zen by the red sea

In what seemed like an official start to summer, I spent this past weekend at Basata, a relaxing, chilled-out, eco-friendly camp between Nuweiba and Taba on the Red Sea. We could see the lights on Aqaba (Jordan) and Eilat (Israel) at night, and the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the sea during the day. In fact, all our phones automatically went on the Saudi Arabia network; given my desire to actually visit that country (minimal), that's probably the closest I will come to going there.

Basata is a cool idea -- basically, there are all these huts on the beach (literally, on the beach, with the Red Sea like 5 feet away), all of which have no electricity or running water. They have "beds" (mats) with carpets/rugs/more mats, a few low tables, a few pillows, etc. Ours was a double-decker with a small loft area, the whole hut sleeping a total of eight people (though we were 10, which was fine as two people opted to drag their mats outside and sleep on the porch). At either end of the camp is a bathroom hut with showers and toilets etc., and there's also one big communal hut. This one features a bakery (freshly baked good every day...yum!), kitchen and cooking area, as well as huge spaces to chill on oversized cushions and the floor, long tables and etc. Oh! And a library, a "take one, leave one" kind of situation. English books are quite expensive, so my friends and I usually trade around what we have, plus I get a new one each month to review for the magazine I write for. Anyway, they had a lot in German, but I did read Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (I love Toni Morrison -- Song of Solomon is one of my favorite books of all time) and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, a fictionalization/reimagining of the life of Laura Bush. Both were excellent.

For food, you are on your own for breakfast and lunch. You can take raw ingredients and make your own, or eat some prepared stuff (i.e. from the bakery, or some corn flakes or whatever). For lunch they usually had out mini-pizzas. And then for dinner you could sign up for prepared food (everything vegetarian!) or make your own. In both cases, you just write down what you took and then pay for everything at the end. We were there three nights and four days, so we did some of our cooking the last night, but ate their food the first two (and it was so amazing). Also, in a very un-Egyptian manner, they recycled! Very exciting stuff.

There was also some beautiful snorkling right off the beach with some great stuff -- saw loads of fish, crabs, sea urchins, etc. And also some lionfish, which apparently are poisonous, so we did not get too close. All in all, an excellent and extremely relaxing vacation. Could not ask for a better start to the summer.

Below, please enjoy some photos of the sea and beach to make you jealous.

in which i get a visitor!

Big news of the week: I have a visitor! Marcy, who has spent the year teaching English in Madrid (another city I love), is visiting me in Cairo for five days before returning to America. It has been a welcome chance for me to revisit some tourist sites in Cairo, like the pyramids and Egyptian Museum, as well as Cairo staples like a felluca ride on the Nile and some shopping at Khan el-Khalili. She has done some exploring on her own, like in Coptic Cairo and in Zamalek, so I have just posted some photos (below!) of the things we did together. Enjoy!

In other news, last week I went with N to see an installment of the Refugee Film Festival. They had been asking for volunteers for the festival, but with my work hours it didn't work out. However, on the day we went we managed to see two films (with dinner in between). I much preferred the second one, which was about mistreatment of Sudanese refugees in Cairo, a problem that many Egyptians don't know anything about. I have friends who teach and/or work with refugees so I have heard about the issue before, but I still found the documentary to be really interesting.

Illicit inside-the-pyramid shot! That's Marcy on the left, rando tourist on the right, and the sarcophagus in the back. This was inside the middle pyramid.

It looks like they are re-painting the Egyptian museum. It seems pink-er than usual...

Green area in the Khan at night

More green area in the Khan at night.

bahrain costs just 90 LE

Last night at my friend L's house, I played a game of Bank el-Haz, the Egyptian version of Monopoly (haz means luck). Instead of purchasing properties named after streets in Atlantic City, you can buy countries and cities in the Middle East -- Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, Casablanca, Beirut, Riyadh, Oman, Algeria, etc.

