Back Again

Astounded Reader –

Yes! It is I, the long lost voyager, the prodigal son come back to seek forgiveness for his long absence from the blogosphere. Too much has gone on between the last time I wrote and now, to give any detailed account of my adventures. So I’ll try to sum up as best I can, starting with the two-month job application process which has finally ended up in my acquiring my first freelance translation gig.

That’s right. In late August, I asked a friend of mine, an American who’s been living in Cairo for six years and who works as a translator for several organizations, whether he knew of translation work I could do. He had told me about one gig, working for an NGO organized by the grand mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa. The organization translates reference works on Islam from Arabic to English, to provide such books to the English-speaking Muslim community. The work they’re currently translating is a 30-volume, 20,000-page Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir) by Sheikh Sharawi, a popular Muslim figure from the 1970s and 1980s (he even had his own television show on Islam). It seemed far more interesting than rendering legal documents or U.N. statutes into English, so I figured I’d go for it.

I contacted my friend’s boss, who (a month later) sent me eight pages from the volume of Sharawi’s commentary that I would translate, were I to work for them, as a preliminary test to make sure I’m up to snuff. I should mention that, prior to doing this test, I got some tips from my friend about the specific challenges and issues which this translation project presents. He even took me through two trial-run translations with him, before I did the real test for the job. So I felt more than ready for the actual translation test, which I passed. I just got the details regarding my first job, and I’m going to spend a good amount of time working on that this weekend.

I also flew to Jordan for two days last weekend, to attend a district conference for Latter-day Saints. It was no ordinary conference: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was going to preside over the thing. A member of the branch in Cairo was generous enough to help pay for several of us young adults to go, and so we went and had an amazing day of spiritual insight and hobnobbing with (I don’t mind saying) my favorite general authority (the “general authorities” are members of the church’s leadership, for you laymen in the audience). We weren’t flying out until the following evening, so we spent our Saturday at Petra, the ancient Nabatean city made famous for its appearance at the end of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

In front of "The Monastery" in Petra

We flew back to Cairo that evening, and immediately jumped back into the daily grind.

In other news, my roommate is getting married! He fell in love with an American girl studying Arabic in Syria, and he’ll be moving up there after winter holidays to live with her (they’re getting married in December back in the United States). Also, by way of mention, I should make it clear that I have internet service in the apartment once again. My roommate and I spent well over a month tracking down our (absentee) landlord, bills from the phone and internet companies, and arguing with people (in a foreign language) over how much we needed to pay to get things going again. Unfortunately, not having internet for a month means I got out of the habit of weekly posts to the blog, which I hope to rectify in the future.

So stay tuned for next week’s post.

Salaam,

K

Travels, Part II: Syria

Mellifluous reader –

I’m pleased to bring you the second of two installments recounting the more salient exploits of my weeks spent traveling outside of Cairo. This entry’s a bit long, so bear with me.

A friend from my study abroad program and I, having traveled from Cairo up to Amman, Jordan together, decided to head up to Syria in tandem so we could team up, watch for traps, etc. Joking aside, I do admit to some initial apprehension at the prospect of going to Damascus, being that Syria has been considered a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979, and has been on the U.S. State Department’s travel warning list for years. However, several friends who have lived in Syria assured me of my safety, and explained that the only tangible result of strained U.S. relations with Syria is that it takes longer for Americans to cross the border. Strolling along the streets of Damascus, they said, felt safer than walking around some U.S. cities.

Undaunted, then, my friend and I left Amman at 6:00AM in a cab bound for the Syrian border. We reached the border after an hour, and it took us only fifteen minutes to leave the Jordanian side, allowing for time at the border to pay the “exit tax” (which should be more accurately called the “foreigner tax”). We got to the Syrian side at about 8:00AM, in plenty of time to begin the farce reserved for any American who attempts to enter Syria without arranging a visa ahead of time. We had to fill out several forms detailing exactly where in Syria we would be visiting, hotel addresses, the amount of time we expected to be in Syria, our reasons for visiting, etc. We then handed these forms to the border guards, along with our passports and student IDs. Now the fun could begin: U.S. citizens who apply for a tourist visa at the Syrian border can expect to wait a minimum of three hours before they receive word that their request has been approved. That was how long my friend and I ended up having to wait. We were lucky. I have heard of people waiting as long as twelve hours for visa approval (despite the wait, I’ve never heard of anyone having their request denied). We flagged down a cab bound for Damascus at noon.

