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.

Voyage to Nubia

I've had several moments over the past month or two when I told myself -- Well, here we go, summer in Cairo, Round 2! Today, though, when the thermometer hit 100 (perhaps not for the first time, but in a very noticeable way that made me dread the exertion of energy it took to cross the street), I found myself thanking my lucky stars that I am escaping for the next ten days. I am heading off this evening with two friends, Miriam and Alex, to Ethiopia. Addis Ababa is only a four hour flight from Cairo, and we will spread out from there to the north and east for trekking in the Simien Mountains and feeding hyenas in the holy city of Harar.

In fact, the last month has been memorably great. It began with my mom's visit the last week in April, when we were given a weeklong break from classes. She wanted to investigate my neighborhood - "my Cairo" - and was especially shocked by how the overwhelming shift from unveiling to veiling of women has completed changed the flavor of Cairo's streets since the 1970s and 1980s, when she was last here. It's hard for me to imagine it any other way, but it's worth reminding myself that many (perhaps most) of the middle-aged women who now walk around in modest scarves once strolled the street bareheaded and in knee-length dresses.

Since fortunately my mom did not want to visit the Pyramids again, we went instead to Tahrir Square and the Mohamed Mahmoud St. political murals; to Darb El Ahmar and the tentmakers' market behind Al Azhar Mosque, and to the gems of Islamic Cairo -- the twin mosques of Sultan Hassan and El Refaaey. It was also Coptic Holy Week, since they use a different liturgical calendar than Western Christians. And so we found ourselves in Masr El Qadima, the old Coptic quarter where the oldest churches, tombs, and museum are found, just in time for the Monday night service at St. Sergius (whose crypt is claimed to be one of the many places where the Holy Family stayed). A handful of men drifted in, took off their shoes, and readied their prayer books. An attendant told me that a service was about to begin. Can we stay, I asked? How long will it be? The man's reply: About three and a half hours. It's okay, you can leave early if you need to... just stay an hour and a half! The (very small) group of men began chanting in Coptic, with some Arabic, and a few families began trickling in -- women on one side and men on the other. As it turns out, all Coptic services are at least three hours long, sometimes longer, but we only made it twenty minutes.

The next morning, we took off for the South -- Upper Egypt. Although we flew into Luxor, we didn't dally there since I'd been recently, but instead went straight to our Nile cruise boat. There are -- we were told -- more than 300 such boats that would normally run between Luxor and Aswan. In these tough times, only about 20 are running. The boats are identical: a dining room in the basement, a couple of floors of cabins, a bar and lounge, and a sundeck with a pint-sized pool and lounge chairs. We spent nearly all our time on the 2-day journey to Aswan on this sundeck, drifting slowly past green marshes, Nile-side villages, nesting birds, and children splashing in the water. Considering the amount of river traffic that passes - or once passed - through, the trip was surprisingly quiet. Most of the way down, there is only the narrowest strip of fertile land on each side of the river, barely enough for a few homes and some farm plots, before the desert.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Egypt has patches of green, too!

Our first stop, the morning after our departure, was the Temple of Edfu, to which we were transported from the riverfront via horse-drawn carriage.

With Mom at Edfu

Then, in the afternoon, avoiding the withering noon sun, we were off to Kom Ombu. This latter, devoted in part to the crocodile god Sobek, featured a museum devoted to crocodile mummies -- from baby to supercroc. Giant crocodiles used to be a dime a dozen in these parts, but when the Aswan High Dam was built, they were all trapped in Lake Nasser south of Aswan. That night, we docked in Aswan, which perhaps has less in the way of pharaonic ruins compared with its cousin Luxor, but offers a more laid-back vibe, a life beyond tourism, and the lively color of Nubian influence.

At 3am, we joined a minibus caravan to Abu Simbel, just 30 miles north of the Sudanese border. What I saw of the road from Aswan was a vast expanse of empty desert -- until we joined Lake Nasser, in which many of Egypt's ancient treasures, as well as most of the Nubian civilization that thrived in this area until the 1950s, are submerged. The Temple of Abu Simbel itself was, in fact, moved from its original location when the High Dam was built. What you see today, though it is no less impressive, is the product of incredible feats of archaeology -- a new rock face constructed above and behind the original site, at a safe distance from the water's edge. The egotistical pharaoh Ramses II, who built the pair of temples of Abu Simbel, constructed a smallish temple for his wife Nefertari and an enormous one for himself that features more towering sculptures of Ramses II than of the gods or religious offerings. It has some memorable touches -- a string of baboons across the top of the main temple, miniature sculptures of his children standing beside him at the temple entrance -- but with my particular interest in historiography, I was especially drawn to the artistically (and historically) inventive frieze of the Battle of Kadesh on the inside. Although the images suggest very strongly that Ramses creamed the Hittites, the Egyptians actually lost the battle.

Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel

Done at Abu Simbel by 9am -- a necessity given the sun -- we returned to Aswan for an afternoon at the Philae Temple. Layers of history linger over the evocative ruins of the Temple of Isis at Philae, which float on an island accessible only by small boat. The blend of half-eroded Pharaonic stelae and Roman arches have long attracted European painters, as well as Napoleon's army during its Egyptian campaign in 1798.

Philae Temple today

Philae Temple in the 19th c., as portrayed by the English painter David Roberts

The French left their mark...