But the game is a Nasser-era relic from what we guess to be the early 1970s, which means that the UAE (including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, etc.) is non-existant, and other Gulfie states, like Bahrain, are the cheapie properties available at just 90 LE (in current prices that comes to a whopping total of about $18. Qatar was also a steal at around 150 LE). It also means that at the time the game was made, there were very close ties between Egypt and Syria, so all the most expensive properties were in those two countries -- Cairo, Damascus, Alexandria and Aleppo in the first tier, followed by other locales in Egypt like Aswan, Luxor and Port Said.

The principles of the game were similar to Monopoly: purchase or trade for a monopoly, then build on it, etc. Instead of houses and hotels there were rest houses and markets, but it's the same idea. There's a banker and a jail and GO, and even chance cards, etc. Everything is in Arabic, so it was slow going for me whenever I needed to translate one of the chance cards, but overall it was a lot of fun. It was definitely a simplified version of Monopoly, but for the novelty it was pretty great. I think next week we will go back to Scrabble.

my stylish swine flu mask

This was a weekend of weird (and fun) cultural experiences. On Thursday night I went to a stand-up comedy event at the Sawy Center. I have heard about comedians performing before in Cairo (there are several well-known comedians, especially Egyptians, thanks to popular specials like Axis of Evil and Arabs Gone Wild), but I always skip them because I was pretty sure they would be in Arabic. My friend L heard about this one and said it was supposed to be in English, so I decided to give it a shot. It turns out that it was an evening hosted by well-known Egyptian-American comic Ronnie Khalil, and featuring some amateur and established Egyptian comics...in English and Arabic. First there were four performances in Arabic, an "interlude" by Khalil (in English, making fun of the Obama speech), and then four performances in English, including a much longer set from Khalil.

I had an initial moment of panic when I heard that half the sets would be in Arabic, but surprised myself by understanding more than I expected. It helps that they were all speaking Egyptian ameyya, which is what I have been studying this year, and that my friend L was there to help translate the jokes I didn't get. I understood the most in the first act, and found him to be pretty funny. One of the next three I understood barely anything (though no one seemed to find her too funny, so I think it was OK), one I sort of understood, though he used a lot of slang I didn't pick up on (really, how am I supposed to know the words for "to hit on" and "PMS"), and the third I also picked up on some, others went completely over my head. But that's OK, I am still pretty proud of myself for what I did get. For the English set, the first two were so-so, the third was a radio personality from Nile FM, and he was really funny, and Khalil went last and he was hilarious (not to mention quite a hit with the ladies in attendance).

The best part of the whole comedy evening, though, was the Official Swine Flu Panic. About 10 cases of swine flu have been found in Zamalek (the Cairo neighborhood in which I reside, thank you very much). They are all AUC students, and the entire AUC dorms have been quarantined (as in, 150 people trapped in a college dorm and unable to leave), with classes canceled through June 15. Since the show was in Zamalek, the venue was passing out free face masks and politely requiring people to wear them. What really happened was that everyone took a free mask and then promptly took it off upon entering the hall. Still, enjoy this photo of L and I modeling our fancy swine flu masks:


Then on Friday, my friend A3, who teaches English to Sudanese refugees downtown, was invited by some of her students to come to a hip hop show they were having in their church. I went with her, and though we stood out by being the only non-Sudanese refugees present, it was definitely an experience. They opened the show by having "praise and worship" (in Arabic, but accompanied by electric keyboard and a great deal of singing), and after several of the hip hop groups had performed, there was a break for the pastor to get up and share "the word" (aka a sermon?), also in Arabic, but which appeared to be about Adam and Eve. I have been to church services before (with my Tanakh class in high school, to get into St. Paul's cathedral for free in London, other cathedral-related experiences as a by-product of living in Madrid, etc.), but none quite like this. Anyway, A3's students were quite good, or at least the ones we saw.

