Cairo Dispatch

Nerves

2007-01-08T04:33:00.000-08:00

Samir is nervous, and a bit uncomfortable in his own skin. 26, with thinning hair and a well trimmed beard, Samir is looking to get married, but he just can't pull the trigger. Week after week he goes and visits potential brides. Someone in the neighborhood calls and tells Samir they have a girl for him to meet, one who is respectable, good looking, age-appropriate. Something is wrong with every one of them. This one isn't pretty enough. That one talks to much. The other one's family asks too many questions or the wrong kinds of questions. Sometimes Samir likes a girl at first, but later he sees the problems. He has agreed to several engagements, only to break them soon after when he detects a fatal flaw. It is a process that has continued for months. Samir just can't find the right one. Or maybe he can't afford the right one.

Getting married is a real disaster here. "The problem," he says, "is that if you want to marry a girl from a good family, you have to pay a lot of money." He struggles for the words, looks down in a sign of embarrassment, looks back up at me again. "And I haven't got a lot of money." The importance of money in marriage in Egypt isn't the unspoken, undiscussed, ever-central backdrop to all romantic encounters that it is in America. Here, it is an issue out in the open. When a man wants to get engaged, he has to pay thousands of pounds (sometimes dollars) to his bride, the equivalent of a dowry. He also has to have enough money to rent or buy an apartment and furnish it. In Cairo, a city of 20 million fit for perhaps half that number, real estate prices are sky rocketing and long ago became out of reach for almost all men in their 20s, and many in their 30s. Men can remain engaged for years as they struggle to earn enough money to afford the necessary items. It is this reality more than anything else that is responsible for the petty corruption - teachers that demand their students take private lessons, government officials that require small 'tips' to get paper work filled out - that most Careens comes across on a daily basis. People are struggling just to get by. They are also horny, and with little sex (none, officially) before marriage, life can truly be a struggle.

Samir, however, thinks he has a solution, at least for himself, and unfortunately, it involves me. "Reuben, I want you to introduce me to an American girl." Samir's idea is fool-proof. All he wants is an introduction. Samir is studying for his master's degree in Arabic, and he wants to learn English, so a language exchange would be the best way to set things up, he tells me. Ideas swirl in my head. Believe it or not, Samir is not the first Egyptian to approach me with such a proposal. Believe it or not, I haven't had a single female friend approach me because she can't find a poor Egyptian to marry her. How to extricate myself from the situation delicately? I start with religion.

Samir is Muslim, like 90 percent of Egypt's population, and almost all of my American female friends are Christian. "The problem, Samir, is that all of my friends are Christian, and I'm sure you want to marry a Muslim." "That's no problem," Samir shoots back. I'm sitting at a restaurant with Samir and two of his friends, and the three of them burst into laughter at the speed of Samir's retort. It's clear he's thought about it before. "She can convert to Islam later."

"I'll see what I can do," I promise. Of course, he wants the exchange to be with a woman. We exchange numbers. I say again that I will see what I can do. I hope he isn't waiting by the phone.

Cops not in charge

2006-12-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

“Get out of the cab! Get out of the cab! Get out of the cab!”
I couldn’t figure out exactly what had happened. Evening had set on downtown Cairo and a crisp breeze blew as a policemen dressed in black screamed and grabbed at an enraged cab driver. The taxicab was stopped in the middle of the road at the northwest corner of the massive Tahrir Circle, 100 yards from the American University and the massive government administrative building, The Mugamba. The corner is generally an insane mass of bodies; it has become a de facto bus stop, and pedestrians wade two and three lanes into the four-lane thoroughfare to catch the overcrowded buses that occasionally slowdown for potential passengers. Cabs weave through the mass, horns blaring and occasionally stop to pick up their own passengers, then speed off.

But the fight that was breaking out was beyond the ordinary mayhem. “What have I done?! What have I done?!” The cab driver screamed. I crowd quickly formed. “Just tell me what I’ve done!!”

The policeman snapped back: “Give me your license! I’ll tell you what you’ve done when you get out of the cab! Turn off the motor! Look! Look! A crowd is forming! Just get out of the cab!”

As the crowd grew to perhaps 20 people, myself included, the fight continued and the volume grew. Neither side seemed to be giving in. At one point the policeman looked as if he was about to slug the driver. The driver remained adamant – he was not getting out. Many in the crowd grew bored of the scene and returned to lazily looking off in the distance for their own bus.

Suddenly, the policeman let go of the cabbie, walked a few steps away and began talking on his cell phone. Calling for backup, no doubt. One of the onlookers turned to the driver who by this point was past furious, “just get out of here.” A second agreed, and a third.

The driver started his motor again and the policeman turned, but something had changed. “What are doing?” He asked, but did not yell. The officer’s voice had grown weary, and there was little fight in his posture as we walked towards the stopped car. Instead of responding, the cabbie put his foot on the gas, and sped off.

What just happened? Such a scene is unfathomable in the American context. What had the driver done? How could the cop have just let him go?

I scratched my head, shrugged by shoulders and waved down a cab for myself. “Agousa?” I asked the driver (In Cairo, cabs can choose to pick you up or not as they please. You thus have to tell the driver where you are going and they decide whether you get a ride). He accepted my destination and I jumped in.

The policeman rushed over.

“Can you pull over to the side please,” the officer asked as he stood directly in front of my stopped cab. “Over to the right please, thank you.”

My driver did as he was told, but grew noticeably uneasy.

“Give me your license,” the officer asked.

“Why?”

“Give me your license!!”

“Why? What have I done??”

The scene began again, only this time I was in the middle of it.

“You’re not allowed to stop here! Give me your license.”

At this, the cab driver loses it.

“What are you talking up?? Cabs always stop here!! I didn’t even stop, I just picked up a passenger and now we’re ready to go!!” This is ridiculous! Look at all the people here!!

“Turn off the engine! I’m calling for help! Give me your license! Get out of the car!”

Another crowd gathers. ‘Oh jeez” I think, and inch to get out of the cab. What do I do? Take the driver’s side? Cabs always stop here, whatever the law is. Hail another cab to make a point? Walk away?

One of the onlookers joins the fight, “Look! He’s a foreigner!” he says pointing towards me. “Look how confused he looks! Just let them go.”

And then, just as it seems a fistfight is going to break out, the cop gets on his phone, the driver starts his engine again, a second onlooker suggests I get back in, and the cabbie and I speed off.

A long-term problem

2006-11-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

The Egyptian government released the results of a survey today that asked Egyptians to give their views of a number of foreign countries. The findings should give pause to anyone who thinks democracy in the Middle East and a sustainable Israeli-Palestinian regional peace accord will go hand in hand.

As the reporter Ahmed Muhammad writes in The Egyptian Today, “Despite the diplomatic efforts and official discussions of peace in the region, popular opinion still sees Israel as either an enemy country.” The official figure finds that 92 percent of Egyptians put Israel into one of two categories that I can only translate as “enemy country” and “very enemy country.” This result comes as we near the 25th anniversary of the Israeli-Egyptian peace accords were signed at Camp David. In the poll, America comes in as the fourth most hated, with 56 percent considering the United States an enemy. One can look at that figure as surprisingly low given our invasion of Iraq and support for an embargo on the Palestinian territories that will shrink the Palestinian economy about 50 percent in the next year. Regardless, the survey paints a grim picture of what Egyptian-Israeli relations will look like the day a popularly elected Egyptian government takes power.

And, have no doubt. That day is coming. It will not happen this year, but it will in my lifetime.

The clash between the Egyptian government and the people is not only taking place in the parliament. It is taking place in the streets and the universities as well. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, like Hamas in the Occupied Territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon is not just a political party. Its members can be found in labor unions, on universities and in the courts. “If the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to perform a coup, they could,” an Egyptian friend told me. “They’re everywhere, in the police, in the army, it would be easy, if they wanted to.” I admit it is a claim that I cannot confirm or refute. But there is little question that the Egyptian government is facing, or at least believes it is facing, increasing pressure, and it has been fighting back.

Last week members of a national workers union were harassed by police forces as they tried to vote in union elections. Many were detained. The reason was their affiliation with the brotherhood. This week, fighting broke out over student council elections in several of Egypt’s state universities over the same issue. Yesterday Anwar Sadat’s nephew, a member of parliament until his arrest last month, was found guilty of slander after he claimed publicly that the military and foreign governments had conspired to assassinate his uncle. [Anwar Sadat was the president of Egypt until he was assassinated in 1981 during a military procession. He had signed the Camp David peace accords just a few years earlier].

This is not to say that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war. There has been no revolution in Egypt in more than half a century. The Muslim Brotherhood swears off violence in Egypt and has shown no sign of changing its tact.

But the long term issue raised above remains. Egypt has an economy about twice the size of Israel’s (300 billion USD compared to about 150 billion USD) and a growth rate that is roughly the same. Currently Israel spends about 5 times more on its military, but that could certainly change. What will happen when the opinions of 78 million Egyptians are final taken into account?

That day is coming.

[You may be thinking, ‘Wait a minute, the US is only the fourth most hated country in Egypt? Who are numbers two and three?’ In second was Denmark – for the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad – and in third was Britain. Go figure]

The Muslim Brotherhood Part II

2006-10-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Mohammad el-Sharqawi was first arrested in late April during a protest that criticized Egypt's government. The rally was one of many that Sharqawi had attended over the lack of judicial independence in Egypt. He was imprisoned for a month, then released on May 23 with instructions to avoid all protests. He chose to ignore the advice. Just two days later, he was back on the street, taking part in a rally demanding the abolishment of prison sentences for journalists who "commit libel" against the Egyptian government. Sharqawi was immediately arrested, taken to a police station and tortured, physically and sexually. Sharqawi's lawyer Gamal Eid said that when he finally was able to see his client, about 12 hours after the initial arrest, the lacerations and bruises on his clients face made him unrecognizable. When Eid tried to take out a camera, a guard knocked the camera out of his hand. Sharqawi was then kept in prison for 2 months (Under Egypt's emergency laws, the prosecutor can hold prisoners for up to 15 days without charge. That 15 day sentence, however, can be renewed indefinitely). Sharqawi was refused sufficient medical treatment, and his lawyer believes he was kept in prison in part to allow the worst of the wounds to heal before pictures could be taken.

The day after his arrest, as news reports surfaced, America responded with an official complaint, but little more. Sharqawi's case symbolizes the democracy struggle here in Egypt: For all of president Bush's promises back in 2004 to bring freedom to the Middle East, advocates for change in Cairo are today almost entirely on their own.

Sharqawi's is not an isolated case. The top opposition candidate from the 2005 national election was arrested soon after those elections and has been in jail now for more than a year. The editor of one of the most popular opposition papers, Ibrahim Essa, along with two reporters were recently sentenced to a year in jail for "insulting" the president in an article. In June the government ordered two US-based democracy NGOs to stop their work in Egypt. The list goes on. America's complaints are few. One person I spoke with who has had contact with senior members of the Bush administration said that he had been told directly by those officials that pressure would not be brought to bare on Egypt's government to curb its abuses or reform its electoral laws.

The reason is not that America loves Egypt's current regime. It is because America fears what could, and ultimately would come if activists like Sharqawi get what they want. Sharqawi is 24 years old and a second year college student. His lawyer describes him as a secularist. If there were truly open elections in Egypt, people like Sharqawi would lose. Instead, the winners would probably be followers of Muhammad Akef.

Muhammad Akef is the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, an organization that has widespread support here. The Brotherhood is officially band, as are all parties based on religion, but it's existence is tolerated. Members of parliament affiliated with the Brotherhood are technically independents, but everyone knows their affiliation, and in major newspapers, they are referred to as members of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can walk the back streets of Cairo and find posters pasted on the side of buildings with the slogan "Islam is the answer." You can talk to people in coffee shops and in electronics stores, and they will tell you openly that they support the Muslim Brotherhood. You can look at the parliament and see that the MB has more members than any other opposition block (it holds about 20 percent of the seats) and know that the the party's power is real.

The MB is an organization in transition. The group has renounced violence in Egypt (not in Israel) and before the Lebanon war had launched a concerted campaign to make itself less scary to a western audience. The group has promised non-Muslims equal rights within a Muslim state. It has also condemned the kidnapping of Jill Carroll and Christian peace activists in Iraq. For these activities and others, Al Qaeda recently denounced the MB as a tool of America. Despite this effort, the groups success in the national elections last year are one of the main reasons that the US has backed off pressuring Mubarak's government to reform. 100s of MB members were arrested during protests against the Lebanon war with hardly a peep from the US government. The primary complaint that the United States has about the MB is that they do not recognize Israel. If they came to power, the Camp David accords would be severed, and the largest Arab state would most likely rejoin the Arab-Israeli conflict.

What the Bush administration truly fears is not just Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. It is a general rise in Islamism that is happening throughout the Muslim world: Iran is ruled by an Islamic government. Hezbollah (Party of God") in Lebanon is seen as the champion of Arab nationalism. Hamas ("The Movement for Islamic Resistence") is now the majority party in the Palestinian parliament. And in Iraq, in free and fair elections, the people chose Islamists to run their state. In this regional context, America has little interest in seeing a freer Egypt emerge. The Sharqawis are thus being left to fend for themselves.

The Muslim Brotherhood I

2006-09-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

In February 2005, Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak promised that the country's upcoming presidential elections would for the first time allow opposition candidates to run. The announcement was a surprise and one that was seen by many as a vindication of America's policy in the Middle East. On the heels of the Iraq war, it appeared that democracy was spreading. Palestinian elections were scheduled for 2006. Soon thousands of Lebanese would take to the streets demanding that Syrian troops leave Lebanese soil. President Bush's promise of a democratic revival seemed to be taking form.

But what Egypt's 2005 elections revealed was a picture not to the Bush administration's liking. The people had announced their preference proudly and clearly. Their preference was for the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite widespread accusations of voter fraud and intimidation, the MB won 88 seats in Egypt's parliament, or about 20 percent, becoming by far the largest opposition block. Their achievement was particularly impressive given that the party had only fielded just over 100 candidates in an effort not to "frighten" the ruling National Democratic Party. In a result that would be repeated several months later in the Palestinian territories, it was clear that if America was going to support true democracy in the Middle East, it would have to accept a popularly elected Islamic party, not a secular one.

