The Land of Milk and Play

My flight back to Cairo included a stopover in Kuwait. Waiting at the terminal before getting on the plane, I was surrounded by the largest number of Egyptians I had seen since February. I smiled at people, said salamo3aleiko, masa2 el kheir, eh el akhbar, ezay el 7al to whoever I felt I might connect with. I was so excited to be back in a space where I could talk freely to people. People are friendly in the US and India but there was no play in either. I was so happy to be heading back, and here it was, beginning.

Inside the plane I had gotten comfortable in my seat and others were still boarding. It was a Kuwait Airways flight but the cabin crew were all European looking and didn't seem to speak much Arabic. I later leanerd they were Swedish and had been hired through a personnel company on a four month contract. Or something.

A tall young man came down the aisle looking for his seat, his gym bag in one hand and his boarding pass in the other. "mesh 7ayenfa3 ma3ana el kalam da," he said out loud (this won't do). "el nabi 3arabi we kan byakol be2eedo. wenti 3ammala te2olelna 'twenty five'? mesh 7ayenfa3 keda." (The Prophet was an Arab, he used to eat with his hand. And you're here telling us 'twenty five'? This just won't do.)

His friend responded from the other aisle, several rows down. "wallahi enta bas elli shaklak mabsoot 3ashan 7atshoof ommak ennaharda." (I swear, I bet you're just all happy because you're seeing your mother today.)

A Shot At My Foot

I'm sitting at a coffee shop in Berkeley, or Oakland, I'm not sure. It's a quiet, cool grey day, long weekend. The day/city seems sleepy and vulnerable, like this is the day it's caught unawares by some major event. Anyway. Beside me are two young guys who've been chatting for a few hours. One of them has a software text book open before him, but they look too old to be university students. They're talking about big things, about having given up trying to change the world and stuff. Their conversation is very meta. Also very synergistic, that is they agree on a deep level and they're just getting off on the verbal rally, confirming and building on one another's ideas. I'm getting a very Atlas Shrugged vibe, even though I haven't read the book, but I have an idea what it's about. They're talking about the interplay of capitalism and the spread of democracy, reminding me why I don't like clever business types. They seem to have snappy articulate definitions and positons for everything and their whole story seems to fit together so nicely. And it's making me sick, partly because I think they're wrong and missing the point. But also because I'm sick of having similar conversations myself, albeit at the fluffier, warmer end of things. I think things are coming to a head in my life, except I'm not quite sure which things. Either way, I want to shut up.

I was just in New York city and I filled my little note book with many cute observations, like I did in India. And now I don't think it matters at all. I want to stop worrying about writing. But not all writing, just whatever this flaneur attitude to which I seem inclined is seeming to inspire in me outside of Egypt. I feel like my meditations on the mundane are meaningful in Egypt and critically less so elsewhere, except for situations in which I was personally very involved, like the time I thought I was getting kidnapped in Udaipur, or the week I nearly lost my mind with frustration about getting ripped off.

But things still stimulated me in New York and I thought about them and chatted with friends and took notes. I'm increasingly coming to see a certain deep discomfort within me to be partly my longing for more direct engagement with the content of things I end up writing about. And the question remains/returns: writing/discourse as practice? I don't know, not for me at least. I have that drive, and I've learned to act on it, but then the feeling of accomplishment fizzles, and I'm left feeling empty and useless in a way I' m increasingly feeling the need to act on as well. And not by writing more to replenish that risky sort of contentment.

Groups of Hacidic Jewish men and boys patrolled the very late night streets in south Williamsburg in Brooklyn. They were everywhere, all dressed the same, walking in groups, walking alone. I was enchanted and I pulled out my notebook and scribbled, in the cab on our way to a club where we saw a group I loved, the Crystal Castles, who I also took notes on. I think I'm driven to write about the late night patrol and the group and so many others because I ultimately want to be them, or at least to partake of the beauty and import I see in them. Maybe I should focus on doing just that. Who knows. Gatni neela and/or Rabenna yesahhel.

For the Sake of Posting

I read Amnesiac's post yesterday and was sent reeling by the last passage, where she recounts one of those Cairo moments that are both mundane and profoundly cool. I felt an overwhelming, if somewhat retarded, urge to fly back and jog through the city clapping, snorting it all in and living all superstimulated again. I've travelled a fair bit over the past three years and I feel like other places just aren't inspiring me that much. Or at least not as much as I get back home. I'm fortunate that I'm not bothered in Egypt or sick of it, unlike the many good people who decide or hope to seek gentler, more reliable lives elsewhere. I feel that because I've nurtured so intently my comfort and fluency with the ways of my city (not just as a flaneur but by constantly imposing a desire for meaningfulness on my interactions with the city's public elements), other places just don't end up hitting the spot (in a general human experience sort of way) the way I know they can. The only way they have done so for me is through an indulgence that I've come to find unsustainable. You can only have your mind blown so many times before you realize 'wi ba3dein' (now what).

