Catching Up, Part II: Cultural Excursions and Kitchen Struggles

Realizing that I need to stop devoting my afternoons to catnaps and verb conjugations, I arranged for Tharwat to take me and Sarah one day to El Moezz St., where we had visited a beautiful and newly restored mosque one evening in January. Whereas going in seemed to be an informal arrangement then, someone decided two weeks ago to charge 100 LE for foreigners to do the historical sites on the street. Anyway, the street, behind Khan el Khalili, is lined with medieval mosques, madrasas, and palaces, most of which date from the medieval period. We got our tickets in a giant cistern that at one time provided the neighborhood with water through a series of public fountains (sabil) decorated in Ottoman style. We then went back to the Qalawun mosque, madrasa, and mausoleum that we had visited previously, although it was a little less magical during the day. Still, the blue and gold ceiling and intricate woodwork are exquisite, and as we were the only visitors, it was a welcome respite from the chaos of the outer world. We also visited the palace of Prince Bishtak, which has been turned into a concert space so there's not too much to see inside (aside from the screens of the haremlik overlooking what is now the auditorium...). The caretaker told us that the said prince only lived in his palace a short time before being overcome with guilt that he had razed the houses of many neighborhood residents. In any case, the guy led us on a climb up to the roof of the palace, which provided a breathtaking view of Islamic Cairo. This really warrants a photo more than a description:

Anyway, we continued from there on to the very large Mosque of Hakim bi-Amr Allah, built in the 10th century but refurbished quite recently with a massive expanse of white marble by Ismaili leaders (making it a site of Ismaili pilgrimage these days). While my friends prayed, I padded around in my bare feet on the cool marble of the inner courtyard, enjoying the near silence punctuated only by a sheikh leading some women in Qur'anic recitation.

The next day, expanding my cultural horizons once again, I rounded up some friends to go to an event at Gallery Misr in Zamalek, a hip art exhibition space. That night, it was sponsoring a tribute to Sheikh Imam, an immensely popular Egyptian folk singer and composer who died in the 1990s and spent much of his life before that in and out of jail as a result of his protest music. As I wrote a little about in my thesis, many of his songs (whose lyrics were written by a range of popular poets, most famously Ahmed Fouad Negm, who is still alive) were sung in the January 25 revolution here last year as well. In contrast to what you might see at a Bob Dylan concert in the US (the closest parallel I can think of), the vast majority of the audience was young people, all of whom knew the words to the songs. Anyway, the event began with a documentary on Sheikh Imam's life and music and a short talk by the director while the organizers passed around beers to the audience. This was followed by a rousing (singalong) performance by a young band called Baheyya. At one point, an old man named Zein Abdin Fouad stood up and explained that he had composed many of Sheikh Imam's songs, and then recited some of his own poetry. Even though we foreigners were probably the only ones who couldn't sing along in the whole room, it was a lot of fun to be part of the energy and at least clap along.

That night, after the concert, I went also for the first time to Borsa, the alleys around the stock exchange that have been closed off for pedestrians and are filled with little cafes with names like "Facebook" open all night. Downtown is filled with aging colonial apartment buildings, which are both beautiful and a little sad as they have almost all seen much finer days. A Eurocup match was just finishing up, so Borsa was packed -- I'm pretty sure the audiences for soccer matches are much larger than for the announcement of the election results or Morsi's swearing-in. Soccer is serious business. We finished up the night at Horeyya, the paradigmatic downtown baladi bar that is bathed in fluorescent light, covered in mirrors, and where the gruff waiters miraculously carry 20+ beers in two hands, aggressively dangling them in front of the patrons' faces until they give in and drink them. But it's famous for having the cheapest Stellas in town at 9.75 LE.

A couple days later, June 30, was Morsi's inauguration. There wasn't too much buzz about all of that beforehand, and when the moment came for the swearing in, in the early afternoon, I was sitting with Adam in the delicious Lebanese restaurant Zaytuna in the swanky mall at Nile City Towers digesting a tasty feta cheese concoction. Most people in the mall continued shopping, although the waiters turned on a TV and gathered around to see his official speech at Cairo University. He didn't overemphasize religion in his speech, which was interesting, but generally there was nothing terribly surprising in it. It was a little anticlimactic compared to the announcement of the election results (I didn't see any firecrackers), and up to this point (now two weeks later, as I write this), I guess people are sort of in a holding pattern to see what Morsi actually does. Of course, his decision just a few days ago to order Parliament back into session despite the dissolution of the body the weekend of the second round of elections caused a bit of a stir. On July 10, the day the high court ruled Morsi's order void, I happened to be passing the Maglis al-Dawla in a taxi in the early afternoon as it's on my way home. There were about 10 police trucks parked around, as well as a substantial but quite docile crowd of demonstrators. Despite this episode, I would not say the air is at all tense in the way it was leading up to the announcement of the election results. While we wait to see what a Morsi presidency really entails, we are also waiting to see what kind of celebration, if any, will take place on July 23. That has always been the public holiday celebrating the 1952 revolution, and more specifically the armed forces. Given the unusual and strained relationship between the president/parliament and the military council, it remains to be seen how this holiday will materialize. If only I were still writing my thesis! 