 We decided to watch the sunset from the Sofitel Old Cataract Hotel, an Aswan institution recently redone in resplendent luxury. A bellman took us upstairs to the vast suite where Agatha Christie was staying while she wrote Death on the Nile. The balcony opened out onto a scenic inlet south of Elephantine Island, shaded by palm trees and the ruins of the ancient settlement of Abu. The sails of a few small boats drifted past. We settled in for karkadeh mocktails on the back terrace of the hotel, where men in matching burgundy costumes -- perhaps the same as they wore in Agatha Christie's day -- lit candles and waved censers full of some Eastern scent.

Aswan sunset from the Old Cataract

We spent our final day in Aswan at the Nubian Museum, which is full of artifacts rescued from the villages (and even cities) now deep underwater. Although the Nubians themselves have fanned out across southern Egypt and northern Sudan, a deep sense of loss and of resentment toward the government not surprisingly remains. Aswan has both Nubians and Arabs, though it's not always easy to tell who is what because the Egyptians of the South tend to be darker anyway. Elsewhere, there is increasing interest among more affluent Egyptians in Nubian culture -- in the form of cultural tourism to colorful Nubian guesthouses (a new phenomenon), cultural and music festivals, and the like -- although dark-skinned Egyptians not infrequently face the same racism as black Africans from outside Egypt. After the museum, we hiked to a hilltop restaurant called the Golden Pharaoh only to be told by the elderly man padding around inside that it was open, but there was no food. Instead, he made us karkadeh from scratch and refused payment. He offered to order some food and cook for us alone the following day -- but admitted that there were no customers. But things are fine, things are fine, el hamdolellah, he smiled at the empty restaurant. People will come soon! Elhamdolellah. Don't you mean inshallah, God willing, and not elhamdolellah, Praise be to God? I wanted to ask.

After being sold ferry tickets by an Egyptian Rastafarian who asked us to call him Ashraf Rasta, we motored over to Elephantine Island, which lies between Aswan's eastern and western banks. North of the grab bag of ruins belonging to ancient Abu lie two Nubian villages. Although many tourists come, they don't feel as though they've lost their sleepy authenticity. We stopped at a fruit stand and struck up a conversation with the skinny, bespectacled boy named Abderrahman who sold us the bananas. He was studying at the Faculty of Agriculture and lived there, in Koti village. He spread a woven mat out on a nearby bench for us, then one for himself across the path. He was curious, like many, about how I had learned Arabic.
-A lot of Americans are studying Arabic these days, I said.
-Mm, since the occupation of Iraq?
-That and 9/11, yes.
-So, who was responsible for 9/11?
-I will be honest with you, Abderrahman, but I don't believe any of the conspiracy theories. I do not believe it was an internal plot.
-It HAD to be! The US has the strongest army in the world... how could they not know? Hmm... you think it was Al Qaeda? Mubarak is the leader of Al Qaeda!

At that moment, a thirty-something man in a red jersey walked by, and Abderrahman summarized our confirmation for him.

-You know who Al Qaeda is?! Red shirt man asks, his eyes blazing. Hosni Mubarak, George Bush, and Bashar Al Assad!  
-Sooo... what do you think of Obama? my mom ventures. Is he better?
-KHARA! says the man in disgust before walking away --- Shit.

Abderrahman and the two other men who joined us do like Mohamed Morsi, although they admitted that the community as a whole is divided. He's a pious man, they say. Jomaa, a middle-aged felucca captain who has lost all his business, also sat down beside us. He had gemlike green eyes that popped out from his broad, chocolate face.

We need to be more patient with Morsi, says Jomaa. It will take time. People in Cairo want change right away. But Morsi is not stealing from the country and the people, though. He is a good man! In Mubarak's time, all the money went abroad...America, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Dubai. His son, Jamal, he had 77 million pounds in England. Nothing in Egypt.

In the midst of this conversation, a wiry old man with a snaggletooth grin ambled up and insisted that, as "chief" of the village, it was his duty to give us a tour of the island for the proper sum. We strolled with Hamada through the brightly painted alleys of Elephantine and he pointed out the mosque, the garden plots, the traditional homes, the sheep wandering on their own. We wound up, as all visitors do, on the roof of a Nubian home drinking tea and posing with the owner's pet crocodile.

Nubian houses are famous for their colorful paint jobs

Crocs are favorite totems of the Nubians

Women on the Offensive

Some weeks ago I was sitting in a café along the Zamalek corniche with an Egyptian friend when the conversation turned, as many seem to do, to sexual harassment. It wouldn’t be your fault even if you walked naked in the street, she said evenly. Because even when you’re fully clothed, he sees you naked.

This is the essence of one slogan in HarassMap’s recent online ad campaign. One of the many organizations that has recently sprouted up to fight this ugly phenomenon, HarassMap collects details of harassment from the victims via text message and superimposes them on a map of the city. Since most women do not, of course, report incidents to the site, it gives only a rough idea at this point of where the centers of vile activity are located. But at the very least, it gives people a visual.

Here are the new slogans, which aim to tear down the common excuses employed by harassment apologists:

If the cause of harassment is delayed marriage, why does the father harass?

If the cause of harassment is illiteracy, why does the teacher harass?

If the cause of harassment is sexual repression, why does the 7-year-old harass?

If the cause of harassment is the way a woman dresses, why is the woman in niqab harassed?

If the cause of harassment is poverty, why does the CEO harass?

If ignoring harassment makes it go away, why has it not disappeared after years of silence?

The Arabic version of HarassMap's ad campaign

I’ve heard all of these excuses, and recently saw “The reason for harassment is your clothing” (Sabab el taharrosh lebsek) scrawled on the wall of the Gamal Abdel Nasser metro station.

