Back Downtown
So here I am, back downtown, back in the New Palace Hotel. My stay in Egypt seems to have come full circle. As I checked into my shitty hotel room (LE30 or $6 per night), I thought of the night I arrived here, flu-stricken, tired, happy just to be in Egypt, excited by the morning call to prayer when it woke me up. Now I'm used to Egypt; I don't even notice the call to prayer anymore unless I'm right next to a mosque. I'm used to the dirty dinginess of the buildings downtown. But I've also spent two months living in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Cairo, so I have to admit, my lip curled a bit in disgust as I surveyed my new room, just for a second, before I forced it to stop being bourgeois. My disgust was confirmed, however, when I tried to go to sleep in the stuffy, non-air-conditioned, fan-less room. Finally I couldn't stands it no more. I opened the window, and today I have the resulting mosquito bites. Between the poor night's sleep and being COVERED in mosquito bites, I'm grouchy enough to entertain thoughts of being a rich philanthropist. And my gift to the world will be solar-powered bug zappers every ten square feet on the entire surface of planet Earth. With any luck, I can drive the mosquito into extinction.
It didn't help that a couple days ago I spent the whole day in Maadi, the most upper-class neighborhood in the city, on the south side on the east bank of the Nile. There you can see Porsche SUV's and BMW's. I went because my friend Linda, an Egyptian-American from North Carolina, wanted to visit her old neighbodhood, her old house, and her old friend (who was very cool and very beautiful but whose name completely escapes me).
In Egypt, you can tell a nice neighborhood from the rest by the presence of trees. Zemalek, Maadi, Mohandessin, and Nasr City all have trees. The rest of Cairo doesn't. So these neighborhoods are really pleasant to walk around during the day. Not that we walked. Linda's friend picked us up from the metro in her SUV-thing and we drove down Linda's Memory Lane. Her school was very interesting - the Cairo America College. It's actually a kindergarten - 12th grade academy that started off as a school for Americans and Europeans, the children of diplomats and neo-colonialists, etc. The neighborhood of Maadi grew up around it, with nice villas and lots of trees, because it was Little America! Eventually, however, upper-class Cairenes were allowed to attend the school, and most of them do these day. This in turn is why upper-crust Cairenes speak such impeccable English.
The difference between upper- and lower-class Egyptians is stark. Unfortunately, since I went to the American University, most of the Egyptian friends I've made are from the upper strata. They're Old Rich, people with connections, who trace their grandparents to the Revolution, whose parents hold positions like Deputy Minister of the Interior, and Vice-President of Citibank for the Middle East. They can't stand the New Rich, that small rising class of entrepreneurs (who will eventually save this country from its poverty). They have what's called the khawaga complex, the foreigner complex. They immerse themselves in Western, particularly American, culture, and they dismissively explain away many Egyptian quirks and problems in vague terms like "culture" and "tradition." Though at the end of the day, they really do love their country. How could they not? It's been good to them.
The Egyptian poor is a whole different world. A good many of them live on LE10 ($2) a day. They don't know English, nor do they know Standard Arabic. They can't read or write, they went to shitty schools for a few years before dropping out because begging from tourists put food on their family's table. They get a manual job or a job in the bloated government bureaucracy if they can. To minimize unemployment (while preventing non-connected Egyptians from starting their own businesses), the government hires five people to do any job that requires one person. Even still there's a 20% unemployment rate. Many people try to make a living by swindling tourists, apparently with some success because it's a huge business. Those without the skills needed to cheat foreigners stagnate on the dole, restless souls who mill about mosques and shisha bars all day. Despite what the rich say about "culture" and "tradition" holding Egypt back, these folks have real, valid reasons for doing the things they do, which don't always make sense to Westerners. And they are not the cause of, but the victims of, Egypt's stagnation. It just drives me nuts, because the Egyptian people have so much potential. All they need is a good government that will allow them to use it. Instead, you have PhD's working as hotel bellmen, cab drivers who fluently speak eight languages, and children who beg instead of going to school because if they didn't their family couldn't eat. Like Gandhi said, "Poverty is the worst form of violence." Okay, I'm going to stop ranting.
The last few days have been one good-bye scene after another. I'm happy my time here is coming to an end, and that I can go home to the city and people I love. But I'm tired of saying good-bye to all the awesome people I've met this summer. This summer has just been so crazy and unreal and full... Jenny put it best: "If I woke up, and this whole trip turned out to be one big crazy dream, I really wouldn't be surprised."
And now all the good-byes are finished. Even my Egyptian friends are vacationing on the North Coast. Now I'm back on Orabi Street downtown, and it's all hellos. It's like my first week all over again, lots of sight-seeing, reading, writing, thinking, browsing the souqs (bazaars) and people-watching while I smoke shisha. Last night there was a big football match between Ahly and Zemalek, and I sat in Talaat Harb Square with immense crowds crammed around cafes with televisions. Cheers went up around the whole downtown when Ahly scored. I asked the guy I was with, Ahram, from Upper Egypt, why this game was so big, and he said he didn't know, he was just here for the shisha and the atmosphere. I laughed and said, "Me too," and we raised our shisha tubes in a toast.