Yesterday was one of my most enjoyable days yet in India. In the morning, Sunny called me out to the courtyard at Shikshantar and asked me to put my ear to a bloated cloth pouch hanging from a clothes line. He'd soaked some moong beans the day before and then hung them outside bundled in a wet cloth so they could sprout (good for salad, healthier in general). I put my ear on the cloth and heard a faint crackling sound. Without thinking I asked him what the sound was. "Beans sprouting." It didn't exactly make me euphoric but to actually hear something grow is I think enough to check a very big, if unglamorous, box on the list of things-to-do-as-a-human. Later in the day we took a whole bunch of things (coconut shell jewellery workshop, cotton thread spinning, paper bag making, herbal medicines, tasty oil-free sugar-free snacks, etc,) down to Sunny's neighborhood as part of our TV Turn-Off Week program. We set up our stalls on the corners and along walls and chatted with the neighborhood crowd. I've been trying to put together a percussion group with some of the people here, with old buckets, tin cans and steel pipes. I'm not a particularly good drummer but I can keep a beat and I can tinker with one, enough to make people want to dance, which is enough in general, I think. So I took up a spot started some beats with Jasmine and when the kids flock to see I hand them some junk and invite them to bang along. Some kids, usually boys aged eight to twelve, are real assholes banging as hard and fast as they can, not caring to actually participate. But you can't just be an asshole back, or tell them get lost. You just can't, and I've learned over the past while that there are indeed ways of making them not want to be a nuisance. (Of course sometimes I do give up and walk away, waiting for them to get bored and hop back on their bikes). Then there are some kids that are just so talented and keen as to make you look actually think positively about the future. I feel there's little that needs to be said. My Hindi's not that good but all I ever need to say with these kids is together and gently. Gestures suffice for everything else. Jamming with kids... some as young as six getting a beat right from the first try, or taking a second to think up their own and leading the rest of the group. We've been doing this all over the city. I wonder if it'll work in Cairo. I hear it already... "aywa ya kabtin... taba3 meen... beta2tak." Someday I'll have the guts to actually say "ma3lesh ya 3ammo".

Gayyash Abducted in India

I've been in Udaipur, India for nearly two months now, interning (for lack of a better word) at Shikshantar. Throughout my life I've been mistaken for an Indian many many times and have always felt a strange intuitive sort of familiarity with many things Indian. It's probably for this reason that I haven't been blown away or super-stimulated as many visitors are here. Instead my stay has been very serene, it's like I've found a second home with all the perks of my own and far fewer annoyances. I'm alone here, noone calls me, my circle of friends is small, I get to read a lot and talk about things that really matter to me. Udaipur is a beautiful, pleasant, easygoing city. The food is wonderful, especially the sweets. I haven't seen anyone get angry (in public) yet and I've been marvelling at how different that is to Cairo. It's because I'm not from here, though, that my daily interactions are far less colorful than they are back home, where the opportunities for play and creative engagement are what gave rise to this blog in the first place. That said, there have been many experiences worth writing about, some that inspired me to reflect on issues of wider social concern and others of the good old zany variety (like the grandmother of a friend who accused me of stealing her spoon after I put a plate of ba2lawa on her bedside table... she said I was narrow minded and didn't like to share; she had no teeth and carried a little dagger [Sikh tradition, I later learned]).

I've been writing long emails back to friends and am thinking it might be good to post them up here, even though I don't intend this blog to be about my life as such. In any case, this is just to check in. I miss fuul.

P.S. The title of this post is just a ploy to draw more readers through the aggregator. Ha2aw.

A Wrong Number

My family, like many, is one that worries. I was in my room reading when my mother's mobile rang last night. It was three in the morning and she was asleep, my father away and my brother sleeping in the bed beside me. I darted quietly to her room and found her squinting into the lit screen of her now silent phone. She couldn't recognize the number so I asked her to hand me the phone so I could call back and see what the deal was. I dialled the number and a quiet young voice answered. "aywa fee 7ad ettasal beena mel raqam da," I said (somebody called us from this number). "ah, di mish nemret mohammed?" (yes, isn't this mohammed's number?) "la2 el nemra ghalat." (no you have the wrong number.) The caller apologised, "ma3lesh byet-haya2li el raqam kan zero etnashar wana darabt zero 3ashra, ma3lesh asfeen." (sorry, i think the number began with 012 and I dialled 010, sorry about that.) "mish moshkela, ma3al salama." (it's ok, goodbye.)