We watched a film in my Arab feminism class earlier this semester called Four Women of Egypt. The documentary records the conversations of four middle-aged women in the mid-1990s: a labor and peasant organizer, an Islamist theater critic, a Christian journalist, and a Francophile novelist. All four are close, if combative, friends, and two met in prison. Watching the film and doing the other readings for my class, most of which date to the 1990s, it strikes me how much seems to have changed for women activists since then. Specifically (and obviously) the Internet has completely changed what kind of coordination is possible, and led to new kinds of projects, like HarassMap, that were not conceivable 15 years ago.

The Internet is also how I found out about International Women’s Day (March 8). Honestly, I’m not sure I knew such a thing existed until I moved to Egypt, and there was far more online buzz about it among my Arab friends than the Americans. The Uprising of Women in the Arab World, the pan-Arab online umbrella site I posted about a few months ago, announced its on-the-ground initiative in 8 countries to celebrate the day. In each participating Arab city, a giant banner was unfurled overlooking a major thoroughfare. Each featured at least one large woman’s face, forcing passersby (as the site said) to look her in the eye. Here in Egypt, the banner on the side of Madbouli Bookstore in Talaat Harb Square read: “I am with the uprising of women in the Arab World because woman is the womb of revolution.”

Women may well be the womb of the revolution, but at the heart of the action assault cases have skyrocketed. An extraordinarily powerful video (see below) was released by the group Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment soon after the anniversary of the revolution this year. It shows the chillingly methodical mass rape of a female protester who is just out of sight of the camera. After this came out, several other women published their own stories of assault in Tahrir during the same two-week period. A couple of these were volunteers with Op Anti-SH themselves, sucked into bloodthirsty mobs while trying to save other women. Were these assaults organized? It seems hard to believe given the chaos of the square, but the strategic precision of the rapists is shocking. But by whom? And why? Some activists say it is to scare women away from political protests, but no one seems to have more details. The responses of the Shura Council, the upper and only current house of Parliament, were appalling. Said one representative: “By getting herself involved in such circumstances, the woman has 100% responsibility.”

Trigger warning: this is a really tough video to watch. But it is also important, and woke a lot of people up to this terrifying phenomenon that began happening with alarming regularity this winter.

Public art like the International Women's Day initiative, "Graffiti Harimi" and Women on Walls is, I think, one of the most promising ways to combat the degrading views toward women that lead some men to participate in this kind of mass assault. Since the revolution, Cairo's streets have blossomed into color with revolutionary graffiti. But women began to notice that they were conspicuously absent. Even when graffiti slogans are meant to discourage sexual harassment, they tend to appeal to men's sense of masculinity rather than empowering or honoring women. "Estargel w ehmeeha" is one slogan I've seen recently: Man up and protect her. But the woman-run projects I mentioned above are part of a truly exciting effort to "reclaim public space", as one participant in Graffiti Harimi claims in the excellent video below, and to reinforce the idea that women will not be bullied into hiding at home. Even the title "Graffiti Harimi," she says, attempts to recast the word "Harimi" (think "harem") -- which has the negative connotation of ownership of women. Likewise, the slogans they use may be traditionally used to cast women in a negative light; they try to pair them with images that transform them into ones that cast women as strong and resilient. 

Overall, positive messages -- "No to harassment," "My body is free", etc. But also the appeal to manliness: "Man up and protect her." (Mohamed Mahmoud St.) 

In my Egyptian film class last week, we watched the 2010 movie 678. It is the story of a shy, veiled young woman who faces physical sexual harassment every day on the bus. She begins spearing the genitals of the men who rub against her with razor blades. Her story then intersects with that of two other women of different social classes who have been violently assaulted, one of whom insists for the first time on bringing her case to court. Our teacher, a woman, told us that it was the first time she’d had the courage to teach this film. The issues were just too sensitive. Mentioning the word harassment was taboo.

If you're looking for a bellwether for social trends (and taboos), look no further than Cairo University. When my feminism professor graduated in the late 1970s, she says, there was not a hijab in sight on campus. Maybe in poor or rural areas -- but not in a university. Today, more than 90% (she says 99%) of Muslim students are veiled. Empirical evidence - a walk around campus with my roommates - confirms this. The old buildings scattered around still have about them a dilapidated grandness: domes, marble staircases, bronze busts of dead poets and scientists. It happened that the day we visited fell in the middle of student government elections, so the grounds were filled with booths representing different student parties. Each party had large poster boards set up along the walkways advertising its candidates with their names and photos. But on the posters for one party, Shabab Bokra ("Youth of Tomorrow"), the women's photos were replaced with identical cartoon avatars (veiled, of course), while the male candidates' photos were shown as normal. Hmm. This smelled of the Salafist Al Nour party tactic in the 2011 parliamentary elections, when all the women's faces -- they were required to run female candidates under a quota system -- were replaced with flowers. 

In contrast with the creeping conservatism I observed at the university, a visit to the Nazra Institute for Feminist Studies proved that ideas are evolving in both directions simultaneously. Along with my Arab Feminism class, I met with the executive directors of the center at their airy, spacious apartment in the appropriately-named leafy neighborhood of Garden City. Nazra was founded in 2005 by young men and women who felt the old feminist groups were too focused on development and not on radical ideas or on politics. When they tried to register as an NGO, the application was sent back by the government, which said that "nesawy" ("feminist"), used in the organization's name, was not a word --  thus they must have meant "nesaa'ey" (adjectival form of "women's"). These days, Nazra uses terms like "gender mainstreaming" to talk about its training programs for female candidates, who must not be affiliated with either the old National Democratic Party (NDP) or with an Islamist Party to qualify. Nazra also talks candidly about sexual assault and especially homosexuality in ways that are extremely rare here. Nowhere else in Egypt have I heard someone say the words "queers" or "vaginal penetration" without blinking an eye; but nowhere else, for that matter, runs "sexuality schools" either. The organization aims to be an open space for dialogue about these sensitive and extremely taboo issues. Although one of the directors seemed very pessimistic when asked about the headway he thought they'd made in changing the public discourse, the very existence here in Cairo of such a place seems a brave mark of progress.