The border madness was the least pleasant part of my Syrian experience; even so, it wasn’t that bad. Overall, I would rate my travels in Syria at 9 out of a possible 10. Syria is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s far north enough that the weather is pleasant even in the summer. Riding buses through the countryside is a treat because Syrian topography is surprisingly green. It even rained one afternoon during a bus ride from Hama down to Damascus. As far as touristy things go, the mosques and markets (souqs) are of course beautiful and have been around for hundreds of years. After two or three mosques, though, I was sort of mosque-d out and ready to see something different (those of you who have traveled in Europe may have experienced similar fatigue with regard to castles).

By far, the best part of the Syrian leg of my travels was spending three days in Aleppo, a city of about three million in the northeast. It’s fairly close to the Turkish border, so the atmosphere has a distinctly European feel to it: narrow cobblestone passageways, verdant trellises, Victorian street lamps, old churches in the Christian quarter, etc. We had fantastic food for surprisingly little money, surrounded by stone walls covered in ivy. The first night there, I indulged my raw meat fetish by eating kibbeh nayyeh, a dish of raw lamb meat and spices, to be spread on crackers (or, in our case, pita chunks). I also discovered what’s called krem thoum (garlic cream) in Arabic. As the name suggests, it’s essentially a cream base with loads of garlic, in addition to some lemon and salt, to be used as a pita dip. I have since found a restaurant in Cairo which serves it, and I’m putting away about half of my monthly stipend to finance my new krem thoum habit.

The most culturally intriguing thing about Syria is that several long-lasting, powerful civilizations of the ancient Near East successively claimed for themselves the land comprising modern-day Syria. An hour spent walking in Old Damascus or Aleppo reveals Roman, Christian, and Islamic architectural and artistic influences layered one atop the other. This unique diversity has continued into the modern period. One of my favorite examples of this is the presence of shop signs and street markers written in both Arabic and Armenian in the Christian quarter. During the Armenian genocide in the 1910s, thousands of refugees fled to Syria and other countries, leading to the presence of a large Christian-Armenian population in Damascus and elsewhere. The bilingual signs stand as a reminder of this, one example among many of the linguistic and cultural coexistence which has characterized Syria for literally thousands of years.

Thus ended my two and one half weeks of travel in the region. I took a bus straight from Damascus down to Aqaba, a 12-hour ordeal which was matched only by the frustration of having to wait twelve more hours at the Aqaba port before the ferry left for Nuweiba, Egypt. When the police began to load the ferry, the thousands of tired, hungry masses (who had also been waiting half the day) began to scatter like animals and run amok. I knew I was not in Kansas anymore when the cops took out their blackjacks and started threatening bodily harm if people didn’t chill out. I would only recommend the experience of taking this ferry if you want to see the sociology of a developing country at its worst; otherwise, grab a plane from Damascus or Istanbul back to Cairo. Once in Nuweiba, I boarded another bus bound for Cairo, where I arrived safe and sound three weeks ago.

And there you have it! I’ve omitted a lot from this account, so specific questions are always welcome. Next week, we’ll have more updates on coursework, Cairo, and other such madness.