I'm back to making random short-term friends in cafes, but the swindlers have also come back into my life. Only now, instead of answering them in English or Fus-ha (Standard Arabic, which didn't impress them and often confused them), now I can speak with them in Egyptian, and they soon move on. You can tell them from the genuinely open people because friendly people only start conversations when you're sitting near each other in a cafe or something. If someone falls into step with you while you're walking and says anything at all to you, they are trying to scam you. And every time that happens I rub my brow and heave a sigh. I wish my Irish blood would have let me tan more deeply over the last two months, maybe I wouldn't have this problem.
It didn't help that a couple days ago I spent the whole day in Maadi, the most upper-class neighborhood in the city, on the south side on the east bank of the Nile. There you can see Porsche SUV's and BMW's. I went because my friend Linda, an Egyptian-American from North Carolina, wanted to visit her old neighbodhood, her old house, and her old friend (who was very cool and very beautiful but whose name completely escapes me).
In Egypt, you can tell a nice neighborhood from the rest by the presence of trees. Zemalek, Maadi, Mohandessin, and Nasr City all have trees. The rest of Cairo doesn't. So these neighborhoods are really pleasant to walk around during the day. Not that we walked. Linda's friend picked us up from the metro in her SUV-thing and we drove down Linda's Memory Lane. Her school was very interesting - the Cairo America College. It's actually a kindergarten - 12th grade academy that started off as a school for Americans and Europeans, the children of diplomats and neo-colonialists, etc. The neighborhood of Maadi grew up around it, with nice villas and lots of trees, because it was Little America! Eventually, however, upper-class Cairenes were allowed to attend the school, and most of them do these day. This in turn is why upper-crust Cairenes speak such impeccable English.
The difference between upper- and lower-class Egyptians is stark. Unfortunately, since I went to the American University, most of the Egyptian friends I've made are from the upper strata. They're Old Rich, people with connections, who trace their grandparents to the Revolution, whose parents hold positions like Deputy Minister of the Interior, and Vice-President of Citibank for the Middle East. They can't stand the New Rich, that small rising class of entrepreneurs (who will eventually save this country from its poverty). They have what's called the khawaga complex, the foreigner complex. They immerse themselves in Western, particularly American, culture, and they dismissively explain away many Egyptian quirks and problems in vague terms like "culture" and "tradition." Though at the end of the day, they really do love their country. How could they not? It's been good to them.
The Egyptian poor is a whole different world. A good many of them live on LE10 ($2) a day. They don't know English, nor do they know Standard Arabic. They can't read or write, they went to shitty schools for a few years before dropping out because begging from tourists put food on their family's table. They get a manual job or a job in the bloated government bureaucracy if they can. To minimize unemployment (while preventing non-connected Egyptians from starting their own businesses), the government hires five people to do any job that requires one person. Even still there's a 20% unemployment rate. Many people try to make a living by swindling tourists, apparently with some success because it's a huge business. Those without the skills needed to cheat foreigners stagnate on the dole, restless souls who mill about mosques and shisha bars all day. Despite what the rich say about "culture" and "tradition" holding Egypt back, these folks have real, valid reasons for doing the things they do, which don't always make sense to Westerners. And they are not the cause of, but the victims of, Egypt's stagnation. It just drives me nuts, because the Egyptian people have so much potential. All they need is a good government that will allow them to use it. Instead, you have PhD's working as hotel bellmen, cab drivers who fluently speak eight languages, and children who beg instead of going to school because if they didn't their family couldn't eat. Like Gandhi said, "Poverty is the worst form of violence." Okay, I'm going to stop ranting.
The last few days have been one good-bye scene after another. I'm happy my time here is coming to an end, and that I can go home to the city and people I love. But I'm tired of saying good-bye to all the awesome people I've met this summer. This summer has just been so crazy and unreal and full... Jenny put it best: "If I woke up, and this whole trip turned out to be one big crazy dream, I really wouldn't be surprised."
And now all the good-byes are finished. Even my Egyptian friends are vacationing on the North Coast. Now I'm back on Orabi Street downtown, and it's all hellos. It's like my first week all over again, lots of sight-seeing, reading, writing, thinking, browsing the souqs (bazaars) and people-watching while I smoke shisha. Last night there was a big football match between Ahly and Zemalek, and I sat in Talaat Harb Square with immense crowds crammed around cafes with televisions. Cheers went up around the whole downtown when Ahly scored. I asked the guy I was with, Ahram, from Upper Egypt, why this game was so big, and he said he didn't know, he was just here for the shisha and the atmosphere. I laughed and said, "Me too," and we raised our shisha tubes in a toast.
I'm back to making random short-term friends in cafes, but the swindlers have also come back into my life. Only now, instead of answering them in English or Fus-ha (Standard Arabic, which didn't impress them and often confused them), now I can speak with them in Egyptian, and they soon move on. You can tell them from the genuinely open people because friendly people only start conversations when you're sitting near each other in a cafe or something. If someone falls into step with you while you're walking and says anything at all to you, they are trying to scam you. And every time that happens I rub my brow and heave a sigh. I wish my Irish blood would have let me tan more deeply over the last two months, maybe I wouldn't have this problem.