Meanwhile, far away in New York, a showdown was brewing at the United Nations. In mid-March, the UN Commission on the Status of Women brought forth a declaration condemning violence against women and outlining steps to be taken to fight it. In debate, a close advisor to President Morsi named Pakinam Sharkawy (a woman) condemned the document as being out of line with cultural and religious norms. (It undermined the family and took questionable stances on issues like abortion and homosexuality, and wrongly counted marital rape as rape, according to the Brotherhood.) When it came time for the final vote, though, a parallel delegation emerged. Mervat Tallawy, the Egyptian representative to the UN, career diplomat, and decided opponent of the Brotherhood -- decided to contradict her government's wishes and vote in favor of the declaration. A yes vote was needed, she said, in order to fight back against "a global wave of conservatism, of repression against women." And so the two sides continue to duke it out...

Finally, my own foray into controversy. It wasn't at the UN, but it did unfold outside the Presidential Palace and in the pages of a major newspaper. Back in September, I wrote about attending a vigil outside the palace in remembrance and outrage on behalf of a girl who was killed while trying to fight back against her assailant in Assiut. It was organized by the Basma movement (against harassment), and I was invited by American and Egyptian friends who were working with the group. There were not more than 40 of us at the event, perhaps a quarter of us foreign. As usual, I had been wary of carrying a sign, though the Egyptian organizers assured me that it would not hurt their cause: this was an issue that affects all of us, and we were all in solidarity with one another. I was glad afterward that I had gone, as I said then, and I still am. But I had nearly forgotten about it when, in February, I returned from my trip to Luxor with my dad to find my photograph posted to my Facebook wall, the logo of Al Masry Al Youm printed across it. There I was, stern-faced, looking off into the distance, holding a sign that read something like "Morsi, where are you? Harassment is everywhere." My name wasn't listed, nor was my nationality or affiliation. The picture had been paired with an article about an unrelated event -- protests at Egyptian embassies abroad in solidarity with the women assaulted in Tahrir in the early months of this year. At first I panicked about the visibility, but quickly a number of Egyptian friends liked the photo, adding that they were proud to see a foreign friend standing up for their cause. I relaxed. And then I received an e-mail from the administration of my fellowship, informing me that my actions were extremely inappropriate and if any proof of attending a political gathering were to surface again, I would be kicked out of the program in an instant. The e-mail was sent to everyone in the program, snowballing into what made me feel at intervals embarrassed, angry, rebellious, and concerned. You're a foreigner and have no right to talk to the Egyptian president in such an insulting way, I was told. Harassment is a political issue, and you're getting into politics when it's none of your business. Then, It's dangerous and you could jeopardize funding for the whole program! I have thought long and hard -- and written -- about what the proper role is for me here as an American. It's not so difficult to find yourself in the midst of a demonstration (walking out of class, for example -- this has happened), and given the current activities of many young people, you also want to give some kind of support to your friends. Ultimately, I never thought it was right, though, to shout slogans like "Down with the regime" -- or anything at all in an expressly political setting. If we go at all, it's as observers. But when it comes to harassment and assault, we're not Egyptians or Americans, we're women. It's an issue that cuts much deeper for us, and has to be treated differently. 

One Wedding Shobrawy-Style

Egyptian friends have often told me: "Our Friday morning is your Sunday morning." Indeed there is a quiet laziness to Friday mornings here that is more like the idea of Sundays in America than the real thing. The streets are empty, the people are asleep, the shops are closed, and at least in my mind it is possible to hear birds chirping. The Friday prayer, which breaks the silence at noon via speakers positioned to reach every corner of the neighborhood, nevertheless has an oddly lulling quality. The voice of the imam, though loud and rhythmically aggressive, is muffled so that it is hard to make out anything more than a phrase here or there.

This Friday, as I lay in bed half-listening to the sermon, I thought back to the night before. Certainly it had been one of the most memorable experiences of my time in Cairo. I had spent quite some time that evening trying to figure out just what to wear: a tunic with loose pants? a long-sleeved shirt under a dress over pants with a scarf? The latter won out, but in truth we had no idea what to expect. I've written about weddings before, but this one was different. For one, it was the wedding of one of our own: a CASAwiyya. Second, it was to be held in Shobra El-Kheima, the very last stop on the Cairo metro line. In truth, Shobra El Kheima is in a different governorate to the north, and is considered by most in Cairo or Giza proper (many of whom, I found, had never even been there) to be the end of the earth. What will you wear? people asked us anxiously, worried we would scandalize the locals with short sleeves or skin. Just mentioning that I would attend the wedding had a huge shock factor. 

In any case, Sofia, the bride, sent out an e-mail a few days beforehand warning us that her fiance's brothers had printed off hundreds of flyers stamped with the Ultras Ahlawy and Ultras White Knight logos. But thankfully: Molotovs are not allowed, wrote her fiance, Mohamed, on the Facebook event.

