Syria

I knew I was in Syria because my cell phone told me so. It's one of those tips that I, as a seasoned traveler now, have picked up. As soon as I cross the border my cell phone company is anxious to send me texts about how I can still make phone calls in these far away lands, for merely outrageous prices.

I also learned that moving around the Middle East isn't too bad. An afternoon border crossing may stretch into a late night border crossing, but you get into the country. What to take with you when you leave is another story. I've been having a bit of trouble getting that perfect souvenir from every country I visit. What should I take from Beirut, that sells itself as the Paris of the Middle East? The county is famous throughout history for its trees, which is a bit of a paradox, considering that the Lebanese Cedar tree population is nothing more then a few patches today. They are also famous for their soup, but that's not exactly something I can display on the mantel, at least not on my mantel. The same problem happened in Syria, famous for... inventing civilization? Perhaps the problem stems from the fact the countries themselves were defined pretty much randomly by England after WWII, and it's hard to find a defining national identity. And although the areas have vast histories, spanning millennia, I need something that sums that all up in a portable "chachka" form for a reasonable price. Perhaps they have models of the Eiffel Tower?

Syria was fun, I've already left, by the way. I'm sad at the things I didn't get to see, like the a giant water mill you can dive off, or ancient Roman ruins in a city called Palmyra, but such are the casualties of a whirlwind tour of the Middle East. I did explore the museums and the "Old City" with a windy maze of shops built into the ancient structures. In a place like Syria, in which my youth hostel casually boasts that it was built 600 years ago, it's kind of hard to not run into history. I topped it all off with a trip to the, likely, best kept crusader castle in the world called Crack de Chevalier. It's pretty much exactly what we all hope a castle would be, and it's fun to finally find one that is still standing as if, in a pinch, I could use it today to fend off invading Turks.

I've found that Syria is alive. It really seems that the economy is doing well, and that it has a future. Unlike Cairo, which more or less feels like everything is about twenty years out of warranty and all visitors can think of is how one might fix it.

Now I'm in Jordan and I will probably get side-tracked in Israel, before moving down south to Petra, the city in the mountain. If I go to the holy city today, I'm a little concerned about Shabbat, the Jewish period of rest from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, and I've heard the Israelis take their rest very seriously, so maybe I'll hit up this side of the Dead Sea, before heading over there tomorrow.

Lebanon

So I'm in Lebanon now, and I'm having fun times. There are a lot of differences between Cairo and Lebanon, if you ever get a chance to compare the two. The first is, they have hills here, right next to the coast with houses built on them, which reminds me of California. The second is, of course, girls with mini-skirts. Which I really missed. It's nice to see that girls have legs again, and that's just something you don't get in Cairo.

I was a little concerned when I first got here because I kept hearing gunshots going off throughout the day. It wasn't that big of a deal until, after leaving a museum, I was wandering in one direction, and then shots were coming from in front of me a few kilometers off. I decided to maybe go a different direction, but before that long I heard gunshots in that direction too, so I decided to take a cab. Perhaps walking isn't the best option. It was all okay, though, for the cab driver informed me that it was just that they were announcing the scores of some yearly test and these were gunshots of celebration. Great.

Mentioning cabs, though. That's a little different over here. At one point, I asked a cab to take me to the bus stop, he drove me to a street and told me to go down some stairs and to the highway and buses pass there. I told him I wasn't sure, and I wanted to get out and look at this supposed "bus stop". I got out of the cab to look down the stairs, but he go out too and grabbed my backpack, and started yelling for his money. I tried to explain to him that I just wanted to look down the stairs. Then he went to his trunk, opened it, and pulled out a stick, all the time yelling about his money. I was not too worried, this old guy could barely lift the stick, but I was shocked it had gotten to this point. Anyway, in traditional Arab style, people started to gather around to see what all the commotion was. I asked them if there was really a bus stop and they confirmed that there was, so I paid the money, but I don't think it would have ever come to violence so quickly in Egypt. Maybe people here in Lebanon are really on edge from fighting and civil war, or maybe that old guy was just crazy.

