This has been a week of sampling Cairo's art scene, in various senses of the word. Last Friday, first of all, I ventured out on a solo expedition to the Islamic Art Museum in the atmospheric neighborhood of Bab al-Khalq. Recently reopened after years of restoration, the neo-Mamluk building (or neo-something, maybe neo-Fatimid... even after my extensive visit to the museum I can't keep all the dynasties' architectural features straight) hosts a formidable (yet, I might point out, un-air-conditioned) collection of woodwork, stonework, ceramics, mosque accoutrements, etc. from the Arab Conquest in the 7th century through the Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods. My favorite items were a pair of Mamluk lunchboxes (yes, they were so labeled) dating from the early 16th century -- mostly just because I liked the image of fierce Mamluk warriors sitting down and pulling out ful and tameyya sandwiches from their ornately decorated lunchboxes. From the same period, the museum had on display a set of exquisitely inlaid wooden side tables and suitcase-like boxes for storing Qur'ans. Not surprisingly, the best and largest part of the museum was the Egyptian section, although there were some nice Iranian tiles. My only disappointment was the dearth of manuscripts, which are usually my favorite part of Islamic art collections, but were here limited to a few Ottoman Qur'ans and medical texts. I also learned a legend about the founding of Cairo, however, during the Fatimid period. Supposedly, astrologers had marked off the outlines of the new city's future walls with ropes, to which they attached bells that would ring to start the construction at an auspicious time. But... a gaggle of crows sat on the ropes, causing the bells to ring prematurely during a time at which Mars (i.e. "al-Qahir") was dominant. Thus the name al-Qahira, or Cairo, came to be. No suckling at a mama wolf's teat or anything like that, but not a bad tale all the same. As the museum panel pointed out as a side note, these were astrologers running the show in those days and not sheikhs.
My second foray into the art scene was Saturday night, when I hit up Cairo Jazz Club for the second time this summer. The star was a guy named Basheer -- Mohammed Basheer -- whose genre is what someone or other calls "Nubian Fusion". In other words, Arabic rock with Nubian influence. I can't tell you what this means other than being really catchy, except that some other person said that Nubian beats are appealing to our Western ears because the scale is closer to the Western 12-step scale than to the Oriental 32-step one. I don't actually know if this is correct, but you can scope out one of Basheer's songs here, the one he opened with at the Jazz Club concert. The venue is, after 2 concerts, becoming a favorite -- it has a hip crowd of various ages, but no cover charge, tasty mezze alongside its drinks, and always the opportunity to dance. Anyway, I didn't know any of this guy's songs before, but I am quickly becoming a major fan... what's not to love about a band that has a violin, saxophone, and a lead singer who seems like a real ibn el balad?
I didn't mean to write so much about this subject, but it is something that many friends have asked me about, and that is a part of daily life here. But on the upside, this is really the only seriously negative thing I can think of when people ask me what I dislike about Cairo, so from now on my posts will only get more positive. (Of course there's the pollution, too, which is probably blackening my lungs by the day, but as I said earlier, it makes for an unusual and unearthly sunset!)
In other news, I finally acquired my long-awaited Ramadan fanous. I trekked a few blocks down Dokki St. in my neighborhood and found a toy store with a large selection. What these lamps share are seriously neon colors -- mine is hot pink and lime green, which look pretty sweet when I have it plugged into the wall. Here's a photo:
Also in the positive column for this week, I reconnected with an old friend from my high school program after at least five years. We caught up over a great dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with a giant tree inside. While we both recognized each other right away (I know, I still look 16!), our discussion of politics and religion showed me how much has changed. Although her father is a Protestant pastor here (Protestants being a minority of a minority), she left the church a few years ago and considers herself an agnostic. Almost no one will ever admit that in Egypt, at least not unless you know him or her very intimately. But my friend told me that in fact people who share her beliefs have connected extensively on Twitter, which she uses mostly as a platform for broadcasting her admittedly controversial stances on social (e.g. gay rights or sexual freedom), political (e.g. relations with Israel), and religious issues. This was an eye-opening conversation for me because I learned about communities about which little is said publicly here, and whose connections are largely virtual. At the same time, my friend's predicament mirrors that of many young, well-educated Egyptians: underemployment. Just out of college with a degree in television production and broadcasting, she works hours twice as long as my daily class time, makes less than 2/3 CASA's monthly stipend, and hates her work as a community service representative at a call center handling complaints for Expedia Canada. Also like many young liberals, she invalidated her ballots in both rounds of the presidential elections, disappointed with all the choices and the way the process was carried out. "Everyone our age is depressed, seriously," she told me, not just about politics, but deeply exacerbated by it.
As I build new friendships and rekindle old ones, I am also looking for part-time internships and volunteering so that I can speak more Arabic and become more a part of the community. Tomorrow I'm going to meet with program directors from a women's advocacy and economic development NGO in my first effort to this end.
