Rebel?

It is June 29, the eve of the massive day of protests anti-Morsi forces have been awaiting for months. Nearly every time I've gone into the metro, there has been a young man with a clipboard pacing the platform. Tamarrod? he asks to passersby, holding out a pen. Tamarrod means "to rebel" -- and the movement has been gathering huge numbers of petition signatures, 22 million according to their last claim, against Morsi. Indeed, most people I see on the metro platform of all stripes do sign, although one bearded man laughed and snorted -- La, tabaan! -- Of course not! 

There is once again the escalating sense -- not at all unfamiliar to me after a year in Cairo -- of a city on the verge. No one really knows what will happen tomorrow. As Michele Dunne wrote on the Atlantic Council's EgyptSource blog, the best (and unlikely) scenario would be protests large and powerful enough to force Morsi to make democratic compromises incorporating a broader coalition. Another scenario is that the protests won't really be large enough to affect major change, as was true of recent brief outbreaks of unrest. Finally, a not impossible outcome could be violence significant enough to spur a military takeover (again). Although many secularists hate the military and the Brotherhood, whispers of a military coup of sorts are not too rare. Indeed, it seems to me, the military is really the only other organized power base besides the Brotherhood. Fifteen million people may have signed the Tamarrod petition, but this doesn't mean they're all liberals with any kind of shared vision -- and it certainly doesn't mean they have the capacity to form an organized replacement for the current regime.

I'm sitting in Shakawa this afternoon, a cafe near my apartment in Dokki, watching muted footage of demonstrations on TV as Arabic pop blasts in the background. Exactly this time last year, I was sitting in the same chair, watching footage of people going to the polls to vote in the second round of presidential elections. Although some were already feeling bitter about their less-than-ideal choice between the Brotherhood and the old regime's felul. But there was still a prevailing sense of cautious optimism that essentially free elections were actually happening. This Wednesday, though, Morsi delivered his State of the Union address. The written text should have taken an hour. He spoke for more than three. He rambled in a seemingly random fashion, calling out names of specific officials and questioning their revolutionary credentials. He claimed that tourism in Egypt had risen dramatically. He didn't mention the four Shi'a men killed by a mob just outside Cairo.

We were in Imbaba, a mostly poor neighborhood north of Dokki, the night of the speech. Miriam and I ate dinner with our friend Manar at tables set up in the street at El Prince, a meat (mostly liver) restaurant. Afterward, we were walking with her to her house on a quiet street when we heard the speech coming from nearly every apartment window. Everyone was listening, and many were mocking it. Manar's mother was once in the army, but left to have children. She used to wear miniskirts (like everyone! she said), but had grown more conservative -- especially after making the hajj in 2011. Though she, Manar, and her sister, are quite religious, none had any use for Morsi. He's mixing religion and politics, came the familiar refrain. That's not right. Maybe no one could have solved our problems right now, but he made a big mistake by only gathering advisers from the Ikhwan with no experience in governing. The whole family rolled their eyes every time Morsi claimed an achievement. Still, none would be going out on the 30th: They would stay as far from politics (and violence) as possible. As the speech played in the background, Manar's mother asked us about religion. Manar, having just discovered excitedly that she had met her first Jew (Miriam), hesitantly told her mom. I would have had no idea! I can't even tell you two apart! she said. As we were leaving, she kept thanking Miriam for changing her ideas about Jews. We always think of Israel... she kept saying, But you are so sweet and beautiful and speak Arabic! I'm so glad to have met you.

We left Manar's house a little after midnight. As we rode down the Corniche, we saw the extent of the gas crisis -- another problem haunting Egypt. Hundreds of cars waited in line at each gas station we passed, at least the ones that still had gas at all. Vendors walked down the lines with newspapers. People drove by yelling about how much Morsi sucks. Some people parked their cars and got out to socialize with people further up. A joke circulated about people ordering McDonald's delivery to the 300th car in the 3rd line, etc etc. When I actually ask people why there's no gas, however, no one seems totally sure. Taxi drivers have told me that the problem was the government giving all Egypt's gas to tiny little Gaza. The government says the problem is caused by "rumors". If the government knew what to do, it seems, it would do it: it's totally not in its interest to have tense, frustrated people gathering for hours as general panic and anti-Morsi sentiment rises.

Yesterday, the 28th, was the warm-up day. Sitting in my living room in the afternoon, I heard loud music down in Mesaha Square. I looked out to find a truck equipped with megaphones circling below. Erhal ya morsi, erhal! boomed the voice. Get lost, Morsi! Then the music again. Later on, I was at a baby shower. It was close to downtown, but still quiet -- the warm-up demonstrations, it seemed, were toward the outskirts of the city, at Brotherhood headquarters and the presidential palace. In the living room, however, some of the older relatives were watching TV. It was broadcasting live footage from Alexandria. The Brotherhood's headquarters in Sidi Gaber had been burned down. So it's begun, I thought. The party continued in the main room. Moghat, a goopy brown drink brimming was spices was passed around. The soboa, as it's called, is held a week after the baby is born. The baby, in this case a little girl named Amina, is put inside a pink cradle with lots of froufrous and bounced up and down. A kitchen knife lies next to the baby and salt is sprinkled around the house to ward off the evil eye. Someone (at one point me) loudly bangs on a brass bowl, initiating the baby into the sounds of the real world. Someone else follows the baby with incense, accomplishing the same with smell. And of course there is dancing...

For now, though, the celebration is over and tomorrow we'll be inside, watching the news.

Faranji in Ethiopia - Part II

The next day, we were back on the bus to Addis Ababa -- this time the Sky Bus coach, which meant that it showed an amusingly English-dubbed Ethiopian chick flick but still took 11 hours to reach its destination. We didn't see much of Addis that night, and the next morning we were in transit again, this time to the north.

Velvet prayer-brellas for sale outside a church in Addis

We flew early Friday morning, May 24, to Gondar in the Amhara region. I was reading Robert Kaplan's book Surrender or Starve about the Ethiopian famine, which he argues was a highly political tool of the ruling Amharas used against rebellious ethnic groups in Tigre, Eritrea, and other areas. Nowhere we went in Ethiopia did there seem to be any legacy of famine, and far from the contentious borders with Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan (aka almost all of them) everything seemed extremely peaceful.