I've done lots of fun things since I've been here, I went to Tripoli, and I've discovered that Tripoli is really boring. But I visited a place called the Jeita Grotto's near Beirut, those were amazing. You go into this gigantic cave filled with stalagmites and stalactites. It is probably the best interesting cave formation in the world. You walk through one cavern and then you take a small boat through another that is filled with water. It's a whole upside world where mountains come from the ceilings. It's also kind of interesting to realize, "Hum, I'm in a room with thousands of giants daggers hanging from above." But the formations are so complex and intricate that it really feels like the whole thing is alive. It's like you're walking through a snapshot of something that is growing and moving with arms that stretch out and skin that flaps in wind that takes an eon to go from one side of the cave to the other. Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures, so I'll just have to snag some on the internet to show people at home.

Well, that's it for Lebanon, I'm off to Syria tomorrow, I just need to find a bus schedule.

Apples and Cigarettes

Ah, Egypt. The land where you can buy a single cigarette at a time, but you have to buy fruit by the kilo. It's not good for those that 'quit' but just want 'one more cigarette' every thirty minutes or so. But at least people are eating apples five at a time.

I saw something the other day which I think in ancient times people would have said was a bad omen. I was in my apartment when I heard a cat meowing outside. I looked out the window onto the service stairs which connected to the back entrance of my apartment. Only the garbage man uses these stairs to pick up people's trash but, apparently, it was also home to a family of cats. One little cat in particular was on the same level as me, all the way on the seventh floor, and she was looking down on the ground below. I couldn't tell what she was doing but, suddenly, she leaped from the stairs and landed on an air conditioning unit about five feet away that that hung outside a window. I was scared when I first saw her jump at that death defying height, with nothing between her and the ground but air. When she landed safely, I felt reassured that it's normal behavior for a cat. I could see though that the cat slipped slightly, because of dust on the air conditioner that had collect over the years. She looked down at the ground far below from her new vantage point, but soon it became apparent that she wanted to get back to the stairs. She paced around a bit, unsure what to do, creeping up to the edge and then backing away. She walked over to the wall and there was a window open next to her, but she seemed not to know where it led. I knew where that window was. It led to the main stairs just one floor below me, and I was thinking about walking down to help her. I never got the chance, though. After waiting for a few minutes she leaped into the air. The dust must have been slippery because she obviously thought she would make it. I watched in horror as the cat's paws stretched out only touched the stairs. She tumbled through the air, down seven stories, and hit the ground. I put my shoes on and walked down the service stairs that I've never been on before. It was littered with bits of trash and chicken bones. I got to the ground and saw that the cat was dead. I've heard a story that a cat jumped from four stories and landed on its belly. In that story a lady came outside and poured water on it, and the cat got up and walked away. I didn't have any water but I rolled its body over with a stick. It wasn't breathing, it was dead. I walked back up the stairs to my apartment. There was nothing I could really do.

I've been thinking about the moral of what I saw. Why did that happen? Maybe the moral is look before you leap, or don't take risks. The cat jumped and got itself stuck, and couldn't get back. But that's not true. The cat could have gone through the open window next to her. She was scared, scared of the unknown. She was more scared of that window than she was of jumping, even though she was seven stories up. I think that's true for people too. Often times we'll do something that's dangerous or bad for us before we do something that's unfamiliar. Sometimes I feel that my time here in Egypt was more about stepping into the unknown, than anything else. It's not dangerous, it's not unsafe, it's just that I didn't even know what to expect. By coming here I hope that maybe for me, I've conquered just a little bit more of the unknown. I still feel bad for the cat though.

The Food Strikes and Dust Storms

Hey everybody, I have lots of stuff to talk about from this month. Let's see where to start. First off the strikes never happened. Let me explain. Here in Egypt the government subsidizes a lot of things. It's a throwback to the fifties when Egypt declared its independence and formed its modern government. At the time they were backed by the Soviet Union, and lots of stuff about communism appealed to the people who had been oppressed by rich capitalists since the country was ruled by British colonials. Anyway, the point is, to this day, people feel the government has a responsibility to take care of them and is obliged to make basic food, transportation, and even entertainment available to all. It's that food part that's the reason that we have what is called "Government Bread." They're cheap little tortilla like things that are sold on the street for about 5 cents. Recently, the prices for food are going up, here as well as the rest of the world, but if the government tried to raise the price of this bread people would riot. So the price stays low, but there is something else going on.

