.

What you will read in a guidebook is something like this: Luxor is the modern day name for what was known as Thebes in ancient Egypt, which is likely a Grecian pronunciation of the Egyptian “t ipt-swt”. It is one of the most frequented tourist areas because of the abundant ruins—temples, tombs and monuments —nearby. Luxor Temple sits on the East riverbank and is central to the city today, and not far away is

the most famous temple in all of Egypt, Karnak. To cross to the west side of the river you can take the local ferry, which runs about 1 LE for foreigners. Once on the other side, many wonders await you: The Colossi of Memnon, The Valley of the Kings, Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, and the Ramesseum, among many others.

Given that it’s been a year, I don’t have all the details of our trip in my head. This is probably a good thing because now I can only focus on the really memorable parts, because I don’t remember the rest. On the other hand, it’s hard to say if any part of the trip was not memorable… Also, here is a direct link to the pictures Cole has posted, so you don’t have to scroll through pages of them to find the Luxor ones: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49095462@N00/page5/

The day that stands out was, I believe, the second day we were in Luxor. We had been trying to plan a day to the east bank of the river, and to spend an entire day visiting the sites over there. The conundrum was transportation because the most common way for people to do this was by bus (and typically our hotel had a “special deal, only for our good friends”) but we wanted to have none of that. Another possibility was bike rental, and because we fancied ourselves to be fit and ready for an adventure, we set out early in the morning to find bikes on the other side of the Nile.

Of course, it did not take long to find someone whose friend Mohammed ran the best bike shop around. On the other hand, it was no surprise that he was not around, and would we like to have some tea while we waited? We moved on, and were not surprised to find that there were many bike shops around the same area, and that all of them were ready do anything besides respect our discretion in order to get our business. We certainly didn’t have high expectations for the bikes, nevertheless it was funny to see the quizzical looks when we asked for a bike with more than one speed. As it turned out, only one of those bikes existed in the area. After cruising from store owner to store owner, leaving a trail of pleas and tea offers behind us, we decided to split up and spread our business around, diplomatically getting our bikes from those store owners that we felt a certain affinity for. My bike cost 5 LE (one dollar) to rent for the day, and Sam and Cole spent a similar amount.

The day that ensued was a delightful sight-seeing affair, including a pleasant bike-ride and an exciting hike. Given our lack of multi-speed bikes, we were happy for the mostly flat terrain. Our more or less final destination was the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. On our way there we passed the Colossi of Memnon, the Ramesseum, and some other place I don’t remember. We took a short cut through what seemed like a neglected collection of tombs, and did a bit of exploring, only to come to thick locked doors.

Using Google earth, I just calculated our ride to Hatshepsut’s temple to be about 4.5 miles. It was a beautiful day, and very hot, so having enough water was a concern, but we managed. I remember very well the large terrace-like courtyards and the rows of columns in front of hieroglyphs… but also I remember someone fainted from heatstroke and had to be carried away. With that in mind we decided to stash our bikes and hike up over the cliff to the Valley of the Kings, which seemed right next door according to the map we had. I just calculated that it was a mile walk, in sandy, rocky, improvised paths. It was great. We got a fantastic view of the temple (http://www.flickr.com/photos/49095462@N00/457076410/) and came to a top-view of the Valley of the Kings. I didn’t really know what it looked like, and was happy to see how disorganized it seemed. It’s a rocky, dead-end valley with winding paths that lead to holes in the ground, and milling tourists trying to make their way around the little maze. We cautiously slid down the hill into the back of the valley, unsure of what the guards would think when they saw little avalanches of rocks and visitors coming in from the back. They didn’t care at all, so we made our way to the ticket office, passing up the opportunity to buy an extra expensive ticket to see the tomb of Tutankhamen, because Cole and Sam had some specific tombs in mind already, I don’t remember which ones besides the tomb of Tuthmosis III. On the way out of it, I traded 5 LE for 1$ with a guard because an American had tipped him in dollars. It was the easiest transaction I made the whole time I was in Egypt. I almost felt like the guard was doing a disservice to his fellow countrymen by not arguing about the rate, or trying to get me to drink some tea.

We left the Valley of the Kings around the time that it was closing because we had left our bikes locked up in the parking lot at Hatshepshut’s and wanted to get to them before the guards did. We did, and enjoyed a cold soda at a roadside vendor (a guy with a fridge in front of his house) on the way home. That night we ate a deliciously indulgent dinner at a terraced restaurant overlooking the river.

Also memorable was our hotel, and the owner. It’s my nature to accept what I think is a good deal when I get the chance, and it’s Cole’s mentality to assume that before you’ve exhausted the options, you don’t even know what a good deal is. However, we all agreed that the first hotel we were taken to—The Everest Hotel—was a good deal at 5 LE (1$) each per night. Of course, just because the rate was good, and it was actually a decent place too, didn’t mean that any of their package tour or excursion deals would be worth it. That’s why we took the bikes.

However, in the afternoon of the last day, while we were sitting in the lobby of the hotel, I was worried that Cole’s competitiveness might be counterproductive. The owner had told us about a ride in a felucca, one of the many small one-sail boats that bring tourists up and down the Nile, and he had given us some price, which I don’t remember. Now we were planning on going that night, and Cole and the owner suddenly had a disagreement about the price. I don’t remember the details, but I remember that the owner was truly upset at one point, and Sam and I had to convince Cole to get over it and pay whatever price it was. It was probably about 5 or 6 dollars for the two hour ride. Probably Cole was unsatisfied that we were doing something so touristy and contrived (let alone paying for it) but in the end we agreed that it was a fun and relaxing, lazy thing to do.