Salaam,

K

Travels, Part I: The Sinai and Jordan

Most Patient and Abiding Reader –

Some of you may be wondering why I have so conspicuously fallen off the grid in recent days, after having promised an absence of no longer than two weeks. That, friends, is a story in and of itself, involving hours of haggling with landlords and internet companies, only to discover that the previous occupant (who helped us move in) had left several hundred pounds worth of unpaid invoices, hence the lack of internet service to our apartment. The occupant has since fled to the U.S. and denied any responsibility. It’s not enough money to make calling the embassy and revoking his visa worth the hassle; but it is enough to stoke the fires of hatred and loathing. Luckily, though, the landlord has agreed to pay half the invoices, so that’s a plus. As soon as we pay our half, he’ll tell the company to turn our internet service back on.

Diatribe over. Now to what you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure, which is: stories from the Sinai/Jordan/Syria excursion! Having six weeks off between summer and fall classes was a great excuse to leave Cairo and see other climes. This post constitutes the first of a two-parter, due to the sheer volume of stories accumulated over the two and a half weeks of travel.

My roommate, another guy in our study abroad program, and I started off with a seven-hour bus ride to Saint Catherine, a tourist spot in the southern Sinai Peninsula known for sights relating to Egypt’s Christian heritage. Of especial prominence is St. Catherine’s monastery, built at the foot of Mount Sinai (where Moses supposedly saw the Burning Bush) by the order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565. It’s an art historian’s paradise: mosaics, oil paintings, paintings on wax, fine sacerdotal ornaments, marbles, enamels, chalices, reliquaries…..and, of course, one of the largest and most important collection of illuminated manuscripts in the world (the Vatican has the largest). The collection consists of some 4,500 volumes in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Slavic, Syriac, Georgian and other languages. We also hiked Mt. Sinai in time to see the sunset, then slept overnight on the peak to watch the sunrise. Pictures will be posted, I promise.

From there we moved on to Nuweiba, a smallish port town on the southeastern Sinai coast. The nice thing about Nuweiba is that it’s pretty dead around the time we went (beginning of August). After a few intense days getting to and seeing St. Catherine, we were ready for low key vacation time, which is exactly what we got in Nuweiba. The three of us ran into two great guys from England, who accompanied us to St. Catherine and Nuweiba. The five of us stayed in Nuweiba at Soft Beach, a cheap yet fantastic hostel which I highly recommend to anyone. We basically ate, took naps, hung out in shaded outdoor sitting areas by the beach, and went snorkeling for three days straight. A day or two more and it would have gotten boring; but as it was, the amount of time we spent there was a perfect recharge. We also enjoyed meeting and hanging out with a married couple who had moved to Nuweiba at the beginning of this year. They were living in Humbolt County, California before that, working as “medical growers” for eight years. The husband’s goal? “I want to teach the Bedouin what I know about growing.” The couple owns and operates a pizza joint called “The ‘Baked’ House” (their sign even has the quotation marks around the word “baked”). Now that’s what I call a development project.

So phase one of the trip ended well, as we said goodbye to Nuweiba and boarded the ferry bound for Aqaba, Jordan. For anyone taking a ferry between these two cities, I would definitely recommend paying the extra ten dollars for the faster ferry; more on this in Part II. The boat ride was uneventful, and upon arriving in Jordan, we secured entry visas, shed our two Brits, and took a cab to Petra with two Canadian girls we picked up in the Aqaba port who were impressed with our Arabic (ha!) and our apparent ability to haggle and to navigate our way through the Middle East. We stayed in Petra for two nights at the Valentine Hotel, which, despite its name, doesn’t rent rooms by the hour. I had already been to Petra, Amman, and pretty much every other thing there is to see in Jordan, so I basically hung around by myself for a day, thinking deep thoughts.

Amman was just as uneventful: we stayed there for one night, taking enough time to walk around the city and see the Roman Amphitheater, situated right smack dab in the middle of downtown Jordan. We also ate at the Hashem Restaurant, an inexpensive hummus and falafel joint which became famous when King Abdullah ate there some years back, attempting to show solidarity with the average Jordanian citizen.

Despite these fun stops, my goal was to move as quickly through Jordan as possible, since it’s a bit more expensive and I really wanted to spend my money in Syria. Which I did. Which is the subject of Part II of this amazing adventure. So you’ll want to stay tuned for next week’s post.

