life on hold

Last week, Mohamed Alaa, the 12-year-old grandson of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, passed away. While the death of a child is undoubtedly tragic, I have to see that I have never seen anything like the mandatory nation-wide mourning that ensued. Popular radio station Nile FM banished its stacks of pop tracks and played only Islamic tracts or somber music for about 24 hours. On Thursday night I showed up at Harry's Pub with a group of friends, only to be told that all karaoke had been suspended "out of respect" for the Mubarak family. It seemed excessive to me, but apparently it's a national tradition here for life to literally be put on hold.

This month I've been enjoying the EU Film Club, which has been screening movies from different countries at European cultural centers around the city since the beginning of May. They screen a different movie from a different country each night, with that host country providing some (free, occasionally alcoholic) refreshments before the (free) film, which is why I believe they are so popular. So far I have seen movies from Ireland (Once -- I love that movie!) and Austria, with plans to see Italy's entry today and Greece's later this week.

Anyway, as I guess you can tell, there aren't a lot of particularly exciting things happening around here. I mean, life continues as usual: work is going well, I feel like I am making good progress with my Arabic classes (my tutor says my reading is improving, which I believe is thanks to those children's books I bought), and friends are also good. As for the apartment, well...the Internet we finally arranged for never quite worked the way it was supposed to, and after three months of fighting with Mobinil, our provider, we are finally calling it a day and returning the modem. I am able to access other apartments' networks just fine, and though the connection isn't stellar it's better than no Internet at all. I can't believe what a struggle it has been to find reliable and consistent Internet in such a major city -- seriously, this is Cairo, not the middle of nowhere. Actually...