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.

Think Unhappy Thoughts

A small boy in Canada looks at a picture, strokes a locket, prays, and fifteen thousand miles away a woman in Ashfork, Arizona tests negative for Cancer four days before starting chemo. A monastery of forty Mongolian monks meditates for forty days and the global level of depression lifts, just a fraction… but does it work in the negative. No doubt there are enough bad thoughts out there to cover the entire surface of the Earth in a fine layer of radioactive dust. The question is, can we concentrate it? Can we sweep that dust into a pile big enough to bury someone in.

Do not worry. I am not asking you all to wish someone dead. I am not that sort. I would not even request pain for another. No, something highly frustrating, inconveniencing, and costing $2,250 (12,000 LE) ought to do. His name is Tarek Amin Galel Adin, and that is how much money he stole.

You will probably need a few details to help channel your negative energy, so here goes. He is a stocky, Egyptian man, forty-five to fifty years old, who can make an outfit of belly-inflated, dirty T-shirt and gray slacks look like horns and a red cape. He has a large face, broad smile and expressive eyes well versed in ‘patronizing,’ ‘sarcastic,’ ‘reassuring,’ ‘conveniently confused,’ and ‘oh-so-sincere.’ His general appearance comes off as dusty gray-brown, but perhaps that is just the lighting of the old-fashioned furnished living room in my mind where he sits eternally smoking out of one mouth, and eating all my Toblerone with another, while the third spins lies and cotton candy promise that distort and dissolve in your determined grip. No doubt he would be a pedophile if his brand new yacht and twenty-year-younger, pink-veiled wife did not satisfy him.

He is our old landlord, and he has admitted to stealing our money, and suggested we try filing a police report against him. However, I do not want to rely solely on such a faith-based form of enforcement. I need something more certain than the Egyptian police. This is why I am enlisting your help in some negative energy projection.

Picture Tarek’s BMW’s front axel cracking in half while he is driving between Cairo and his villa on the North Coast. Focus in on that axel. It is greasy and has collected much dust and sand. It does not so much snap as tear, and in slow motion a deep black gorge grows, separating the lighter, sandy exterior. You can see the layers and patterns in the metal and then it goes blurry with vibration as it breaks clean through. As the front wheals bend outward the car crashes down onto its belly and goes into a long uncontrolled slide which rips hoses, breaks tubes, kinks shafts, and shears bolts. The car finally comes to a stop, but another minute goes by before he stops screaming. It is a hot Friday afternoon and there are few other cars on the road. He slides open his LG and gets half way through dialing a number when the lithium-ion battery dies.

Now repeat that thought.

Merry Christmas

The whether has finally cooled down, and it is brilliant, crisp. I have not woken up sweating in almost a week. As I sit in my room my shirt is off out of habit, and yet I find I am shivering slightly and nestling my chin into my left shoulder for the feeling of warmth and raspy new shavenness. There is a slight breeze penetrating the windows and a phantom woody smell of burning that Sam claims is merely the return of my tumor hangs in the air.

My sleep has been odd and off the last couple nights, and my thinking is crackly and disconnected, when it is there at all. I have two exams next week and a couple papers looming, and yet, or perhaps as a result of this, I can taste a metallic, chilly, saliva inspiring feeling of exuberance and optimistic inevitability, like the feeling I get under my tongue before tasting my fathers fresh salsa. It pervades the periphery of the profound emptiness which blossomed out of returning from school after a long three day week and half sleeping from 8:00 PM to 11:45 PM and then waking to find the house empty of everything including my sense of time and space.

It is the combination of these elements—the cold, the burning, the crackly, the anxiety, the optimism, the emptiness—that has given me the profound feeling that it must be Christmas Eve.

I miss and love you all.  Eat, Drink, Breathe and Pray, and I will see many of you a couple months after tomorrow.

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.”

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

Yoga Times

SATURDAY, CAIRO – I have an interesting and unique perspective on the story of tons of rock which fell on an informal community on the outskirts of Cairo that hit the new recently.  This is not because I live near ground zero, but because I co-facilitate an underground yoga studio out of my apartment.

This morning I awoke early to take a shower before Jessica and her gaggle of yoga instructors would arrive for their first meeting and practice session. Just as I was rinsing out the last of the shampoo I heard voices coming up the stairs. I threw Gillian’s lime green towel around me and ran through the studio into my room where a pair of dirty jeans awaited me. Still drying my hair and trying to figure out if I had slept in my contacts, I saw the women in and made sure they were comfortable. While they chatted about class sizes, times and the underlying ethics of various payment schemes, I hid in the dinning room with my last hundred pages of American God’s and eavesdropped.

About forty-five minutes had gone by, and things had quieted down to a point where I was starting to wonder if the woman had reached their quota of downward dogs and cosmic salutations and slipped out, when the phone rang. Eden, whose husband taught my first Philosophy class at the American University and whose family I have grown close to, crackled across the line that Michael needed to reach Wendy, but her phone was off. It was an emergency! I was not enough awake to wonder whether this should make sense to me. Instead I bumbled as silently as possible into the studio and said in my loudest whisper, “Windy, Michael needs you. I guess it’s an emergency.” One of the woman laying, eyes closed on the floor raised her head and looked at me as if to say, “is there more?” I reached out my mobile to her, and then realized that Michael was not actually on the phone, and I did not have his number, and did not even know who Michael was.