You see, people are saying that there is not enough bread and that there are huge lines to get the government-made bread if at all. This news is in all the papers here, but I have seen an abundance of sellers, selling the bread in the street, so I don't understand what the problem is. There must be more going on, possibly some corruption, like people selling the flour to make more money and not producing bread. In my view, I don't see what they're talking about, but the end result is that the government is not doing anything about it. It's this government apathy that made people decide they wanted to strike. Not in any particular job, but all of the people from all of Cairo want to rise up. They want to take a day and refuse to work. They want to meet in front of the main government building and demand the government do something! Well that was the plan anyway. The AUC said that we weren't allowed to take the day off for the strikes which I think would be fun. It seems kind of against the whole spirit of a strike if the management can just say it's not allowed. Of course it's not allowed! Of course they don't want it! That's why we have strikes, in order to send a message. But it was not just the AUC that canceled the strikes. The government canceled it totally, and like I said, the strikes never happened. All and all, they may have been more like riots had they actually taken place. I remember when Egypt won the African Cup and people took to the streets shouting, and blasting spray can powered fireballs. It may have been the same thing this time, except there were massive arrests the night before. On top of that the military presence in front of the government building was on the scale of a military occupation.

I did get a chance to watch from a roof top, and when kicked off, I wandered around a bit. If I stopped to stand, I was told to move along. No one was allowed to take pictures, although I snuck off with a few anyway. The mood was tense, and everyone was looking at each other, waiting for someone to start something but no one ever did. Or if they did, it was quickly squashed by police. I did see an armored prisoner truck driving by. I could hear the people inside banging against the walls in unison. Well, that's a totalitarian government for you. At least they let the Americans do pretty much what they want.

Ironically, the day of the planned strikes was also the first day of the "Khumseen." The word means "fifty" and it stands for 50 days of dust storms that come the same time every year. I didn't think the dust could penetrate the thick cityscape of Cairo, but this was the only day you really felt the dust storms of legend. It still wasn't that bad, but at some points you couldn't see more than a couple dozen meters in front of you. I bet if I manage to get out to the desert though, I could really feel it. Now wouldn't that be sweet.

Guests and the Future

My girlfriend, Kristen, came to visit, that was a lot of fun, although it wreaked havoc on my grades. I should be able to still do well, it just was a strenuous week is all. I tried to do extra work before she got here, in the hope that I could get ahead. That was a pipe dream. With everything I have to do just to get by, there really is not too much getting ahead unless I squeeze time away from the less important things like sleeping and eating. Really, maybe I can try to combine the two. Some sort of device that can inject the food into me while I sleep. I know it will be all the rage with the med students if I could bring it back to UCSD. But now, after that week, it's easier to catch up than it was to get ahead. Maybe because when I was trying to get ahead I didn't really have to do it, but now that I have to catch up, I really have to do it!

Having a guest is fun though. I get to show someone around and experience all the wonder of the city like when I first got here. It's also nice to be running around with someone that is not broke. My last friend here was hoping to get by on some ridiculously small amount of money everyday. Cairo is cheap, but the tourist events add up! We did all the fun stuff like ride camels around the pyramids, hold baby lions at the zoo, and see the awesome view of Cairo from the Citadel. She also mercilessly made fun of me for my videos I had been doing for ERC-tv. She loves them more then life itself, and she watches then every night before she goes to bed. But when she recites to me some of the things I say, I don't know what I was thinking. It's so corny, but that's just what comes to me at the time. I do love making those videos though, and I have a ton of footage. I just need to edit it all together when I get back to the states.