In the historic city of Gondar -- one of the many old capitals of the Amharas -- we stayed in the Florida International Hotel, a shining blue and orange edifice through whose lobby passed a number of Jews in kippahs. Gondar has the last concentration of Ethiopian Jews, and all of those will have relocated to Israel by next year. My first stop, though, was the Debre Berhan Selassie Church, to which I set off on my own that morning. To get there from the central Piazza, I took a scenic hilly walk through outlying huts. At the shady, secluded stone church, I removed my shoes and was taken hold of by a wizened priest in a soiled white toga. He unlocked the door for me; I was the only visitor. He grabbed my arm, trying to kiss my cheeks (apparently this is a thing they do, but it was really awkward) while showing me the holy murals. Hundreds of wide-eyed angels peered down at me from the ceiling. The church was covered, every corner of it, with color. Satan played on one wall, leading Muhammad (eek!) on another. The personified Trinity, a trio of graybeards, adorned the back half of the church where velvet curtains led into the locked sanctuary. The priest didn't speak a word of English, but kept repeating something like "gooznash" whenever I would correctly identify one of the saints.

Inside Debre Berhan Selassie Church, Gondar

My attempts at Amharic, though, did not get very far. The word for "thank you" has about 15 syllables and the alphabet is in fact a syllabary, with hooks and curls added to letters for various vowel sounds. I sat for a while with two teenage girls on a bench overlooking the Piazza as we tried to sound out phrases from my phrasebook. Sky, one said to me in English, indicating that it was too hot for us to be out in the sun.

Miriam was writing an article about Jewish tourism in Ethiopia, and we joined her and her guide for a brief visit to a model Felasha (Ethiopian Jewish) village outside Gondar. There is only one Jewish woman left there, said the guide, and she is veryyyy, veryyy old. (In fact, the woman told us herself, she is about 50.) The cottages are occupied by Christians these days, but they paint the Star of David on the whitewashed exteriors in an odd twist of marketing... although the Jews and Christians in the village were once in conflict, now it is a kind of tourist trap, selling pottery in the name of the Felasha. We sat with the Last Jew for a while, and she told us that her mother died in a refugee camp at the Sudanese border, so she return to Gondar. Mostly, though, she was interested in her pottery.

The so-called Felasha Village

We decided after that to visit the Royal Enclosure, dating from when Gondar was a flourishing capital between the mid-17th century and the mid-18th century. The compound, restored by UNESCO, contains several palaces, lion cages, halls, and outbuildings. In fact, there were still lions kept there through 1992. The stone edifices have been kept in a state of arrested decay, with creeping bits of green here and there. The air was fresh and almost cool, such that I almost felt I could be somewhere in Northern Europe.

Gondar's Royal Enclosure

Not too far away, and next to a strange modern ruin of a parade ground, were the Fasiladas Baths. Similarly made of stone, they consisted essentially of a huge swimming pool with a house perched in the center. The pool was empty and we were the only visitors. Mammoth tree roots curled around the edges. That day, it was silent, but once a year the local government spends weeks filling the pool for a big public festival that simply sounds like a giant pool party.

Roots climb over the edges of the Fasiladas Baths

We had heard of the Princess Mentewab Complex nearby, and were intrigued by its billing as the place where a long-dead Amhara princess used to satisfy her penchant for young boys. We rode a tuk tuk up a steep hill, then walked past a cluster of straw-roofed huts to reach the crumbling stone complex perched on top. Most of it had been destroyed by the pesky Sudanese dervishes in the 1880s. The highlight, however, came when we ducked into one of the overgrown outbuildings adjacent to the main church. A priest in yellow and black robes greeted us, handed us long, wispy candles, and led us into the crypt. Our light flickered over bits of old church paraphernalia and the brittle pages of books written in the ancient language of Ge'ez. Then the priest pulled back a sheet to reveal the skeletons of Princess Mentewab herself and her three sons.

One of the attendants at the Princess Mentewab complex and a young boy

The road to Princess Mentewab's

Thanks to Miriam's article about the Jews, we were able to attend Friday shabbat services with the last Ethiopian Jews that evening. The Jewish Agency for Israel has an office in Gondar and brings in young Israeli women to teach Hebrew and prepare the final emigrants for their journey. As soon as we entered the compound, we were swarmed by tiny children shouting to us in Hebrew. The back of the courtyard had been set up with long benches for services, and a sheet down the center divided the men from the women. Like many Ethiopian Christians (and perhaps Muslims as well), many of the women were dressed in white, with shawls wrapped around their heads. The only distinguishing factor, we were told, is that felasha women sometimes tie a topknot with their scarves. Of course I didn't understand either the Amharic or Hebrew parts of the service, but many of the children who had followed us back attempted to do the prayers. At the end, the rabbi appeared and broke bread, passing it around on large trays. By next year, all these people will be gone, and this bit of culture will have disappeared.

We ate dinner on cowskin stools before heading out for a night on the town. Gondar isn't huge, but we managed to find a cozy spot of life pulsing at the Balageru Cultural Nightclub. In any country but Ethiopia, I would have steered very clear of anything that called itself something so dubious as "cultural nightclub." In Egypt, that would probably mean belly dancers in mummy costumes. But at Balageru, and at a similar venue in Addis later on, we were the only foreigners in the house. Ethiopians, it seemed clearly, really enjoy Ethiopian stuff -- they seem to feel little need to imitate any other culture, but neither did they seem to aggressively reject 'foreignness.' Perhaps it comes from the fact that the country's brush with colonialism was so brief. The attitude seemed to be: "Hey, what we've got over here is working pretty well for us right now." A fairly hip, perhaps upper middle-class crowd lined the walls of the club, which was decorated with traditional-looking paraphernalia of unknown use and lit with red and purple UV lights. Guests sipped the local beer or a bottle of ultra-sweet Aksumit wine, while a man with a square, banjo-like instrument and woman in a traditional white, embroidered dress sang to the beat of a drum. We were told the lyrics were satirical, so we just tried to laugh when the other audience members did. Spotting us, the duo of performers approached and sang to us in Amharic... All we got out of it was "Obama! America! Ethiopia! America and Ethiopia!" so we knew it was about us, and it seemed to be friendly in tenor. Eventually everyone got up and started wildly gyrating their shoulders -- often in a face-off with another patron. I decided to get in on the shoulder dance and got in the middle of the crowd with the singers. When I sat back down, a man across the table leaned over and yelled: "Miss, you are the BEST!" Confident I had mastered the elusive shoulder dance, I retired for the night.

