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.

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.

Le Rêve, Le Cauchemar

Half-built Greek temples adorn the landscape, their capital-less pillars naked exposing the infrastructure beneath. Gates like ivy hang useless awaiting a wall to give them purpose. Everything is dust and billboard and just planted palm. “AUC 3km” reads the sign.

“Citi!” “Schneider Electric!” “The Smart Arabia Building!” The proud signs and plastic backlit letters call out from piles of organized bricks propped up precariously by scaffolding inspired by an Indiana Johns film.

We drive past a theater screen sized billboard broadcasting “Le Rêve” housing development. Behind it is desert.

To the left an awkward adolescent building stands lonely and self-conscious of its size. It is blue and white and brown and looks like someone dropped an airport on the coliseum. One imagines it must be filled with roller coasters and water slides and signs telling visitors what height they must be to ride. “FUE” it says—Future University Egypt—and we all wonder Will it one day be a university? Or is it a university now that will drag Egypt kicking and screaming into the year of the robot? And then we wonder why is it written in English?

We pull off into the sand 100 meters from the University’s south-west entrance, just off the turf of the Parking Mafias who have grown up out of the desert or emigrated from down town and who will break your mirrors or scratch your car if you do not pay them their dues.

There is parking inside the campus gates but at 3,000LE a space braving the protection racket seems a better deal. The school says you are paying for a service. Besides protection there is comfort, there is shade. When students ask “When will there be shade?” the school replies, “When the trees grow.” It is a good response and puts the ball in the other team’s quart, saying, “You can’t expect everything at once. You must be patient young student with BMW.” The problem is, even the love child of Lao Tzu and the Buddha would get antsy looking for growth on a dead tree.

They stand like a forest of toothpicks stuck in the sand. The landscaping project is run by the Desert Development Center whose head came back to check on the campus grounds at the end of the summer to discover that the gardeners had spent all summer water dead trees. When he said, “You are water dead trees.” they replied, “You told us to water them.” To be fair most of the trees aren’t dead, and no doubt, some day in the future, they will save many AUC an student the hassle of digging his or her D&G sunglasses out of the sand after they were expelled from the student’s head after raw skin made contact with boiling black leather. Yes, the trees are a much better situation then the ‘lawns.’ Sand drifts and blows around many areas of the campus optimistically represented as green on all the maps. Actually, to date I have only found one area that actually has grass. It is a little triangle to your left as you first enter the campus. It must take the work of half the grounds keeping staff and even some of the professors working overtime to keep it green, and it does nothing except preoccupy the mind of the passerby with trying to figure out the correct way to phrase a sentence that paints that little bit of grass as a metaphor for the whole new campus situation. The correct phrasing can not be found because the metaphor isn’t there; the rest of the campus is not receiving the compulsive attention of most of the staff and it is not green. What the passerby is really looking for is a general feeling of futility.

Inside the campus, bathrooms do not have water, teachers do not have offices, classrooms do not have internet, hallways do not have signs, wires dangle from holes in the walls and ceiling, and this is just in the good buildings. Everyday things get a little better, but it is a slow process.

Last week at one of the temporary dorms located in a Heliopolis Military hotel, a guard forced himself into the room of a young woman and began “to touch and kiss her while she tried to push him away.” Another girl was molested on the street in front of security guards who did nothing but look on and laugh. The girls are demanding accountability from the University. The girls are demanding recompense. The girls are demanding change.

When all these issues were brought to an AUC forum, President Arnold’s rash response was “If you don’t like it you can go home.”

“We are servile and will accept insults and humiliation rather than lose a post or make a protest.”

(From an analysis of Egyptians by Lufti al-Sayyid (1872-1963) portrayed in Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, pg. 175)

The Laughing Man

This is not a post about life or Egypt or adventure.  It contains no profound insights or descriptive eloquence.  It is simply something about which I feel I must tell my community and the world.  For a month and a half I have been trying to decide if this is worth writing about.  I have finally decided that, small and simple a subject as it is, to not mention the Laughing Man would somewhere deprive all of you of an honest and thorough peak into my life in Cairo.  Here is how simple it is.

