Election Week

At last it's the weekend again and I'm hunkering down at the dining table to catch up on the last week's events -- my Mounir tunes cranked up, grilled cheese pita (made on the gas stove that may or may not be the last appliance still functioning in my apartment) at my side, and fan strategically positioned three feet from my face. (Today actually feels relatively cool! It's only 95 degrees. Saturday's forecast is 101. It's only June.) 

I'm going to work backward. Last night, my flatmate Sarah invited me along with some Egyptian friends of hers to eat at a Chinese restaurant in Abbaseyya. We took the metro to Midan el Geish and stopped for juice (Have I already discussed juice? How can I not love a country where apricot juice is available on every corner? This is a people after my own heart.) Reaching the restaurant itself required some tricky navigating around sheep well-disguised in the dusty twilight, but we made it. I can't tell you the name of this restaurant, because it was only written in Chinese. The menu is a picture album because the only employee who speaks Arabic, we're told, is the smiley little boy Hassan from Burkina Faso who comes to fill your tea with a pot half his own size. The place itself is basic -- we're not talking upscale here. Most (or rather all) the other patrons were a rugged-looking bunch of Chinese men -- they looked to be Uighur, although really I'm not an expert there. Sarah's friend noted that quite a few come to Cairo to study at Al-Azhar. The waitress, also a Chinese Muslim, was decked out in a bright orange rhinestoned hijab, eye-popping prints, and a leopard fanny pack. The food was not bad at all -- in fact, the fried tofu, the last thing I expected to be eating in an alley of Cairo, was really quite good. After the meal, I took the metro home and employed the tried and true trick of any woman traveling alone, especially in a foreign country: find someone who looks kind and motherly and stand/walk next to her to deter evildoers. Families and the elderly (though not too elderly) are okay, too. One young woman and her husband were deeply amused by my presence on the metro at 11pm and, with a somewhat pitying look, invited me to come stand with them. 

Meanwhile, many of you have probably been following the political news coming out of Egypt these days. The announcement of the official results of the presidential election, planned for today has been postponed. Of course, the unofficial results suggest that Morsi has won. To be honest, this was not really what I expected given how much SCAF did not want this to happen. But the jury is still out. Although my sample size has not been too large, I have found about an even break between Shafiq and Morsi supporters among people I've spoken to in the last week -- probably more Shafiq, though. While most of my friends favored Shafiq (if very reluctantly), taxi drivers, a large part of my sample, appear to be split. But at least they're eager to discuss the elections -- one gave me a long speech in Morsi's defense on election day blasting the corruption of the old regime and its effect on business. (That's the limit of what I got before the language barrier won.) Last Sunday, I also had my first "Meshwar wa Dardasha" meeting, which involves CASA pairing us in small groups with different Egyptian conversation partners each week. Safwat, an engineer, and his friend Mena brought us to the Engineers' Club in Zamalek. Lots of professions have this kind of club, which has various facilities and Nile-side tables. Both Safwat and Mena, who are Copts, said they'd been with Shafiq from first round, and enthusiastically so. In response to the "felul" argument against Shafiq (i.e. that he is a remnant of the old regime), Mena held that there were nevertheless many decent individuals within the Mubarak regime even if the revolution was a good thing. 

As for the election days themselves, last Saturday and Sunday, things were really very calm everywhere I went (and I didn't go to Tahrir, by the way). In fact, I passed by the polling place in Zamalek at a fine arts school and while there were a couple dozen uniformed officers hanging out, I only saw two people who looked like they might be voters. On the first day of elections, I whiled away my afternoon at Shakawa, a cafe and shisha joint around the corner from my apartment that promises to be a frequent haunt this year thanks to its air conditioning and wifi. Plus, the name means "naughtiness" in Arabic -- probably a bit too ambitious for this place. (Just don't make the same mistake I just did and Google it to find the correct spelling.) The soundtrack to our homework, the news, played on loop a special entitled "Misr tantakhib al-ra'is" -- Egypt elects the President. They said turnout was even lower than expected. Doing my own straw poll of voter turnout, I surreptitiously look to see who has a black fingertip from the ink one dips it in after voting. Later Saturday night, I met up with the rest of the CASAwiyyin for a sunset felucca ride that set sail from Garden City, outside the Four Seasons. (Note: my Arabic teacher here said the Four Seasons is a 7-star hotel... I can only imagine what lies inside. I will have to sneak in one of these days and use the bathroom.) Sunset is definitely the time to be out on the Nile, or really anywhere outdoors in Cairo. When the sun, dust, heat, water, and smog collide at that hour, it produces something very ethereal. The felucca men tied our two boats together, and while I stayed on the tame one thanks to the warning signs of a fatal piece of lettuce or onion, the other boat lost no time in bringing out their Stella (the classic Egyptian beer) and Omar Khayyam (the classic Egyptian wine). 