View of Gondar

A sad attempt to capture the vibe of the cultural nightclub

The next day, we began our trek into the Simien Mountains. We had hired a trekking company (highly recommended) to ease the stress of the trip and because we had limited time: to procure all our own equipment could have taken days. A van that was, amusingly, blasting Shakira's Waka Waka: This Time for Africa drove us to the base camp at the mountain town of Debark, where we picked up an entire entourage of cook, guide, assistant cook, and scout (later to be joined by porters and their mules). Our guide, only 24 years old, was one of only 3 female guides in the whole national park. We hiked with her that first day a few hours to our first campsite. Our scout, picking up the rear, wore an old camouflage ensemble and a cape and slung a rifle that appeared to date from the American Revolution over his shoulder. Perhaps to keep away the hyenas. We plunged into an expanse of green that was like nothing I have seen in at least a year. I was reminded most closely by this woodsy sense of peace and clean air of hiking in Vermont as a kid, although the Ethiopian cliffs were a bit more dramatic. Also, for example, there are no troupes of baboons in Vermont. Shortly into our hike, we encountered a gaggle of about 50 baboons hanging out on the grass and picking each other's nits. These are vegetarian baboons, so humans are cool with them, and in fact they allowed us to approach very, very close.

Our trek begins

Baboon sighting #2 (of many)

When we arrived at our campsite, our cook, Fanta, had already pitched our tents and had popcorn and a canteen of tea out for us on a little folding table. After dinner, we sat around the campfire he had built and Alex brought out his water bottle full of strong Ethiopian honey wine, tej, to share with our convoy.

The first night went smoothly and the second day brought dramatically varied terrain. Sometimes it was something out of a science fiction movie, with vast slopes of knobby yellow grasses punctuated by lone palm trees. Sometimes the trees were low and mossy, and sometimes we followed the edge of dramatic cliffs. Sometimes we encountered a herd of sheep (or a herd of children) that seemed to belong to no one and come from nowhere. A child would appear, spinning and cracking a whip, and then scamper off across the open horizon. A handsome black and white bird would swoop down every now and again, and once or twice we spotted a klipspringer or a bushbuck hiding in the brush. As it was the beginning of the rainy season, the skies were often a bit cloudy and most views partially submerged in mist -- something of Casper David Friedrich's The Wanderer. 

Alex, The Wanderer

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer

Just before arriving at our second campsite, we passed through the round thatched huts of Geetch village balanced sideways on a steep hill. We stopped by an old man, shoeless, who was plowing his field with a team of sinewy oxen of mammoth size. Our guide explained that the government had decided to relocate all the villagers out of the national park in order to protect it the environmental detriments of overgrazing. I'm not happy about this, the old man stopped to say. Young people can find something in Debark. But me? I'm too old to learn a trade. What can I do?

Old man plows his fields in Geetch

That night, the rains came early, around 4pm, accompanied by roaring winds. We huddled in the cook's shelter wearing all our clothes, and one of our tents collapsed irreparably. With all three of us curled into one, the interior of the tent flapping against our faces, we managed to emerge victorious the next morning. We descended from Geetch in an ethereal post-rain fog for our final day of hiking. We reached our highest point at 3900m above sea level on a cliff that jutted over a broad green valley. Mostly we walked in solitude, savoring our last few hours of silent lushness.

Morning at Geetch campsite, after the rain

Eventually the road appeared, again from nowhere, and we were driven back to Gondar. From there, still burned to a crisp and unshowered, we were taken several hours to the south to the city of Bahir Dar. Perched on Lake Tana, Bahir Dar is a tropical - even malarial, for some - counterpoint to mountainous Gondar. Fortunately we'd stocked up on prophylactics just in time and took on buggy Bahir Dar with zeal. We checked into the Ghion Hotel, where the aging buildings were surrounded by waist-high, blossoming gardens, which made up for the dangling wires and generally seediness of our room.

The next morning we hired a motorboat to take us out on Lake Tana. There was not much to see around the lake itself, but the Zege peninsula - where we were welcomed by a small monkey balanced on a log -- was something else. The narrow trails leading between the monasteries were lined with vendors of the cone-topped furry lunch boxes for which Bahir Dar is famous. There weren't many other visitors, though. We visited two round monasteries, each brimming with flamboyant colors. The second, at least, was quite large and had a modern complex for the monks built up around it. Monasticism, it seems, is alive and well in Ethiopia. The monasteries are perhaps best represented visually:

Paintings from one of the Lake Tana monasteries, Zege Peninsula

Vendors on Zege Peninsula

We then motored to the source of the Blue Nile, a nearly unnoticeable gap in the lake where hippos are said to dip, though we saw none. Later on, off the boat, we headed to the Blue Nile Falls, the site that is currently causing intense ire in Egypt because of the Renaissance Dam that is in progress. We followed a short path and a suspension bridge to the falls themselves, trailed by a horde of small children demanding money. And also my shoes, which they attempted to unvelcro from my feet. It was hard to believe that this large trickle of brown water was the focus of a threatened war!

Miriam gains a following on the suspension bridge to the Blue Nile Falls

The next morning, I tried a new delicious Ethiopian breakfast food: chechebsa, bread mashed with eggs and honey.

Chechebsa at Wudu Coffee

Then we were off to the Bahir Dar airport, a two-room gig whose degree of completion was inversely proportional to the zeal of the security staff. Back in Addis that night, we made our way to the National Museum, only to find that its pride and joy, the protohuman "Lucy", was not currently on display. Still, we got to see an ostentatious throne donated by the Indians when Haile Selassie instituted a national education system. Beyond that, the museum was largely empty of displays -- perhaps another product of its lack of European colonial penetration. We dined at Serenade, an apparent hideout for African Union officials, whose African-Mediterranean flair manifested itself in the form of a five-course dinner. Because that drained us of all our remaining money, we sat out the rest of the evening in Fendika, another "cultural nightclub", attempting to master the shoulder dance... and then on the floor of the Addis Ababa airport... before returning to simmering Cairo in the wee hours of the morning.

Metropolis of the Absurd

Cairo is often a place of absurd contrasts. This was demonstrated once again this weekend when Miriam and I ventured out to two different neighborhoods for two very different social experiences. Many of the city's absurd contrasts are, of course, linked to the vast income disparity. Cairo is a world metropolis full of trendy artists, intellectuals, and bankers, and all the things those types of people like -- as well as, in many of its incarnations, an enormous slum.