Salaam,
K

It's Good to Be [Deputy Chief of Mission]

What up, Reader?

I waited an extra day to put up this post because I knew that doing so would yield even more fodder for blog tales. Several adventures were had this week, and I will struggle to do them justice in the short space I allow myself. I’d like to begin by noting that I’ll be off the radar screen next week, and possibly the week after, due to travel plans involving Jordan and Syria. So I figured I better get in one last good entry before disappearing for a little while.

And what an entry this promises to be. First, I attended my first ever interfaith devotional meeting, put on by my colloquial Egyptian dialect professor. He happens to be of the Baha’i faith, which emphasizes points of intersection between all religions. The meeting therefore began with about half an hour of devotional sharing time, during which each person took two or three minutes to sing a favorite hymn, pray aloud, or share a scripture (he has copies of the Bible, Qur’an, and the Kitabi-Aqdas, which constitutes the main corpus of Baha’i teachings). We then took about an hour and discussed the topic of education (each biweekly meeting centers on a different topic). It was a very productive discussion, especially because it was conducted in the spirit of mutual edification and with an emphasis on shared spiritual assumptions, rather than divergent doctrines. And then we capped it all off with food, which is the only way the meeting could have been any better.

Today (Saturday, 25 July) I went to a cookout at the residence of the Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, Matthew Tueller. He’s one step below Margaret Scobey, current U.S. Ambassador to Egypt; he also happens to be Mormon and goes to church with me, hence the connection. He’s had a long career in foreign service: he majored in International Relations at Brigham Young University and went on to Harvard for a masters degree. He entered the foreign service at age 27 as a specialist in politics with the U.S. State Department. He has worked in the Gulf states for most of his career, including posts as Political Counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia and Charge d'Affaires/Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. He served as Political Counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq from 2007-2008, during which he oversaw much of the transition of Iraq’s burgeoning democratic government. As mentioned, he’s now Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Egypt.

And his current residence, 10 Taha Hussein St., is incredible. It’s a villa built in the 1920s by German(?) architect Michel “Max” Libermann, whose work dots various upper scale neighborhoods in Cairo and environs. The ground floor has several sitting rooms, a massive dining room complete with a silver collection and tapestries, and a foyer whose square footage rivals that of the house I grew up in. Persian rugs accent original pine hardwood floors. The main landing on the staircase features a gorgeous stained-glass window of a landscape scene, designed by a famous Italian whose name I forget. About twenty of us gathered out back to eat burgers and hot dogs and watch small children swim in the pool. It’s good to be king. Or in this case, Deputy Chief of Mission.

No. 10 Taha Hussein St.

I failed to mention this, but classes ended this week. Which means that my roommate and I will be traveling north with another student from our program, in order to enjoy the historic splendor of Damascus and Aleppo. I’ll be off the blog map for the next week or two, but I promise stories and pictures. Until then, I am yours,

K

Warning: Pontification Ahead

“The benefits of education are indirect. The mind is not a receptacle; information is not education. Education is what remains after the information that has been taught has been forgotten. Ideas, methods, and habits of mind are the radioactive deposit left by education. In the advanced industrial countries, at least, it is as naïve to expect power and prosperity to result from ad hoc education as it is to expect to lower the divorce rate by courses in Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced Marriage.” –Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Learning Society


Expectant Reader –

I have chosen to begin this week’s installment with the above quote because of thoughts inspired by a guest lecturer who came and spoke to us about the latest of four novels he has written in Arabic. The author is ‘Ala‘l-Aswani, native of Cairo and dentist by profession. He has also been called the “second Naguib Mahfouz” by leading Egyptian intellectual Galal Amin (Naguib Mahfouz is generally considered to be the great Egyptian author of the twentieth century, and perhaps of the entire modern era). As part of the study abroad curriculum, we read Al-Aswani’s novel The Jacobian Building, a relatively quick read detailing the rise of modern Egyptian society using an actual building in downtown Cairo as a microcosm. The style and diction are relatively simple, but the character development and socio-cultural commentary have been recognized as a significant contribution to public discourse about modern Egyptian society.