What is the Muslim Brotherhood? For starters, it's is a group that believes that Muslims should live in a society where Islamic law is the law of the land. But in recent years the organization, like Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, has also whole-heartedly embraced democracy as a means of gaining power. Unlike Hizbollah and Hamas, the MB in Egypt has no military branch and has sworn off violence to achieve political ends (at least in Egypt). In June I attended a protest against new laws that would restrict freedom of the press. The American ambassador did not attend, but a representative from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was there, busy railing against the new government censorship and giving interviews to anyone who would talk with him. When the Judges' Syndicate has protested state encroachment of judicial independence, the MB has stood with them in solidarity. The MB opposes the war in Iraq (as does the Egyptian government) and does not recognize Israel (the Egyptian government does) but in almost every other way, it appears that the MB shares America's stated desires for reform in Egypt. In press interviews, MB leaders have stated that within a Muslim Egypt, minorities would be allowed to worship as they like. Christians might be allowed to drink in private. Before the Lebanon war, there was even talk that the MB, if it came to power, might not cancel the Camp David accords. (Such talk ended during the war. At one point during the conflict, an MB spokesman said the organization was prepared to send 10,000 mujahideen to fight in Lebanon against the Israelis. It is a statement the organization has been backpedaling from ever since, especially considering such a move would violate Egyptian law). The big question, of course, is whether or not the MB would stick by the liberal promises it has made if it ever gained power

In mid-August, I returned to Egypt for four days, a short stop between trips from the US and to Eastern Europe. While I was back, I attended what was billed in a newspaper advertisement as a conference "in solidarity with Lebanon." The ad had been placed on the front page of The Egyptian Today, and announced that there would be two speakers, both professors, at an outdoor event at Cairo University's Menial campus. I decided to attend. What I found was not what I had expected. The journalist's protest I had attended included perhaps 200 demonstrators. The "lecture" I arrived at included thousands. The event was outdoors and the crowd was so large that a projector was set up 60 yards from the podium so that all the attendees could watch the speakers on a large screen. The place was packed. At the entrance of the park was a paved path that led back towards the Nile, which provided the far border of the area. The crowd itself was perhaps 40 yards wide. To keep things orderly, young men standing arm-in-arm stood between the path and the crowd, so that people could enter and move to the back. Each wore a black headband that read in white print "All of us are with you, Lebanon." As I waded to the back, and then around to the other side, I quickly realized this was not on ordinary lecture. As I arrived, the speaker and the crowd were engaged in a call and response. "God is Great," called the man at the lecturn. "God is Great!" boomed the crowd all around me. The next call and response was too difficult to make out. The first part was "Ya Yehud, Ya Yehud," ("Jews, Jews") and the second part included something about attacking Tel Aviv. It didn't quite rhyme. There were also chants for Hassan Nassrallah, Hezbollah's leader. It was only once I was on the other side of the crowd that I saw the large Muslim Brotherhood banner attached to the fence behind the lectern. I turned to a member of the crowd:

"How did all these people know about this event?" I asked. The man gave me a suspicious look.

"How does anyone learn about an event? Where are you from?"

I had not been prepared for his cold demeanor. "Canada," I responded.

"So how do people learn about an event in Canada?" He asked.

"Um, friends, advertisements," I said sheepishly.

"It's the same here." Then he hesitated for a moment. "Everyone here is Muslim Brotherhood," he said in a hushed voice.

A man on my other side, over six feet, thin, bearded and with piercing eyes, turned to me and asked in perfect English, "Where are you from in Canada?" His English was disarming. I said Vancouver. He asked me for my name. Reuben Johnson, I responded.

"That's in British Columbia, do you speak French?" He asked.

"No," I said, the crowd all around me.

"I thought everyone in Canada spoke French."

"Um, I think that's only in the Eastern part," I said nervously. He knows I'm lying, I thought. No one else seemed to be paying attention. I shot back awkwardly: "Do you know where the garbage is?" I had bought a piece of corn earlier, and throwing out the rind would now be my escape valve. He pointed towards the back, I turned around and fled.

If I had any doubts about whether or not a Muslim Brotherhood government would break relations with Israel, those doubts were erased by my mid-August experience. But while MB anger over Israel's war with Lebanon is real, so is the anger of the Arab street over the war. The real question is whether one only supports democracy if the result is America-fIendly policies. In my next entry, I'll explain how the American government has made it clear that it prefers the autocracy it knows in Egypt to the democracy it does not.

Nasrallah Rises

2006-09-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the long break. I hope it will be my last for several months. I spent the last two weeks on vacation in Budapest and Vienna, and decided that I should not comment on Egyptian politics from afar.
Not It Girl posted a note on my previous entry that read, “Cairo is a state of mind.” I think she’s right. I was certainly back in Cairo before I was, literally, back in Cairo. My spiritual arrival occurred on the pleasantly cool tarmac of Italy’s Aeroporti di Roma. Through the magic of Expedia, I was able to fly from Egypt on Budapest and back for only 400 dollars, but because there are no direct flights between the capitals, I was forced to transfer planes in Rome. As one can imagine, there isn’t much of an ‘Arab feel’ to a Budapest-Rome flight. The Rome-Cairo flight is, of course, another story. It was on the bus from Terminal C to Alitalia’s Airbus A320 that, mentally, I arrived back in Egypt. The bus was filled with Arabs, gesturing, talking loudly and excitedly in a way that is foreign to your average American or European traveler. And it was at this moment, as the Bus’s engine revved, that the two Egyptians to my right began discussing Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

I came in on the conversation as the two were discussing the problem of American Jews. The younger one, with a full head of hair and a well-kept suit, informed his older, balder, more disheveled friend that he had worked for some time in the ritzy resort towns of the Sinai, where many Israelis go for vacation. The problem with the Jews, he said, is that all of them have two passports, one American and one Israeli. The two men quickly agreed that there was no difference between an American Jew and an Israeli Jew.

The topic then changed to the war in Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah, the older one said, was changing the world. America and the Jews were on the run, and perhaps the Jews would finally be pushed into the sea. Certainly, they agreed, there would be no real peace, until that happened.

During hostage crises, psychologists have noticed that many prisoners become attached to and identify with their captors, a phenomenon now known as Stockholm Syndrome. This condition is the only explanation for my initial response to such blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric. “Ahh,” I thought, “I’m back in Egypt!” The constant trashing of Israel and America that I had grown so tired of by late July was suddenly putting an ironic smile on my face. Here we go again, I thought eagerly.

The two Egyptians I stood next to are hardly alone in their hopes that Nasrallah is here to save the day. Once, that figure was Saddam Hussein, taunting the West in 1991 and refusing to give in, even under harsh sanctions. Today though, it is unquestionable that Saddam ultimately lost to America and Israel. Nasrallah has now taken his place as the stoic Arab, fighting for the Arab cause. Two weeks ago, a weekly independent magazine here included a free copy of a Nasrallah poster with every copy. Egyptians everywhere are having their spirits buoyed by the hope that Hezbollah’s ‘victory’ will be less superficial than Saddam’s was.

In a poll conducted by the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, it was found that Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s baby-faced, soft-spoken, straight-talking leader was considered more “important” than any other leader in the Middle East. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came in second. The first head of an Arab state to appear on the poll was Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, coming in 11th. The chairman of the center, Saad Edin Ibrahim, wrote about the poll in the Washington Post:

The pattern here is clear, and it is Islamic. And among the few secular public figures who made it into the top 10 are Palestinian Marwan Barghouti (31 percent) and Egypt's Ayman Nour (29 percent), both of whom are prisoners of conscience in Israeli and Egyptian jails, respectively. None of the current heads of Arab states made the list of the 10 most popular public figures. While subject to future fluctuations, these Egyptian findings suggest the direction in which the region is moving. The Arab people do not respect the ruling regimes, perceiving them to be autocratic, corrupt and inept. They are, at best, ambivalent about the fanatical Islamists of the bin Laden variety. More mainstream Islamists with broad support, developed civic dispositions and services to provide are the most likely actors in building a new Middle East. In fact, they are already doing so through the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, the similarly named PJD in Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and, yes, Hezbollah in Lebanon."

My next entry will be on my thoughts on the Muslim Brotherhood

Down for repairs

2006-08-16T03:08:00.000-07:00

Cairo Dispatch will reopen September 6th, when classes resume. I am spending this month out of Egypt, and thus am trying to be faithful to the notion that Cairo dispatches should all be written from Cairo.

Dispatch on break

2006-07-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the states on vacation. Please check back in around August 10th for more Cairo dispatches.

Hoping for rebirth

2006-07-26T01:54:00.000-07:00

My last post was quite grim, as those on war tend to be. Reading The Egyptian Today, I found a small story from Lebanon that was a little more uplifting. It’s only a short blurb on the back page of the 14-page daily, next to a 4X2 inch picture of a man holding a baby. The man is wearing a brown button down with the top button undone, his black hair gelled, his face looking down as if to watch his step, to avoid dropping something precious. His baby is newly born, almost bald, and, most importantly, alive. She’s wrapped in a pink blanket, maybe she’s sleeping. The title is “Life continues,” and the blurb reads:

In the midst of the bombings of war undertaken by Israel against Lebanon, and under the raining missiles, this child was born in one of Saida’s suburbs, and thus: Children die and others are born…And life continues.

Here’s hoping that that baby and her counterparts in Israel grow up in a more peaceful world.

A couple clarifications on my last post:

The term “The Arab Street,” is one of the most overused clichés in Middle East analysis. It is essentially shorthand for public opinion, but unlike public opinion in America, it is rarely measured accurately. Because it is hard to get solid data on what people think in the region, analysts refer to ‘The Arab Street,” and then make a claim that is generally impossible to either falsify or prove. Like everyone else, I’m just guessing from anecdotal evidence. When I say “The Arab Street,” I’m referring to Arab Muslims who live in North Africa and the Middle East. Within that community – which comprises the vast majority of the population of the Middle East – there is little debate about the current conflict. But in minority communities, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that some disagree with the dominant narrative of events. I have heard anecdotally from friends that some Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population, have very different attitudes on the Palestinian conflict in general. A friend of mine living in Israel also mentioned that she had met an Israeli Druze who was extremely supportive of Israel’s current incursions. The Druze community in Lebanon has also been more reserved in its criticism of Israel, and the sect’s political leader in Beirut, Walid Jumblatt, has accused Hizbollah of acting as a state within a state during the current conflict. He has continuously blamed Hizbollah for instigating Israel, and has demanded that the militant organization disarm and abide by Lebanese law. Lebanon’s Christian Maronite community is also no friend of Hizbollah or the Palestinian struggle. Thus, there is some disagreement about what is going on in Southern Lebanon today, and I should have mentioned that. But the debate and the counter currents should not be overemphasized. Last night, on the popular Al Jazeera debate program “The Opposite Direction,” the shows audience was asked to vote on the internet as to whether or not Arab governments are currently selling out the Arab cause in Lebanon. Of the 10,000 votes cast, over 95 percent agreed with that sentiment.

Also, I should have provided more information on the montage of Palestinian death on Syrian state TV. I have no reason to believe that many, or any, of the images in the montage were filmed during the current Israeli-Lebanese conflict. All of the clips could have been from yesterday or 5 years ago. Thanks for the comment Simon. You’re right, there’s no way to know whether or not those images are all the result of Israeli fire or not. I could probably do some research and talk to a Syrian government official, but I don’t think their confirmation would be sufficient (I hope the sarcasm is apparent). Another friend, playing devil’s advocate, asked how I could even be sure that the images weren’t staged. I think that question pushes the point too far. Even ‘high budget’ Egyptian films have terrible special affects, and the fake blood that is used in Egyptian programs and movies is obviously fake. It is hard to believe Syria would have a much better special effects team. However, Al Jazeera for the most part has a good reputation for looking into the violence it shows on its screens. During the current conflict, I have not heard any vociferous complaints from Israeli officials on the body counts being put out by the Lebanese government. Instead, Israel has focused on Hizbollah’s willingness to hide among the population and the inevitable civilian casualties that result from smoking out such insurgents (Israel calls them terrorists).

The central point of my last post was to explain what the Arab world is seeing right now when they watch the news, and the visceral reaction that so much blood must be producing. Still, I should have been clearer about the uncertain origins of the montage.

Blood

2006-07-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

The first thing that you realize when watching Arab news is how much, well, more real it is than what we see in the West. I’ve heard wars include killing people, that people return maimed, that kids die, families are torn apart, things like that. But if you watch CNN, Fox News or any other American station, most of the time it’s hard to know. Blown up buildings get lots of airtime. Blown off faces do not. Something about “standards of decency.” In the Arab world, on Arab TV, such standards do not exist. You can’t go a half hour without seeing a crying child or a body half-clothed heading into an ambulance. Al Jazeera is known in the West in part for its bloody content, but it’s nothing compared to Al-Manar, the Hizbollah-funded television station that, despite Israel’s bombing of its headquarters, has managed to stay on the air.
One of the major issues that the Bush administration has with Al Jazeera and other Arab media outlets is their willingness to show such bloody images. Such a policy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has argued, essentially works to arouse the Arab populace against America and Israel. Airing those images is thus something close to propaganda. And, of course, he’s right, to a certain extent. When Al-Manar airs dead civilians, it’s trying to gain support for its parent company’s goals. The same goes for Syrian or Libyan state television. But of course, the reality is that there is more blood being spilt on the Arab side of these conflicts (Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank) than on the non-Arab side, and thus, the facts are a little biased. Reality is what it is.

Syrian state television is offering particularly bloody coverage of the war. Even when the facts are biased, Syrian TV is going to be more biased than the facts. The Syrian government is one of the many in the Arab world that does not have relations with Israel, a fact that has deeply hurt its relationship with the US. That’s bad for business (The US has sanctions right now on Syria primarily because of their support for Hizbollah) but occasionally good for domestic support. While Egypt, with its strong ties with Israel, is in a bigger bind every day that hostilities continue, Syria, a country that does not recognize Israel, can gain politically from glorifying the Palestinian struggle and reminding the Syrian street where its government stands on the matter. There is no debate on the Arab street about whether or not the current Israeli incursions are justified. They simply are not. It’s an article of faith.

I decided to check out the quality of the state-funded propaganda of Syria’s television station. I hoped to find something funny, like embarrassingly low budget tribute videos to the country’s president, Bashaar Al-Asad. What I found was not funny.