The “captain” of our “ship” was a 15-year-old boy (probably some kind of cousin of the hotel owner) and his “first-mate” was his 8-year-old brother. They pushed off from the dock, set the course and offered us cigarettes. Soon we were meandering down the Nile, listening to a fuzzy Bob Marley cassette, watching the riverbanks slide by. A short while later, we arrived at our destination: Banana Island, still, there is doubt as to whether this is actually an island or not, we think it was just a clever peninsula. On the other hand, all of our reservations about price were obliterated when we found that the boat ride included all you can eat fresh bananas and sugarcane. Even Cole had nothing to complain about. Entirely satisfied and full of bananas, we returned to the boat and sailed home. As the sun started to descend toward the cliffs that hide the Valley of the Kings, I realized that the sunset would be spectacular, and thought of how beautiful this place was. Then, as I watched the sun sink, I saw the low cloud of smog envelope it, and obscure the gorgeous reds and purples I was anticipating. It reminded me that I was in Egypt; natural beauty covered by a thin haze of trash.

To not end on a note like that, I want to say that overall my trip to Egypt was delightful. I love being anywhere different, and in very few ways is Egypt similar to the US. So I have nothing but thanks for Cole’s and Sam’s hospitality, because it was a great time, and having a helpful and generous host in Egypt is invaluable. Cole never even asked for a tip.

A Dangerous Game

It is an interesting and slightly awkward sensation to know that you are that crazy, absurd happening that people will tell their spouse or kids about when they go home at the end of a long day. Well, for about six weeks, before I hacked off my mop of three-fourths-formed dreads, while sliding semi-gracefully in and out of honking traffic, this was my lot. Now that the mop is missing I find it a smidgen easier to skateboard inconspicuously in Cairo, although even now it creates a bit of a stir and tends to raise questions, to which I usually replay “Ok, so I have a death wish.”

I am not sure if I should be proud or disturbed that I am growing much more comfortable skateboarding in Cairo. With my knee still on the mend, I can only take out the board about once a week, and I use it almost solely for transportation. I think I would have to give serious thought to giving it up if it were not such a great way to meet people. It is far better than a baby or a puppy; of course the type—um, that is sex—of people that it attracts in Cairo is a little different.

My first real experience with the social qualities of skating occurred outside a bank I pass on my way home form school. The bank has an ATM that actually works with my card and a block long stretch of the smoothest sidewalk I have found in Cairo. As I slid up to the small set of stairs leading to the ATM, bouncing slightly along with the System of a Down beating in my head, I noticed a group of middle aged businessmen watching me. This is not uncommon, however when the three started to approach me I wondered if I was about to get chastised for skating on the bank’s busy sidewalk.

The man in front pointed at the board with sandpaper on one side and wheels on the other that he saw me holding in place with my right foot and said “Eh da?”

“Da… um… skateboard.” Even if I had known the word in Arabic it would have served me little. Most people in Egypt have never seen a skateboard before.

“Skataburd,” the men repeated to each other a few times, at once committing the word to memory and making a previously fantastical concept into a concrete object. Then all of a sudden one of the men grabbed the board, dropped it to the sidewalk and hopped on. He made it about three feet, at least his long, leather, pointy-toed feet did. His upper buddy stayed resolutely in place, went rigid with shock, donned an almost blissful expression of surprise, and then thumped to the ground. As he picked himself up and brushed dust off his navy blue suit his buddies expressed their concern by laughing uproariously and acting out his two seconds of grandeur. This did not dissolve the man’s resolve, and after fishing the board out from under the car where it had lodged itself he tried again. This time he placed one ridiculous dress shoe on the board and tried to push himself along with the other. Unfortunately, he was now too cautious to actually commit his weight to the leg on the board so instead of gliding or even rolling along, he propelled himself with an ungainly, bobbing hop that produced a pleasingly birdlike effect.

For the next twenty minutes I sat around and chatted about school, the weather, where I live, and what I thought of Egypt (four of the only topics to which I can contribute in Arabic) with whichever two men were not currently trying their hand, or I suppose feet, at skateboarding. Eventually, the level of their bruising and my need to start on homework found an equilibrium, and we said our good byes.

I have a similar ongoing relationship with some of the guys on the market street by our apartment. They generally yell and wave to me when I go past and sometimes I stop and they play with the board for a while. Most of them have given up trying to stand on it and content themselves by sitting while one of their friends pushes them at whatever car or busy intersection or group of giggling girls is closest.

One of the more interesting encounters was a time that I was actually stopped by one of the military guards at a street corner in the embassies neighborhood of Garden City (near downtown Cairo). In the USA there is a certain traditional relationship that pervades between skateboarders and the authorities. With this in mind I was immediately worried that I was about to get yelled at. Then after a moments thought, I decided that actually I felt pretty cool. Clearly this was part of my initiation into becoming an actual skateboarder. However, I quickly discovered that like the men at the bank, the guard simply wanted a turn on the odd, wield apparatus.

Now, I use my skating times more for relaxation than fun. And currently relaxation is something I need for more than social interaction. I have started to avoid some of these more encounter-full locations—the bank, the market street—or I put on some loud music and try to block out the cat calls and kids who jump out in front of me to see if I will swerve and hit a car. I have started building up the courage to skitch, grabbing the bumper of a car as it passes and letting it pull me for a block. But the cars move slow, traffic moves slow, everything is if not pedestrian friendly at least pedestrian wary, and I always leave me music just low enough that I can hear a warning hunk from behind. Honestly, just between you and me, none of this is really as cool or dangerous as it might sound—and I am not just saying that for my parents.