The reason I thought about education when listening to and participating in discussion with Dr. Al-Aswani, however, didn’t have as much to do with the book as it did with the fact that the book’s author is a dentist by training who also writes very successful novels. People in certain corners of Cairene literary discourse have attacked Al-Aswani’s work for its lack of literary merit and contribution to the modern Egyptian novel. Whether The Jacobian Building has or hasn’t any such merit, I can’t help but admire a man who keeps pace with Egyptian literati in the same day that he cleans your teeth. Did Naguib Mahfouz or Taha Hussein complete medical training and pursue successful careers in health care? Isn’t it amazing that someone like Al-Aswani has been able to bridge two fields which seem diametrically opposed?

In other words, my thoughts on Al-Aswani involve the nature of education. Here’s a man who understands the value of continued learning throughout one’s life. In talking to him, he also recognizes the value of speaking to current socio-political issues through the voice of fictional characters. In other words, he is not a mere product of his vocational training. He is not content with the technical spin put on the value of education. He understands, as Robert Maynard Hutchins did, that the value of learning goes beyond the securing of employment and the accumulation of gadgets. While financial independence is of course important and essential to living a fulfilling life, such independence does not excuse those who have it from also striving for intellectual, moral, and spiritual independence and growth. I’m sure that plenty of dentists would be content to clean teeth all day, then settle down for a few hours of TV or surfing the ‘Net before falling asleep. It takes a lot of energy to write a novel under any conditions, let alone after long hours of cavity fillings and root canals.

So, today’s lesson? Turn off the TV tonight, shut down the computer after checking email, and learn something. Or write something. Or play a musical instrument. Or go see live theater. In other words, dare to be more fully human.

More pontificating next week. Salaam,
K

Knee-Deep in Cultural Thingies

Attentive Reader –

In reviewing the past twenty-six years of life I’ve spent on Earth, I have found my life divided into two major periods: the one before last Sunday, and the one since then. For it was last Sunday at 11AM Cairo time that I and the rest of my fellow study abroad students enjoyed the presence of one of Egypt’s great intellectuals, journalists, and proponents of linguistic and artistic excellence, Farouq Shousha. He had a widely-syndicated television show for decades, featuring interviews and debates with leading figures and intellectuals in the Arab world. He regularly publishes articles on various political and social topics, and has been publishing collections of poetry since the 1970s. Among other things, he is famous for his mastery of spoken Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is considered difficult even among native Arabic speakers. Having listened to the man himself, I can confirm that his is the best spoken MSA I’ve heard thus far, given my limited experience with Arabic study.

Verbal acrobatics were only part of the joy of listening to Shousha talk on Sunday. The man also has encyclopedic knowledge of the linguistic and literary history of Arabic, which he drew upon in order to explain developments in the language. For instance, he explained that the reason classical Arabic poetry is so hard to understand (and the reason why I love it so much) is that it employs vocabulary and expressions which differ from their current usage in both lexical and socio-cultural meaning. One example will serve to illustrate: the phrase “the dog’s cowardice” is common in classical panegyrics as a compliment to leaders and other great men. “He is a man of the dog’s cowardice” means “he is generous,” referring to the fact that dogs often kept watch at the entrance to encampments. The tribal leaders who were known for their generosity were those who held back their dogs (making them appear cowardly), thus allowing all to enter and partake of their hospitality. Circumlocutions such as this one are ubiquitous in classical Arabic poetry, and they remind me of kennings from medieval Old Norse poetry, where a phrase such as “wave’s steed,” which means “ship,” is strung together which other such convoluted references, making one line of poetry a linguistic and cultural thicket to be waded through.