To set the stage, I had a discussion on Saturday afternoon with a couple of my students at St. Andrew's. Chao, a breathlessly eager new student from China, is living on his own here. He and Ayman (the Sudanese student who went out to buy Machiavelli last fall) and I were discussing what it means to be a foreigner here... in different ways, of course. Yeah, we're all foreigners, but you have it way better, they told me, laughing a little. This was true, I admitted. If two Sudanese are fighting each other and they go to the police, nothing will happen, Ayman added. If you go, they'll take care of you. (This at least used to be true: no one is sure the police are doing anything these days.) A little later, Chao asked me whether the U.S. Embassy would help me if I were in trouble in Egypt. I told him it would depend on the issue, but I guessed so. Oh, I see, Teacher. But if I go to the Chinese Embassy here, they will not help me. Never. They don't care, he said. I asked Chao if he felt like he had had a good experience here, or whether he felt he was treated differently because he was Chinese. I have had some good experiences, but there are many bad guys on the streets. It was hard to gauge what had actually happened, because he naturally laughs constantly and darts from topic to topic. Lately, he had been searching for an apartment with Americans or Europeans, where he thought he would be able to focus better on his studies. I don't like living with Chinese guys, he told me. They don't respect my property - if I lend them my computer, for example - and they just watch movies all night long and play games! Chao wants to study as hard as possible so that he can take the necessary exams to leave Egypt and study somewhere in the West. His determination shows, manifested in the reams of paper he has printed - -the review sheets from the entire last year of classes -- which he has meticulously marked with phonetic symbols and Chinese translations.

Our conversation returned to other risks. Ayman brought up racism, which many Egyptians are resistant to labeling as such. I mentioned this and he rolled his eyes, laughing. We also discussed sexual harassment, which Ayman said that Sudanese women experienced as well -- far beyond the kind of whispering about women's attributes, he said, that men engaged in in their own country. Chao told us about a man who had exposed himself to him on the street. But at least he didn't touch me, he said, he was just touching himself. Despite my students' distracted antics in class, they all live much more adult lives, and face many more adult problems, than the vast majority of kids their age.

As Westerners living here, my friends and I have the privilege of being able to transcend many of the class boundaries that bind much of the society (and certain categories of foreigners here as well). We can blend in at a fancy soiree or a nightclub -- or frequent shabby cafes where our presence provides for laughs rather than discomfort.

On Saturday evening, we decided to experiment with the former. Taste of Zamalek was a showcase event for chic local businesses and restaurants held at... the Gezira Equestrian Club. Preteens in dressage uniforms pranced about the ring, while white paper lanterns were strung across a patio nearby. Organic juices, fancy cupcakes, and gourmet shawarma were all to be had -- as well as cat food giveaways and expensive jeweled handbags. A woman crooned in French over the loudspeakers. It was the Algerian singer Cheb Khaled's rai classic, Aisha, but nearly unrecognizable. Hardly any women were veiled, and not a small number wore sundresses or tank tops. Dozens of sleek white sofas had been set out at one side of the ring in front of a giant outdoor movie screen. As we sat eating, the emcee announced, in English: Let's all give it up for pouffy bean bags!!.... What?! Yes, actually, a large number of pouffy bean bag chairs had been interspersed with the sofas in the dressage ring. I looked up and saw people standing on the 6 October Bridge, above the club, taking in the scene below. I could only imagine what they were thinking!

The next morning, Miriam and I geared up for quite a different experience. A friend had recommended a particular hammam sha'aby to us, the same thing that is known as a Turkish or Moroccan bath in other parts of the region. It's not much of a tradition here anymore, but there are baths here and there. This one was in Boulaq, a very old, atmospheric (but also crumbling) part of Cairo on the Eastern bank of the Nile that served as Egypt's main port throughout the Ottoman Era. In those days, Alexandria was between heydays and hardly of note. Traders came all the way down the Nile to the Boulaq outpost, which before the construction of anything but pleasure gardens on the Western bank was some distance beyond the city proper over towards the Citadel. Today, the alleys of Boulaq still seem to be dwelling, in some respect, in another era. The taxi couldn't fit in the street where we were headed, and even the tuk tuks stopped beyond it. A banner was strung across the alley, advertising Hammam Awkal with the slightly blurred, airbrushed photograph of a middle-aged, mustachioed man. Beyond, peering down on the alleyways of Boulaq from the newly developing Corniche, were two mirrored skyscrapers. We turned in at the entrance of the hammam, marked by oddly garish paintings of red flowers and golden mummies.

In the lobby, we were greeted by a boisterous old woman who took our arms and reeled off the services we should receive -- el sweed (waxing), takyees (scrubbing), mask, and so forth. The lobby itself was high-ceilinged and filled with slightly dingy Louis XIV sofas. These were occupied both by women in varying states of undress and by an assortment of motionless Shirazi cats, sprawled out with their feet in the air. To one side was a display of elaborately froufrou-ed wedding dresses; to another was a glassed-in cabin where a girl in her underwear was having her legs waxed for all to see. Most notable, however, was the monkey cage. Two live simians pranced about inside... luckier, at least, than the scores of taxidermied animals that were also displayed around the room. No one but us seemed to notice the oddness of the place, and before we could marvel too much we were rushed inside to disrobe. The round bath chamber itself was unsurprisingly damp and somewhat dirty, but full of life. First, we crouched on the floor of the steam room, then dipped into a pool of hot gray water before the scrubbers were ready to take us on. Propped up on the tiled platform in the center of the bath, we had our old skin sloughed off by ample matrons with firm hands. They were not nearly as ample, though, as most of the other bathers: once the slimming blacks abayas came off, the room was filled with mammoth bosoms. I felt as though I were in a slightly more modest though even more exaggerated version of Ingres' 1862 Orientalist painting The Turkish Bath.

Most of the chatter in the bath was just smalltalk. The ladies ranged from about our own age to late middle age. In just their underwear, stripped of the layers that betray one's social class as well as degree of religiosity, it was hard to tell their background. Many had come, though, from faraway neighborhoods -- this was a good place, they said, and they would come every few weeks. After a hummus-like mask and a shower from a cool spigot, I was told by the matron in charge that I was bakhta (very stingy) for asking the price. We kept hearing mumblings about siyaha, tourism. It seemed a tourist price had been invented for us... Certainly there couldn't be many tourists venturing into crumbling Boulaq these days, and most certainly not for a bath.

The Intellectual Revolution

This just in! Here are some photos from the ongoing sit-in of intellectuals outside the swanky Ministry of Culture villa in Zamalek. For the last week or so, artists, writers, and the like have been occupying the new Brotherhood minister's office in protest of his revamping of the ministry and firing of the heads of key institutions (the Opera, the National Archives, etc.). The scene tonight was not huge but energetic and refreshing. There has been a constant stream of outdoor performances in the quiet residential street where the ministry is located, and most of the audience comes and goes. During the time we were there, we saw the tail end of a wild marimba performance, heard two poets reciting anti-Ikhwan pieces calling on Egyptians to come out for the June 30 protests, and listened to one of the Sheikh Imam tribute bands that had performed at the memorial concert a few days ago. In between poems and songs, the emcees and the crowd broke out into chants: Aish, horeya, isqat el ikhwangeyya, they shouted -- Bread, freedom, down with the Ikhwanis. And many of the popular refrains of the last year returned, such as Ana mosh kafer w ana mosh molhad (I'm no infidel and I'm no atheist), a response to MB accusations that liberals and intellectuals have corrupted with country and betrayed religion. (We're still not at the point yet where it's okay to publicly say you're a kafer or a molhad, but that's another story.) Unlike some of the other protest milieux I've been in here, no one looked at us strangely. It was okay that we were curious. I tried to imagine what a sit-in of intellectuals would look like back home, but I couldn't. In Egypt, everyone who is a part of this scene is concentrated in Cairo and everyone knows one another. Although most of the women there were unveiled and many of the men had a distinctively hipster quality about them, there is historically an association between artists and the working class, even fellaheen (farmers) -- a link evoked by many of the songs and rhetoric.