When I turn to Syrian TV, there is a 10-minute montage to the Palestinian struggle running. What I find affects me, and I want to share that experience, but words are a poor substitute for pictures. The montage may have been a lot longer than 10 minutes, but after 10 minutes, I decided to change the channel. The montage was making me want to vomit. Israeli munitions may be incredibly precise, and the country may never target civilians, but it has managed to kill and maim enough children anyway to allow for some pretty unbelievable images. What they show on Syrian TV is of course biased, but it’s all, well, real. It’s hard to argue with reality, at least when you first see it. Reality becomes much more subjective down the road. A little later you can discuss if Israel is just protecting itself, if the concept of proportionality is important or ignores the real question of national security, if Hizbollah or Israel, or both are trying to draw in Syria and Iran and the US. You can argue about who fired the first shot 2 weeks ago, in 1948, in 1937, earlier. You can remind yourself that this is just Syrian propaganda aired to serve state interests, that no one is even watching this because no one trusts state TV anymore and everyone prefers Al Jazeera anyway. But those arguments aren’t really applicable at the moment.

What I see is a screaming mother, a stretcher being rushed to an ambulance, a woman wearing a Lebanon t-shirt crying, rubble, another woman screaming at a microphone, an old woman screaming at no one. It’s hard to think bigger picture. But then there’s this one image that really sticks. You can see the infant’s dead eyes, her dead face, the color completely gone, the eyelids open, her face pockmarked with blood. She’s covered in a white blanket which has a few specks of red on it. They’re in an undecorated room with a bed and a small wooden desk, they’re indoors, he’s screaming, he’s kissing the dead baby. He’s putting her down on the bed, his friends are pulling him away, he won’t let them pull him away, he doesn’t want to let go, he can’t let go, he’s crying, the tears are running down his face, the lifeless face of his baby staring up at nothing, not really staring of course, because she’s dead. The music is playing in the background, it’s a sad song, Arabic, a female voice, crooning for Palestine, the camera is in slow motion, two friends have now entered the picture, one arm on each of his shoulders, they’re still trying to pull him back, he’s struggling, the image switches to the next crying mother, or daughter, or whatever. I can’t remember the next scene. The shot may have lasted five seconds or it might have been 10 or 15.

It’s just propaganda for an autocratic regime that abuses its people and is searching for anything to legitimize its power, it’s just one baby and millions are involved and geopolitics are involved and maybe Palestinians killed her maybe it’s all a big set up…. That jumble of thoughts only comes after I change the channel. When I see that dead, white face, that baby that’s not going to get to live, I can’t really respond. It’s war and people die, and all I’ve done is witnessed a dead Palestinian baby.

There are no montages as brutal on serious Arab news channels, like Al Jazeera or Future TV or Abu Dhabi’s independent satellite station, but there are other montages, and there are other brutal pictures. Al Jazeera has labeled the current conflict as “an open encounter,” and every time Lebanon news is about to start it runs a series of pictures from the conflict, flashing quickly across the screen with voices talking over each other. The last picture is of a dead child, his face covered with blackened ash. The picture stays on the screen a beat longer than the others. There are call in shows where everyone talks about the terrible crime they believe Israel is committing against Lebanon. When I watch a call-in show on Al Jazeera on this topic, my first thought is that they should find Arab voices that support Israel, that it’s not balanced. But then I realize that those voices don’t exist. If you’re going to have a half-hour show on Arab public opinion on the current conflict, and you want it to reflect the Arab mood, you’re only going to have speakers who think Israel is committing a crime. Al Jazeera’s picture of a dead child, or Syria’s montage are basically reinforcing what everyone already believes to be true; that Israel is committing a crime against humanity.

There are plenty of dead bodies in Lebanon – about 370 at last count – for those montages. There are many dead in Israel, but not nearly as many. If nothing else, the Arab Media is serving as a witness to that truth. It’s definitely hurting the image of America. It’s definitely inciting rallies throughout the Middle East in solidarity with Lebanon. How biased it is, is your call.

How the Arab world gets its news

2006-07-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

The Opinion….And The Other Opinion
That’s Al Jazeera’s slogan. CNN may fancy itself as “The Most Trusted Name in News,” but it’s hard to argue that it’s the most important. It is certainly not the most controversial. That title, without question, belongs to Al Jazeera. And, as of Saturday, I can watch as much of it as I like, along with 250 other channels. The price tag was about $100, including installation. If I lived in Cairo the rest of my life, I would never have to pay another penny.

The process by which Arabs get access to Satellite television is entirely different from the one Americans are used to. The biggest difference is that, for the most part, TV here is free. The biggest exception to that rule is Arabic Radio and Television, or ART. Most people don’t get the extra channels offered by ART, a monthly subscription service that provides more movies, news and sports. This reality caused quite a stir throughout the region when ART won the rights to broadcast the World Cup exclusively throughout the Middle East, but except for that month of brooding and frustration, what you get for free here is everything a TV junkie could ever want. Even if you didn’t speak Arabic.

Having my satellite installed caused me to miss a fairly big protest against Israel’s siege of Lebanon. The protest involved thousands of Hizbollah (“The Party of God”) supporters who had gathered at Cairo’s most famous mosque, Al-Azhar. Muslims are required to pray five times daily, but most of those prayers are done privately. Several times I’ve been at small bodegas looking for some random item, only to have the shop owner ask me to wait so that he can pray. He’ll pull out a rug, wash his hands, feet, forearms and face and then begin praying, facing Mecca. The whole process takes 5 to 10 minutes. Then it’s back to business. It’s only during the Friday afternoon prayer that most worshippers go to their local mosque to listen to the sheik’s sermon and pray with their neighbors. Such prayer meetings have often served as a forum to vent more worldly frustration; In a Muslim country with such strong relations with Israel, the gathering can be politically dangerous. These days, every sheikh in Cairo (no, I haven’t heard every one, but I dare you to prove me wrong) is decrying the Israeli raids on Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and America’s seeming indifference to it all. At Al-Azhar, the last two Fridays have witnessed huge demonstrations directly after prayer time, and large-scale police interventions. This past Friday, I wasn’t able to witness the thousands in Al-Azhar’s mosque who waved green banners and demanded that Egypt break its relations with Israel and America because I was up on my roof, at 2 P.M., watching two young men install my satellite dish. I would only see shots of the protest later on, on Al Jazeera.

The actual installation of a satellite is quite an ordeal. While purchasing by dish, the shopkeeper asks me if I want assistance with installation or if I can do it myself. This question only becomes ridiculous after I figure out what installing the dish requires. The process is thus: Along with two helpers, I amble onto my roof with all the required equipment: Dish, cement mixing contents, 100-foot wire – and my 20X20 inch television. I finally manage to get to the roof after climbing a wooden ladder so rickety that my mother would have had a stroke had she seen it. What I find is a 2,500 or so square-meter roof utterly covered in satellite dishes of various sizes. I immediately realize that I have bought the smallest dish on the roof, and a depression sets in that any half decent psychiatrist could easily explain (“I have the smallest!”) The next step is the cement mixing. White and black stuff is mixed with water to form wet cement that will dry and secure the base of the satellite to the roof. [Note: I am no longer a boy, but I’m not a man yet either. I firmly believe that I will someday be a man, and that I will know that day has come when I know what that “white and black stuff” really is. Or perhaps I will know that day has come when I no longer think such knowledge allows one to join the man club] Once the base is secured, the television is hooked up so that we can watch a little TV. Only with the TV on can you figure out if the satellite is facing at the correct angle to get decent reception. When all the screws are finally tightened, the 100-foot wire is attached to the satellite and then thrown over the side of the building. The building I live in is 10 stories high and my apartment is on the 5th floor. In order to watch TV, a wire is going to have to stretch from my rough to my apartment. We take the TV back downstairs, all three of us covered in sweat, only to find that the wire has gotten tangled amidst all the other wires. One of them goes back up to disentangle everything. Finally everything is set up. I pay the helpers for their help and flip on my set. I find Al-Jazeera and flip to the channel. What’s on? A half-hour, exclusive interview with Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nassrallah. It’s going to be a good year, I think to myself.

My first experience at a hospital

2006-07-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

America, it appears, could learn a thing or two from Egypt. At least, when it comes to medical treatment.

Three days ago I woke up with a pounding headache, the likes of which I had never experienced before. Moving my head just a few inches in any direction inevitably led to a deep throbbing around my cranium. The time delay was about 5 seconds, just long enough to believe that maybe, just maybe I was past the worst of it. I was nowhere near past the worst of it.

I attempted to go to class, more proof if any was needed that my stubbornness directly borders the absurd (there is certainly no buffer space). By 2 pm, I gave up, went home, and went to sleep. I woke up at 4 in much worse shape.

Getting out of bed was nearly impossible. When I attempted to get out of bed, the pain was bad enough to cause a spewing of sexual and scatological terminology. I began to freak out. Were these the first signs of an impending stroke?

I got back into bed. Maybe I could wait it out. The prospect of going to the hospital, where I would know no one, and know nothing about the system was more distasteful to me than the pain. I have dealt with physical pain in my life. The Egyptian hospital system is another story. It appears I prefer possible death to an uncomfortable situation.

I called my roommate and told him the situation. He would have said something like "you’re a fucking moron," were it not for his struggle to live in the path of Jesus Christ. Instead, in a concerned voice, he told me I should reconsider and get in a cab. Finally, I conceded.

What would I find at the hospital? Egypt has a booming economy, but it’s still a part of the third world. My health plan, offered by the American University in Cairo, costs 80 dollars for the entire year. The brochure claims it covers all hospital expenses up to 25,000 Egyptian pounds (about 4,500 dollars). Given such a low premium, what would the inevitably low cost of care provide? Would the hospital be clean? The Ministry of Health released the results of a survey two weeks ago that found that only 8 percent of Egypt’s doctors wash their hands before and after each examination. To state the obvious, I was a bit worried.

What I found at Peace Hospital (Musteshfa al-Saleem) was the opposite of what I had expected. A receptionist immediately pointed me to the emergency ward. The receptionist in the emergency ward took my insurance card, inquired about my symptoms, and then asked me to have a seat in the waiting room, which was clean and cool. Within 5 minutes – for emphasis FIVE MINUTES – I was speaking with a doctor. A short 10-minute exam ended when I was given a shot of painkiller in the ass. I was given a prescription for antibiotics and anti-inflamatories. The whole operation, from walking in the door to walking out, took about 40 minutes. I paid zero dollars.

My headache had not gone away by the time I left (it would a few hours later) but I began to believe that a small part of my head pain was now being caused by confusion. What kind of a hospital lets you see a doctor within 10 minutes? Where was the paperwork? What about co-pays? The doctor had even given me his cell phone number, in case my symptoms did not improve. My head pounding, searching for answers, I came up with only one theory: Egyptians, living in such poverty and backwardness for so many decades, have still not learned that the most important mark of civilization is a healthcare system that is impossibly complicated, incredibly expensive and infuriatingly time-consuming and petty. Maybe someday they’ll learn.

Two days later, I’m still a bit baffled. The antibiotics are actually working. I feel much better. I have not received any letters requesting payments. I suppose the letter from the insurance company denying coverage has only been processed, and will reach me via email in the next day or two. If that letter does not come, I will be forced to face the prospect that the Egyptian healthcare system works better here than it does in the states – at least for the middle class, for minor problems.

I also had a second thought: The third world has plenty of reasons to detest the West. Plenty. But one small thing that it has to be thankful for is the investment private and public companies of the first world have put into pharmaceutical research and development. Had I been without health insurance, the pills that I received would have cost me about 5 dollars. I don’t think 5 bucks goes a long way into paying for lab work and clinical trials. (If you are an expert on this topic and know I’m wrong, please email.) As Americans struggle to pay for their own prescriptions, Egyptians are able to get theirs filled cheaply because someone else put up the money for R&D. Because of cheap drugs, many Egyptians (though certainly not all) are able to live longer, healthy lives.

But aren’t all these Egyptians stealing from all those poor American and European corporate executives and their companies’ shareholders? Hmm. I don’t think I’ll get a headache over it.

An Egyptian phenomenon

2006-07-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I went to see The Yacoubian Building, a movie that follows the intersecting lives of several Cairo residents whose only common feature is that they all live at the same address. The story covers several topics that are verboten in Egyptian society; Government-sponsored torture, corruption, homosexuality. It is the first film to both talk about these issues explicitly and place the events in the present era. While initially the film had plenty of state backing, since its release, there has been talk of shutting down the show. Which, of course, has made The Yacoubian Building the most popular movie in the country.
The film is not just unique for the topics it covers. The cast is virtually a who’s who of Egyptian cinema. The film is also incredibly long, even my American standards. At three hours in the length, the film requires a ten-minute intermission. The Yacoubian building is also better financed than most Egyptian films. At 3 million dollars – according to NPR – it is one of the highest expenditures ever One reason the film was allowed to be made at all is the fact that the movie’s director, Marwan Hamed is close with Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak. During the election campaign last year, Hamed directed an interview with Mubarak that ran 6 hours on state television.

The film is certainly controversial. There’s no nudity, but the omnipresence of sex and alcohol throughout the film is jarring even for someone who has only been in Egypt for a couple months. To have a character who is clearly homosexual, and is clearly about to partake in gay sex, is unheard of, until now. The film takes place at the time of the first Iraq War in 1991, but accept for one line that refers to the impending Kuwait invasion, the film could easily take place right now. Children, accompanied by a parent or not, are expressly forbidden from attending.
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I'M GOING to see the film on a Thursday night. The Egyptian weekend is Friday and Saturday (Friday being the Muslim holy day) so Thursday night is movie night. The theater entrance is pure insanity. Cinemas here partake in the bizarre practice of assigning each patron a seat, even though admission is the same price for all. I find such a policy strange anywhere, but it’s particularly absurd in a culture that does not respect the concept of ‘the line.’ The stairway from the ground floor to the theater level is an impossible crush because people are only being allowed into the main chamber three or four at a time. Ushers have to take each person to their seat individually, so by the time I get to the front of the line, it’s only 10 minutes to show time and two thirds of the seats are still empty. It’s not because no ones behind me. The ushers, all in matching blue button-downs and dark ties are now literally sprinting – and expecting moviegoers to sprint with them – from the stairwell to the assigned seat. Of course the system is a disaster, and many people end up in the wrong seat anyway, fighting with sweat-drenched ushers who demand that they find their assigned spot so that the rightful owners can take their seats. The last few stragglers are being taken to their seats as the curtain comes up and the show starts.

