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.
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.
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