Now if you have already read the New York Times piece titled “Rescue Slow as Part of Cliff Flattens Cairo Distract” than you have an advantage on Cole Of This Morning. Although I had met Michael Slackman previously at a dinner party at Eden’s house, and although it had been illustrated, nay frescoed to me that he was the ranking Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, and although there has even been talk of an internship or the like, it did not strike me that it was this Michael who needed to get to an emergency and that it was his wife who was in my studio living room, laying on a yoga mat, eyes closed listening to the lilting melodies of distilled good karma. Wendy gathered her things and rushed out the door. That was all I knew.

After the session ended Jessica informed me as she was leaving that gigantic rocks had crushed part of the city killing over a hundred people and wounding many others. This is what had interrupted the yoga session. She joked that it would be nice having our own back door into the New York Times. Only then did I fully absorb the connection between the dark-haired woman in the studio, the calm almost timid middle aged man at a dinner a half year before and the Middle East correspondent for the New York Times.

This should have made the catastrophe feel more real and immediate, but without any explanation or details it was all too apocalyptic and absurd sounding to hit me at any emotional level. However, when I sat down an hour ago to peruse the article online and reached the words of a 36 year-old elevator technician named Muhammed Abdel Wahid—”There are the rich, they eat and drink; there are the poor, and they die.”—I saw the faces of all the elevator maintenance men who, living at the top of the building at my old apartment, I had become very familiar with and often, grudgingly, made tea for while they fiddled and tinkered outside our door, and I pictured the informal communities that I have often explored, and the packs of dusty puppies waddling around the dirt roads, and the little girls with big, round, curious eyes and rich brown curls, and smudged faces and pursed lips peaking out from the door of a scrap built shack or the gate of a renovated burial house sucking their thumb or clutching a scavenged toy, and I had to struggle to keep myself from crying.

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.

A Story That Was Not

A young man stands motionless outside the bar, staring through the well polished glass front designed to show to the world exactly how much more fun it could be having if it did but push through that two way swinging door.  He pulls down hard on the front of his gray-green fedora further obscuring his mundane features and rubs his arms against the 2:00 AM chill.  A white, three-fourths-sleeve thermal clings to his torso, and even in the dim streetlamp light his nipples can be seen through the thin fabric.  A few ill-behaved chest hairs poke embarrassingly through, and while normally he would tug the shirt forward dislodging them, at present his attention is focused steadily deep inside the plate-glass windows, past the animated manikins of glamour and eligibility, through the throngs of flirtation to an unseen, unoccupied, round table with seating for two. 

There is no such unoccupied, round table at the back of the bar and if there were it would not go unoccupied for long, but still he sees it.  And as he watches the small round table a contemplative, young, fedora-ed man in a clinging white shirt pushes through the dark and blurry crowd and sits in the closer chair his back to the muted giggles and conversation that hangs in the room.  A soft blue light illuminates him melodramatically like the contrived moment of anticipation just before the lead actor launches into a sad but inspiring soliloquy, as the first notes of the pit band spill into the audience.  He sits stoically nursing his gin and tonic, or some such scripted drink. 

Before long, another character materializes out of the shadows.  She flows in from behind him brushing his arm, but he does not turn.  He does not need to.  Her dark wavy hair gives off the smell of lilac and basement mold.  She sits in the seat that had always been reserved for her.  She does not look at the contemplative, young, fedora-ed man who now shares his soft blue sheen, but instead stares impassively at the crowd behind.  In contrast, the young man stares directly at her, scrutinizing her eyebrows, scouring her skin, scanning her eyes for even a flicker in his direction.  It is not that she is ignoring him—she is deftly aware of the young man through a sense of acknowledged although never realized history—it is simply that eye contact is at once unnecessary and beneath her.  I minute goes by before she speaks.  Her Lebanese accent is rich and exotic.  She says what he knew she would say, and still he laughs in earnest.  Although her exterior is soft and graceful when she opens her lips her sharpness shows.  It is not that she is piercing or biting.  There is nothing aggressive in her attitude; it has simply been worked to a fine edge.  Be careful, if you get to close the slightest bumble or most momentary trip could result in a severed limb.  The young man is aware of his unworthiness, but navigates the woman keenly, and she is grateful that for once it is not her responsibility alone to keep another from injury.  She can relax.  She can breathe. 

They talk, and laugh.  Sometimes she fakes it, and he does not care.  Sometimes he stares and she does not care.  Both are flattered.  The closer forward he leans, the further down the fedora is pulled until finally shadow covers all but his slightly cracked lips and unshaven jaw.  Both know where this conversation leads, and before half an hour has passed they are pushing through the crowd, his hand on the small of her back guiding her.  He tells himself he is guiding her.  As they pass through the glass door they see a young man across the street, leaning against a lamp post.  This young man wears a clinging white shirt and a fedora pulled so far down that the top has begun to crinkle out of shape.  As they pass by they smile, but the young man just stands there not moving a muscle.  

The pair reaches the intersection and turns right heading into the shadow and daze of a long street of neon and glint.  The young man leaning against the lamppost watches the young man with the flowing, dark Lebanese woman by his side.  There is no jealousy in his gaze, at least none worth noting.  The young man walking away down the street is not him, and the young woman in the young man’s arms is not a part of his life.   He has no desire to be walking down the neon and glint street, a dream in his arms, at least no desire worth noting.

The young man looks one last time through the well polished glass, nods almost imperceptibly as if in agreement with some line of thought he has been following, and walks to the intersection.  He glances right and turns left striding resolutely into the ever growing blue glow of the night. Hamra is a forty-five minute walk away.  He can make it by 3:30.  He will sleep, and tomorrow he will go to church.

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.