By the time I get to my seat, I understand why the government is concerned. As I take in the sights and sounds, I think I can imagine what the American movie-going experience must have been like before home theaters and living room surround sound made the Cineplex obsolete. There is a legitimate buzz in the air. People know they’re about to see something they’ve never seen before, something subversive, something the government isn’t exactly pleased they’re watching.

There are four main characters in the film, all of which provide different criticisms of the government. Zeke Bay is an overweight heavy drinker and smoker who loves women. His father was an important official in King Farouq’s government, a government that was toppled by Gamal Abdul Nasser’s military coup in 1952. With the new government in power, Zeke Bay remains well off, but any hope of high government service is dashed. At several points in the film he talks longingly of Cairo before the 1952 revolution, before the Nasserist regime turned its back on the West and betrayed its people. Azem Pasha is a multimillionaire who has made his fortune in the drug trade. Now rich, Azem decides to run for parliament. In exchange for a $200,000 bribe, the election is fixed, and Azem joins the government. His character is corrupt and two-faced. In front of parliament he calls on the government to clamp down on sex on TV. At the same time he takes a second wife, forty years his younger, and rents her an apartment in The Yacoubian building so that the relationship can be kept secret.

The most dangerous character though is Taha Shezli. Taha is the son of the Yacoubian Building’s doorman, and his dream is to become a policeman. He is extraordinarily successful in his studies, but when he arrives for his interview with the military university, he is quickly rebuffed because of his impoverished background (There is no doormen’s union in Cairo). Only the children of the privileged are allowed to rule the country. His dreams dashed, Taha turns to radical Islam. He is arrested during a protest and is brutally tortured. We see Taha being beaten and bloody. We see him about to be raped. After finally getting out of jail, Taha decides to take part in Jihad. In the end, he dies as he kills the officer who was responsible for his defilement.

Sitting in a theater in Cairo, in a country where freedom of speech is limited, where most political conversations happen at home behind close doors, watching this movie, I am often overcome with adrenaline. I just can’t believe these events are being depicted. The chief of police who is torturing Taha exists in real life, and he’s probably really torturing someone right now. When Taha finally gets his revenge in the end, much of theater erupts in applause. It’s exactly what the government must be afraid of. A communal celebration of a high government official getting what's comming to him. Who’s to say that sentiment won’t spill onto the street?

It doesn't tonight though. The celebration in the theater is a quick burst, full of release, but also hesitation. There must be government officials observing the crowd. What's an acceptable response, and what might get you locked up? No one knows where the line is. No one wants to cross it. The celebration may be quick, but, still, everyone in this male dominated crowd is happy that the head of secret police has just been shot in the face. Just think, this guy really exists.

The fourth main character (if you were counting, you noticed only three have been enumerated thus far) is Hatim, the editor of the French language newspaper Le Caire. Hatim is a homosexual, and because his lifestyle is so taboo here, it is the part of the film the government has stepped out to criticize. Rather than admitting that the torture and corruption depicted in The Yacoubian Building actually occurs in Egypt, members of parliament have voiced their concerns that the film will lead young men to become homosexuals. Anyone who has seen the film immediately recognizes how ridiculous this theory is. Hatim is the classic stereotype of a homosexual. He is impeccably well dressed. He walks, talks and acts, well, strangely. Not in a way that reminds me of any homosexuals I know, but rather in a way that is recognizable as 'a little off.' It’s the extra hop in his step and the slightly odd inflection in his voice. The way he pronounces the word 'very,' continually caused the crowd to burst out laughing. In the movie, Hatim tricks a young, poor soldier, Abdu into becoming his lover. Hatim buys Abdu an apartment, a dream Abdu could never realize without Hatim’s help. Hatim constantly is getting Abdu drunk in order to corrupt him. Abdu is married, and in the middle of his illicit affair his son dies of a mysterious illness. Crushed and convinced that his relationship with Hatim has brought God’s wrath down upon him, Abdu disappears.

The film does nothing to dissuade us of Abdu’s conclusion. In search for his next lover, his next victim, Hatim brings home a degenerate, who looks quite a bit like a crack-head. Amazed by the lavishness of Hatim’s apartment, the degenerate decides to kill Hatim and take his money.

It’s at this moment that the absurdity of the government’s ‘concerns’ is revealed. Hatim dies brutally. Expecting his lover to take him from behind, the stranger chokes Le Caire’s editor from behind with a belt. Hatim’s body writhes in pain, struggle, and finally falls to the bed, lifeless. As the thief begins to take Hatim’s rings and watch, a large portion of the crowd bursts into applause. Hoots and hollers echo off the walls. No one condemns the revelers. The celebration of Hatim's murder is certainly less restrained than when the government’s torturer gets a bullet to the head.

New press law passes

2006-07-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

The new press law, which so many journalists turned out to denounce on Sunday, passed in a voice vote, as expected. In a last second act of kindness, however, President Hosni Mubarak told parliament that they should erase the part of the new law that would imprison journalists for revealing the financial activities of members of parliament. Another part of the law which was erased before passage, according to the newspaper The Egyptian Today, was the line that threatened jail time for journalists who insult foreign heads of state. In an act of protest, several independent publications decided not to sell their papers on Sunday. I discovered this when I went to the press stand and couldn't get The Egyptian Today. I only figured out it was a political statement and not evidence of unprofessionalism when I read Ben's article on IRIN (see link in previous post).

For more details on this story, check out this article .

Despite the revisions, the press syndicate here is promising to continue fighting the law. I still haven't worked out the exact process by which bills get introduced and passed, but it's clear that Mubarak has enormous power, at least within his own majority party. His National Democratic Party has spent the last week accusing journalists of blackmail and denouncing their supporters as traitors, supporting the new bill and all of its provisions unanimously. In a surprise announcement, Mubarak told parliament of the changes he wanted. Immediately, every member of Mubarak's party said they supported his changes. The speaker of the parliament said that Mubarak had 'taught an important lesson to the government.'

Get your independent information while you can

2006-07-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

Because of the oppressive heat during the summer months, Cairo’s policemen are given white uniforms. You can find these everyday cops all around the city, directing traffic, patrolling street corners and protecting the entryways to government buildings, embassies and universities. It is only natural that in a country as overpopulated as Egypt, there are too many policemen. It appears that employing a traffic cop 24/7 is cheaper than buying and maintaining a traffic light.
But the cops I saw yesterday morning were not wearing white. They were wearing black. They were present in droves and they looked ominous.

The occasion was a large-scale protest against a new press law that will make reporting on Egypt a lot more difficult for Egyptian journalists. When I say large-scale, I mean by Egyptian standards. The rally took place in front of Egypt’s parliament building and it included about 200 people, if my estimate is accurate. But while such a small protest would never make the news if it happened in the states, it is rare in Egypt for an anti-government rally to get so large. The New York Times has run front-page stories about protests here that involved only 50 people. For a foreign journalist, finding legitimate stories on opposition politics can be tough going.

The protest today though, was real, as was the tension in the streets. To ensure that traffic could pass, and that protesters would recognize how powerless they are, the police ringed the entire crowd. The sidewalk onto which the protesters were forced was only 6 or 7 yards wide. Maneuvering through the crowd was nearly impossible. For every 2 protestors wearing a sign around their necks that read (sarcastically) "Viva corruption, down with freedom!" there was a journalist covering the event trying to get an interview. [I particularly appreciated that half the signs were in Arabic, half in English. It is clear that their target audience is not just the Arab world] Like the overpopulation in Egypt and the overblown police presence, there are also too many journalists. Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, Al-Hura, MBC, and a plethora of print and radio journalists were all trying to squeeze past me to get to their next interview. In the 95-degree heat, I thanked God that I am six feet tall and 180 pounds. I did not fear being crushed by the mob.

What I did fear, however, was getting the shit kicked out of me by the cops. There was certainly reason for concern. I left for the protest just before 11 with my friend Ben, who was covering the event for IRIN, a UN news service. A few blocks from the event we encountered our first signal that something other than run-of-the-mill business was occurring near by. Six or seven police paddy wagons were parked, ready to carry off any protestors who got too rowdy. The police vehicles were not of the school-bus-with-grated-windows variety that I was used to seeing in the states. Paddy wagons in Cairo are meant to look intimidating. They say: "you really don’t want to be in here," and they more closely resemble armored bank cars than any conveyor of civilian traffic. Painted dark green or black, with impossibly small windows, they do not give the impression that correctional facilities here are meant to be rehabilitation centers. They look like punishment in themselves.

When we first arrived at 11, the crowd is spilling onto the streets. It is only a short while before the aforementioned 'men in black,' previously standing on the other side of the thoroughfare, come across to 'control' the crowd. As we struggle through the mob, looking for people to interview, I notice the cops menacing glances. There are now enough policemen to form two full rows around the entire group, and they continue to slowly push us back until everyone is on the sidewalk. What is especially worrying me is that, before we arrived, I had spotted groups of men in civilian clothes organized in groups of 20 or so, with one or two uniformed officers standing near by. They were clearly the type of government-hired goons who take care of uppity rabble-rousers who forget their manners. Some of those men, in jeans and dirty button-downs, are standing at attention across the street. Next to them are groups of authentic riot police, the kinds with batons and facemasks that fought protestors in the streets at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, or the kind you see in Europe battling soccer hooligans. All in all, the cops in view outnumber the protestors and journalists at least two to one.

There are also other things that are worrisome. Some of the journalists begin to chant slogans, demanding freedom. The chants are call and response, and the head of Egypt's press syndicate, the man responsible for the event, is having none of it. Between interviews with Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the small, bald man with an impeccably tailored suit and an even more perfectly groomed mustache turns to those chanting and yells at them to shut up. They do, but eventually their chants start up again and the process is repeated. It’s clear that he’s worried about violence, or future retribution.

The law that is being protested, as it was described to me is fairly draconian. Before the most recent election, President Hosni Mubarak promised an end to the imprisonment of journalists, but now that the election is over and there is no pressure coming from the United States, Mubarak is going back on his word. The new piece of legislation, which was introduced under Mubarak's name, mandates a minimum sentence of six months for a variety of press offenses, including insulting Mubarak, his family, the state, or members of parliament. The law does not specify a maximum sentence. For a few more details on the law, check the article Ben wrote. Members of the ruling National Democratic Party have said the law is necessary to counter the 'blackmail,' of the press. 'Blackmail,' the protestors believe, is the government’s way of saying they are annoyed that the press has been exposing the rampant corruption that goes on in Egyptian politics. Obviously, members of the government aren’t too happy about the bad coverage.

By the time we leave, at around 12:30, no violence has occurred, and none will. We walk back to the university, taking a different path than the one we had taken to get to the protest. Amazingly, every 150 yards or so, there is another pack of cops, either in uniform or in street clothes. These groups continue for blocks. I guess they’re there to protect the state. 'Blackmail,' is a serious national concern.

The dumbest thing that has ever been done

2006-07-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

It was done by me. Two days ago. I admit it. My act has no equivalent regarding such lack of planning. Many have engaged in silly endeavors through man's long history. Custer's last stand comes to mind. So does the game of hacky-sack, or the nuclear-armed bazooka (It is the only weapon the US has ever developed where the blast radius was greater than the firing range). I believe my activity was stupider. I hope by describing it, I will divest myself of some of the guilt, a purification through confession

I went for a run. In Cairo. In Center City. The decision was my own. There was no element of force.

Cairo is one of the most overpopulated cities in the world, and while it may not be as polluted as Beijing or New Delhi, the air quality here is something to behold. Center city, where I live and where The American University in Cairo (AUC) is located, is the worst of the worst. The traffic is unbearable. A statistic on Wikipedia claims that 60 percent of the cars in Cairo are more than 10 years old, and thus do not have modern emissions systems. The statistic is without citation, and I am skeptical of its authenticity. With the exception of the Mercedes that I see entering the Interior Ministry (which is right next door to my apartment), I almost never see a car that could possibly have been constructed during this decade.

Perhaps it was the air pollution itself, and its deleterious affects on my judgment that led me to run. It had been a month since I had gone for a jog, and my experience in Damascus, where I had run weekly in short-shorts and an "I love New York" t-shirt, had led me to believe that running was doable. Oh, Damascus had been polluted, but I had been training for soccer. I had coughed, I had strained and the inhaled dust had caused unspeakable amounts of phlegm, but I had persevered there. Why should Cairo be any different?

I threw on a t-shirt and shorts, grabbed my I-pod, and ran downstairs. Within a hundred steps, I knew something was terribly wrong. It started out as a light throbbing sensation at the bottom of my stomach, just above the mons pubis. Not a stitch exactly. Closer to a tactical warning coming from just above my loins. My body saying "Don't even think about it." I ignored such sage advice. My body doesn't know what the fuck it's talking about, I told myself, even as a fuller understanding of the unfolding calamity began to form in the back of my brain.

10 minutes into the run, the reality set in. Initially I had ignored the smell, but as the acid built up in my muscles, such Pollyanic thoughts became more difficult. Lactic acid is what builds in the muscles during periods of extreme exertion. It is what makes the mind slow the body down. It is why man cannot run a mile at the same pace as he can sprint a hundred meters. What was building in my muscles was not lactic acid exactly. It was some sort of mixture of acids produced by the body and those that are emitted by exhaust systems more than 10 years of age. Cairo streets have few serviceable sidewalks which forces one to run in the streets, right next to those fumes. When I say 'one', I mean one, because I am the only 'one' who would engage in this activity. Every time a car passed, I was forced to inhale molecular compounds I had never before encountered or imagined. It was hell.

And yet, I didn't stop. Something about having once been an athlete forced me to continue. Perhaps I would not run again, but an athlete does not quit in the middle of a run. Ever. I also had to get back home, and running would be far faster than walking, or so I told myself. In truth however, at some point the difference between those two speeds, walking and running, had decreased precipitously.

Instead of stopping, I tried to let my mind wander. If only I could fall into the fantasy world that the 50 Cent blasting in my ears normally provided. Rap music has become such a phenomenon in part because it allows white middle- to upper class boys like myself to imagine themselves to be as tough as the gangsta rapper. It is a fantasy that I often partake in. On most runs, I can imagine that there is some parallel between my slow jog and the ghetto lifestyle that the likes of 50 Cent apotheosize.