We arrived as a conspicuous group of over a dozen, made more so by one guy narrating our journey in a Godfather voice. In order to reach the street where the wedding was to be held, we passed for quite some time through a labyrinthine souk -- not the Khan El Khalili kind, but the practical sort that sells kitchen implements and Mickey Mouse nightgowns and whirring children's toys. If we stopped to ask directions, we didn't need to say anything. The foreign bride? Straight ahead!

Because transportation beyond the end of the metro is exclusively by tuk-tuk, we passed a number of those parked alongside the dirt streets. It was around 10pm when we finally reached glowing lights and the entrance to a a tent, all strung up between a few apartment buildings of 3 stories or so. Most appeared to be single (extended) family homes: Sofia and her husband, fiance, will now live in one such house in an apartment about his parents'. In Egypt, the bride moves to her husband's apartment, which he must ready before the wedding -- usually having bought it quite a while before, as owning an apartment is usually a prerequisite to a girl agreeing to an engagement. "The apartment" thus takes on all kinds of broader meaning, most importantly the husband's ability to provide for his wife.

The two perpendicular alleys in which the wedding took place were covered over in old Oriental carpets. Bright red and yellow fabric was draped from the apartments to create a tent feeling inside, criss-crossed by strings of lights, and round tables were set up -- primarily, it seemed, to facilitate the passing out of copious amounts of green apple Fanta. The bride and the groom hadn't arrived yet, and in fact friends of the groom were still at work constructing the platform where the couple would sit on a white couch to greet guests. We watched as they hammered and erected a beach scene backdrop, subsequently covered in white gauze.

At last the bride and groom appeared on the TV screen rigged up in front of us, and everyone rushed toward the entrance of the tent to welcome the couple. Cheb Khaled's blockbuster hit C'est La Vie was blasting as they made their way up our makeshift aisle, the bride's father (the only one in a suit - weddings are casual in these parts) danced behind them. Sofia, my friend, was wearing a white lace dress with long sleeves and a turtleneck, as well as a sort of cap that Muslim women wear under their veil -- a kind of wedding hijab. She recently converted to Islam and her new husband is a political activist who trained at Al Azhar and hopes to be a reformist preacher. Look at her makeup! said an Egyptian woman to me, She is masreya masreya now! (100% Egyptian).



For a short time, we heard the sound of fake guns going off, and worried in passing if our other friends' ominous warnings about security had been warranted. But it was just to add to the festive mood, like the fireworks. As for the rampant hashish we'd been cautioned about, I saw only a few young guys smoking outside the tent when I slipped out to find a bathroom. A middle-aged lady standing on her stoop nearby invited me in to use hers. It was a hole in the ground with a spigot and wooden box. I couldn't have cared less given the circumstances, but she seated me down in a white plastic deck chair in the linoleum-tiled hall and apologized: Sorry it's not like your nice bathrooms downtown!! she told me, in the same breath asking me to stay for tea. Manawwareen, manawwareen! she kept saying, a gracious way of saying "welcome" that literally means - You are lighting up the place.

Back in the street, the dancing was picking up, with a mob of mostly teenage girls in one circle and a mob of young guys in another. Once I was in, there was no going back. The girls grabbed my hands and gestured to copy their moves. Seeing a foreigner enthusiastically engaged in "shaaby" dancing, as it's called (see previous: "Haty Bosa ya Bet" video) was hilarious to the girls, and one of them even asked me to dance with her husband. Another woman foisted her baby off to me (see below). Another was waving something in the air as she danced, then handed it to me. I followed suit, only to realize that it was a knife. We looked behind us to see the boys, some shirtless and drenched in sweat, crowdsurfing across a sea of strangers.






When I tried reluctantly to leave for the metro, the girls kept grabbing me and pulling me back in to dance. At last we all blew kisses goodbye and I started to make my way toward the exit. Partway there, I encountered a little boy, maybe 7 years old, who challenged me wordlessly to a dance-off. Drugged into shaaby wedding nirvana by the loud music and a couple hours of spinning, I accepted. To this day, I am not sure who won, but the photographic evidence is here:

What remained between me and the door was a sea of rowdy youth. Asking to get through would be fruitless, so I just began to dance my way through the crowd. The seas parted and the youth clapped as I threw my hands up and made a dramatic exit.

Two Taxis, April 13

11:50AM. 26 July St. En route with Robin from Dokki to Zamalek.
-Germany? From where?
-La, Amreeka.
-Obama!
-Aywa, Obama kwayyes. (Yes, Obama is good.)
-La, mosh kwayyes! (No! Not good!)
-Ah, okay. 

Surely he doesn't like US foreign policy...

-'Alshan aswad. Black. (Because he's black.)
-Naam? (Uhh, yes?)
-Black mosh helw. (Black is not pretty.)

Well, this just got awkward. More importantly, is this a joke? Our driver is definitely black by all reasonable measures. However, we got the feeling he would be pretty offended by that. He kept going...

-Wa Clinton, Clinton kan kwayyes. (But Clinton was good!)
-Mhmm.
-Wa Bush!! (And Bush!)
-La, Bush msh kwayyes. (No, not Bush.) 
-AYWA, KWAYYES! Kwayyes awy. (Yesss, good! Very good!)

What?! Not a single human I've ever met in the Middle East has praised George Bush, not one. Puzzling over what to make of this odd interaction, we arrive at our destination and never find out.


* * *

11:50PM. En route from Zamalek to Dokki.
I stand waiting for a cab at the corner of 26 July and Shagaret El Dor in Zamalek, outside a glowing benzina (gas station). As I start to walk, a groaning white jalopy pulls up beside me. I peer inside to get a good look at the driver. If he's over 45, I'll take it. He's at least ten years over my minimum, so I get in. He has a heavy aquiline nose and a rugged but sagging face topped by a close-cropped tuft of gray.