The other big news was, of course, Mubarak's near-death on the 19th. The first reports I heard in the middle of the night that day were that he was dead. By now, it's unclear what the situation actually is, as reports have been as absurd as a fall in the bathroom, but life support seems the most likely. I haven't really heard much discussion of this at all, however. 

I also want to report on attending my first Egyptian wedding last Friday. The bride is a coworker of Adam's and she held her wedding at the swanky country club in Katameyya Heights, an exclusive and verdant gated community of villas outside the city proper. First, there was a swanky reception inside the club, while we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. Then we all filed outside as the big orange sun loomed large on the horizon and the musicians began to play. The groom met the bride under a canopy and then they walked and danced together through the crowd in a traditional procession known as the zeffa. The musicians, in white, accompanied their march on horns and drums, along with belly dancers with candelabras on their heads. Behind the club, a dance floor was set up alongside impeccable white couches and high tables. The DJ was spinning Edith Piaf and Barry Manilow's Copacabana, and a rare breeze blew over the complex, which overlooked a lush golf course, the villas of Katameyya, and the desert beyond. Certainly most weddings here are not this swanky... these are the uppermost echelons of society we're talking about, and in most ways (besides the zeffa and absence of a religious ceremony to which the guests are also invited) was very similar to weddings at home. But I must say that my introduction to Egyptian wedding culture so far gets an A+. 

As long as we're on the subject of my social life, I have also been dabbling in the expat community here. I often wonder when I see some sandy-haired gentleman or lady in the Seoudi grocery store in my neighborhood what he or she is doing here. Well, last night one of the veteran CASAwiyyin hosted a party at his apartment in Mounira that drew the kind of eclectic bunch I thought dwelt only in fiction. When I walked in to the pulse of a thumping bass, I wondered who the man with the long, white hair was sitting in the corner staring into his ashtray (this one remains a mystery). I then proceeded to meet an American writer who had been kicked out of Yemen, come to Egypt, bought a felucca in Aswan, and sailed it up the Nile himself over the course of 74 days, stopping in each village along the way to capture revolutionary Egypt from a rural perspective. He urged me to go to Yemen as soon as possible. Then I drifted into a conversation with three girls, one Syrian-Kurdish, one British, and one American, who work as extras in Egyptian films and TV series. The Kurdish girl came as a journalist, but her opposition newspaper was shut down and she turned to the acting gig -- which, she said, had just that day led the film star Adel Imam to lay his head on her shoulder and ask if she was already married. Mostly, though, that world was inhabited by fat, middle-aged men in tight pink shirts and lots of young people searching for something else to do. Finally, a talked to a bearded half-Egyptian architect with a thick Geordie accent from the north of England whose goal was to design environmentally-friendly buildings in Egypt. In the wee hours of the morning, we packed a taxi (with me on my friend's lap in the front seat) as we cruised back to Dokki. For some reason, the streets were packed. Sha'b ghabi, sha'b ghabi, ("stupid people") muttered our disgruntled driver as he dodged bunches of pedestrians. What's your opinion of Egypt? he asked. Helwa, helwa ("beautiful"), we responded. What's your opinion on the elections? I asked. His face darkened and he emitted a sound of disgust. Not Morsi and not Shafiq, he said, muttering on for a few moments to himself about the state of affairs.