The other amazing cultural moment from this week involved a classic work of Egyptian cinema: “The Candle of Om Hashem,” a black-and-white flick from 1968 and directed by Kamal Attia. It’s based on a short story by Yahya Haqqi, one of Egypt’s great modern fiction writers, and whose daughter we are going to meet this coming Friday. The story revolves around a man who grows up in Sayyida Zaynab, a traditional section of Cairo featuring the Sayyida Zaynab mosque, named for the prophet Mohammad’s granddaughter. People from all over the country come and visit the tombs present in the mosque, in a form of saint-worship not without parallels to Roman Catholicism. Many come for healing powers believe to be invested in the mosque. One practice in particular involves putting hot oil from the mosque lamps into the eyes of those with vision problems; thought to cure such ailments, this practice inevitably led to the blinding of many people. The man who grows up in Sayyida Zaynab leaves Egypt to study medicine in Germany, after which he returns and, to his shock, realizes the danger of the practice of putting hot oil in peoples’ eyes. The confrontation between Egyptian religious tradition and Western medicine is a microcosm of the infamous “clash of civilizations” that isn’t supposed to exist.

So, an eventful seven days to say the least. And there’s more where that came from, so check in next week for reports on a lecture from one of the most popular authors in Egypt, who works a day job as a dentist in Cairo. You won’t want to miss it.

Salaam,
K

Dinner and a Movie (and a Protest)

Effervescent Reader –

This week was far more eventful than last; where do I even begin?! Things started off with a bang as my roommate and I made our way up to Shubra, an area of the city about twenty minutes north of downtown Cairo (where I live). It’s also mostly inhabited by locals, which made me happy because we didn’t hear any English and didn’t see any bumbling tourists. We made the trek north in order to spend the afternoon with a gentlemen we’d met near Al-Azhar mosque in Old Cairo. His name is Hussein, and, as you know if you’ve ever spent time in the Arab world, it was not at all unusual for us to head over to someone’s house for dinner, having met this person casually on the street the week before. We ended up spending four or five hours at his house, which is in a building owned by him and his extended family. His wife conjured up an amazing chicken-and-rice concoction, along with baked potatoes and a thick, soupy sauce poured over rice called mulukhiyya. All very local food, and all outrageously scrumptious. We extended a dinner invite to him and his family at our apartment, per guest-host etiquette.

That was last Friday. The next day, I walked ten minutes from my apartment to Dahab Hostel (if you remember, this is the place I stayed during my first week in Egypt), where a married couple I made friends with were crashing for a couple of nights. We were to meet up with Tarek, a photographer for Reuters, who wanted to take us over to al-Azhar gardens in Old Cairo. However, he told us that he had an assignment to cover a protest happening on the street outside the hostel. It turned out to be less exciting than any of us had hoped; there were about fifteen total protesters (and one hundred or so cops, of course) making speeches in support of Moussaui and those demonstrating in support of him in Tehran. In particular, the protest centered on Neda Soltan, a student whose violent death at the hands of Ahmadenijad’s Basij militia has become a high-profile rallying point for Moussaui loyalists. We did end up going to al-Azhar afterward, though not without Iran on everyone’s minds.

On Sunday, I and the other students in my study abroad program went to Ma’adi, a large-ish neighborhood twenty minutes south of downtown Cairo, to see a movie. Yes. It’s called “Tell [the Tale], O Sheherezad,” and it’s about a talk show host whose floundering career gets a shot in the arm when she decides to begin airing women telling stories about their problems in love. (yawn) Not to sound like a snob, but it was apparently stereotypical Egyptian cinematic fare: violent, schizophrenic women; domineering, misogynistic men; and love scenes featuring little or no kissing, which is a fairly scandalous thing to show in film and television in the Middle East. It was nice to go to a theater in Cairo and hang out with other students in the program, though, and it whetted my appetite for the classics of Egyptian cinema. Like “The Candle of Om Hashim” (that’s a direct translation, not sure if that’s the name in English), which is based on a short story by Yahya Haqqi and is truly a masterpiece. More about that and other topics next week. Until then, friends.

Salaam,
K