-Dokki?

He nods.

-Medan El Mesaha, inshallah.
-Inshallah ya madame.

We ride without speaking across the 15 May Bridge. The windows are down and a cool breeze laps at my face.  Umm Kolsoum is on. Her crooning fills the silence. The driver lights a cigarette and holds it against the steering wheel between his thumb and pointer. The tip of that cigarette is the only light inside the car. Outside, the neon signs marking the Nile dinner boats light the dark Corniche. Anyone here will tell you that Cairo is best seen at night, but I'm almost never alone enough to feel it. Umm Kolsoum crescendos. This is the Cairo I don't want to leave. We reach Maglis El Dawla and the driver turns toward the Medan. I see the white Cilantro sign glowing a few blocks ahead.

When we reach the square, I address the driver for the first time since I got in.

-Momken taleff keda? I gesture to turn toward my building.
-Araby is very good, madame. 
-Allah yekhaleek. Alshan 'aisha hena. Thank you -- it's because I live here.

We arrive at my door.

-Ma' el salama ya madame. It means goodnight. Ma el salama, ma el salama. 

I get out and the car putters off into the dark.

Am I Staying or Going?

Summer comes early in Egypt, and sometimes I have trouble remembering whether spring ever happened at all. As temperatures climb toward the 90s, I am reminded more frequently that CASA is actually winding to a close. A few more weeks of classes, a spring break, final exams, and then a brutal thrust into the real world of unemployment. For the time being, I feel in some sense that I am treading water, unsure whether I should be laying down deeper roots here or picking up the loose ends and getting ready to move on. I've never had this degree of uncertainty in my life before -- that is, not knowing what I will be doing 8 weeks from now, much less in a year. As I work on figuring out what comes next, I alternate between two sentiments. Sometimes, I think of the long, long summer ahead, a thirsty Ramadan under the July sun, an indefinite period of traffic jams on the Corniche and feral dogs and shouting matches with taxi drivers and sandwiching myself onto the metro as the sweat drips down my pant legs and the matrons ogle my arm hair. At those times, I am not ashamed to say I miss America and am maybe ready to go home. Yet I think just as often with fondness of the relationships I've formed here and the communities I have become a part of. At those times, I don't feel ready to leave.

One such time was the recent end-of-year awards ceremony for my social studies students at St. Andrew's. All grades gathered together with their parents to recognize the top students in each subject area, watch a slideshow of the year's highlights, and feast on cookies and soda. I was afraid before I went that I would feel out of place: I was only a part-time teacher and felt I didn't know many people around the school. I also felt like a failure because not a single one of my students had passed the final exam -- a real GED test intended to simulate the one we had hoped they would take in June. The highest grade was a 42. I worried that my students would feel incredibly discouraged. In fact, the same results were seen across the board, and the high school students who did come to the ceremony didn't seem fazed in the slightest. Grades in hand, they came up to shake my hand and pose for photos. They seemed pleased that I had come. The mood was jubilant as the student DJs blasted Jai Ho and, peculiarly, Barbie Girl, giving the elementary kids a chance to break it down.

I thought back then to the impending doom I had felt as we approached the final exam. I knew that only four or five students would be selected to take the actual GED, but they didn't. A few questions in particular stuck out. My lesson on supply and demand, involving an extended comparison of Chloe's Car Company and Velia's Car Company, had gone surprisingly well. A day or so later, a sample test I gave them asked an easy question about the effect of price increases on the demand for toasters. I felt good: I knew they had supply and demand down pat. But one hand went up, then another and another. What's a toaster? each student asked. Therein lay the crux of (one of) the big problems we were up against. State lottery revenues, teen driving laws, toasters. These were the questions that were supposed to be easy for any half-grown American with his eyes open, but they were the hardest for my students. So there I found myself, drawing pictures of toaster ovens on the whiteboard. Teaching American history made me feel alternately patriotic and foolish -- the former when my students oohed and aahed over Albert Bierstadt's paintings of the American West or when a few produced moving commentaries on the iconic photos of the Civil Rights Movement. The latter came about when I had to apologize for awkwardly propagandistic instances of cultural bias. One sample question featured a photo with soldier returning from battle and the stars and stripes waving behind her. What American value does this photo represent? it asked. A teaching moment for all of us occurred when I assigned a few sample questions related to an excerpt on Manifest Destiny. One question asked:
Which of the following beliefs from the 1840s has been discredited?
a. Democracy is a form of government that appeals to many people.
b. Native Americans are incapable of self-government.
c. The United States should promote freedom throughout the world.
d. Individuals should have the opportunity to improve their lives. 
e. Economic development helps the United States prosper.

Obviously, the correct answer as per the test is (b). Almost every one of my students chose (c). I tried to use this to segue into a discussion about the world balance of power after World War II, but in the end I found myself just telling my students that they should try to pretend they are the US government when they take the test. Standing in front of 27 16-year-old refugees from Sudan, that sounded pretty ridiculous.