In Cairo's bustling streets, it wasn't working. My mind did wander, but to other topics. Despite the pain in my legs, I noticed I wasn't sweating or breathing deeply. My thoughts were thus: I wasn't sweating because the air is impossibly dry, and even in the 90 plus degree heat, any sweat immediately evaporates. I wasn't breathing deeply because every breath made me want to vomit. When I wasn't breathing car exhaust, I was running past abandoned construction sites with gratuitous amounts of debris littered everywhere. The putrid smell of neglected garbage greeted me about every 100 yards. And the constant dust inhalation made me incredibly congested. My asthma, dormant since age 5, began to pop up. My lungs simply wouldn't expand.
I began to wonder about cancer. How many cigarettes does one 'Cairo run' equal? Where would the malignant nodules develop? I could have sworn I felt one growing on my liver, on my larynx.
Of course, I had plenty of less fully constructed thoughts. Thoughts like: "Fuck." And "God damn motherfucker." And: "Cocksucker." On the run back, I got lost. The random cursing going off in my brain began to spew from my mouth. I began to get strange looks. Or perhaps I was only noticing the looks for the first time. Thinking of my mother and her undying love for me, I had tried to focus on not being killed by the cars that I was forced to weave in and out of. No one in Cairo wears shorts, and the spectacle of someone not only wearing shorts, but running in them, must have been strange indeed. I was only able to take in the reaction when stopped, searching for familiar landmarks. Or perhaps they were staring because they new English curse words. I guess I'll never know.

I finally found some kids who knew where my apartment was. They pointed me down a street. I figured out my location. I got home. I went inside. I took the elevator up to my 5th floor apartment. I banged on the door, my roommate opened it, and I walked in.

"How was the run," he asked.

I responded: "Well, there's a first, and a last time, for everything."

The value of hating America

2006-07-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

Blaming America for everything is a favorite past time in the Middle East. But in Egypt, vilifying the US can earn you more political capital than anywhere else in the region. The regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has close ties with the US. In fact, we have a better, tighter relationship with Egypt than we do with Michael Moore's favorite target Saudi Arabia. But you don't hear all that much about Egypt in the US. Why?

Perhaps its because Egypt has been such a good ally in so many ways. Terror suspects captured abroad have often been taken to Egypt for 'interrogations' before being transported to secret prisons in Europe, Afghanistan or our facilities at Guantanamo Bay. Since the 1980s, Egypt has also been Israel's closest friend in the region. The largest Arab state in the world, Egypt has had diplomatic ties with Israel since 1981. The accord cost the Egyptian president at the time, Anwar Sadat, his life. In the last few years Egypt has opened up several free trade areas with Israel. In the most recent crisis between Israel and Hamas (Hamas has kidnapped an Israeli soldier, and Israel has responded by invading Gaza and kidnapping half the members of Israeli's parliament), Egypt has been putting heavy pressure on Hamas to go along with Israeli demands.

Still, one would think the country of the pharaohs would get a little more scrutiny in the western press - after all, we do give them more financial assistance than any other country in the world, save Israel. Every year, over 2 billion dollars goes from American coffers to the Egyptian treasury. More than half of that is earmarked for military spending.

But while the American-Egyptian relationship provides Mubarak with more guns to control his citizens and more jobs to placate them, the relationship also poses potential problems for the Cairo-based regime. Any group that challenges Mubarak and his National Democratic Party can instantly gain points by arguing, regardless of its other political ideas, that Mubarak is too close to America, too close to the murdering of innocent Israeli civilians, too close to the war in Iraq. Ordinary Egyptians think the US government is essentially a terrorist organization. Having such a tight relationship with the US creates quite the PR problem.

During the run up to elections last spring, one of the largest opposition groups was the Egyptian Movement for Change, popularly known as Kifaya (Enough). In the States, the organization got huge press. The group made its position clear: it wanted Mubarak out. It was willing to talk to any journalist who would listen. While the group is an umbrella organization that includes nationalists, Islamists and pan-Arabists, most members come from the more western school of thought: The group has called for freedom of speech, assembly, fair elections, and all the other components that make up a liberal's wet dream. To the casual observer, it seemed that Kifaya and Washington would be natural partners.

Such a partnership has never materialized. Perhaps the first step in understanding why is to check out Kifaya's manifesto. It begins this way:

We are Egyptian citizens, in agreement, despite our different political perspectives, opinions and jobs, that our country faces dangers and enormous challenges. For example, the American occupation of Iraq, the continuing Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and the plans to redraw the map of the Arab people including a plan for the Greater Middle East, which threatens our nationality and our identity and which requires the gathering of all effort to completely face on all levels...political, cultural and civilizational.

Kifaya talks about democracy and judicial independence later on in the document. Much later. The next several paragraphs continue to talk about the crimes of the west. You can find out more on Kifaya on their website. It's in Arabic, but they have their manifesto in English (the above is a translation from the Arabic. I imagine they have more freedom to be strident in English).

The reality is that any group that wants to challenge the government on anything hear immediately gains credibility by distancing itself from the US and Israel. One person I spoke with who works with a democracy promoting NGO here said that the reality of the situation is that only home grown organizations independent of the West can change anything.

It makes you wonder where those 2 billion dollars are going. On Thursday I'm having dinner with an employee of USAID, an organization that is responsible for disbursing about 500 million of the 800 million dollars earmarked for nonmilitary aid to Egypt. Maybe I'll have a better idea where all that money is going after dinner.

An Egyptian scandal

2006-06-29T01:31:00.000-07:00

terI found out about this story last night while having a drink with a couple friends who I studied Arabic with a few years back. My first thought was, "Wow, a scoop!" Then I was told the trial had ended a year ago. Looking on the internet, I found this article from an obscure daily (The New York Times), and rather than summarizing the story on my own, I've placed the article below. Check it out, it's really interesting. Post your own thoughts.

Paternity Suit Against TV Star scandalizes Egyptians
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR Published: January 26, 2005

CAIRO, Jan. 25 - The standard three-step program for any unmarried upper-class Egyptian girl who becomes pregnant is an abortion, an operation to refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first unwitting suitor the family can snare.

But Hind el-Hinnawy, a vivacious 27-year-old costume designer, decided she was not going to playact her way through the virgin-marriage pageant. Instead she did the unthinkable here: she had the child and then filed a public paternity suit, igniting a major scandal and prompting a national debate over the clandestine marriage contracts that young couples are using to have sex in this conservative, religious society.

"The whole society says: 'No! No! No! Don't say this. It's shameful. It's a scandal. Go have an abortion. This girl was not well raised. She's loose,' " said Attiyat el-Abnoudi, a renowned Egyptian documentary maker who after hearing about the case became so involved that she has become the child's godmother.

"The importance of this case is that it is out in the open," she said. "The whole society has to question whether it is only her, or whether the society is changing. Young people want to make love without getting married."

This case has mesmerized the country, particularly because Ms. Hinnawy says her daughter's father is Ahmed el-Fishawy, a famous 24-year-old actor. He is the scion of a family of movie stars and well-known as the host of a now canceled television talk show dispensing advice to devout Muslim youth.

He contends that the couple never had sex or even met off the set of the television comedy pilot, called "When Daddy Returned," where she helped create his wardrobe.
By filing suit, Ms. Hinnawy did more than just shatter a social taboo. She may well set an Egyptian legal precedent by requesting that the court order Mr. Fishawy to submit to a DNA test to establish whether he is the father of young Leena, born in October with a shock of soft black hair. DNA testing is relatively novel here, never before used to prove paternity in court.
In Egypt and across the Arab world, respectable sex requires marriage, particularly for a woman, and especially for the first time.

Ms. Hinnawy contends that the two had what is known as an urfi marriage, a practice in Sunni Islam that allows couples to marry in private with a contract they draft.
Urfi marriages have become far more common in recent years because the combination of tough economic times and a renewed emphasis on Islamic mores means that normal marriages remain an elusive dream for so many.

Tradition dictates that a young man who wants to wed first buy an apartment, furnish it and shower his fiancÃ©e with gold jewelry, an unreachable expense for many bachelors. Corporate tycoons and politicians who are married have found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with everyone from secretaries to belly dancers with an Islamic seal of approval.

But the clandestine nature of such marriages makes reliable statistics unavailable. Made public, Ms. Hinnawy's story became the talk of Egypt.

Conservative commentators decried the demise of the traditional Egyptian family. Gossip magazines splashed the scandal across their covers. The mufti, the highest religious authority in the country, issued an edict reminding everyone that secret marriage or no, the welfare of the baby girl was paramount.

Ms. Hinnawy said she had purposely held off telling her parents, who had rejected four suitors as unacceptable, that she was pregnant until it was too late to abort.
"I am trying to say to other people, not only girls, to try to have the courage to be responsible for what you do," she said during an interview at her family home. Her baby daughter, whom she will not allow to be photographed, was bouncing on her knee.
She complained that Egyptians prefer hypocrisy to what they consider public disgrace.
"I did the right thing: I didn't hide, and eventually he will have to give the baby his name," she said. "People prefer that a woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn't matter as long as it doesn't become a scandal."

In general, abortion is illegal in Egypt, but doctors are given wide leeway to interpret two general Islamic guidelines: that it is acceptable in cases where pregnancy might jeopardize the health of the mother and that the fetus gains a soul at three months. It is an option for women with means, though.
For women in poor Cairo neighborhoods or along the upper reaches of the Nile, out-of-wedlock pregnancies often end in death: the girl killed by her father or brother to end the public shame and cleanse the family honor.

Ms. Hinnawy's family lives in the Moqattam Hills, a favorite new suburb of Cairo's well-to-do on the eastern desert plateau overlooking the heaving metropolis. Her parents - Hamdi Abdo el-Hinnawy, an economist, and Selwa Mohamed Abdel Baki, a psychology professor - acknowledge that they were appalled at first when their daughter told them. Some of the extended family remain horrified.

The fact that the Hinnawys are a family apart is readily apparent from the front gate, which displays the names of both parents. Most such plaques name just the man of the house.
"I don't make the link between honor and sex," said Mr. Hinnawy, a short, soft-spoken man whose wiry hair is shot with gray. "Honor is one thing and sex another. Any guy or girl can have sex without sacrificing their honor. Of course there are certain conditions - that there be love, for example."

Mr. Hinnawy made an unusual decision in supporting his daughter, and the strain sometimes shows. On Jan. 6, the first day of arguments in the lawsuit, he was squeezing his way through the habitually packed corridors at Cairo's Family Court, trailed by television cameras, when a veiled woman screamed above the bedlam: "Go teach your daughter some values! It's a scandal, and you are filming it! Go fix your daughter's mess!"
"She did not make a mess!" Mr. Hinnawy retorted. "It's only a scandal for you and those like you!"
The case galvanized feminists of all stripes, and a score of Egypt's most prominent female activists showed up. Before postponing arguments until Feb. 24, the judge barred spectators, transforming the cramped, drafty waiting area outside the courtroom into a sort of commentators' souk.

On one bench Selma Bakr, a novelist with short curly black hair, said she was thrilled because she was convinced that the case would help defeat the conservative Saudi values that she said had changed Egyptian society for the worse since she was a student in the 1960's.
"These values from Wahhabi Islam are completely different from our Islamic values," Mrs. Bakr said. "This is petrodollar Islam. Women are considered objects for sex, for family, for marriage. But we need to let women be citizens, to have the same rights as all citizens."
On another bench Safinaz Kazem, a veiled, outspoken writer with Islamist leanings, railed against the so-called new religious sheiks whom, it is claimed, Mr. Fishawy consulted while the young couple were secretly fighting about an abortion. Ms. Hinnawy said one such figure had told them that they should each sacrifice five camels and fast for 60 days, then God would absolve them.

Ms. Hinnawy's lawyer, Mamdouh el-Waseemy, argued that Mr. Fishawy must submit to the DNA test to ensure the baby's welfare. In an interview, he said there were about 18,000 paternity suits across Egypt currently. DNA was used for the first time just six months ago, in a complicated rape trial in which the criminal charges trumped the paternity issue.
Mr. Waseemy said the Family Court judges were eager to find a test paternity case to push for DNA evidence, considering it far more scientific than the usual method of summoning witnesses like doormen to testify that they had seen the couple entering the same apartment.
Yousri Samy Sayed, the lawyer for Mr. Fishawy, argues that there never was a marriage and that in the absence of a contract, his client will not submit to the test.
"You cannot accuse any man in the street just by saying: 'This is my husband and the father of my child. I want him to go take a DNA test,' " said Mr. Sayed, a favorite lawyer for actors. "There has to be some evidence first that there was a marriage relationship."
He accuses Ms. Hinnawy of being a gold-digger, seeking to trade on his client's fame by taking her case public.

Ms. Hinnawy denies the charge. She says that there was a contract, but that when she first told Mr. Fishawy last spring that she was pregnant, he nicely asked for both copies so he could make the marriage official by registering it. She says that she has not seen the documents since, and that afterward he told her he would never marry an unveiled woman.
It is hard to gauge exactly where public sentiment lies. Among students interviewed outside the gates of Cairo University, for example, some suggested that Ms. Hinnawy was a tramp whose ambitions would have no effect on youth culture.

Others hoped that she would win and strike a blow for more open, equal relations between men and women and help lift the shame from sex. Some social scientists note that since the case went public, urfi marriages have suddenly become an important subplot in television soap operas, usually resolved with the marriage being made official.

The fictional versions seem pale in comparison with the real drama.

Writing in the semiofficial daily Al Ahram, the columnist Mohamed Shamroukh said, "It's like a TV series where everyone is dying to watch the last episode, making it the first reality series ever starring its own writers with an undetermined ending."

END OF ARTICLE

This isn't the end of the story. For the sad, second chapter, check out this link

Al Jazeera, seriously?

2006-06-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

Al Jazeera has long been vilified in the West by commentators and politicians who have never watched the channel, let alone understood its contents.

(Note: This could be bias. I have no proof. It's possible members of congress regularly tune in to Al Jazeera. It's also possible they all speak Arabic. I might just be uninformed).