And I didn't even get hassled for having a girl in my apartment from the locals.
The last time I had a girl there, it was my tutor and I was studying Arabic. The apartment across from me is a lawyer's office, and the waiting room is directly facing my door. When I entered my apartment with an Egyptian girl, it really got people's blood pumping! And then I closed the door, which if you have a woman in the apartment, you're supposed to keep the door open, lest everyone thinks you are tainting this woman's honor. Within two minutes, there was a knock on my door and the whole waiting room is outside yelling at me, with the lawyer himself trying to rationally persuade me that what I was doing was wrong, and some old man in the back chanting slurs, and claiming that he's seen me with a different girl every night! We yelled back, showed the Arabic homework and slammed the door. The issue was never really settled, but I'm just not used to this whole idea of society trying to uphold the morals of everyone else. I like good old America, where if I want to slide down the slippery slope of sin and vice, well, Thomas Jefferson tells me that's my right! Of course the real issue wasn't that she was a woman, it's that she was an Egyptian woman. It's been several months since then, and now when I had my American girlfriend stay with me the whole week, there was not a peep of dissent. She's a foreigner anyway, and everyone knows their morals are beyond help.

In other news, the more Arabic I study, the more I realize what a hard language this is. It's not something you can study for a year or even two and then have it. You really need three years or more of intensive study to be able to speak this language. And I have some friends here who have studied it for seven or even ten years, and they still can't read a book, or have a full conversation. Not that I'm discouraged, it's just there are a lot of words out there. I can't quite put my finger on why exactly Arabic is so difficult for English speakers. Maybe it's the totally different vocabulary, or the sounds, or the grammar, but I miss those sweet and simple Romance languages! I never really applied myself to learn one before, but after Arabic, I feel like I could learn Italian in about a week! The point, anyway, is I need more Arabic before I go back to UCSD and this summer is a perfect opportunity. The program I really want is in Beirut, Lebanon. It was a toss up between Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria. Beirut is having a political crisis, for those who don't know, and is having trouble getting their elections going for a new president. I really think the country is going to be fine, so long as there are no more major political assassinations. Of course the kicker is the last major assassination of a top Lebanese official was actually in Damascus, so I'm kind of screwed either place I go. On the upside, the situation may have scared away all the other Americans, so I will really get a chance to speak only Arabic, and if civil war does break out maybe I'll get to ride in a helicopter as they're evacuating the American students. I have my fingers crossed!

Culture

I just saw a particular aspect of Egyptian culture that can be both inspiring and frustrating. It was expressed in a small fender bender that happened next to me as I was walking down the street. With the erratic nature of traffic and a seeming absence of any traffic laws other than what “feels right”, this is not a completely uncommon experience. This particular collision was perpetrated when an Egyptian taxi slammed on his brakes for no apparent reason and a car of four Japanese tourists slammed him in the back. When everyone got out, the Japanese didn’t seem to know how to play the game. You need to get angry. You need to yell and scream and swear to Allah. Whoever is more upset is seen as the victim, here in Egypt.

The taxi driver knew how it worked, of course. He did his best to be enraged and attracted the attention of all the curious passers-by on the street. This is the second part of Egyptian culture, when a crime has been perpetrated your jury is anybody that is curious enough to gather around you. You have to prove to them that you are on the side of right.

So the taxi driver is explaining to all these people how he was unjustly rear-ended without so much as a warning honk from the horn of the Japanese driver. The horn is a big thing over here. Egyptians love to use it in every possible situation even when there is only the slightest hint that it might be appropriate, such as a pedestrian three blocks away, or if you’re about to barrel through a blind intersection. More than once I’ve been punished with a horn honk for crossing a street too slowly and, heaven forbid, forcing a driver to tap the brakes. These are not normal horns either. I am convinced there is a special tune-up shop to make it more blood curdling and eardrum popping than anyone thought possible.

So back to my story, eventually someone decided that the only one who could correctly arbitrate such a situation would be one of the multitudes of police that idly lounge on the streets of Cairo. I saw several walk by, hurriedly, as if to show that they really didn’t need to deal with this today. After nearly an hour, one large officer with several stars on his shoulder showed up on the scene. All the time, I was talking with the parking attendant next to me, who claimed that since no one was killed, everyone should praise God and drive off happy. I think such a fatalistic attitude is harder to muster when you’re the one who has to pay the repair bill.