Another current events item I wanted to mention -- hopefully I haven't already -- is the ad the military aired warning Egyptians against foreigners. As a foreigner living here, this is of course worrisome  -- and mind that it came from the SCAF, not from the Muslim Brotherhood. Here's the ad from last month, with English subtitles. Anyway, it was definitely controversial but we have been warned by our program and others that being present at demonstrations in Tahrir, for example, is risky in part because it's not rare for foreigners to be accused of being spies. That was one impetus for the widely discussed assault on a female British journalism student who was taking photos in Tahrir one night a few weeks ago (part of it was that she was female, part that she was foreign). I mention these things not because they are the norm at all -- they definitely aren't -- but simply to show the contradictions in attitudes toward foreigners here. No one really believes that the US government has anything but sinister intentions, but obviously the troubling trend, if it ultimately turns out to be one, would be a shift in attitudes toward individuals. I want to stress that I don't see this happening at all on a large scale, but simply worry that if the kind of conspiracy theories promulgated by ads like the one above become more widespread, foreigners will be really deterred from visiting Egypt... and God knows, that's really the last thing Egypt's economy needs.

But back now to all the positive things about this place, and some of my special outings. We were assigned a few weeks ago for my Egyptian dialect class to go to a special market in the Ataba neighborhood that sells only materials for "soboua" (not sure how to transliterate this!) This is something like a baby shower, but takes place exactly 7 days after a baby is born. The shops sell primarily baby-themed knicknacks (small statues, mostly) that are distributed to the guests, as well as baby rockers or decorative cradles (I know this is hard to imagine... basically a bassinet in which you shake the baby back and forth in front of your guests) decked out to the extreme in pink or blue froufrous. There is also a special metal pot, also with froufrous -- the more the better -- hit with a metal beater to create a din. We had a really comical time with this homework, since I went with a male classmate and the shopkeeper of course assumed that we were having a souboua when we asked how much we would need of every item if there were to be 30 guests at our party... not many tourists come asking after baby shower paraphernalia. 

A second assignment, carried out last weekend, was for each of us to cook Egyptian food. I was assigned mahshy, which is anything stuffed -- i.e. grape leaves, cabbage leaves, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, etc. Although grape leaves are apparently the most beloved here, I felt that would be too challenging a task for my first foray so I chose peppers (filfil), eggplant (batingan) and zucchini (koosa) instead. I went in the morning to Soliman Gohar, the vegetable souk in my neighborhood and bought those three veggies already hollowed out for mahshy, as well as tomatoes and onions for the stuffing. A kilo of tomatoes, for instance, only costs about 40 cents. I then picked up the rice, fresh mint, fresh parsley, etc. from the grocery store and went home to begin. The problem was, the Egyptian cooking show my teacher had told me to use for the recipe didn't give any quantities, since every woman here already knows how to cook this. I also couldn't really understand the chef... except that he kept saying "hasb 'a-raghba" -- equivalent here to "depends on your taste." So I winged a lot of it, just throwing spices into the mixture in random quantities and hoping something edible would emerge. I want to point out that this is not a recipe for a busy woman - I cooked from 12pm-4pm and from 7pm-9:30pm, stuffing my vegetables with the rice/tomato/onion/spice combo, laying them in a pot on a bed of tomato and onion slices, and finally boiling them for an hour or so on the stove. Again, most of this was guesswork. In the end, we all met for a potluck at a classmate's place and feasted on koshary, lisan asfour, hawawshy, masaqa'a, and other classics. I also made about 8 times more than was necessary, so clearly my estimates were off. Although every Egyptian I told about my mahshy struggles, looking for validation, told me that his or her mom's was definitely better than mine, overall the meal turned out to be delicious and our toil worth the while. 

As all of you are well aware, the 4th of July recently happened as well. Here in Egypt, we would naturally not let this pass us by without some truly American partying. One of the other CASA fellows, Michelle, hosted a potluck barbecue in her apartment after class that day, set to the truly American soundtrack of songs like Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." Friends brought or made mac 'n cheese, key lime pie (don't worry grandma, this was good but yours is still the best!), corndogs, hamburgers, lemonade, pasta salad, and other down-home classics. This was my second 4th abroad in the last few years (the other being 2009, when I celebrated at the US Embassy in Rabat). (And then of course there was the famous July 4, 1996, when we went to the embassy party in London and I met Ben & Jerry. A day that will never be forgotten.)  Being away from America for this kind of holiday (maybe Thanksgiving will be the same?) makes celebrating them even more imperative, and there is a lot of bonding that goes on on such occasions among American expats. On July 5, I went to a second party, this one at a diplomat's apartment in Mohandessin, where I began to see familiar faces and realize that the American expat community here is really smaller than I imagined... and then on the 6th I went to... get ready for this... an American Idol world tour concert at the Cairo Opera House! I know this is weird, especially since I've never seen the show, but why not, right? The audience was split between American embassy families and hangers on, and Egyptian teenagers who actually knew the words to the Justin Bieber songs the performers sang. 