The third was later on Friday, when I went with some friends to see a ballet at the Cairo Opera House. It was the tour of the Canadian National Ballet, and it wasn't really traditional -- it was a much more modern take on dance. There were two acts, each a separate performance; although the first part was interesting, the second part was really fantastic. The music for the piece was traditional music from Southern Italy (according to the pamphlet), and was performed live on stage. Very enjoyable. Also, much like the last time we went for the opera, we were able to pay for the cheapest tickets and then were moved up to like the fifth row because there were so many empty seats. It's a shame more people in Cairo aren't coming out to support the arts, but I do appreciate the benefits of being one of the few who do so.

Anyway, I did other things this weekend, including a futile search for ice cream (seriously it's like 95 degrees and I would kill for a Ben and Jerry's right now), a friend's house-warming party, and more. Now that my time here is winding down, I am looking forward to making the most of all my remaining weekends.

more thoughts on the speech

I know I have written about Egypt's Jews before. Just the same, I saw this article today and thought it was interesting -- and sad.

"Mr. Obama had harsh things to say to the Arab world about its treatment of women. And he said much about America’s debt to Islam. But he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of Egypt’s finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in the audience of this, because, in most cases — and especially among those younger than 50 — their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews."

So true -- the people my age in Egypt have very little idea of what their country is missing. They know that their parents or grandparents used to have Jewish friends and spoke positively of them in many cases, but they have no idea about the cultural legacy they have lost.

the cairo speech

Obama was in Cairo Thursday to address the Muslim world from Cairo University, and though I was only able to watch the speech on CNN International just like everyone else, I wanted to share some thoughts anyway.

First, the atmosphere in the city all day (well, even all week leading up to this) was pretty interesting: there was a lot of anticipation for the speech, and Cairo got a pretty impressive sprucing up. Freshly painted bridges, redrawn traffic lanes on major roads, working street lights in the more bustling areas of the city, and an additional effort to get rid of the garbage normally clogging the city's few fractured sidewalks.

Every taxi I got in last week, when the driver figured out I was American (usually they assume Egyptian...until I start speaking Arabic with my very obvious accent), the first questions they would ask was whether I was excited about Obama, the speech, what did I think he would say, etc. Most Egyptians seemed to cautiously optimistic -- they felt that Obama was coming out on a limb by coming to Egypt and promising to address the Muslim world, and they hoped he would live up to their expectations. The fact that Obama was coming was all anyone could talk about -- and it was really refreshing for me to see how highly anticipated the leader of my country was in a place where, prior to November, invoking the name of the previous leader (Bush) led only to snide remarks and sneers of disapproval. (And yes, I am guilty of both snide remarks and sneers of disapproval when it comes to discussing Bush and his policies.)

Then there was the day of the speech itself. All schools were given the day off to curtail traffic and people in the streets, and many of my friends were given the day off from work. My gym was closed ("in honor of Obama's visit to Cairo" according to a sign), as were many other businesses. Mostly this was because everyone wanted to watch the speech (live at 1:15 pm), and also an attempt by the government to keep car and foot traffic to a minimum on the day of the speech. Cairo University, in Giza, was completely blocked off for blocks in all directions, making it completely impossible to come anywhere near the school. I had thought about going to see if there would be protesters or something, but it was pretty clear from photos I saw that there were nothing but hundreds of extra armed soldiers and a surprising dearth of cars.

Cairo has a huge traffic problem, going through all hours of the day and spread through most of the city (residential area at 11 pm? Traffic still sucks...), so there was something almost spooky about the quiet streets everywhere, kind of like that scene in Vanilla Sky where Tom Cruise runs through a completely empty Times Square. No honking, no exhaust, no traffic jams -- sorry, Obama, but that's not the real Cairo experience. Anyway, it turns out that this car-free effect was achieved by closing down entire roads for hours at a time, resulting in horrible traffic in other parts of the city. Most people stayed home or worked from home if possible (luckily, I was able to do that) to avoid the traffic and the excessive police (because really, why deal with that if you don't have to). But following the reactions people had to the speech, in person and online (I think I finally found the point of Twitter, people!) was very enjoyable and educational.

If you missed it, you can find the whole text of the speech here.