There is a student in my Public Finance class who can not stop laughing.  On the first day of class the teacher, a comical Chilean man named Rodrigo Seda, entered room 322SS, saw Laughing Man with his preened chinstrap slouching in his seat listing to his ipod while staring cockeyed at the blackboard as he gently flexed and unflexed his biceps absentmindedly, gave a shudder and said in a warning tone, “I remember you.”  Than he turned to a girl a couple seats away and finished the comment. “He thinks everything is funny.” To which Laughing Man started laughing.

For the first few classes I thought Laughing Man was just trying to be a disruptive wise ass.  But, it turns out he really can’t control it.  Rodrigo once threatened to fail him on the spot if he didn’t stop laughing.  This worked… for 5 minutes, and then he burst out laughing again.  During one class Laughing Man had to be sent out of the room to go on a walk and cool down.  On other occasions he has been made to sit in the corner facing the wall so that he won’t see anything funny.  Naturally, he finds this situation very amusing.

Rodrigo can say something as simple as, “So, Ahmed and Fatima have a given amount of clothing and food to divide between them,” or “As we move along the PPF,” and Laughing man will be ignited.  And, as poetic justice dictates, his laugh is infectious.

Laughing man is about 5’6” and good looking, the antithesis of threatening, and yet timid students are still afraid to sit next to him.  It will be interesting to see who he manages at our first exam.

 

May Be An Angel

“Is someone sitting in this chair?” might be the first thing she asks you.

Someone was, but you say, “Nop, its all yours,” because in that moment you can’t imagine being rude to this woman. Grabbing the top of the wicker chair she will tick-tack it awkwardly closer, intimating the conversation. She seems brittle, and you would offer help but you are still trying to sort out if you are annoyed with her for interrupting your hour a day of internet.

“Oh, I’m I interrupting anything?”

“No, no, not at all.”

The original occupier of the chair across from you returns from the cafeteria with a pineapple Fayrouz. She grabs a third chair. There is an unspoken understanding that you will both be having this conversation.

Your guest talks about her self. It isn’t self-centered or conceited, more like a prolonged introduction in which she is offering up a slice of herself for you to sample. “And then when I went to Mecca,” she is saying “and when I prayed at the Kaaba my face became lighter, more beautiful. I heard God talking to me.” She says God not Allah. You wonder if it is for your sake. You may recall a friend telling you the day before of a crazy woman around campus who talked to God in a hanging plant. As you look at her, trying not to notice that one of her cheeks is larger than the other, you wonder if this is the same woman.

She tells the two of you that she has an engineering degree, but works an administrative job at AUC. She wants to study religion. However, she is afraid she will have a hard time studying after being out of school this long. More than this she is afraid she won’t have time to talk with people. This is her favorite pastime currently, to meet people and talk with them. She feels it is what God wants her to be doing. From time to time during the conversation she will grip the armrests of the chair like she thinks it might take off. She seems nervous and awkward and slightly oblivious and glances around the tiny courtyard as if expecting friends of yours to arrive at any moment and call you away. You wonder if she is a naturally timid person who has had to push herself to become this social. You wonder how many people around this place are willing to sit and talk with her. You wonder how many people make fun of her. You wonder if she knows.

Eventually you find yourself standing and saying to your companion, “We should probably be getting home.” You feel guilty for saying it, like you are backing down from a challenge. As the two of you walk away you will toss this back to the woman, “Hey, it was great talking with you. I’ll see you ‘round?” And to your surprise you mean it.

You round the corner smiling contentedly maybe even smugly. She may be an Angel.

A Place Apart

THE ABODE

[Go to Flickr link for photos. This text is only supplementary.]

It has been one month since school began. I have written my first paper and taken my first test. By my standards this means I am settled in, regardless of the articles of clothing that have still never seen the inside of my armoire, and the bags still lounging on my floor. This means it is time to do my semesterly apartment report.