I have generally felt squeamish while listening to such high-pitched convulsions. For the most part, as best I can tell, Al Jazeera's news coverage is a bloodier version of CNN. Al Jazeera chooses to air Bin Laden's taunts to the West, while western media sources only announce that such taunts were broadcast on an Arabic language station, a more patriotic alternative that does not give the aid and comfort to the enemy, or so we are told. On the Iraq war, far more images of dead civilians are shown on Al Jazeera, in large part because the station is really in the blood business. When it comes to American news, the mantra is "if it bleeds it leads." When it comes to Arab news channels, the mantra is "if it bleeds, and you've got that blood on tape, then it leads." It's a different emphasis, but unless you consider it anti-American to broadcast the unpleasant fact that, when wars happen, people die, it's hard to call such news coverage biased.

Of course, Al Jazeera is biased, openly - when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Critics of AJ love to point out that the station refers to Palestinian suicide bombers as "martyrs." It's not really the best criticism. In Arabic, suicide is a negative term. In English, we may think of 'suicide,' negatively, but the word itself is descriptive, and value neutral. In Arabic, the word for suicide implies mental imbalance. To call a Palestinian militant a suicide bomber in Arabic would thus be the equivalent of saying "Yesterday, two insane, depressed Palestinians blew themselves up because they were mentally unbalanced in Tel Aviv, killing two civilians." You might as well call them homicide bombers (for those who don't know, that's what fox news calls them). Where Al Jazeera is really biased in its word choice is in its decision to refer to all Palestinians killed in an attack by Israelis as martyrs. Thus when a Palestinian, civilian or militant, is killed by an Israeli raid, he or she is 'martyred' during an Israeli attack.

What has always befuddled me, though, is that American commentators constantly complain about Al Jazeera's bias. I read Al Jazeera online almost everyday, and I'd never seen a story that seemed to justify such virulent protest by Americans.

Today I read an article that made me think differently (though I stand by my assertion that few who complain about Al Jazeera have ever actually seen it).

Here's the article, the translation is rough:

Saddam would not resist helping Washington with quieting [the violence]

Khalil Duleimi, the head of the defense team for former President Saddam Hussein, said that his client believes that the United States will come to him for help in quieting the resistance in Iraq and in smoothing the path for the withdrawal of the American forces.

Deleimi said in an interview with the Associated Press that Saddam was the key to returning stability...

The article goes on and on. Saddam doesn't want any more bloodshed. Saddam wants to help both Americans and Iraqis. One quote is "This blood in the Iraqi government which was brought to power by the Americans has no purpose. They are unable to protect themselves or the Iraqi people. [The violence] will force the Americans, without question, to the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and to the Baath Party to save themselves."

It would be a good article, if it were a joke. But it's not. The only source for the article is Saddam's lawyer. There's no American spokesperson, no analyst to say how ridiculous these claims are. No one who says "regardless of how bad it gets in Iraq, it is rather unlikely that the US government will turn to Saddam Hussein, whose execution is imminent, and beg for any help he can give."

If anything, the article serves as propaganda for Saddam Hussein. It portrays him as willing to work will all sides for the good of the Iraqi people. There's no mention of the crimes he is accused of.

The story is on the front page of AJ's website, but there's no mention of the story anywhere on Al Jazeera's English language site. Odd, don't you think?

Personal news: this blog's future and being back in Cairo

2006-06-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you who worry, I'm back in Cairo, safe and sound. I got back to my apartment last night at around 9pm, just in time to do a little bit of work and pass out. Amazingly, I managed to sleep from midnight until 8 am. Maybe there won't be any jet lag this time (keeping my fingers crossed). For those who don't know, I found a new apartment. Yes, the days of the giant cockroaches are (hopefully) behind us. I'm now living in a small, cheap, but clean, two bedroom apartment about 5 minutes from the university by foot.

With regards to the blog, some changes are coming. My week in the States caused me to fall behind on my work, but the reality is, I was spending too much time on the blog before anyway. Daily entries are just too time consuming (about 1-2 hours). From now on, I'm going to write only 1 or 2 entries a week, but hopefully the quality will go up. With more time to think about what I want to write, and more time to make sure that what I write is fact, not fiction, hopefully the blog will become more journalistic.

Dispatch suspended

2006-06-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the states this week dealing with some family matters. Look for more dispatches from Cairo starting a week from Monday.

-Reuben

A small tragedy

2006-06-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

The gym I work out at in Agousa has become a small community for me. The same 8 to 12 guys are come just about every day. Some are a little bigger than me. Others are a lot bigger. But everyone is friendly. You can tell that, for the others, the gym is their social network. The 'captain' of the gym, Mahmoud, works out and gives advice from noon until the last straggler (often me) has finished their workout, normally around 11 or 11:30 at night. The gym is on the first floor (it's about the size of a small apartment) and the captain's apartment is on the fourth. Working out is Mahmoud's passion, his religion even - unlike most other establishments in Cairo, the gym does not close on Fridays, the Muslim holy day.

Immediately, from the first time I showed up, the captain tried to take me under his wing, giving me different exercises to do, prodding, encouraging, pushing me to work harder. After my second workout, he invited me up to meet his family. He's married (his wife wears a hijaab, the traditional Muslim headscarf) with four children. In his early 50s, the ages of his children range from young adults to a toddler who's around two years old. At one point, I told him that, with four kids and a twelve hour-a-day work schedule, he was quite the busy man. When I arrived, his wife was cordial, if reserved. She gave me a big smile, but words were not exchanged; in the Muslim world, husbands generally entertain male guests, and wives entertain female guests. Mahmoud may not be particularly religious, but some customs are more cultural than anything else. His wife quickly ducked into the kitchen, brought us some juice, and prepared tea. These meetings always make me a little uncomfortable. For one, my Arabic isn't strong enough to just ramble in conversation, and I never quite know what's appropriate conversation, and what isn't. For the most part, we just sat there, occasionally exchanging a smile or pleasantries about the house, family, or life in Cairo and America. It seemed as if the captain led a comfortable life. His horizons were no doubt limited, but there seemed to be a warmth in his gym and in his house that I imaged could sustain a happy life.

A few days later, I found out just how wrong first impressions could be. I arrived at the gym a little late, perhaps 10:30. By 11, I was the last person still there. As I finished up my work out, Mahmoud began asking me a few questions about my program. "Do you know a lot of American women here?" "Um, I know some, mainly through my program," I responded. "Do you think you could introduce me to some of them? I would like to meet some American women." Oh God, I thought. Not this. "Ah, the problem is most of the women in my program are very young, just about my age." I hoped Mahmoud's age would end the conversation, but he persisted. "You know, there's no love anymore in my marriage. I come and I go, and we exchange a few words and that's it." I asked him how long he had been married. He said since 1981. During the 70s, Mahmoud had been a professional body builder. He traveled to Vienna to compete, and claims to have met Arnold Schwarzenegger while he was there. He said those were great times. He had met women there that were fun, that life was enjoyable.

Suddenly, I began to think about the gym differently. Maybe it wasn't just a social network; maybe it was an escape valve, a way to work out sexual frustration, to deal with a life that could have gone differently. One thing I learned from my time in Syria, a lesson reinforced by my experience here, is how much more important outward appearances are than real life. They are important enough to list through a loveless marriage for decades.

Now that's a small tragedy

Saudi Arabia's first match

2006-06-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

The World Cup continues, and even if everyone can't watch see the game with a clear picture, it's still the biggest story in town. For the Arab world, last night was the real beginning of the Cup. The match up: Saudi Arabia vs. Tunisia. Both nations are predominantly Muslim. Both maintain Arabic as the official language. Beyond that, the two nations have little in common. Here's a Description of Tunisia from the CIA Factbook:

"Following independence from France in 1956, President Habib Bourguiba established a strict one-party state. He dominated the country for 31 years, repressing Islamic fundamentalism and establishing rights for women unmatched by any other Arab nation. Tunisia has long taken a moderate, non-aligned stance in its foreign relations. Domestically, it has sought to defuse rising pressure for a more open political society."

Repressing Islamic fundamentalism? It's hard to imagine a worse description for Saudi Arabia's political system. Saudi Arabia was founded at the beginning of the 19th century by Abd alAziz al-Saud, from whom the modern day kingdom takes its name. An aside: two points to anyone who posts the name of another country named after its royal family (at least one exists). From its beginning, the Saudi monarchy established itself as the defender of Islam. The nation's entire history has been a succession of bargains between the royal family and the country's strict clergy. The religion of Saudi Arabia is one of the most reactionary in the world. The monarchy has had to fight for every inch of reform. When Ibn Saud wanted to introduce radio to the kingdom, he was only able to do so by convincing the clerics that the invention would be good for Islam. The first radio broadcast was thus a reading of the Quran. Women are still not allowed to drive (if they could, it would presumably lead to more interaction between the sexes). Religious police enforce dress codes on both men and women. Infractions often lead to beatings. Beheadings and lashings are not just an accepted form of justice; they are part of the legal code. A certain number of lashings for theft, another for adultery, for battery, etc.

(I was hoping to link to a NYtimes op-ed by Maureen Dowd, but the site is down until Sunday. If I remember, I'll post the link then)

When it comes to religion, there is little question that Egypt has more in common with Tunisia than it does Saudi Arabia. I haven't looked into Egypt's legal code (stay tuned for a future entry), but the government is primarily a secular one. Egypt has a huge tourist industry, and seeing foreigners on the street without headscarves is normal; Unless you're on business or doing a pilgrimage to Mecca, the only way to get into Saudi Arabia is if you're invited by a Saudi (it really should be "an Arabian," but it appears that Mel Brook's golden rule applies to language as well; those who have the gold, make the rules).

Thus, it seems logical to me that Egyptians would feel closer to Tunisia than Saudi Arabia, and would root for them during the match.

Last night, I went to the gym to work out. The gym I use is small; maybe there are 10 or 15 machines in an area the size of a large living room. The machines are old; some are clearly on their last legs. The 'captain' of the gym, who I will discuss in my next entry, gives me a workout plan everyday. Yesterday was a leg workout. "Just so you know, you won't be able to walk tomorrow," he promised me. He turned out to be wrong; I hadn't lifted with my legs for so long, that by the fourth excercise, my hamstrings started spasming and I had to stop. The gym I go to is a dirty, poorly lit back street. The only sign for it is an unlit billboard that says "WINNER GYM," partially hidden by foliage. If you didn't know where to look, you wouldn't find it.
Walking out of the gym, I turn left. About 100 yards down the block, a left turn takes me to the main road, Sheriat elneal, or Nile Street, where I catch a bus or cab back to my home. But between the gym and that second left turn is a series of bakeries and outdoor coffee shops.

After 10 pm, the coffee shops are bustling, with chairs set up well into the line of traffic. Most nights, when I walk past those coffee shops, their small televisions, produced during the 1980s, are tuned to Egyptian soccer. As I walked past last night, I casually looked over at one of the sets. I could immediately tell from the camera angles that it was not Egyptian soccer. Without my contacts on, I strained to figure out who was playing, to determine what would cause the coffee shop to switch from its normal programming.

As I leaned in, attempting to weave my way through the small, rickety wooden tables and overflowing tiny glasses of tea, just to figure out who was playing, the chatter picked up around me. In an instance, that quickened chatter turned to shouts, which turned to a roar coming from all around me. It was clear that the other two shops down the streets had been tuned to the same game, and celebration was all around. "What's the score?" I asked a man sitting next to me. "2-2, Tunisia just tied the game in extra time." Within seconds, the game was over. While the three coffee shops I was around at the time of the goal hardly qualify as a representative sample of all Egyptians, but I wondered if Egyptians really do prefer Tunisia to Saudi Arabia. Earlier today, I asked one of the security guards at the University about it. He didn't think what I had observed was representative. "Tunisia is Arab, and Saudi Arabia is Arab," Ibrahim said, "but when it comes to sports, we don't get along with Tunisia so well." "Who were you rooting for last night?" I asked him. "Saudi."

A word on the World Cup

2006-06-14T03:31:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know (how is that possible) the United States lost its opening game of World Cup 2006 to the Czech Republic on Monday, 3-0. Thus far, it is the most lopsided loss that this years cup has seen; after the game, the US manager lambasted his players by name, including several of the supposed stars of the team - Kasey Keller, DaMarcus Beasley and Landon Donovan in particular - for a lack of effort, a lack of focus and an over all lack of execution.

The ability to watch the World Cup is taken for granted in the United States. If you have cable, you can flip on ESPN2 and see all the matches live. In America, like electricity, refrigerators and Ipods, cable has gone from a luxury item to a necessary and relatively affordable sign of middle class living. It is thus not an exaggeration to say that checking out the games this June is, for Americans, a piece of cake.

Not so in Egypt. Here in Cairo, and I believe throughout the Middle East, the rights to broadcast the World Cup were bought by ART, or Arabic Radio and Television. In the Middle East, most people get their news and entertainment from satellite television; few people pay for more than the dish. ART is a satellite television provider available by subscription only. In the US, if you want to watch Al Jazeera, Al Arabiyya or any other Arabic language station, ART is the provider you call. The packages range from 30 to 60 bucks a month (if I remember correctly).

But in the Middle East, people don't pay much for satellite television.

Until now.

ART must have paid a fortune for the rights to broadcast the World Cup, and their passing it on to consumers. In order to subscribe to ART, an American friend who has been living here a year told me, it costs 3,600 Egyptian pounds. That's more than 600 dollars, or a small fortune here. Whatever the price is (I'm having trouble finding it on the ART website), it's clearly more than most Egyptians can pay. I watched the first cup match, between Germany and Costa Rica, on a small TV at a local coffee shop. The reception was so terrible we left for a second local spot. By the time we had decided to move from the first place, I had developed a strong headache.

The experience is not unique. Small outdoor coffee shops are the norm in Cairo. People go to meet friends, sip tea, smoke shisha and, now, watch futbol. Walking from locale to locale, you can tell which shop owners know a thing or two about stealing cable and which are pure amateurs. It's only at the nicest places that one can watch the game as it can now be seen - a large screen, a clear picture and with quality sound.

What a shame that so many here can't fully appreciate the world's biggest party.

Pan-Arab nationalism, past and present

2006-06-13T05:21:00.000-07:00

Pan-Arab nationalism - a political movement that calls on Arabs (not Muslims) to unite, due to a common history, for a better future - was most popular during the 1960s. Its chief proponent was the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt during the late 1950s and 1960s. Nasser rose to power through the military (it was a military coup in 1952 that freed Egypt from England's colonial rule) but he became an Arab icon in 1956 when he made the bold and unexpected decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. The decision to unilaterally take the canal from British control was not as unexpected as its consequences; British, French and Israeli troops invaded Egypt to retake the damn in late October, despite a United Nations resolution, only a few months old, that recognized Egypt's national claim. In an episode that is not mentioned often in today's Middle East, the US quickly intervened on the side of Egypt, demanding that French, British and Israeli forces leave. The episode was widely believed to have destroyed the myth that Britain remained a Great Power.