My second foray into the art scene was Saturday night, when I hit up Cairo Jazz Club for the second time this summer. The star was a guy named Basheer -- Mohammed Basheer -- whose genre is what someone or other calls "Nubian Fusion". In other words, Arabic rock with Nubian influence. I can't tell you what this means other than being really catchy, except that some other person said that Nubian beats are appealing to our Western ears because the scale is closer to the Western 12-step scale than to the Oriental 32-step one. I don't actually know if this is correct, but you can scope out one of Basheer's songs here, the one he opened with at the Jazz Club concert. The venue is, after 2 concerts, becoming a favorite -- it has a hip crowd of various ages, but no cover charge, tasty mezze alongside its drinks, and always the opportunity to dance. Anyway, I didn't know any of this guy's songs before, but I am quickly becoming a major fan... what's not to love about a band that has a violin, saxophone, and a lead singer who seems like a real ibn el balad?
Tonight, Tuesday, was my third attempt at art appreciation this week. After a long day of class that culminated in an end-of-semester writing exam about Copts and hijabs, we waited for the 100+-degree heat to abate a little. (It has been hovering around 100 for the bulk of most days, with tomorrow promising 103, but we're all pretty excited that the high over the weekend will be back down to 95! Nighttime doesn't really equate with coolness -- the coolest it ever gets at night is about 88 or 90.) Anyway, I went with my roommate Andrea and friend Robin back to Darb 1718, the artists' enclave and exhibition space abutting the old church quarter in Masr Qadima. The current exhibition is called "Taharrush" - aka Harassment. Sexual harassment is, unfortunately, something that every woman deals with here, and so while the quality of the artwork was varied, the firsthand encounters from which it was derived made the pieces very raw and direct. A short documentary, for instance, consisted of an interview with a frustrated and unmarried young man from Alexandria in an attempt to get inside the minds of men who engage in this kind of behavior; another video nearby simply played the text of women's descriptions of being victims of sexual harassment, in many cases even from children. (One Egyptianwoman described her doorman's 3-year-old son as greeting her with the equivalent of "hey, hottie" every time she came home.) Sometimes, as foreigners, we feel that we're targeted because we stick out, but it's clear from exhibits like this, as well as talking with women here, that not even being a local or even being dressed extremely modestly and with hijab protects you from harassment. An American male friend of mine recently saw from a taxi window a man on a motorbike fly past a pedestrian and grope her, causing her to fall down in the dust. This is not something you witness every day on the street, and I've never seen it happen myself, but verbal harassment is pretty ubiquitous. Usually it's just irritating ("hey, honey" accompanied by a whistle or a hiss). But on Friday, on my way to the art museum, I told the 50+ cab driver, with rotted teeth and a gray beard, that it was hot outside, and he responded: "No, you're hot." Despite my expression of discontent, he proceeded to proposition me for sex, multiple times, on the way to my destination. Neither silence nor a harsh and disgusted rebuttal silenced him. Egyptian women are protesting increasingly vocally and in larger and larger numbers. Some of you may have heard about the anti-harassment protests in Tahrir a few weeks ago, for example -- which were joined by many men but sadly physically attacked by others. So, there's a push for change and a growing awareness of the severity of the problem, but still a ways to go in fixing it.
I didn't mean to write so much about this subject, but it is something that many friends have asked me about, and that is a part of daily life here. But on the upside, this is really the only seriously negative thing I can think of when people ask me what I dislike about Cairo, so from now on my posts will only get more positive. (Of course there's the pollution, too, which is probably blackening my lungs by the day, but as I said earlier, it makes for an unusual and unearthly sunset!)
In other news, I finally acquired my long-awaited Ramadan fanous. I trekked a few blocks down Dokki St. in my neighborhood and found a toy store with a large selection. What these lamps share are seriously neon colors -- mine is hot pink and lime green, which look pretty sweet when I have it plugged into the wall. Here's a photo:
Also in the positive column for this week, I reconnected with an old friend from my high school program after at least five years. We caught up over a great dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with a giant tree inside. While we both recognized each other right away (I know, I still look 16!), our discussion of politics and religion showed me how much has changed. Although her father is a Protestant pastor here (Protestants being a minority of a minority), she left the church a few years ago and considers herself an agnostic. Almost no one will ever admit that in Egypt, at least not unless you know him or her very intimately. But my friend told me that in fact people who share her beliefs have connected extensively on Twitter, which she uses mostly as a platform for broadcasting her admittedly controversial stances on social (e.g. gay rights or sexual freedom), political (e.g. relations with Israel), and religious issues. This was an eye-opening conversation for me because I learned about communities about which little is said publicly here, and whose connections are largely virtual. At the same time, my friend's predicament mirrors that of many young, well-educated Egyptians: underemployment. Just out of college with a degree in television production and broadcasting, she works hours twice as long as my daily class time, makes less than 2/3 CASA's monthly stipend, and hates her work as a community service representative at a call center handling complaints for Expedia Canada. Also like many young liberals, she invalidated her ballots in both rounds of the presidential elections, disappointed with all the choices and the way the process was carried out. "Everyone our age is depressed, seriously," she told me, not just about politics, but deeply exacerbated by it.
As I build new friendships and rekindle old ones, I am also looking for part-time internships and volunteering so that I can speak more Arabic and become more a part of the community. Tomorrow I'm going to meet with program directors from a women's advocacy and economic development NGO in my first effort to this end.
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