A few days later, though, I had planned a lesson on analyzing political cartoons. The GED loves them, but I was panicked because cartoons are incredibly culturally specific. All but 7 students skipped class that day, yet those who attended came alive. They were very well versed in current events, and laughed raucously as I passed a few images around. As we discussed a cartoon of an ostrich with its head in the sand roasting in the sun like a chicken (global warming), I joked that I'd never eaten ostrich. But one of my students had. Yeah, it's easy, just grill it, he said, making a matter-of-fact grilling motion. Another cartoon showed Ahmadinejad as Pinocchio, lying about nuclear weapons. That same student launched into a discussion of Iran's right to nuclear weapons if everyone else was going to have them. Except, he explained, it's very bad with Sudan. Ahmadinejad was selling nuclear technology to Bashir [President of Sudan, not so popular among these kids for obvious reasons]. Yes, this was very bad. 

When the semester ended, we agreed that in May I would start bootcamp for the 4 students selected to take the real GED. The rest will do another year of high school and hopefully pass the Sudanese national diploma next year. Getting them from 40 to passing - not just in social studies but in every subject area - will not be easy. But for a lucky one or two, the GED offers a way out -- hope for a scholarship to study abroad. Of course, many other hurdles also stand in the way: the TOEFL, the SAT, the admissions process. But there are a few precedents, and my students hold on to this possibility.

The day after I celebrated the end of the school year with my St. Andrew's students, I left Cairo for a CASA-sponsored weekend on the Red Sea. We arrived in El Gouna via a red-eye to the nearby Hurghada airport. When I stepped out onto the balcony of our adobe villa at dawn, I discovered that I was on a manmade island paradise. Around me were canals with little footbridges and all sorts of desert flora.

The view from my balcony in El Gouna: an island playground

As I quickly learned while walking outside the resort down to the Abu Tig marina, El Gouna is a kind of elite desert Disneyland. It was developed only in the 1990s by a family of telecom magnates as an alternative to its somewhat tackier neighbor, Hurghada. The spotless streets are lined with tasteful villas evocative of Hassan Fathy's New Gourna, with SUVs and fluffy puppies parked in the front yard. We walked through the streets in short skirts without a single whiff of harassment. Of course, it is a completely artificial place, the kind I might have pooh-poohed back home. But as a brief refuge from Cairo's din and chaos, this artificiality was a welcome relief.

Our first night in town, a group of us wandered around the marina (very quiet, perhaps the season or perhaps the tourism crisis, hard to say), where a number of shiny yachts were moored. We wound up at the same place as, it seemed, everyone else: Mood's, an outdoor dance club with tiki huts and a DJ spinning house beats. Most of the others there were Europeans dressed lavishly for the occasion. It was a toned-down version of the kind of evening I expect people have in Ibiza and places like that: music pulsing across the coast, colored strobe lights searching the horizon. In Egypt, I didn't expect it.

 

The thrill of showing some leg - much taken for granted 

The CASA contingent after a few days in the sun

The next day was water aerobics class, with a very muscly Egyptian instructor and a pair of fleshy middle-aged Brits. From there we moved on to snorkeling, though this time the water was really rough (there had been a sandstorm the previous night). Later that night, after squirreling plate after plate of smoked salmon appetizers from the open buffet, we gathered on a moored pirate ship that serves as a beach bar by day. We clung to our last moments of peacefulness by spending our last day sprawled on the "Relaxation Beach". That night, dining at an Indian restaurant, the contestants in the Top Model of the World competition walked in. These were ten or so girls, all over 6 feet tall, wearing evening gowns and sashes bearing the names of their countries. The champion was to be decided right there in Gouna later in the week. Then arrived the men with whom they were to be taking photos in the restaurant (where they did not, apparently, actually consume any food) while making scintillating conversation. Within 20 minutes, they had all left.

Back in Cairo, I answered a call online to translate a screenplay for an up-and-coming local actor/director/screenwriter. I had never done any formal translation, but the simultaneous interpretation class I'm in has shown me that I really enjoy the creative puzzle of recreating a speech or story in another language. Most of what we translate in the soundproof booths in class is in the category of official political discourse (UN, Arab League, Mubarak's surrender, etc.). But even in the most basic ways - capturing a turn of phrase in Arabic in an equally elegant English expressing, for example - there is room for creative imagination. There's also the cultural interpretation element. A formal speech in Arabic typically begins and ends with "As-salaamu aleikum w rahmat allahi w barakatu" - Peace be upon you with God's mercy and blessings. Saying this in English would be absurd, so we were instructed to ad lib something like "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us." When it came to the screenplay I was translating, there was even more space for me to interpret: it needed to sound natural in English more than it needed to be perfectly accurate. Much of the dialogue was youth slang that demanded a careful repertoire of expressions like "hey, dude!", "you'd be nothing without me, man", and "can you chill out, please?".  The hope is that the screenwriter/director will win a grant to produce the film, which portrays issues like an at-home abortion that are pretty wildly taboo here. One of the things that is great about the independent arts scene here is that it's kind of a small and tight-knit community. It is easy to come in and meet pretty important up-and-comers.

Meanwhile, in political news, warrants were issued for the arrest of wildly popular TV satirist Bassem Youssef (often called the "Jon Stewart of Egypt", since he modeled his post-revolution political satire show El Barnameg on The Daily Show). Accusations were brought to the general prosecutor by independent lawyers that Youssef had insulted Islam and and the Presidency. Youssef posted bail a couple of weeks ago, and as of today, Morsi has asked the claims to be dropped. But even the threat of such action against a comedian is an ominous sign. The best English-language summary of what happened can be found, as it happens, on The Daily Show.