Farangi in Ethiopia - Part I

In the midst of end-of-CASA turmoil, I slipped off to Ethiopia on May 19 with my friends Miriam and Alex. It was a random trip, or so it seemed at the time, a seizing of an opportunity that would become much more expensive and logistically difficult if we waited until we no longer lived in Egypt. So we flew out that Sunday night from Cairo to Addis Ababa. Since it was before the sizzling dam news broke, it seemed to most here like a vague and peculiar destination.

We were destined to see more sunrises over the course of our ten days in Ethiopia than middays. We also had no confirmed hotel reservations when we touched down at Bole Airport in Addis at 3am. People warned us that it was the fiftieth anniversary of the African Union, which is based in Addis, and maybe there would be no rooms available. Somehow, though, we wound up in a suite at the soon-to-be beloved Addis Guest House just as the dawn call to prayer began to wail. Even in Ethiopia...

That afternoon, we went out to take stock of the city. The streets -- hilly, meandering, patternless -- were lined with low, semi-solid buildings with tin roofs. The blue and white taxis with their round headlights would not have looked out of place at a classic car show. I was struck after some time by the fact that we had not come across a single Western chain store or restaurant. (Compared with the ubiquitous Pizza Huts and KFCs in Cairo or the Starbucks in Beijing's Forbidden City, this was really kind of strange.) The signs posted in curlicue Amharic letters advertised Ethiopian movies, plays, and bands -- not foreign ones.

By minibus and foot, we made our way to Addis Ababa University. I marveled at the leafiness of it: clusters of students were buried amongst the gardens reading quietly. In the middle of campus sits the Ethnological Museum. In front of it is a set of steps leading to nowhere, a monument built by Mussolini during the five-year Italian occupation of Ethiopia to commemorate the years of Fascist rule; it is capped by the Lion of Judah, placed there by Haile Selassie when he returned to power as a reminder of who triumphed in the end. These allusions to colonial rule are rather occasional, though, as the period was so brief: the chief contributions seem to have been the macchiato, a café staple, and ciao. 

Addis Ababa University -- Haven't seen this much green in a long time!

The museum itself, inside Selassie's former palace, revealed Ethiopia's dizzying number of ethnic groups -- the majority Oromo, the ruling Amhara, the southern tribesmen recognizable by the enormous disks they wear in their lips, and so on. Religious diversity was also noted: 44% of Ethiopians are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, 34% are Muslim, 19% are Protestant, and the rest are traditional animists. However, the guiding organizing principle seems to be ethnic, and that's where most conflict has arisen. Within a single tribal group, there are often both Muslims and Christians of different types. The art floor in the museum demonstrated influences from the Gulf, India, and Europe, something that might be surprising given that Ethiopia is landlocked and was hardly colonized. (We found out later, when visiting the much shabbier National Museum, that it was India that donated Haile Selassie's grandest throne... When establishing the first national education system, Selassie had hired Indian teachers for it.)

Because the Ethnological Museum was once the Emperor's palace, it was possible to visit his bedroom, a fairly modest affair given his aspirations to grandeur. A large mirror displays the bullet wound left during an attempted coup. In my usual fashion, I made sure to check out the Emperor's bathroom. The simple tiled floors and blue ceramic sink and toilet were a window onto the banality of dictatorship.

The Emperor's Bathroom

We wound our way back that afternoon past the Lion Zoo down a broad boulevard lined with government ministries, though none occupied pompous or imposing offices. Around dusk, we arrived at St. George's Cathedral atop a hill in the Piazza neighborhood. People sat on benches in the tree-spotted courtyard around the octagonal church or prostrated themselves on the steps as ethereal Amharic hymns emanated from the interior. All Ethiopian Orthodox churches, I was told later, are round or octagonal, a reference to the infinity of God. Nearby, a line of a dozen or more men crouched along the sidewalk reading newspapers in apparent unison -- it seems one does not wait to get home before cracking them open.

Nighttime in Addis was conspicuously dark. The shed-like shops that lined the streets eroded into shapelessness. We spent quite some time wandering in search of a restaurant that had been recommended, only to wind up at a fancy hamburger place clearly favored by chic Ethiopians and expats.


A few hours later we were awake again, picked up at 3:30am to go to the public bus station. Or, if you're following the Ethiopian clock, 9:30. This was one of the craziest parts of Ethiopia, a reminder that we were someplace decidedly and almost whimsically different: it has its own clock, not just its own timezone. 12 o'clock is dawn, or 6am our time. 2 o'clock, then, is 8am -- opening time for some businesses. Dusk is also 12 o'clock, or 6pm our time. This can definitely cause some problems if you're not sure whether someone is speaking in Ethiopia's time or "faranji" time (i.e. the rest of the world's).

The bus station where we were brought to seek tickets to the city of Harar, in the East, was otherworldly. It was an outdoor lot, lit only by the fluorescent bulbs above the ticket windows from which an earsplitting din emerged. They were tiny stalls, marked in Amharic with different destinations and prices, and the salesmen frantically waved tickets from behind their barred windows. Clusters of country folk in wildly patterned traditional clothing and gnarled walking sticks stood with their bundles, negotiating with bus agents. Yusuf, the friend of our guesthouse's manager who had been sent to negotiate for us, finally found us a bus to Jijiga -- the last outpost in eastern Ethiopia before Somaliland. It would stop for us in Harar on the way. (In any case, all the coach buses and flights had been full, as were all direct buses to Harar.) We waited perhaps two hours on the bus before it moved, three abreast in our seats, the aisles filled with men crouched on tree stumps. It was a wild ride, eleven hours of Ethiopian pop songs blasting from the loudspeakers and, though most roads are now paved, a considerable amount of bumping around. At some point, we spotted baboons bounding along beside the bus. People whooped excitedly and threw them the bread we'd be handed at the beginning of the trip. We stopped for a lunch break at a roadside rest stop, a shabby inn where people used to stay the night when the bus trip took two days -- that is, until 2 or 3 years ago. Our fellow male passengers returned with bulging plastic bags of qat, or, as it's known in Ethiopia, chat -- the bitter, leafy stimulant that is banned in the West and known to have drugged out most of Yemen. We'd entered the East, where chat flows as freely as the famous honey wine tej does in the North. The chewing session began, littering the bus with chat leaves. We traveled hour after hour through dramatic landscapes, from rocky deserts to wide lakes, to rolling hills dotted with tin-roofed cottages and thatched huts, to steeper mountains.