I kept the phone with me and my mother went back to sleep. Minutes later the same number called, ringing only twice. I went and sat in the living room and called back, wondering what to do in case I found the caller to be deliberately bothersome. The person picked up and I said this was the number they had just dialled and that they did not know anyone here. "ana kont batesel be sara, ma3lesh," was the response (I was calling for Sara, sorry). I said there was no Saras here and that it was too late to be calling wrong numbers. I ended my sentence with 'yabni' (son), thinking the caller an insomniac schoolboy. Further apologies were readily provided and I responded "Mashi, khalas yabni, ma3assalama," (Ok, that's fine, good bye). The caller paused before responding with a lighthearted tone "ma3lesh, howa 7adretak leh 3ammal te2ool yabni? ana bint," (sorry but why do you keep saying yabni when i'm a girl). I sensed in the back of my mind a longish sentence about the voices of prepubescent boys being similar to those of women, but opted instead for another "mashi, mish moshkela, ma3assalama" (ok, no problem, good bye). I went back to my room and continued reading with my mother's mobile beside me, worried the person would call again, in which case I would switch the phone off, I decided.

When I was 16 our phone rang and when I picked up it was a woman. I asked who she wanted. She asked who I was. I said she was the one calling so she should tell me her name. Jacqueline, she said, with a sultriness that was almost silly. I thought for a second and figured she wasn't being genuine so I hung up. When I told my father about this he didn't think it was very significant, implying instead that I needn't have ended the conversation so abruptly.

Fuul on Safeya Zaghloul

I made my way home early on the morning of the 3rd, having been up for a good day and half trying to meet deadlines (NOT after-after-after-partying as some clever souls might infer). Exhausted and freezing to the point of misery I found a parking spot far from my building and walked through the throngs of civil servants making their way to work. I needed to eat but could bare neither the cold nor my too-heavy laptop bag much longer. I realised, though, that the special fuul place I always miss would be open. It would be good to get some food, especially fuul with zeit 7aar (linseed oil) and shatta (chilli powder).

I walked over and the little shop was buzzing and I dreaded having to wait so I just shouted my order repeatedly at one of the two guys behind the counter. He prepared a little dish and held it out towards me. I said 'what, me?' and he said 'yes, zeit 7aar and shatta, no?'. I said 'yes' and he said 'well here you go'. I stepped outside and found a clear spot on the makeshift table (a large board on a barrel top) among the empty plates, half-eaten onions, pickles and bits of bread. I asked a fellow diner where the bread was and he pointed behind me, to a palm-wood lattice on the sidewalk heaped with fresh baladi bread. I reached down and the first one I picked was warm and soft. I ate with gusto, reflecting on the significance of a person's fuul preference as I watched others bring their fresh aluminum bowls. The nice thing about such eateries is you get to see how everyone likes their dish: chilli or no, lemon or no, which oil, how much salt, how much tehina, whether they mash the beans, what they do with the salad, etc. Regardless of what a person's preference 'means', merely noting the particular tastes of strangers is somehow pleasantly intimate.

My eyes fixed on the eating hand of my neighbour to the left. His thumbnail was all dark and funky-looking. Being a connoisseur and frequenter of juice shops I remembered the disconcerting waterlogged (at best) look of the fingernails of juice professionals and wondered how people's nails get so unhealthy. Just then the man looked up and shook his head and said "homma el masreyeen keda: yeb2a oddamhom keteer weyet7asweko wemaye3gebhomsh 7aga, welamma mayeb2oosh la2yeen teshofhom yaklo ay 7aga oddamhom. bos wennabi, el 3eish da kollo zay el foll wallahi, zay foll, lessa tale3, we bos 3ammaleen yefa33aso weyrammo fee ezzay... mafeesh fayda..." (Its just like Egyptians to do this: when there's plenty they get all finicky and when things are scare you'll see them eat whatever crap they can find; just look, all this bread, i swear it's fine, it just left the oven, totally fine bread, and here they are poking at the loaves and tossing them around. There's no hope...) I tried to tell him it's ok, with a but-of-course-life-sucks/ the-sooner-there's-patience-the-better approach. He didn't respond and I wished him a happy meal and went back inside to pay.

It was still really crowded and there were two profoundly archetypal mowazzafat (civil servants) sparring , each unwaveringly insitent on footing their 2-pound bill. A colourful looking old man with a big beard and embroidered upright ta2eyya (scullcap) milled around the patrons as if waiting for his order and when he called to the fuul guy the guy responded "emshi ghoor men hena ya 3ammena, we khalli feloosak di" and threw his 5 pound note back at him (get the hell out of here old man, and keep your money). Just then I heard muffled screechy exclamations coming from deep within the snug mob to my left. I poked my head in and saw a petite cherub-faced white-haired mute protesting to a much taller man behind him. Seeing this, the fuul guy reached over the counter and gently knocked the mute's head, like he was knocking on a door. He turned around with a look of absolute incredulity and rage, only for the fuul guy to sate him with a "shhhhh!", gesturing the same and adding "matza3a2sh, seebak menhom we khaleek ma3aya. olli 3ayez eh." (Don't shout, forget about them, just stick with me. Now tell me what you want.)

Borger Max

___________________Agouza corniche
___________________pities Heliopolis. For
___________________Quick holds no candle.