It’s a nice place on the west side of Zamalek , eleven floors up, overlooking the water. We have a combined living room and dinning room with a balcony and clothes line, and a nice little kitchen with a serious lack of shelf space. There are one and a half bathrooms, neither of which has light. At first there was a working light in the hallways, but that burnt out about two weeks ago, and we have not gotten around to replacing it. The full bathroom has a little window, so during the day you have light. At night you either light a candle or wing it. There are three bedrooms. Jessica’s room is just off of the entrance way. The other two rooms are on the hallway with the burnt out light across the living room. First comes Gillian’s room, the master bedroom with the master balcony. Sam and I share the room at the back of the apartment which has a small balcony.

The apartment was consistent water, that gets really hot, and the power has only gone out once, as far as I know. We have some sort of cable or dish that gets in a few English channels and a few French channels which Sam uses. It takes about 20 minutes by taxi to get to school and is a 5LE ride, unless you get a driver with expectations. We are 7 blocks from the dorms and 9 blocks from the closest grocery store, Metro Market. There are also a few little hole-in-the-wall markets in the area and a couple fruit and vegetable stands. The biggest issue with the apartment is that we have no internet. We sent in our application at the beginning of September and it was supposed to take 7-10 days. Nothing has happened. TeData DSL still hasn’t contacted us. Hours on the phone, spent by me, seems to have brought us no closer to getting hooked up.

In total we pay 6,000LE per month. This is about 2,000LE more than we were expecting. I think we are paying for the view.

 

THE ABODERS

When I entered the apartment for the first time it seemed stale and cold and small. Over the last month however the apartment has blossomed with decorations. The best of these decorations however are not the ones tacked to the walls or hanging from the lights, it is the moving ones—no not the nice glass balcony doors in Sam and my room that don’t latch correctly and bang against the walls and keep me up all night. It is the decorations that lay down on my homework and chew the side of my text books, the decorations that drift out to the balcony to talk with me at 4:00 AM after a long day, the decorations that make me dinner when I have a too much homework to be bothered, the decorations that scold me for doing homework when we have guests over, the decorations that bang against the walls and keep me up all night.

Jezebel: A crazy white cat with a brown tail. Do not pick her up for more than 5 seconds unless you are wearing gloves. Jezebel will attempt any feat of acrobatics once, and, if it does not kill her, she will try it again.

Greatest moment in my eyes: Running all the way up the balcony curtains to pounce on a fly… that was on the ceiling.

Morrison: An odd ash cat with white trim. He is my preferred of the two and hangs out with me more. He once went missing for a day and after causing much worry was discovered under Jessica’s bed.

Greatest moment in my eyes: The first time he responded to me when I said, “Mmmrraaaaooww, mraaaaaow, mmmmmerrrrrroaw,” which is cat for, “please get off my book. I have to read that.”

Sam: A happy blond human with a love for candy. Sam forgot his razors back in Oregon and has been getting progressively scruffier as the semester progresses. I keep telling him he can us mine but he turns me down. I think it is one of those college moments. He tends to emit strange noises like, “Ooga booga!” and “grawmph!” and “eeughxgl!” He was once in a punk band called “The Worst Thing Ever,” at least that is what he always calls it. They released one album but decided to keep it a secret.

Greatest moment in my eyes: Saying, “Cole, lets go down this way. Whenever we come past here I want to go check out that tree.” It was a comment that led to the discovery of one of my favorite places in Cairo.

Cole: A dopy dark brown human with a bit of feline in him. Do not pick him up for more than 5 seconds unless you are wearing gloves. He recently discovered the joys of pristine side parts. Cole has been thinking a lot lately, trying to break cycles, and debating the net benefits of taking it easy. He has started smoking and is questioning his sexuality. If you do not know him, he would like to meet you.

Greatest moment in my eyes: Discovering that he can talk to cats, or at least Morry.