First baboon sighting of the trip. Many more to follow.

We were dropped off in the new part of Harar, which consisted of a few broad boulevards, and taken by tuk tuk, the only form of public transport, into the old city. The old city, which we had been told felt more Morocco than Ethiopia, was still contained in its 16th-century walls, with an entrance marked by a painting of a long-dead turbaned emir and an unidentifiable, perhaps Fascist, metal monument. A favorite local story is that of Sir Richard Burton's successful attempt at penetrating walled Harar, then a city forbidden to Europeans, disguised as an Arab merchant. According to our somewhat swaggering guide Amiri, the owner of the guesthouse where we were staying, Burton camped out for two weeks in a neighboring village and miraculously managed to master the Harari language in that time.

Harar was, in any case, a critical trading center for centuries and had a notably large Indian commercial presence for a long time. It is mostly Muslim, with 82 mosques within the old city, and many people speak Arabic. Assalaamu aleikum, keef al hal? said one teenage boy to me in the kind of formal Arabic one would learn studying the Qur'an. Inside the city, people speak Harari, while the surrounding farmers speak Oromo. There is also Somali influence, as goods arrive in Harar via the Somaliland port just as Islam once did from the Arabian Peninsula.

Our late-night walk through the chat-littered streets truly felt like we were at the edge of the world. People's features were indistinguishable in the blackness, just the swish of the women's colored dresses and the bundles of firewood they balanced on their heads; and the shifting of shapeless forms under blankets alongside the Friday Mosque. The Fresh Touch restaurant in the New City was a reminder that  we were not so far away after all: it was our first delicious Ethiopian meal in-country with the spongy bread injera and the meat and egg dish kitfo, but also clearly the place where the few foreigners in town come to dine.

Harari women carry loads of firewood through the old city

We stayed in the Amiri Cultural Harari Guesthouse, one of the oblong whitewashed homes of the old city perched on a hillside with views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. The interior was covered in red carpets and pillows, with a loft for sleeping. Amiri himself was arrogant but knowledgeable. He proudly announced to us that he speaks five languages and has 3 wives and 26 brothers and sisters. For breakfast on our first and only full day, he brought us to a cafe where we were served flaky melawwah bread (something that seems to have made it from Yemen to Morocco, a classic) topped with honey and eggs. Then we set off on a walking tour of the old city, beginning on Machine Street. This path is lined with fabric shops and people crouched outside beside their ancient sewing machines. We came out at the Meat Market, where Amiri purchased bits of raw meat and we stood in the adjacent courtyard with outstretched hands to feed the vultures. The arched arcades where the meat merchants hung their wares did, in fact, remind me of Morocco, as did the brightly painted greens, purples, teals, and yellows of the stuccoed houses. People paint their houses anew every Ramadan, said Amiri, choosing a different color each time.

A sampling of the colors of Harar

A young man teaches me how to properly feed vultures

We stopped for coffee, Harar's specialty, and a gooey sweet called heloo in a miniature cafe alongside the main market. A man on the stool across from us shook his head: You're all so white! he marveled. Kids ran by with old-fashioned toys: one boy pushed a metal hoop with a stick, another pulled a homemade train. Farangi, farangi! came the refrain. Foreigners, foreigners! And, almost as frequently: Money! Money! 

Nearby, outside the back gates, was the cattle market. It was an off-day: twenty or so giant cows pawed the dust, waiting for buyers. Normally an ox would go for 15,000 Birr, about $800 at 18.5 Birr to the dollar. Amiri boasted that he buys one every year to share with villagers. As we walked back inside, he also told us that Hararis liked the Italians. They had built up the city's infrastructure and repaired relations between the urban Hararis and the Oromo farmers. We moved on to the shrine of Emir Nur, typical of Sufi shrines in that it was capped with a tall, green, beehive-like top. According to Amiri, Harari Islam is highly influenced by Sufism but does not have any religious hierarchy.

Later on, on our own, we visited the Sherif Harar City Museum. The house was more interesting than its contents. Belonging to Ras Tafari (Haile Selassie) before his ascension to the throne, it was a grand white structure with broad wooden verandas decorated with Indian flavor. My friends had had enough of dusty paraphernalia after this visit, so I set off on my own back through the old city and around the exterior walls. A strange find, apparently a crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane, was apparently an abandoned project for a unique restaurant. Gaggles of children pretended to fight me, then asked for money. After another viewing of a dusty museum, guided in improvised sign language, I wandered into the courtyard of Medhane Alem Cathedral. I had heard the same ethereal hymns wafting down the "Main Asphalt" and followed the sound. I took a seat on one of the benches to listen, beside an old man and his toddler. Ancient-looking women wrapped in white lined the other benches, the same white that the priests wear, though they wrap the cloth as a toga. The church itself was painted whimsical shades of baby blue and pink. After 45 minutes or so, the loudspeakers went quiet and the priests emerged onto a pink outdoor altar painted with Amharic Bible verses. A small boy picked up a drum about his own size and began to beat it in accompaniment with the lulling chants of the priests.

I went home before dusk, because I didn't want to miss the hyena feeding ritual about which I had heard. Amiri took us down behind the city walls again, to a religious shrine where the show -- which only dates back about twenty years -- of the domesticated hyena takes place every night. When we arrived, a handful of people had already gathered, and the headlights of a tuk tuk illuminated a young man crouched in the dust beside a basket of entrails. He was dangling a piece of raw meat on a stick, and a hyena was ambling towards him. Afterward, he called on Alex to sit beside him, and the hyena circled back again. When it was my turn, I couldn't see the animal behind me or the meat hanging just above my hair. Suddenly I felt a heavy thump on my shoulders and saw two enormous spotted paws. My instinct was to laugh hysterically and sort of keel over: I had no reaction prepared for being bear-hugged by a hungry hyena.