But in the Middle East, the Suez Canal crisis was seen as a huge victory for Nasser and his new notion of Pan-Arab nationalism. Arabs had stood up for themselves...and won. Suddenly, Nasser was like a God. The idea of Arab unity was so powerful that in 1958 (just two years after Suez), Syria invited Egypt to unite the two nations as a first step to an all-Arab union. The experiment, known as the United Arab Republic, lasted just over two years. In 1961, Syria seceded, due to Egypt's heavy handed policies.

But what truly destroyed the notion of pan-Arab nationalism was the disgrace of 1967. In a war that lasted only six days, Israel destroyed the militaries of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Nasser had touted his Arab socialism as the path to development and Israel's destruction. '67 proved that neither had happened. Nasser remained in power until his death in 1970, but just barely; revolutions in Syria and Iraq just after the war revealed the earthquake in Middle Eastern politics wrought by the 67 war.

Iran's Islamic revolution of 1979 suddenly brought a new philosophy to the foreground: pan-Islamism. Like in 1956, a new ideology had risen, fought the West, and, apparently, won. Islamic movements sprung up throughout the Middle East, including in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood successfully assassinated Egypt's President Anwar Sadat in 1982. Hezbollah grew in the south of Lebanon, and killed more than 200 US Marines in a suicide van attack during the same year. During the decade, the Syrian government also faced a challenge of the Muslim Brotherhood, and crushed it brutally in the city of Hama, killing as many as 10,000, including civilians.

But Islamic insurgencies have failed to topple any Arab government since Iran's revolution. Instead, governments like Egypt's have been forced to play a delicate balancing game between their Arab identity and the potential threat of a Muslim takeover. During the 1990s, Saddam Hussein in Iraq adopted a far more pious stance, funding mosque construction and religious instruction throughout his country. Similar policies were adopted more recently in Syria.

What's interesting is to recognize that these ideas - pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, secularism, democratization - all still exist, and can still be seen in Egypt. The country is still an Arab republic, but Islamic values are apparent everywhere. The Islamic brotherhood is still officially outlawed here, but its existence is tolerated and its existence and importance are obvious. Throughout the Agousa neighborhood, where I live, you can find pictures with the slogan "alislam, hua alhel," "Islam is the answer." It is the slogan of the Muslim brotherhood, and while the phrase can't be found on major highways or billboards, it is everywhere on Cairo's backstreets. Initially the Iraq War caused the government here (led by President Hosni Mubarak, who rose to power after Sadat's assassination in 1982) to hint that it was ready for more democratic reform, but such promises have thus far gone unfulfilled.

To see the importance of these ideas, you can look directly at Egypt's constitution. It begins:

1) The Egyptian Arab Republic is a country whose political system is democratic socialism, built on an alliance with the working class.

And the Egyptian people are a part of the Arab nation, working towards the realization of complete unity.

2) Islam is the religion of the country, and the Arabic language is its official language, and the principal of Islamic law is the primary source of legislation.

3) The sovereignty of the people is the source of power and the people participate in their own sovereignty through the constitution.

Compare that to our constitution. Imagine if it included "America is an Anglo-Saxon nation, and it works to unite all the Anglo-Saxon nations." Just a thought.

The price of oil

2006-06-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

USA! USA! For those who don't know, America's first World Cup game is today (7pm in Cairo, noon in NYC) against the Czech Republic. There's also a lecture I'm going to in an hour (perhaps the source of my next entry...), so my time for today's entry is short.

In case you were wondering, gasoline in Cairo costs 1.4 Egyptian pounds to the liter. If my calculations are correct, that comes out to about 93 cents a gallon. The notion that all Arabs get their gas basically for free is quite off the mark. My apartment (a three bedroom) costs about $320 a month, and would be at most three times that if it was in a nicer neighborhood and building. Taxi rides that in New York would cost 8 bucks are about a dollar here. Food is also cheap (I can get a decent meal for $1.50, and I think even nice meals here generally run in the 10-15 dollar range, excluding the highest class establishments). As you can see, in comparison to the cost of living, Egyptians are actually paying more for their gas than we are.

Egypt's economic outlook

2006-06-11T02:59:00.000-07:00

In the coming months, this is something I hope to write about a lot more. It's a topic that can be overwhelming, especially for someone (full disclaimer) with little economic background. Cairo is a sprawling city with upwards of 15 million residents, and while economic indicators can help to explain certain aspects of Egypt, they hardly paint a clear picture of what life is like here. I suppose the best 'big picture' you can find is provided by the IMF. The International Monetary Fund ensures the stability of exchange rates, provides economic advice for developing (and, less forcefully, developed) economies and is a lender of last resort during economic crises. IMF reports are critical for developing nations. A positive report causes private investors to put money into an emerging economy. A bad report can eliminate foreign investment. In April, the IMF released a largely sunny progress report. There are other stats one can throw out: the growth rate is around 6%, unemployment is close to 11 percent, (comared to 4.6 percent in the US) and the US dumps in about 800 million dollars in economic aid annualy (plus another 1.3. billion in military aid)

Jay Nordlinger of the National Review attended the World Economic Forum summit in Sharm elShaikh and described Egypt's economy this way:
"Egypt may be having problems on the political front, but they are making big strides on the economic front. And they're happy to trumpet it. On the roads to Sharm El Sheikh's Congress Center--specially built for this conference, in under eight months--are signs: "Egypt: Open for Business"; "Egypt: Open for Competition"; "Egypt: Open for Growth"; "Egypt; Open for Change." These are not empty claims, for the facts back them up. Tariffs, taxes, and other barriers are falling; GDP is rising (by a profected 6 percent this year). Inflation has been subdued. Foreign investment is pouring in, and the Egyptians are asking for more."

For most people here, though, I imagine such a simple picture doesn't really fit. There is a lot of construction going on in Cairo, but there's also a lot of rubble. Walking by the American embassy the other day, my roommate was astonished to find a high-rise building in the same condition that it had been in (no walls, electrical wires jutting out every which way, a work crew milling on the sidewalk) the day he'd left Egypt, 12 months ago. The story may be anecdotal, but the building was within a block or two of the American embassy, in the wealthies part of the city. What you see walking the streets is the incredible gap here between rich and poor. According to an Egyptian student I met, the middle and upper classes here just don't have the same sense of social awareness you find in the states, primarily because the situation here seems so hopeless. In an odd reversal, western fast food changes charge prices that the average Egyptian could never afford, and cater to the rich, primarily local, upper class. The banking system may be improving, but most people don't use it. We pay our rent in cash. We pay for meals in cash. We get our stipends in cash. Some places do accept credit cards, but only those that are frequented by western clients. Immediately upon arrival, I had to take out a few hundred dollars from Citibank in order to pay the first month's rent and deposit. I ended up helping an Egyptian man who was using the stall next to mine. He was short, with graying hair, perhaps in his early 50s. It was apparent he had never used a touch-screen before.

Perhaps the best example of the economic gap here can be found in my neighborhood. There's a Mercedes-Benz dealership, fully stocked with new model luxury cars. This morning, there were perhaps a dozen young men out front, cleaning the windows in preparation for business. A hundred yards away, women sit on the corner and sell spices and vegetables off of carts, while others walk donkeys down the street (perhaps for my next post I will investigate where the hell these donkeys come from, and where they go).

Of course, the main problem for me is one of perspective. First, I've only been here a week, so I can't comment on what Egypt looked like years ago. But perhaps a bigger problem is that I judge by American standards. The poverty here is real, but to assume a booming economy here will resemble a booming economy in the West is obviously unfair.

A small victory

2006-06-10T05:51:00.000-07:00

First off, check out this week's War News Radio program. It's really fantastic. It's not everyday you hear what your average Iraqi has to say about events in his or her own country.

Since my arrival in Cairo, I've been waiting for the famed Egyptian sales pitch to come my way. I have to admit, by Thursday, I was surprised no one had offered me a "great deal" on exotic rugs, an "exclusive offer," on fine dishes or a "special price" for Arab treats. No one had even tried to sell me perfume. Until today.

I got out of bed today at 1 (I'm sleeping from dawn until I wake up these days because of a not-so-small cockroach problem) and decided to head to the center of the city to wander around. The American University in Cairo, where I'm studying, is in the most western part of the city (where you'll find McDonald's, KFC and Hardy's), and I figured it was as good a place as any to find an internet Cafe. [An aside: the AUC area is also the heart of the tourist and travel industry. One travel office had a large banner above its entrance that read "direct flights to Baghdad." Apparently that's it's best selling point. I guess a lot of people are flying from Cairo to Baghdad these days]

Right now, my Egyptian colloquial still isn't fantastic, and often random people on the street shout things to me I can't make out. This especially happens in the neighborhood where I live, most likely probably because there are virtually no foreigners. But as the midday sun scorched my neck, I found myself in a reasonable mood. As I walked a crowded street, a boy of about 15 with dark brown skin (I would not have mistaken him for Syrian) began barking at me "mister, mister, scuse me, mister." I decided to engage him. "Afwan, elinternet cafe fein?" [where's the internet cafe? that's what I wanted to say, anyway]. "Come, come," he said, as he led me across the street.

Fuck. I don't have time for this, I thought, my sunny mood slowely weakening. He walked me into a small perfume shop, a few steps below ground level. A shabby red rug covered the floor. Perfume bottles lined the wall, reflected by wall-to-wall mirrors. "I really just want to know where the internet cafe is," I said, stopping at the entrance. He told me that everything was fine, that his father would tell me where the cafe was. All he wanted to do was give me the store's business card. He invited me to sit down.

His father showed up, a short, stout man with a tight mustache and a growing bald spot on top of his head. "Welcome, welcome," he called in a warm voice. He introduced himself as Abdul, and asked if I wanted coffee or tea. "I really just want to know where the internet cafe is," I told him. "No pressure, no pressure. You are friend. Sit, sit." I reluctantly said I would have some tea. It's a smart trick he pulled. By agreeing to have tea, I was forced to stay for an unspecified amount of time. The son disappeared to make the tea, which, amazingly, was not served for a solid 20 minutes. Perhaps he was boiling the water by the heat of the sun.

As we sat, an amusing conversation began. The Arab was trying to engage his American customer with mediocre english. The American was responding only in even more atrocious Arabic. Finally he relented and we spoke mainly in Arabic. I told him I was a student, with little money. He said he would give me a special price, because I was a "special friend." It's amazingly easy to make special friends here. (He always said "special friend" in English. Perhaps he didn't feel comfortable bullshitting to that extent in his own language, but I doubt it.) I tried to explain in Arabic that I didn't wear perfume, that I had a girlfriend in America, and that the only perk of that unfortunate situation was that I didn't have to smell nice. Ever. I must have butchered the Arabic though, because he didn't seam to get the joke. "I give you special price. 1 guinea." Well, I thought, if I can get out of hear for only 20 American cents, I guess that would be fine. As he let me (that's not the right causitive verb) try on a few perfumes, we discussed my living situation-- I'm looking for an apartment. Suddenly, another boy, maybe 14 with the beginnings of a thin pubescent mustache showed up in the doorway. Abdul, who had been showing me perfumes, turned to the boy and told him I was looking for an apartment. Abdul asked how much I was willing to pay. I explained I was living with a friend, and between us, we were willing to pay 2000 pounds a month ($380bucks). "Not a little more?" He asked "No," I said. The boy rushed out to look for an apartment. Normally, he wouldn't do this, Abdul assured me, but I was a special friend.

After trying on a few perfumes, I told him which I liked better. Finally, his son returned with the tea, as did the boy from the apartment. He said he'd found an apartment that was fantastic (no coachroches, he promised) for only 1,600 pounds (300 dollars). The catch was that the apartment would not be vacated for a week, but for a small deposit it could be held... I said I could make no decisions without my friend. I felt the pressure of three sets of eyes looking at me. The stout owner was perhaps 5'7," the two adolescents much skinnier and maybe an inch or two shorter. Their combined gazes were still intimidating.

I said I would talk to my friend about the apartment, and the topic changed back to the perfumes. "Okay," Abdul said, as he reached behind his desk for a few velvet-covered boxes. Inside the box were glass bottles of varying size. "This one, 120, this one 100..." Wait, I thought, what was going on? "Afwan, wa lekin fakaret en kulta wahid guinia bes." Sorry, but I thought you said only one pound. "No, one pound, one gram. Special deal, normally it's two pounds one gram, but you are special friend." So he's trying to drag me in for 20 bucks hunh? "Sorry, but I'm really not that interested in buying perfume." "No pressure, no pressure," he said at a feverish pitch, as he reached for a smaller box. "This one 50, this one 40." Finally he got down to the smallest bottle. "This one only 10 pounds." I stood firm. He offered to sell me half the bottle for 5 pounds. "Only 5 pounds he said, in a voice that was quickly approaching a wimper. I'm not buying I said. I'm interested in the apartment, and I need an internet cafe. Where was the business card I had been promised anyway? Finally, I was at the doorway, a half hour after my entrance, with business card in hand. "Please, 5 pounds only." Almost out. I promised to call about the apartment. "Where's that internet cafe?" I asked the boy again. He pointed around the corner. "Just 5 pounds!" Abdul moaned. 3 more steps until street level. 2 more. 1. Freedom. Zero dollars spent.

I still couldn't find the internet cafe. So I asked another shop owner.