Gillian: A snarky very dark brown human with a scull in her bed. Gillian is creative artistic and spontaneous. She is almost done making a dress out of one of the junky old blankets that was stuck in a corner of the apartment. Graphic novels are her bread and radiation laced butter. She would probably date anyone first name Super last name Man. Do not give her chocolate, peanut butter or potatoes. Gillian is a self declared misanthrope and likes giving Cole a hard time. She projects a very hard exterior.

Greatest moment in my eyes: Being provoked into beating the tan out of me when I had not felt some good pain in a very long time.

Jessica: A joyous nearly-black human with stories. She is an amazing writer currently working on at least one graphic novel which is being illustrated by Gillian. Jessica is Gillian’s big sister (or younger twin depending on which mythos you follow). She arrived a couple weeks ago and will be studying Arabic next semester. It is hard to say what it is about Jessica that makes her so very special.

Greatest moment in my eyes: Telling me that she writes about me a lot, but can’t post any of it now that I know her blog address.

MIT

A few weeks ago I handed over the duty of keeping you all up to date on my activities to my good friend Adam Cox.  The last weeks of have been busy ones for Adam, but he has rallied his forces so now, once again, we are granted a day in the life of Adam in Cairo.

Adam’s submission, part 2 of 3:

As a primer for this entry I just looked back through the pictures that Cole has posted of the time while I was visiting.  I realized the ones where everyone is wearing white helmets and hanging from cables may look a little foreign, so I’ll explain those.

Early in the week after I arrived, Cole and Sam and I went on a trip that Ibrahim (second farthest from the camera in the log picture) had planned, to an MIT ropes course—yes, that’s right, Maximum Impact Training.  We left at 10:00am and our chartered van drove and drove and it turned out that Ibrahim wasn’t quite sure exactly where it was we were going, but we were getting closer.  And as Cairo was becoming distant in the background we had to turn and go back toward the city to be able to get off at the correct exit, and then we made it, at about 11:30.

After a brief orientation, where we shared our fears, expectations and names with each other, we were ready to start our experience.  Our team leaders, Carl and (for the sake of conversation let’s call her) Maggie were both friendly and enthusiastic, and were “ready to challenge us.”

Maximum Impact Training consisted of putting us in (imaginary) life or death scenarios, and seeing how we faired.  What would you do if faced with this situation?  You and six friends stand on the sandy edge of a deadly, but controlled, pool of acid and lava.  It looks like sand, but to touch it means certain, instant death.  You are the last survivors of a great civilization (we didn’t get much background on how all our other friends died, but we accepted the fact somberly).  A rope hangs above the middle of the acid/lava pool is your only means of crossing to the sandy bank on the other side.  You and your friends must evacuate your side within fifteen minutes, at which time inexplicable death awaits you; I think the entire world was going to blow up, actually.  Easy, you say?  Ah, but you are also charged with bringing the key of your civilization—yes, the small metal token that eternally sits atop the upturned end of an empty water bottle—across to the other side.  If anyone touches the token, or if it touches the deadly acid/lava, the world would undoubtedly blow up, the end of life as we know it.

But did we cringe?  Did we even look at each other and flinch?  No.  Admittedly, we were a little stunned by the gravity of the situation—I was at least—but no, we were not scared.  We were brave, resourceful, and successful.  Look around you… the world did not blow up.

That was one of a few scenarios that we coolly looked in the face and conquered.  Another involved acting like animals and organizing ourselves on a large log (the one pictured).  It was a little harder to take that one seriously.   In another we were faced with a sheer cliff face which we had to climb, keeping in mind complicated rules about how many people could stay at the top to help others up.  I believe that a horde of merciless bandits was bearing down on us, which would kill us and our families if we didn’t escape over the cliff in less time than it had taken the last group. 

In the pictures you can see the high ropes course, which, although it didn’t come with an elaborate fantasy, was still pretty fun.  It was most challenging for anyone with a fear of heights, like Perry, who gaspingly confessed her love for me while I helped her switch her harness from one cable to another. 

The long ride back to AUC was characterized by a long discussion about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the problem of veiled women being denied jobs in commercial businesses.  Both were subjects I didn’t have much to say about, but were good to learn about.

And that’s all for now…

ELECT THIS!