Feeding the hyenas - initial shock

Marking Time

Yesterday, June 6, was the one-year anniversary of my arrival in Egypt. The new batch of CASAwiyyeen arrived the day before, so in a sense it was very easy for me to remember exactly what I had felt like at the very beginning of it all. It's true that last June 6 was pretty different, and experiencing both the arrival of the newbies and the graduation of the next class of Princetonians made me feel a little wistful for the world-is-my-oyster fresh-facedness of June 6, 2012. I had dinner in the dimly lit lounge of the Fairmont hotel, a hamburger, with my boyfriend and was reunited with my good friends Yehya and Nada. In one way, it was a much more comfortable routine I was about to settle into: I knew what I was signing up for for the next year and I had people to look out for me.

But on this June 6, perhaps partially a result of my heightened consciousness of time, I suddenly felt that I surmounted one of the invisible linguistic hurdles that line the path to really speaking Arabic. In an unprecedented occurrence, I actually expressed everything in Arabic how I wanted to express it, when I wanted to express it. In the afternoon, I had just left the French Cultural Center with my now-roommate Miriam when a man cruising in a silver car drove by a few times yelling "sex" out the window. My reflexes were unusually swift, and I took off chasing him down the street. He stopped for a moment at an intersection and I caught up, looked him in the eye, and shouted qoss ommak -- the foulest of curses I could muster -- while shaking my fist. He looked surprisingly panicked, tried to drive off, and crashed into the car in front of him. Walking off feeling empowered, we were stopped a few blocks later by a young woman who told us she was quite sure the man was driving a stolen car. (This would explain his panic when he saw me running!)

Later I helped new CASAwiyyeen friends connect with the landlord of an apartment they wanted. The idea that my Arabic was good enough to be useful for someone else -- now this was a new idea. A year ago, I would have frozen up and called on someone else to do the Arabic for me.

That evening, Miriam and I were invited by our friend Ahmed to a concert at the Journalists' Syndicate  commemorating the 18th anniversary of the death of the gravely leftist folk singer Sheikh Imam. Every revolution has a voice, said the emcee, but Sheikh Imam is the voice of all revolutions. He was originally the voice of the 1970s student movement, although many of his songs (written by a variety of leftist poets, including the most famous, Ahmed Fouad Negm) were recycled for the January 25 revolution, since everybody knows them. Immediately after the concert, the round, gray-haired host added, all those interested would be relocating to the Ministry of Culture, where they would join an ongoing sit-in of artists and intellectuals protesting the new Muslim Brotherhood minister.  (He recently fired the liberal, well-liked director of the Opera, the spark that set off people's fears that the MB was trying to dull or suppress cultural life here.) And, he added before the bands began, they would bring down the MB government entirely on June 30 -- a day when giant protests are planned - inshallah. Indeed, the audience was filled with liberal and leftist activists of many generations, including my own friend and his buddies and the founder of the Tamarrod ("Rebel") petition campaign that has apparently collected millions of signatures against Morsi. Still, strangely, we were sitting in neat lines of plush chairs in the union hall's theater. Last year the event had been in the street, Ahmed said, and that was much more appropriate for the populist music of Sheikh Imam. Even if the Journalists' Syndicate is a bastion of anti-Brotherhood sentiment, it still felt like too much of an institution for rousing protest songs. Even so, the selections evoked both the best of Egypt's cultural history and the revolutionary fervor of the almost-present. Songs like Ya Masr Qomy (Rise Up, Egypt!) and Sabah El Kheir 'ala El Ward Elly Fattah Fe Ganayin Masr (Good Morning to the Flowers that Bloomed in the Gardens of Egypt) were sung in Tahrir Square this time around as well. The latter title was, specifically, printed in red on the front page of a special edition of Al Masry Al Youm newspaper on February 6, 2011. Beneath it was the famous smiling photo of Sally Zahran, the first woman killed in the revolution, and photos of the other martyrs up to that point.

On my way home around 11, the metro was mysteriously packed and men had completely filled the women's car. I tried to make my way out at my stop, but a group of about 12 shabab stood between me and the door. Normally I would have shut up and tried to weasel out, but they were trying to pick on me and I was feeling testy. I won't let you out until you give me your number, said Rot-tooth by the door. Come on, gimme something, gimme something. He grinned into my face. Yeah, no girl in the entire world is going to want that, I told him, just loudly enough for the 50 people crammed around us to hear. I didn't smile, but I gently pushed him aside and stepped out. On the escalator, with the cat calls of the group still audible behind us, an old man stepped beside me and asked: Miss, are you Egyptian? I told him I wasn't and he said he was surprised after seeing me tell off the shabab in good Egyptian. I'm sorry for that. Feeh keda w feeh keda! -- You know there are people of all types here. Everywhere, I guess, right? He smiled and plodded off into the night, tsk-tsking his way along.  

On my way into my building, I stopped to chat with the security guys. I mentioned that I had just been in Ethiopia. This has suddenly become a really hot topic -- as of the day before I returned from Ethiopia -- because lots of Egyptians currently want to go to war with Ethiopia. This is because Ethiopia is planning to build a new dam at the head of the Blue Nile that Egyptians fear will divert some of Egypt's water supply (and Egypt currently uses more Nile water than anyone else). People are really up in arms about this. Apparently Morsi and the Coptic Pope are going to Ethiopia soon, and when Mohamed El Baradei apologized to Ethiopia for all the raging Egyptian threats directed at the country, there was a massive angry uproar.

Before I went to Ethiopia, Egyptians scratched their heads when I mentioned my destination... Why would anyone want to go there? Now they're interested. So what's it like? asked my security buddies. I started describing the mountains, the lake, the baboons, the rain, the historic sites. Bas... ya3ny... al nas kwayeseen? they wanted to know. Are they good people? Yes, I nodded vigorously, in my experience. The two men looked slightly incredulous but took it in.

Naturally, the conversation shifted next to my marriage prospects. Nasser is a quiet, moon-faced man, with eyes that crinkle and just a few thin wisps of graying hair around the sides of his head. He listens more than he speaks, but he knows us better than most of the others -- remembers our names, where we're traveling, what we're doing in Egypt. The other man, with his thick white mustache and business suit, likes to remind me of details he's gathered about my life, although often they're not quite accurate. He's not afraid to help himself to a cookie or two when I come in from the bakery, and has a forceful but pally demeanor. So would you ever marry an Egyptian? he wanted to know today. I reminded him that I wasn't planning to get married anytime soon. Okay, but theoretically, what if you were 30? Would you marry an Egyptian then? I told him that I would need to evaluate things on a case-by-case basis. He said that his son runs a resort in Sharm El Sheikh and there was an English woman who wanted to marry him. I need to get her some books about Islam, though, That's the thing. I looked over at Nasser: But as I understand it, it's okay for a Muslim man to marry a Christian woman -- right? Nasser agreed -- Mosh moshkela, It's not a problem. Yeah, it wouldn't normally be a problem, continued mustache man loudly, but you know, she's a "maseheyya mota'seba"! -- She's a fanatic Christian. He seemed determined to resolve the dilemma, though, whatever it would take. Then he redirected his questioning at me. Anyway, we will find you an Egyptian husband sooner or later. Then you can stay in Egypt forever! I told him I needed to live more so that I could know who is good and who is not. That seemed to be the magic answer that satisfied their inquiries. That is so wise of you, they both said. Too many marriages end in divorce! Even mustache man added before letting me go: Enty kwayessa, 'ashara 'al 'ashara! -- Something like, You're a good person, through and through. 

