"Exotic"

Again I reappear with another severely belated update on the life and times of Cairo. I've been bopping around a bit since my last post. And since that was Thanksgiving, I suppose that does make sense. I went home for the holidays, which you probably mostly all know. It was wonderful to see everyone again, to breathe clean air, see the dogs, catch up with friends, and enjoy all those privileges and pleasures that come with living in the First World. 

I came back mid-January to my best friend K.,  staked out in the apartment my room mates and I managed to acquire just before my departure from Egypt. I had the better part of two weeks to get my bearings before classes started, and I used the time wisely, sleeping late, reading, and generally being unproductive. I did, however, make two trips out of Cairo. First we went to Alexandria, where we enjoyed sitting beachside, watching the waves crash with well-sweetened cups of the ubiquitous Lipton "Yellow Label" black tea. Somewhere between the enjoying Alexandria part and subsequent impressions of the city, my room mate and I managed to get rather... uh... explosive cases of food poisoning. Fortunately, the next day, with digestive systems purged, we had ice cream for breakfast (which was the same meal as lunch. Turns out we weren't much for eating that day) and let the tar, courtesy of Cairo pollution, break loose from our lungs as we sat watching the waves come in across from the Alexandria shipyards. 

About a week after that, we wandered off into the desert. Well, not so much wandered as caught a bus across most of central Egypt to an oasis called Bahriyya, where we met our own personal jeep, and were whisked away and waited on hand and foot by our guide in a three-day, two-night trek around the Black and White Deserts. Our driver, Talaat, knew his way through the sand dunes (all off-roading) far better than anyone has any right to, although, plunging nose-first over the crests of sand dunes at full speed has an uncanny way of making one reconnect with their faith. We determined that the growing wisdom that "there are no atheists in foxholes," applies to other areas of the Middle East as well. 

I have now just completed my third week back in classes, and am settling into routine quickly. Over the course of my travels, and from what I've heard from others, it's really struck me how adaptable people are. You can throw someone in the most exotic of locations, but given time, they will find a comfortable routine, and the novelty dissipates. That is to say "business as usual" can be carried out in some very unusual circumstances. Such has been the case with my last several weeks. I wake up, go to class, come home, study, chat with my room mates, and go to bed. But I suppose that doesn't make a very exciting e-mail. So I'll just throw out a few details on what things look like these days: 

I live in an apartment with four people. It was five, but K. has returned to Geneva. Given that it's a three bedroom apartment, we're pretty cosy, but K. and I never did need personal space where one and other are concerned, so it was no problem. It's a pretty enchanting place, though. The bedrooms are not much to speak of, but the living room, where we are sometimes lucky enough to pick up the neighbor's wireless internet, is full of well-stuffed sofas, recliners, and coffee tables, all of which now bear little sticky notes with their respective nouns printed on them in Arabic, in my ongoing quest to increase my vocabulary. 

My early schedule involves taking the 7am bus to campus most days. Fortunately one of my room mates has a similar schedule to mine (poor thing). We also both like to run. We also both recognize that there's no chance to run during the day in Cairo. Between traffic, gawkers, and bad air that rises with the traffic, it's morning or nothing. There's nothing like having that running buddy that gets up with you at 4:45am to go for a jog in the predawn stillness. I had a conversation partner back in Boulder, a Saudi whom I would meet for breakfast before class. I remember once I stumbled in to breakfast bleary-eyed, seeking coffee, and Hadi observed, "I thought all Americans loved mornings?" I raised an eyebrow and was informed that the Americans on the compounds in Saudi Arabia were always awake and jogging in the pre-dawn darkness before work. Well, I'm now perpetuating that stereotype. I've become that person. How nauseating, no? I will say this, though, the call to prayer that plays from the mosque minarets right at that time says the same thing each call, five times a day: "God is greatest; God is greatest; I bear witness that there is no god but God; I bear witness that Muhammed bears the message of Allah; Make haste towards prayer and religion; Make haste towards welfare; ***; God is greatest; There is no god but God." The other four times a day, this otherworldly drone that echos across the City of a Thousand Minarets serves to remind me that I'm actually here, in Cairo, which is cool. But where you see the *** above, on the dawn call to prayer, they add "Prayer is better than sleep." The between-the-lines on this one is that no one should be awake at that hour. It's just not right, thus the extra push to inspire people to pursue their religious duties. 

School follows on the heels of my running escapades. Originally, it was a little rough. They couldn't decide what level they wanted me in, and I was bopping among classes faster than a ping pong ball among drunk college kids. But I've settled into a regular program. I absolutely adore my professors. They are all a perfect mix of energetic and encouraging, demanding, and empathetic. I've noticed a difference in my Arabic in even these meagre few weeks. Not a big difference, but a difference nonetheless. After over two years of Arabic, and still not speaking it half so well as the half-hearted Spanish I still dust off from time to time, finding that words are just sticking, my comprehension is improving, and more often than not, I don't dread going to class, is really a rewarding way to be spending my time (and exorbitant amounts of money.) My schedule is exclusively Arabic classes. Specifically, I study Modern Standard Arabic (the standardized dialect), Arabic in the media (and am gaining a wealth of useful vocab, I might add), Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, and Arabic Morphology (word formation and the structure of the language- the sort of linguistic playground that reminds me why I love this stuff.) All in all, it's not nearly so oppressive as I figured 4 hours a day of Arabic would be. I usually feel like I'm drowning in half-learned vocabulary lists, but I suppose that's kinda the idea. 

As far as room mates go, I've lucked out once again. Mine are fantastic. I live with four other people- one a CU graduate who is studying at another language school, one an intern for a German NGO, one an absolutely delightful peer of mine at AUC, and one old Model UN friend and AUC student (who technically doesn't live with us, but that's really just a detail. She has a key, so it counts.) We make a lively household, everyone is busy with our respective pursuits, but you can generally find us camped out around the couches in the living room (the one place we can poach the neighbors' internet) in the evenings. On weekends you might find us downtown at Horiyya, a bar that, in my room mate's description, is cheap and dirty but totally amazing, much like the rest of Cairo. We've developed a fondness for luxuriating with our bottles of Sakkara and Stella beer (the local brews), while arguing the finer points of... well... just about anything, or scanning the crowd for the omnipresent member of the Mukhabarat, the secret police who "inconspicuously" sit silently in the corners drinking water and listening for talk of political unrest among the drunken masses. 

Seeing women bedecked with the most ostentatious colors I've ever seen made into scarves walking the Nile Corniche like Birds of Paradise out for a stroll, or a man in a Galabayya (think floor length mumu) on a motor-scooter with his completely veiled wife, who is in turn carrying a small child, or the Khamaseen weather pattern that will be rolling sand storms through campus is all very exotic, but the truth is that no matter what, once you have a routine it ceases being a page out of a travel magazine and in a totally mundane way becomes life. Personally, I find that rather cool. So, it would seem "exotic" is relative.