Personal news: ups and downs

2006-06-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

There is good and bad news on this, my first day of classes. First, the bad news. I must warn you, the bad news is gross, so if you haven't the stomach for infestation, this would be the time to skip down to the good news section.
The bad news, is that the roach infestation in my apartment is major. And I mean, major. The day before yesterday, my roommate and I went out and bought roach motels and spray, and put them / sprayed it in the bathroom and kitchen. Yesterday morning, we found about 7 dead between the two rooms. In the bathroom, we found a giant living one, which we quickly sprayed and killed.
We haven't gotten to the bad part yet.
During the afternoon, I sprayed some more in the bathroom, and I sprayed at the entrance to my room, and a little on the floor. Bad for my health, I figured, but good for my sanity. Still, it was hard to sleep. There is nothing that disgusts and terrifies me more than large cockroaches (see previous post and reference to The X-files). It was hard to sleep. I kept imagining that I heard things, kept straining to feel if something was on some part of my body. At some point, I think I did drift into the lightest of sleeps.
At 2:20, I awoke to feel what I thought was something on my leg. I thrashed for a moment and quickly realized I had definitely felt some type of crunch between my left right thigh and the mattress. For a moment I waited in bed. Finally, I got up, and flipped on the light switch. As I turned to look back at my bed, I saw a large roach on its back struggling to live. I looked down, and freaked out. There was another on my hip, near the waistband, inconceivably on its back, stuck to my underwear fabric, also struggling. I smacked it away, then grabbed my sandal I smacked the one on my bed. I was breathing hard, stressed, and ultimately, flipping out. "Unbelievable," I thought. At 2:30, my evening of sleep had ended. And right before the first day of class. How could I turn my light off? I could have sprayed the repellent behind and under my bed, but I decided that sleeping with such odors rising through the mattress was probably a bad way to go. I sat up, thinking how terrible it was going to be to have to move. I like the neighborhood I'm living in. I just joined a gym. I have a spot picked out, a local tea shop with nargiles (water pipes), to watch the world cup, which starts on Friday. Still, I knew I couldn't live with the problem I'm living with. I thought about lost money. The rent, plus the security deposit, plus the 'finder's fee' came to about 400 bucks, more than my monthly stipend.
This morning, we spoke to the landlord about the problem, An exterminator is coming in this afternoon. If it doesn't work, I'll be moving out next week. Will keep you posted. This is the grossest post I've written (and hopefully the grossest one I will write).

On to the good news. I arrived at opening orientation groggy (on only about 2 1/2 hours of sleep), but with caution optimistic for my first day. First, there was a speech about what the summer session will be like. An hour 40 of classical Arabic will be followed every day by 2 1/2 hours of Egyptian dialect. The entire summer's syllabus will be focused on Egypt - culture, politics, history, literature. Then, I headed to my first at 10. It was awesome. As the teacher began the introduction, I realized I hadn't seriously studied Arabic since Middlebury College, where I spent my 2004 summer. Since then I've taken an Arabic course at Penn, and gone to Syria, but I haven't taken a real Arabic course, with real homework (or at least with real homework that I did). Coming to Cairo, I worried if I actually still enjoyed studying verbs and nouns. Within minutes, that fear disappeared. I actually got a jolt of adrenaline as I realized how psyched I was to study vocab. It's now official, I am a nerd. But at least I now feel excited about the year.

my own big brother moment

2006-06-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know, I now have a cell phone in Cairo. If you're calling from the states, it's: 011201055451. From Cairo, it's: 0101055451.

I bought my cell phone (In the Middle East, Arabs and foreigners alike refer to them as 'mobiles' and pronounce it in the British style) two days ago at Radio Shack. That's right, Radio Shack. One of the perks of western cultural infiltration is that it allows one to read very funny transliteration of English into Arabic. I've also eaten at a McDonald's and a Pizza Hut. For the record, I intend to switch entirely to local foods soon, but I'm trying to pace myself and avoid what I will euphemistically refer to as stomach problems and other ailments that most westerners experience upon their arrival in Egypt. But back to Radio Shack. The cell phone I settled on is a slick Sony Ericsson which ran me about 80 bucks (400 Egyptian pounds). The salesman, a slight 5'10" Egyptian with a soft, undemanding demeanor, said I had made a good choice. A strange comment, I thought, seeing as he had been the one to point it out. But no matter. Riding on the euphoria that can only come from being told you have good taste by someone who you are paying, I approached the cash register. I asked about warranty. He said it was a year, free of charge. I asked him to let me hear the alarm (my cell is my only clock here). It was loud. I said 'I'll take it.' In a quiet, slightly accented voice he told me to wait a minute. From under the desk, he pulled out and began to fill in a form in Arabic. As my eyes wandered around the store (adapters, CD players, batteries) he asked, "Can I see your passport?" I had gone to the shop with my roommate Justin who lived in Egypt for a semester and had been here a week. The request didn't seem to bother him. I told the clerk that I didn't have my passport, but that I had a copy, which a proceeded to take out and put on the table. "That's all I need, he said." He filled in my passport information and did not return my copy. I proceeded to pay and walked out, a new cell phone in hand. "What happens to that copy of my passport?" I wondered.
This morning, I woke at around 9. I had had a rough night sleeping. Before going to bed, I'd gone to brush my teeth and found three cockroaches in or near the bathroom. The largest of the three (gargantuan, antennae an inch long) was under my toothpaste on the bathroom sink. If the problem isn't solved, I'll have to move. [When I was at an age between 8 and 12, I watched an episode of the X-Files where cockroaches were sent by aliens to study humans. In the episode, one cockroach would show up in a poorly lit scene. Suddenly hundreds would appear and burrow into an unsuspecting attendant or late night security guard or over-worked scientist. As is probably apparent by my mentioning it, the episode left an impression] After waking up, I walked into the living room and told my roommate about the previous evenings events. I brushed and watched my face. We talked about buying some Roach Motels. Suddenly (as I suppose it always is) I heard my mobile ringing from my bedroom. Strange. The only person I had given my number to in Cairo was my roommate, and it would have been about 3 am in the states. I didn't recognize the number on the phone, but unlike my girlfriend who is too busy and popular to pick up unknown numbers, I excitedly jumped at the opportunity and hit send. "Hello?" I said. In the background I could hear typing, and what sounded like a busy office. "Uh, you speak English?" a male voice responded in a gruff, thick, but understandable Egyptian accent. "Yeah, who is this?" I said. More typing in the background. "Thank you." The man promptly hung up. Big Brother, it appears, is listening.

big brother news part 2

2006-06-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

Judging by an email I received about my "big brother news" entry, I think some may have missed the point of the post. While a meeting between an Israeli prime minister and, say, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be news regardless of what transpired, Israeli and Egyptian heads of state meet all the time. The meeting alone isn't front page news. An agreement that negotiations are the best path to peace is meaningless. The equivalent would be if, with the 2004 presidential race heating up, Kerry and Edwards had met and announced that America would be better off if George Bush wasn't the president. The reality is that neither the Israelis nor the Egyptians changed their position at all (nor were they expected to do so) at the recently concluded summit. If anything important happened at Sharm Al-Shakh, it wasn't an agreement that a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians is a good idea.

Big brother news

2006-06-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

Note: I In the US, we generally associate state-run newspapers with the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984. In the book, the hero Winston Smith works in the records department, 'rectifying' what had previously been written. When a former leader of the party was discovered to in fact be an enemy of the people, Winston would go into overdrive erasing that person's good deeds from the history books. When Oceania is at war with Eastasia, all newspapers, magazines and books are 'rectified' to show that Oceania had in fact always been at war with Eastasia. When the enemy changed to Eurasia, Winston and his colleagues would feverishly work to rectify the history books. Yesterday morning I woke up at 4 am (jet lag). After 3 hours of lying in bed, I decided to go for a walk and buy a newspaper. I picked up one of the many state-run Egyptian newspapers, Al-Akhbar (The News). What I found did not remind me of 1984. What is published, is what happens. But the definition of front page news may (no conclusions on day 2) be a little different for the state-run papers. What follows is a (rough) translation of the beginning of the lead article of Al-Akhbar from June 5, 2006. There is a 3X3 picture of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sitting with new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert underneath the headline: Header: Mubarak and Olmert agree on the necessity of resuming negotiations to realize peace. Sub-head: The President - "Negotiations for the sake of a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis push the peace plan on all tracks. If Israel arrives at a final solution the Arab world will not hold back from recognizing [Israel]." Olmert - "We are sorry for the accident on the Egyptian-Israeli border that killed two [Egyptian] security officers and we have decided to form a combined committee to determine what occurred and to make sure that there is not a repetition of the accident." Smaller sub-head: Israel is committed to the road map and will meet with Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] to move forward. Body: Sharm al Shakh - President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed during their diplomatic mission last night in Sharm al-Shakh on the necessity to resume peace negotiations. The president announced during a press conference his agreement with Olmert that a peace agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian people arrived at through negotiations is the principal requirement in order to arrive at a general peace agreement among all parties. Mubarak also announced his willingness to work with Olmert in order to realize this goal, and that he was sure that it is possible to change the current situation in the Middle East. He said that it is important to us to place the parties at the negotiating table, and that this is the principal option. He invited the Fatah and Hamas movements to solve their differences so that they could return to negotiations, that their internal problems make it more difficult to deal with the principal problem. Mubarak announced his belief that if peace was realized and the problem ended, the Arab world would recognize Israel and begin complete diplomatic relations. Olmert promised during the press conference that Israel wanted to arrive at a negotiated settlement and that if it cannot it will take its own path. He said that he agrees with President Mubarak that a negotiated settlement would be better for the sake of peace in the region. Additionally he said that Israel is committed to the road map..... This continues, but I must go. The above translation took about an hour. Hopefully I'll be able to do it faster as the year goes on. My conclusion: In Egypt, whatever the president says, it's front page news.

Personal news: first day

2006-06-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

Note: If I'm writing on a topic I think is only of interest to those who know me, I will title it "personal news." I don't want to waste the time of my millions of other readers who are more interested in my keen analysis of the Middle East than in my day to day life.

Today was (and continues to be) orientation. We began at 9 am with an introduction (already, only in Arabic) from the US and Egyptian directors of CASA. The provost of the American University in Cairo (AUC) also welcomed us. He did so by informing us that the current weather is only 'warm' and that in the next couple of months, we will experience what Egyptians believe to be 'hot.' He also mentioned that, once it gets 'hot,' we may begin to see visitors and tourists from the Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait) who will come to Cairo in order to "get cool." I guess everything is relative.

News and notes from the introduction: The CASA program is now entering its 39th year, and there are around 1,400 CASA graduates out there in the world. The program began (do the math) in 1967, and the director, Mahmoud Al-Batal informed us that currently the program receives less funding than it did in the 1970s. Al-Batal said that, when he was asked to become director in 2000, he was unsure he wanted the job because he feared he would be known as the director who oversaw the end of the CASA program. That all changed, obviously, on 9/11. Funding from the Department of Education has increased, and this year's class is the largest ever (35 students). During the 80's, Al-Batal reports, the program got about 40 applicants a year for 20+ spots. This year, there were over 140 applicants. This is not to say I am in the Arabic elite. Some applicants (I was informed by a friend who knows people on the CASA selection committee) were turned away because there Arabic was too good. That 9/11 has increased interest in Arabic and increased funding for Arabic studies is clearly an uncomfortable reality for the directors of the program. There is no question that CASA is in better shape today because of those terrorist attacks.

In 10 minutes, I have my placement exam for Egyptian dialect. Seeing as I don't know any Egyptian dialect, the process should move quickly.

Driving in the heat

2006-06-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

The first thing I noticed as I got out of the airport was the heat. It caused fear. At 8 p.m., as I got into the taxi, I began to sweat. Pulling away from the airport, I discovered that having the window down made little difference. There seemed to be two choices: hot still air with the windows up, or hot moving air with the windows down. I thought it was a universal law that the windows down ensured some measure of comfort. The laws of physics (or is it chemistry? biology? In college, I was not one for science) were apparently different in Cairo than on the left side of the Atlantic. More than anything, the heat at 8 pm made me fear what the heat would be like at 2 pm. I tried to convey this to my taxi driver. Apparently my Arabic needs work.

Quickly, my mind wondered to a different topic - death. As in, the likelihood of death on every drive in Cairo. The 50 mile an hour speed limit is more a point of reference (kind of like the zero year in the Christian calendar) than a law here. The white lines dividing lanes are even less important. At night, headlights are turned off so that they can be flashed at intersections to warn other drivers. Horns blare constantly. Whether or not the cars have turn signals is unclear, but they certainly are never used. According to the woman sitting next to me on my flight - a project manager for USAID - 40,000 people die a year in car accidents in Cairo alone. The notion of slowing down before a blind ally is foreign here. So is seatbelt use. As my taxi driver careened along the highway, cutting in and out of traffic, using his horn with abandon, he was fatalistic about his profession. "Driving is crazy here," he said. I told him how people say the same thing about New York, but that those people needed to travel to Cairo to learn what crazy really was.

First thoughts

2006-05-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

What will this blog be about? I think it's fair to say that the first several weeks will be an exercise in trial and error. At least for now, my blog has three purposes. First, I think it will be a better format to keep you guys (friends and family) updated on what's going on in my life. I studied abroad in Syria during the spring of 2005, and writing long mass emails became a hassle. I hope the blog makes staying in touch easier. I know I'll miss home.
Second, I'll write about Egypt. These are exciting (and scary) times in the Middle East, and the possibility for serious change in Egyptian politics is real. The blog will give me a forum to write about what's going on in Cairo, and it should force me to read the local papers a few times a week. Translating should be a good exercise.
And third, (assuming I can figure out the technical aspects) the blog will allow me to keep my radio journalism skills in shape. Stay tuned for interviews with people all across the spectrum from shopkeepers to NGO employees to friends and professors.

A little background on me: I'm set to graduate from Swarthmore College this weekend. I majored in political science and minored in history. My main interest since I arrived at Swarthmore has been Middle Eastern politics. I started studying Arabic during the 2003 summer at Columbia University. I did an intensive at Middlebury College the following summer, and studied abroad in Syria during the 2005 spring semester. I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and went to the Bank Street School for Children through 8th grade. My mother still lives in New York with her boyfriend Len Rodberg, a professor at Queens College (my father died when I was 12). My brother is going to law school in DC in the fall, and my sister is an English teacher in Brooklyn. When I get back from Cairo, I'll be looking for a job in journalism.

Another way I could have written my background: I'm the youngest child of two New York psychiatrists.

How much time I'll have to write and post on this blog remains to be seen. My primary reason for being in Cairo is Arabic. The program I'm in is called CASA (Center for Arabic Study Abroad). You can find it here. It's run out of Emory University. Classes are taught at the American University in Cairo. Supposedly it's pretty intense. I'll certainly let you know. By the end I'll be reading full books and writing papers in Arabic, or so I've been told.

I promise future posts will be more interesting. I expect to start using this for real in mid-June.