It’s been almost a complete week here in Cairo, amazingly enough. I would have expected that, after moving cities every second day for the last month around Europe, a week in one place would seem like a lifetime, but apparently there is enough here to keep me busy. But, surely enough I’ve been here a week tomorrow, and so far so good.
They shuffled us along from the plane to the dorms, got us situated, and started the orientation fair, and so far, everything has worked out rather well for me. Given that two weeks ago I didn’t have any classes and only just had a home, looking at the class schedule sitting on my dorm room desk is pretty gratifying. And as an extra bonus, I have a CELL PHONE!! For someone who just finished the homeless vagabond way of life, that is one seriously exciting development. I still have yet to buy a hair dryer, a water heater and/or coffee pot, and laundry detergent (they have washers AND dryers here! Talk about the lap of luxury.) But it’ll get done when it gets done.
That “It’ll get done” business is, as expected, a fairly common line of thinking here. It’s what everyone says- things just tend not to work as planned here. This really goes for everything: the new campus isn’t complete, so kids can’t move into the dorms (they are putting them in hotels for now), the buses are late, the toilets either don’t flush or constantly run, cars break down in the middle of the road constantly, The sign-ups for activities are unclear and nothing is ever announced, just about all important memos were spread by word of mouth (it’ll be interesting to see how many kids show up to class an hour early today- daylight savings time kicked in last night, but only a few people know it), and the only way you know what’s going on is just to follow the crowd and hope someone has some idea of where we’re going, and in Egypt, never, never stand in line. Just mob the counter or you’ll never get anything done. This fact that things simply don’t function efficiently, I can tell you now, will be the biggest problem for me culture shock-wise.
But I have high hopes that it will be a fairly easy hurdle to overcome for this reason: it’s almost a beauty of the culture that things work like this. Every reference to things that will happen in the future is followed by the aside “inshallah,” which translates to “God willing.” And in a sense, it makes sense, ‘cause a lot of things that are planned don’t happen; nothing is certain. However, this allows a lot of room for appreciation of the present. You can sit and have a cup of coffee (‘ahooah in Arabic- good word to know) and a worthwhile discussion with your friends now instead of detailing out the plans for tomorrow. Tomorrow will either work or it won’t- that’s in God’s hands. What we can do now, what we CAN affect, is our use of what time we have now. The whole line of “it’ll get done” thinking is an effect of a paradigm that emphasizes a lot more passionate use of time and appreciation of the life that exists now. It’s a pain in the you-know-what when you need to get something done, or when you’ve been standing in the sun for an hour waiting for dinner, but in a big-picture kind of way, it’s really part of the fervor and passion in this culture that got me interested in the Middle East in the first place. So, I guess I’ll just learn to have patience. And bring a book with me everywhere. But, man, am I gonna end up the biggest procrastinator by the time I get home.
But I also have discovered the answers to some of the questions people asked me before I left. So let me see if their answers give you some idea of what Cairo looks like:
1. 1. No, for the most part there aren’t horse/carts/other livestock on the roads. This is not without exception. The traditional tourist horse and carts are around, but those don’t exactly count- the intention there is that they are antiquated. And you’d see more or less the same in Denver. But legitimate, two-wheel, working carts pulled by donkeys and the like do exist, and there are stretches of road where they are lined up on the curb selling produce and the like. It is interesting to be driving in a bus down a major highway and see cars dodging around a donkey trotting along the side of the freeway pulling a cart. I think I saw three on the way to the new AUC campus yesterday. (Campus is on the outskirts of the city, not near the dorms).
2. 2. No, I don’t really speak the language. I can pick up bits and pieces from conversations I hear and I can make myself understood with my formal Modern Standard Arabic and what little I know of the Egyptian dialect. I know enough to be ok, but not to really understand what’s going on. Most people do, however, speak more English than I do Arabic, and given that I’m white, that’s always what they start with when I walk up to the counter, etc. Replying in English is a habit I REALLY need to break.
3. 3. Yes, I have to dress modestly, meaning nothing tight, no sleeveless shirts or tank tops, no low necklines, no skirts above the knee. And this is tempting to ignore because it’s hot. We’ve topped 90 and regularly 100 degrees each day I’ve been here, and it’s humid (but everything’s air conditioned, so it’s comfortable inside). I have been making a study of what the Egyptian students wear, and it seems like there is a really wide range of the degree of modesty with which people dress. I am collecting data, we’ll say. I aim for a productive shopping trip soon (Hey- it’s out of necessity!) To be honest, though, the degree of appropriateness of an outfit seems to have more to do with the circumstances. I’m pretty sure you cold get away with just about anything on campus; it’s out of the city and virtually everyone there I suspect will be a fairly westernized Arab or a westerner. On the other hand, we ended up walking a couple blocks from where the bus dropped us off to the dorms, later in the evening as a large group of primarily women, and we were hissed at (the local version of cat calling) and addressed (in Arabic, English, and even French) on a couple of different occasions. And in this case, I don’t think it would have mattered what we were wearing; I think anything would have elicited the same reaction, but I was quite happy in my very long skirt and very roomy shirt. Which leads me to point four.
4. 4. Yes men stare, and even grab in rarer occasions. Actually everyone stares. And yes, the women are cat-called, and as tourists, we are all pestered, and everyone does well to keep an eye on their wallets. And yes, these things are annoying. But the thing is, at no point do you ever really feel unsafe here, or at least, I haven’t. Islamic values of peace and kindness are pervasive enough to ensure even the wellbeing of the foreigners, I think. So yes, things can be uncomfortable, but I don’t ever anticipate feeling particularly endangered. (Except when crossing the streets. That makes me nervous. It’s like playing friggin frogger!)
And, being as I’m now in my third page, I’m going to forgo my commentary on traffic, and save my stories from Khan al-Khalili for my next update. Thanks, once again, for letting me perch on m digital soap box.
No comments:
Post a Comment