Egypt is a country in which legitimate elections and unicorns share a similar plane of reality. That said I suppose it is not surprising that the Student Union (SU) elections are such a big deal at AUC. I heard stories last semester about how worked up people had gotten over the elections the year before. People got harassed in the halls, campaigners paid people to vote for their candidate, rumors were spread, reputations were ruined. I got the impression that this sort of thing had a history going back about as far as the SU. I also assumed, by how much I heard people talking about these voting issues, that it was something the school was becoming more aware of and concerned about. I assumed that the school would be cracking down on this sort of activity this year, and that a peaceful, respectable, boring election would ensue.

I once had a math teacher who used to say, “Assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’” Clearly I was paying too much attention to the math and not enough to the real lesson.

Before I talk about the election itself I feel I should introduce the five candidates for SU president.

Ahmed Abou Hussein: Current Chair of development and planning (SU), best SU member 06. When asked, “Why should people vote for you?” he replied, “Because I hope they believe in me as I believe in them.”

Ahmed Seddiq: President of the Egyptology Society, Math Society, and English Literature Society. When asked, “What’s the first decision you would make as president?” he replied, “Make every student, by default, a union member, people will not be excluded on account of interviews or qualifications.”

Hisham El Hifnawy: He was once a member of the sales committee in ‘The Challenge.’ When asked, “Why are you running?” he replied, “In opposition to the SU elections and how they are run. I wans [sic] to represent people who dont [sic] vote and hate the system and get harrassed [sic] by campaigners during the elections.”

Hussein Mohamed Abou El Soud: Current SU Treasurer. When asked, “Why are you running?” he replied Through my four-year experience in the SU, I realized what the people working in the SU need and what people outside it need from the SU and what the SU can really do. My vision and plan come from me and from a group of people who support and believe in me and the vision.”

Mohamed Yussr: First Year Experience organizing committee head, charity club vice president in Hand to Hand, best SU member 05-06. When asked what his greatest quality was he said, “Patience.” When asked about his greatest flaw he replied, “Being too kind.”

Opinions about the SU generally fall into two camps. There are those who believe that the SU is complete reorganization of the phrase “buts hill.” And, there are those who believe that the SU president comes somewhere just under The Prophet and just above the President of the United States of America, and that SU members are the planets true “chosen people.” I am a bit of a nomad, but I will let you guess who’s camp I generally sleep closer to.

Elections started on Sunday (the first day of the week here). I only had one class and it was on Greek Campus and I went home right after it. As a result I completely missed the passion of Voting Day #1, which was taking place on Main Campus. As some sort of security measure the powers that be (stupid) decided to move voting to a different area on campus each day. About an hour after arriving home, Jason burst into the apartment raving about the wildness that was going on. The support groups of the three main candidates (Ahmed Hussein, Hussein El Soud, Mohamed Yussr) have group colors. If you happened to be wearing one of these colors you would probably get harassed by members of the other groups. If you weren’t wearing one of these colors you would probably… get harassed by members of every group. The path between the tennis court and the basketball court on Main Campus was a mosh pit of campaigners and non combatants. As Jason tried to walk through the area he was ambushed by our friend Sara (campaigning for Ahmed Hussein) who then passed him off to another girl who proceeded to tell him everything he needed to know about their candidate. After voting Jason was hit by a second mob of people trying to find out who he had voted for. Finally, with all his appendages and most of his sanity still attached, Jason made it out the gate and into the street, where he could breathe a sigh of relief in the calm sanctuary of down town Cairo.

The second day of voting took place on Greek campus so I caught the tail end of the excitement on my way to my last class. Unfortunately, the passion had subsided slightly, and I was only harassed by one campaigner who ran alongside me nagging, “Can I have just a minute of your time to—” I looked him straight in the area directly in front of me and, with succinct honesty, said, “No.” He paused, taken aback, and I was gone. I was slightly disappointed that he didn’t put up more of a fight. More unfortunate still, just as Sam and I were getting ready to vote, it closed down for the afternoon. That night, while doing our homework, I talked with Sam about how satisfying it would feel to punch a campaigner in the face, and start a huge brawl, or simply how cool it would be if a brawl got started.