Not knowing how much longer I'll be here, I'm also trying to make an effort to get to corners of the city I still haven't seen. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Lindsey organized a hiking expedition to Wadi Degla, on the eastern outskirts of the city. Who knew there was hiking to be done in Cairo? Unfortunately, the ticket gave us false hope that there would be flora and fauna. Instead we found ourselves trekking across scorched canyons, feeling something like post-apocalyptic Indiana Joneses. We offered a collective prize to the first person to spot a non-human living creature. Nobody claimed the prize. (Not that it wasn't cool: desert scenery is awesome until you run out of water.)

Hiking in Wadi Degla 

Not long afterward, my good friend Caroline from Princeton arrived to spend a week taking in the sights. This gave me the chance to flex my tour guide muscles again. Among the highlights for me were returning for the first time to two places I visited on my first trip to Egypt so long ago. One of these was Al Azhar mosque, the global power center of Sunni Islam. The seminary-university attached to Al Azhar attracts students from all over the world, and this internationalism can be felt inside the mosque as well. Not only were the visitors very diverse, but we dropped in on lessons (Islamic finance for instance) in a few of the side rooms and found Africans, Asians, and Arabs listening intently.

Al Azhar, then and now:

Here I am in 2006, Crocs in hand and my infamous fuchsia & lime green headscarf (with LINC friends Mary and Ashley)

And now in 2013 with Caroline

After winding through the khayameyya (tentmakers' market), one of my favorite somewhat lesser visited parts of historic Islamic Cairo, we suddenly found ourselves at the back side of Azhar Park.

Picnic games against the Cairo skyline, Al Azhar Park 

The second place I revisited with Caroline in tow was the Garbage City (Medinat El Zabaleen). It is the place that made, I think, the greatest impression on me in high school, and when I think about how my relationship with Cairo has been tempered by realism I often reflect back on my first experience of Garbage City. Then, in 2006, we drove in on a coach bus... Some years ago, I wrote in an internship application:

"There was a lurch, then a wave of gasps, and I suddenly found myself sitting peculiarly sideways. Outside our ill-fated bus, which had tried to navigate the narrow, unpaved alleys of Cairo's Garbage City, a mob of curious children had already gathered. Five minutes later, my friends and I were on foot, jostling with donkey carts piled high with teetering stacks of watermelons..."

Indeed, the experience of walking through a neighborhood centered around garbage -- its collection, sorting, and recycling - symbolized to me at the time my coming out of my comfort zone and exploring the unknown. The neighborhood is an amazing example of human resilience and ingenuity, of people filling the gaps left by nonexistent municipal services. That is more what struck me this time around, though: the first time, I was more drawn to the cacophony -- the teetering watermelons, the near collision with a donkey cart, the colorful political slogans scrawled on the walls, the skinned and headless cows hung by their tails from the butcher shops. Then, I found the neighborhood's colorful poverty both fascinating and shocking. I had never seen anything like it up close. These days, I'm sometimes troubled by the knowledge that a key element of Cairo's original allure was the exoticism of its poverty. Looking now at the Garbage City, it struck me that it might be the most organized place in the entire city. Without any idea how the residents actual organize themselves, it is a marvel that they are able to get the plastic bottles or the cardboard boxes of 17 million people into a single place.

Buried inside Garbage City, an overwhelmingly Christian neighborhood, is the Church of St. Simon the Tanner. Garbage City is built onto a plateau called Mokattam, and St. Simon is a Coptic Orthodox saint said to have moved the mountain in the 10th century. Although there has been a holy site associated with this incident for hundreds of years, about 25 years ago the Coptic Church decided to chisel a giant open-air church into the mountainside. These days, it seats 5,000 people. When we arrived, there were a lot of Christian school groups visiting and even a stand where you can get your cross tattoo (which all Copts here have on the inside of the wrist).

Inside St. Simon the Tanner's cave megachurch 

With Caroline at St. Simon's 

The final stop on this week's spiritual journey through Cairo was a viewing of the new documentary Jews of Egypt. For some months, authorities were censoring the film, but finally the ban was lifted and it is now in the ritzy Nile City Renaissance cinema. The audience was of mixed ages, but was overwhelmingly chic, with a heavy percentage of foreigners. I had heard that there weren't more than a couple dozen Jews left in Cairo, and knew that there had once been quite a sizable population. (Indeed, maps we looked at in my Ottoman Egypt course showed entire Jewish quarters in Cairo, just as they exist in most cosmopolitan cities in the Middle East.) But I didn't know how it had happened. Of the people interviewed in the film, only one was both still living in Egypt and still Jewish, and he only nominally. He was a radical communist organizer who happened to be in jail for his political activities at the time Jews were stripped of their Egyptian citizenship and expelled from the country in 1956. He had actually converted to Islam as a formality in order to marry his Muslim wife, but a law put in place in the Nasser Era legally negated the conversions of any Jews that occurred after a certain year. The poignant stories of most of the other interviewees were told in French, from France: they had been teenagers at the time of the expulsion and their mostly fond childhood memories of being Egyptian had blurred with time. Even in the 1940s, few recalled much animosity. The film took pains to demonstrate that Egyptian Jews felt, for the most part, far more Egyptian than Jewish, and did not sympathize with Zionism at all. (Anecdotal evidence suggested that most went to Europe in 1956 rather than Israel, but the question was not addressed head-on.) Still, as historians noted, in the 1910s the Zionist movement had an office downtown that was open to the public, and in fact some of its members were aligned quite amicably with the Egyptian nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul. After 1948, and especially in the 1950s, however, relations deteriorated rapidly. It was the Suez Crisis that gave Nasser the pretext to expel Egypt's Jews once and for all. You can still visit a few of Egypt's historic synagogues today, in Cairo and in Alexandria, but they are empty.

Spring flowers in Masr El Qadima