It was a good evening. The more confident I feel about my Arabic, the more willing I am to advance my own - maybe controversial - opinions. And if I can say them correctly, people actually listen sometimes. 

News from Ethiopia coming soon.

A Few Final Reflections

I'm angry with Egypt, Essam the taxi driver told me as we made our way toward the Women and Memory Forum, a feminist library where I was hoping to do research for my final paper. Every country takes advantage of Egypt's history except Egypt! Essam himself was particularly historically conscious, pulling examples from the past to prove to me that Egypt was on the fast track to destruction.

In Mubarak's time, plenty of mistakes were made, but those were mistakes we could live with. Now? There are mistakes being made that we can't live with. Essam continued: What Egypt needs right now is statesmen -- like Amr Moussa. He's respected! He cited his experience with the Foreign Ministry and the Arab League. Who we have now -- those are no statesmen and no one can solve the problems they've created. You know, Islam teaches forgiveness... 

He seemed to be implying that forgiveness of the sins of the past was necessary for the country to make progress. Look at Nelson Mandela! He was in jail for decades, but when he came out, he forgave the people who had put him there and moved his country forward. And what about us? The new regime comes and tries to control its enemies in exactly the same way that they [the Brotherhood] were being controlled before. They're just afraid that if they don't have total control they'll be sent back to the jail they came from.

Essam is one of a perhaps not very small minority of Egyptians that has begun to express nostalgia for the pre-revolution regime. He was for the revolution two years ago, but he sees its aftermath as even worse.

The Women and Memory Forum, where I got out, also has a mission linked to history. It aims to retell Egyptian history from the woman's perspective -- that is, reminding people that women's history is a part of Egyptian history that has been almost completely unwritten. It has reissued the memoirs of early women's rights activists like Malek Hefny Nassef and Baheya El Badeya and tried to collect the pamphlets, conference proceedings, and articles ("gray literature") published by local feminist organizations in Arabic from across the Middle East. The Arabic part is key: most dialogue about women in the Arab world happens in English and other European languages, and even many feminist activists in the region are more comfortable or familiar with the English terms for feminist ideas than with the Arabic. In order for women's history - and their contemporary priorities - to be accepted and integrated into public discourse here, so the thinking goes, it needs to be happening in Arabic.

I finished my paper on the use of cultural history by feminist groups today as part of their effort to reclaim public space for women (see "Women on the Offensive"). This was my last assignment for CASA, and very quickly the whole program came to an end. We were feted at the Flamenco Hotel with lunch and a set of student performances on May 16 -- which three friends and I contributed to with  a dance medley to three wildly popular Egyptian songs. Probably for the best, the few days following our "graduation" were packed with goodbye parties and outings to our favorite restaurant, since most of the other CASAwiyyeen were leaving Egypt for good. I had little time for existential questioning: Do I really speak Arabic now? What do I do next? Of course my Arabic is way better than it was a year ago, but I'm not sure that I made the magical ascent to fluency that I imagined when I signed up. I'm not sure what more I'll have to do to get there, but staying longer in Egypt at least ensures I won't backslide too soon and, one would hope, I can keep learning from the streets.

One of the last days before the mass exodus to America and my own departure for Ethiopia, I went with a few others to visit our friend Sofia in her new married digs in Shobra. Having been previously only for the wedding itself, and at night, we barely recognized the street without the flashing Christmas lights and brightly colored swaths of fabric. Sofia and her husband, Muhammad, live in his family's building the floor over his parents. This is a common system in Egypt, where staying as close to all your relatives as possible is something that appeals to many young people (and aging parents). The sense of community in Shobra is obvious even from a brief visit. Muhammad took us up to the roof, from which we could see and yell across to people on their own balconies and roofs in all directions. Five-year-old Youssef was one of these neighbors. He looked across at us, then held up a walkie talkie and yelled something into it very seriously. Muhammad called to him to come over, and a few minutes later he appeared beside us. I was calling the government on you, he told us very matter-of-factly. He turned to my roommate Andrea and grinned: Better get a gun! Muhammad, a political activist, asked Youssef what he wanted to be. A policeman or a boxer, Youssef replied. You think the government is good? Muhammad asked him, bemused. He nodded. Then he proceeded to ask us about our favorite professional boxers. Later, Youssef decided to imitate for us the way that Americans dance. He rapidly jumped up and down in place. That's how Americans dance. And how about Egyptians? we asked. He immediately broke it down with the best sha3by moves around. It's like that, except with a knife! he explained.

People back home have always asked me, a bit incredulously, if I really feel safe here. I have always said yes. But a week or so before things wrapped up, the newly chosen director of CASA, Chris Stone, was stabbed in the neck outside the US Embassy. A young, angry, unemployed man had come in from the countryside, so the papers reported, in search of American blood. It is said that he approached Dr. Stone outside the embassy and asked if he was American. When he said yes, as none of us have ever been afraid to do, the man stabbed him. He went immediately to the hospital and made a full recovery, but the nature of the incident (random, in a sense, and highly intentional in another) had people on edge. It is an example of tragically misdirected hatred -- attempting to kill an American who has spent his whole life trying to make the West understand the Middle East better and more sympathetically. Right-wing blogs representing the other extreme of ignorance even circulated an article entitled "American professor who hates America stabbed in Cairo by Muslim who also hates America" with what was intended as a sinister picture of the pale-skinned, blond-haired Dr. Stone (who I met only once while he was eating with his young kids in a cafe in Zamalek) wearing a keffiyeh. To be honest, the incident did not make me feel personally unsafe: Of course there are people here who hate America (there are people everywhere who do), but the vast majority do not, and even those who do are highly unlikely to take it out on any of us personally. But it did discourage me -- why does our presence have to be so fraught? Should we be expressing some kind of imperialist guilt? That's exhausting after a while. Should we acknowledge the horribly unfair distribution of wealth? Be embarrassed by the glitter in my toothless fruit man's eye when he inquires about a visa to America?

Often I find myself just hoping for indifference -- as a woman, as an American -- not to be noticed or noted at all.