On the third day of voting I awoke bright and early, excited to do my civic duty as an upright AUCian. I would finish class at 2:00 and go over to New Falaki to vote. I got to school, and it was a matter of minutes before I heard the news. A fight had broken out. Some campaigners had lost it. A kid had been knocked out. The election had been shut down. And I… had missed it.

Right now it is unclear what will happen with the elections. Today this letter was released:

To the AUC Community:

A decision was reached today to suspend voting for the president of the Student Union. The university made the decision following a series of complaints by students concerning aggressive behavior toward voters by supporters of the various candidates. The decision to suspend the voting was based on the recommendation of a university committee representing the faculty and students.

The university is now conducting an investigation of a series of incidents that took place on Tuesday, May 8. Voting will resume when the investigation is completed. The university is prepared to take disciplinary action against anyone who is found guilty of disrupting or interfering with another student’s right to vote.

Following the investigation and before next year’s elections, the university will also design policies and procedures for all future elections to ensure that each student is allowed to vote without interference or disruption.

If any member of the AUC community has complaints or concerns about the voting process at the university, please contact me directly.

Ashraf El Fiqi

Vice President of Student Affairs

 

 

Three Weeks Gone

A very good friend of mine is in a very bad situation and I do not know what to do. I can pray. I can keep my fingers crossed. I was just on the internet looking up a band I ran across called Local H, and phrases, lyrics, adds and titles kept jumping out and speaking to me. It was surreal, almost disturbing, like this giant network of data and dateables was peeking into my mind and poking at my thoughts. “Too young to die.” “And this girl could” “Everyone Alive.” “Hands on The Bible.” “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.” I averted my eyes, embarrassed by the superstitious notions that these lines conjured in me. I pretended to ignore them, pretended they were not there. I fear to fornicate with such signs. I may set my alarm clock to random numbers, but that is tradition. This is different. This is a hopeful reinterpretation of reality.

I am sitting on the couch listening to music which is slightly too loud for 1:00 AM. This much I can do. I am writing. This too I can do. And I can recall. The weeks since spring break have been wrenched out of my grasp one by one, before I ever really got a chance to examine them. I have not yet had the time to simply sit and think about Brenna, or anything for that matter. Since that fateful motorcycle accident more than three weeks ago I have received only occasional snippets updating me on her condition. “Brenna was in an accident. She is in a coma.” “Her condition is unstable.” “She responded to foot stimulus.” “Her mom flew to Lebanon to be with her.” “They are planning to fly her back to the states, so she must have stabilized a bit… right?” “Yesterday… Brenna… was pronounced brain dead.” “Today she lies in a hospital in Reno, Nevada fighting for her life. Pray. Brenna is an amazing person. She deserves to live.” And each time I receive one of these long awaited snippets I struggle to assimilate it to a life that has not quite come to terms with the fact that Brenna is no longer across the Nile watching The Office and playing with her kitties. A life which unconsciously assumes that at any moment Brenna might sneak up behind me and cover my eyes with her hands, and when I wriggle out of her grip, she will laugh and ask me why she has not seen me in such a long time. A life glazed in the distractions of life. In the last three weeks I have attended lectures; I got addicted to “Heroes”; I spent a night singing karaoke with the Egyptology department; I participated in the excitement, chaos and free-food-if-you’re-resourceful of International Day; I even went three days without sleep in a brash effort to finish an art project. This new personal record threw me into a surreal state intoxicated by daze and dream. For the next two nights my dreams were disorientingly vivid. I do not regret a moment of it.

Unfortunately, nowhere in these fun filled three weeks have I found a home for mediation and contemplation. I hope to find this tomorrow. Sinai Liberation Day has in turn liberated me from a day of classes. Somewhere between the hours of homework I must complete, I will find a quite corner to occupy, and sit down with my subconscious and explain to it the facts of life. This done… I will do my best to forget them.