I was surprised at the overall outcome. The taxi driver wanted 500 pounds, the Japanese men felt that it wasn’t their fault, and that the taxi driver should bear some of the responsibility for their own damaged hood. Unfortunately, the Japanese were on the stunted end of popular opinion, seeing as how, not only was there a language barrier, and a cultural gap, but also the idea that all foreigners could stand to shed some bills for a deserving Egyptian. Eventually they offered to pay 50 pounds (about $10) in reparations. The taxi driver seemed upset, but the policeman jumped on the chance to end the issue. The crowd seemed ready to be done with it all, and compelled the taxi driver to take it and drive away. Everyone looked very pleased for managing to “solve” the problem.

It’s a whole different culture over here. People just seem much more prone to avoid conflict over achieving justice, and everyone who passes by wants to be the peacemaker. It sounds like a great idea on paper, but when I’m the one getting screwed, I don’t want to just walk away, and the last thing I want to do is have to explain my side of the story to some random guy that doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than watch people get frustrated. The moral of the story is there is a lot of peace and love going on here, and sometimes it's just a little hard to get used to.

The Break is Ending

I just made an amazing discovery, it turns out I actually get the Daily Show here in Egypt! It comes on some nights at 12:30 AM, and it’s on the same channel that CNN comes on. So finally CNN has realized what we’ve known for years, everyone gets their news from Jon Stewart. I’m just glad that the Egyptians get to experience the joy of indecision 2008.

So the break is coming to an end, and it was a long one. I ran around Egypt with friends, visiting all the places I missed during the semester. Down in Upper Egypt (down because it’s south, upper because it’s up the Nile), I got to visit Aswan and Luxor. Aswan is the most southern tourist city in Egypt, it’s around there that all the Nubians are. Nubia used to be a separate empire, to the south of Egypt, but now a days Egypt and Sudan have swallowed up what was Nubia. The ethnic Nubians have a harder time too, since in the 1950’s Egypt built a dam, which created Lake Naser, where it used to be just the Nile. Since for 5,000 years everyone lived right next to the Nile, this new lake flooded over all the villages and ancient monuments that were once there. So, no more Nubia. But there are still Nubians, and what was considered the best of the ancient monuments were moved, beyond the flood zone. Moving a 70 thousand ton rock isn’t exactly easy, but they managed.

The best thing I saw was Abu Simble, which is a temple with four giant statues sitting at the entrance. They are massive, especially when you see them in person. I continued north to Luxor, which has the temple of Karnak, next to the ocean, which the modern city is literally built around. It’s odd seeing on one side of the street an ancient temple to the god Isis, then on the other, a strip of fast food restaurants and Internet cafes. There were more hieroglyphics and pillar and statues and rocks. In all actuality, by the end of it, hieroglyphics were kind of like stars, each one is magical, mystical, inspiring and all that, but unless you know what you're looking at, they are all kind of the same.

I ended my break trying to get to the border between Gaza and Egypt, after Al-Jazeera was reporting that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were flooding into the country. I went with friends, not really knowing what we were looking for, we just wanted to be where the action was. Well, it turns out the trains were on strike over a price increase. The train company wanted to fine the driver an extra 10 pounds ($2) every time the train was late. The drivers thought that sometimes the trains were late and it wasn’t their fault. Then hundreds of Egyptians came out because they just love to support the little guy, without really understanding the issue, or even bothering to find out if this might actually make the trains run on time.

Anyway, they were probably right, but we didn’t find out. We wound up taking a bus, and after a few unnecessary transfers to squeeze all the money out of us possible, we were finally being taking across the bridge over the Suez Canal. All the Egyptians wanted to get across, so that they could sell their goods to the incoming Palestinians and make some money, but the Egyptians government didn’t want that. They wanted the Palestinians to go home. As we proceeded we saw the police dumping out loads of items like chips and tires and other goodies that were being seized by police. I saw a huge pile of Marlboro Cigarettes and I though it would be nifty to take a picture. Bad Idea. Not in Egypt, not at a military check point. Long story short, we were detained for hours because taking pictures is forbidden, my pictures got deleted, which bothers me because I had this great video of a guy during the train protest ripping his shirt off (Censorship!), and they let us go, each with a pack of contraband cigarettes, and I don’t even smoke. We made it back 24 hours after we left without being shot or kidnapped or sent to jail or anything. We didn’t make it to the border, but we had an adventure and it was a great start to the semester.