I know, I know. It has been 2 weeks since I posted. So this is going to be a grab bag of stories -- which is why I don't have a catchy title. First, I should mention that as of last weekend, I have relocated to a new apartment. It is, however, in the same building as the old one -- the building we have come to know and love on Midan El Mesaha. I'm finally starting to get chummy with the security guys downstairs, especially Ibrahim with the fine mustache, who works mornings and has offered to be our surrogate baba (father). One of the many things that is splendid about this apartment (as well as the last one) is that it looks out on... green space! This is something that is not always easy to find, at least not available for public sitting, in Cairo, and probably (along with rain), what I miss most about home. Of course, we can't actually sit in the grass of the Medan because it is overgrown and there are no benches, but it's nice to fantasize about at least. The new apartment is spotless, though we now know the reason for that is that a cockroach and ant population of unreal proportions has long reigned in this "shaqqa" of ours. But we have more grownup furniture here (no more gold lamé pillows here, for better or for worse), and a pretty large living and dining room. We're on the 8th floor now but still overlooking the square. My bedroom has a great gold queen-sized bed and an entire wall of closet space -- something Egyptians appear to know how to do extremely well.
I've been working a little more on my knowledge of the neighborhood and have identified a few more key anchors. First, the pious bakery next to the liquor store on Tahrir St. Second, City Drinks, the tried and true juice joint. Third, Tawhid wa Nour, the apparently Salafi-owned homewares department store to which I made an inaugural visit earlier this week. Next-door, there was a full cow being skinned on the sidewalk. Hello, there! Anyway, Tawhid wa Nour has a really complicated system by which you order what you want in a given department, whether that is the plastic tree department or, as in my case, the sheets department. Then you are given a receipt and go downstairs to pay at a different counter. But the key is: don't try to take your purchases with you from the place you found them! Because finally you are sent to a third counter, where a salesman picks up a microphone and calls out your purchase number and a messenger comes trotting down the stairs with your (in my case) one sheet, delivered to your hands. You've now been given fair warning: things are more complicated than they appear.
Moving now from skinned cows and bedsheets to politics, the two weeks from the elections to the announcement of the results to the swearing in of Mohamed Morsi were pretty exciting. It's important to emphasize again that I have no experience whatsoever with most of what you read about in the newspapers happening in Tahrir. Just before the results were announced two weeks ago, things were indeed starting to get rather tense, largely because the parliament had obviously been dissolved and it seemed quite possible that Shafik would be announced as the winner despite appearances that Morsi had won democratically. Many people here worried that given the masses of Muslim Brotherhood supporters organizing in Tahrir, a decision in Shafik's favor could ignite a wave of serious violence. I read in the New York Times: A few blocks from the swelling crowds in Tahrir, a contingent of soldiers and riot police continued to guard the Parliament building Friday to prevent any attempt by lawmakers or others to enter. Tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military forces have resumed positions a on the road into the city from Alexandria that they had occupied during the uprising against Mr. Mubarak. Over here in Dokki, however, I would never have known any of these specifics had I not read the Times, and in fact it would have been pretty easy to be totally ignorant of rising tensions as people continued to go about their daily lives.
On Sunday, June 24, the day the presidential election results were set to be announced, Sarah and I spent the morning working in Cilantro a few doors down from our building. As the prescribed hour of 3pm neared, we relocated to Pizza Hut to watch the announcement on a big screen. The employees were all gathered around waiting, but none of the patrons was even looking. We waited and waited, awkwardly long, and then realized that we should just go home and watch on our laptops. Farouk Sultan, the head of the Egyptian Presidential Election Commission, then made an hour-long speech listing every single election complaint in every Egyptian governorate. Twitter was buzzing with people moaning things like: "al-shaab yurid inha' al-khitab", which means "the people want an end to the speech" -- a pun on the famous revolutionary slogan "al-shaab yurid isqat al-nidham" (the people want the fall of the regime). I zoned out for a moment, and then suddenly saw on the ticker of Jazeera Mubasher: "Mohamed Morsi Ra'isan li-Misr". Simultaneously, we heard from the square below an ecstatic voice bellowing Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar. He continued for maybe five minutes, by which point the streets, which had up to that point been empty while people watched the speech, filled with cars pounding their horns in delight. Firecrackers went off in the distance. After a few moments, I had to catch a taxi to meet my language partner in Zamalek, so I walked up to Tahrir St., which was filled with boys on motorbikes screaming and waving Egyptian flags, and a general sentiment of unadulterated joy. Of course, not everyone in Egypt felt this way by any means, but those people were not out in the streets that day. I met that week's language partner, Evline, at Sufi bookstore cafe in Zamalek. As we sipped our mango juices, Evline (who is an AUC student in economics) told us that she was happy that day that the people were happy (mabsota 3alshan il-sha3b mabsot) but hadn't even been enthusiastic about a candidate in the first round... like virtually every other liberal young person I know, she had supported Hamdeen Sabahy, although she called him the lesser of two evils (a7san il-wi7isheen). (This was similar to what another friend said -- that he was happy Shafiq lost and sad Morsi won.) Our chat was interrupted briefly by earsplitting firecrackers in the street below. But that was it for the election drama.
In the same bookstore after our dardasha (chat), Adam held the launch party for his new (first) book, Plateau. Lots of friends came and all of us got a few unique lines on the title page. A bit of shameless promotion: http://www.facebook.com/Plateauadam. For all you English speakers out there, you can at least take a peek at the cover and look at some photos from the book signing.
The following day, we had a little CASA outing to the Umm Kolsoum Museum and Nilometer (Nile-measuring apparatus) at the southern tip of Rhoda Island. On the way there, a confused taxi driver took us through Tahrir for the first time on this trip to Egypt -- but things were pretty quiet because it was early in the afternoon. There were still lots of tents set up, but mostly people were just milling around, eating snacks, etc. A critical mass or organized group of any kind was definitely absent. The driver, who was maybe in his 60s and had a great fro-like halo of Einsteinesque gray hair, asked us our feelings toward ElBaradei, the first time he's come up in conversation. Like all good foreigners, we said he was smart impressive, blah blah blah. This guy, who had voted for Morsi, then rambled on quite a bit about how ElBaradei had lived abroad and become so Westernized that essentially he was Egyptian in name only. When we finally reached our destination, we found Umm Kolsoum mathaf just to have a bunch of dresses, but the Abbasid-era Nilometer, which measured the level of the Nile in style beginning in the Abbasid Period, was a sight to behold. (Pictures to come soon, which will explain better.) But perhaps the highlight of the trip was our stroll along the Nile on the island. The riverfront is covered with little garden shops where you can buy any plant you might desire.
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