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