Earlier that afternoon, I had gone to Al Azhar Park with an Egyptian friend, Ali, and an American, Dexter. Dexter and I made the mistake of taking the metro to Ataba (the market district), which is one of the most crowded places I have ever seen in the entire world, and then walking almost an hour to the park. But it was worth the struggle, because Azhar park at sunset has to be in the running for most beautiful views in Cairo. It is on a hill overlooking a panorama of minarets, palm trees, desert, and, on one side, the famous Citadel. The Cairo sunset is a special beast because of the obscene amount of pollution here: the sun looms enormous on the horizon for a few moments and then slips into a constant grayish haze that is oddly beautiful. Here are a couple photos. In the first you see the Citadel behind us (the mosque of Mohammed Ali, which also happens to be the name of the friend pictured here), and in the second you see the view from another side of the park just before sunset.

Azhar Park is a great feat because it is a lush oasis that was built on top of a massive landfill in 2005 with a grant from the Aga Khan Foundation. It is filled with flowers, fountains, and neo-Mamluk style gazebos. I remember coming here in 2006 when I was in Cairo with LINC and dining in one of the restaurants, but hadn't realized then that it was brand new. Ali took us to a quiet area of the park and we sat for a bit on the grass before being approached by a guard who told us that particular patch was off-limits. All Ali had to do, however, was tell them he was Dr. Mohammed Ali (he is trained as a veterinarian and works for a medical company) for the guard to offer his deferential apologies and walk away. Another family then tried to sit down near us, and the guard again asked them to leave -- as no one was a doctor, however, their pleas were in vain. We were explained to Ali that this was a strange encounter for us, as no guard could care less if you were a doctor or a Congressman or anything else in the U.S. if you were sitting on some patch of protected grass. But here, being a doctor or an engineer earns you a wide range of extra privileges: in that respect, there is a much keener sense of class consciousness, and uneducated people are usually very deferential to those who seem highly educated in a way that one does not really see in the U.S.

My last story for now is about food and hospitality. An Arabic professor I had at Princeton, Tarek, is currently in Egypt visiting his family and agreed to meet up with me and Kevin, the other Princeton student in CASA. He took us to the villa of his friend Ali, who used to live in New Jersey but now owns a popular restaurant downtown. The villa was way out in a desert development called Shorouk, past miles of barren sands and Burger Kings and next to the British University of Egypt, an odd complex of brand new British colonial-style architecture in the middle of nowhere. The place reminded me a lot of the development where I lived with my host family back in 2006 -- a bit soulless on the one hand, but green, pleasant, and windy on the other. Ali's family put out an eye-popping spread for us. I am struggling with how to describe the quantity of food present: lentil soup, eight or ten salads, pasta with bechamel sauce, gigantic lamb shanks on the bone, a platter of whole pigeons, a tomato stew of some sort, mahshy, two rice dishes, kofta, kobeiba, and at least five or six other dishes I've forgotten, all cooked by Ali's wife. We didn't even touch at least half the dishes and from this meal alone I have developed a kersh (belly). The pigeon was the most original experience.... as it peered up at me from its little black eye, Ali showed me how to crack its back so that the rice stuffed inside would pour out. As they say here, it was a khibra! So after we gorged ourselves and I apologized profusely for being physically unable to put anything further in my mouth, we moved out onto the back porch and watched Tarek, who many, many years ago used to play for the Ahly club in Cairo, take on Ali's two young sons. Then it was time for the first of four rounds of dessert, Umm Ali. This is a delicious concoction of milk, sugar, and maybe some other things, but mostly milk and sugar. This was followed by a steady procession of tea, lemonade with milk, chocolates, cakes, and fresh fruits while I nursed my kersh in a corner. Hospitality in Egypt truly goes to extremes, and visits stretch on late into the night, much longer than they would at home, where I suppose guests tend to assume the host has other things to do and vice versa. In this case, we arrived around 5pm and stayed talking until midnight. What was perhaps best about this evening spent with a real family was the opportunity to speak only Arabic for an extended period and experiment with all the colloquialisms we've learned in class but are sometimes afraid to use on the street in case we mess them up. I felt for the first time yesterday that I have made major progress in speaking since I arrived a month ago.

Now I'm off to buy myself a fanous, the special Ramadan lantern, since the holidays begin in a week!