these streets

the other night lisa and i ordered home delivery from hardies, which is a bad fast-food burger chain, and which is the first time we have done such a thing, but we thought we should try it, because here in Cairo everything is home-deliverable... mcdonalds, beer, felafel sandwiches with baba ganoush... and usually its free to deliver, so we got some beer and some burgers. when our burgers arrived we paid, and the guy left, and we opened our bag and it one of the burgers was wrong, it was a beef burger instead of a chicken burger, but whatever, we said, and we ate our burgers and cold wet fries. about five minutes later the guy came back holding up our order, and said 'i gave you the wrong one, but you ate it! the burger you eat is more expensive, so you must pay more, and i'll take these burgers back to the shop'. we said no, and members of the house were still hungry, so we decided to buy the chicken burger, chips and drink we originally ordered, from him, but only if he went and swapped the pepsi he bought with him for 7-up which is what we'd ordered. So he did, after using our phone to call the shop and explain the mistake, and he came back and wanted us to pay the full amount for the two orders (4 burgers, 4 chips, 4 drinks and 2 delivery charges). i told him, oh no, sir, you see we don't really want this order. we are doing you a favour by buying it when it was your fuck up. we will pay for the one extra burger we ate 'by mistake' and we will pay the tax. you will take your fourth burger, and your 2nd delivery charge, and you will return to your shop, a happy little guy. but he was not a happy little guy. he really wanted us to pay the full amount, even though i was giving him back the shitty food we did not order. in our countries, i told him, you would give us all this food for free. in this country, he replied, you pay me money. we closed the door.

schools over for the term, danielle's left and nimsa is soon to depart. lisa and i are red sea bound, once again, where we will learn to dive, drink banana milkshakes, climb mount sinai at sunrise and study arabic verb conjugations. today we are trying to battle the kafkaesque monument to beurocracy called mogamma to get temporary resident visas for egypt so we can stay on to keep on studying. Process: first through the metal detectors, leave your cameras at the desk, up the stairs, down the hall, round the corner, round the other corner, past the windows for palestinian residence visas, to the tourist visa extensions window. get a form, fill it out, go back down stairs to get a photocopy of your passport and a passport photo made, go back upstairs, give it to the woman at the window, go down the hall to the payment window, pay 11 pounds and 10 piestres for passport stamps, go back to the tourists window, give them the stamps. you are told to wait one hour. wait the time, then go to another window in another hall, to receive your passport. it will not be ready, or even near ready, so the woman kinda avoids your gaze and refuses to answer your question about how long it will take. go to an internet cafe to wait for two more hours. pray ohsomuch that it will be ready when you return....

and, a small list, of great things:
1. learning how to play mahbouza, the way old arabic/israeli men play sheshbesh.
2. schweppes tangerine flavour
3. when a taxi driver is automatically satisfied by the amount you pay him
4. the ceiling of the mosque of mohammad ali at the citadel of salah-al-din
5. text messages from the usa, denmark, australia and turkey.

thankyou.

pictorial representations of anti-mubarek demonstrations

the building in the back is mogamma, the scary kafkaesque maze of offices and windows where we have to go to get our visa renewed today.

the traffic tries to push through the crowd

the guys on the ground (with yellow signs etc) are the anti-mubarek demonstrators; the guys on top of the car, tugging on the sign are the mubarek-loving skirmish-seekers.

a policeman with lots of badges and not much to do

strangulation, beatings, and placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings

Just a quick update for y'all:

You know how I said in the last chrismail (below) that there was this goofy black guy from Maryland and I wondered why he was learning Arabic?

The reason is this:
He runs an intelligence company that has been contracted by the US Army to work for them in Iraq. And thus, next week big goofy Melvin heads out to the big US base in Germany for a week for briefing, and then onwards to Baghdad, where he, personally, will work as an interegator. I asked him, hesitatingly, what that involved, and he apologised for not being able to answer properly, because of the 'sensitivity' of the work.

Woot, I go to school with a torturer.

Yee-HAH.


Now visit the below link for some juicy gossip about US interegation techniques.
http://207.44.245.159/article7524.htm

demonstration

The vote count will take until Saturday, apparently, but of course all reports are indicating an overwhelming victory for Mubarek. All in all, it was not such a crazy day yesterday as the media, the school and my imagination, perhaps, indicated it would be.

I arrived in Midan Tahrir, in downtown Cairo at just before midday, and looked around for the crowd of people who were supposed to be filling the square. On a corner near the American University I saw about 30 people standing around with Kefiya stickers, and about another 20 or 30 European and Arabic photographers, journalists and cameramen arriving and anxiously scanning around to see where their story was. Slowly, more and more people arrived, and they headed out, shouting, through the stream of traffic, to the middle of the square. Over the next hour the crowd grew to about 300 people, which is (a) astonishingly little considering the population of Cairo, (b) about 200 people less than the spectators of the demonstration itself, both Carienes and journalists, who flooded the sidewalks and balconies and pushed and shoved to get a good spot. The white uniformed police, bellies swollen and faces stern, directed the constant traffic through the middle of the crowd; buses, taxis, motorbikes and cars bleeting and weaving through the thicket of shouting people. Men scribbled on posters of Mubarek's face, an old woman was hoisted up to lead a chant against Hosni, her voice thin and wavering over that of the crowd. Then came the Mubarek supporters, about 10 or 15 people holding up his picture and shouting for their president, and obviously trying to push through the anti-Mubarek crowd in order to create some sort of fight. Many people said they were paid to be there, an accusation which has some sort of support in Mubarek's own comment that if 'he ever wanted people to go out and demonstrate for him, all he'd have to do is pay them'. Despite their antagonism no scuffles broke out, and the significantly larger crowd managed to almost completely drown out the Mubarek guys. Slowly, the protest snaked around the square, the police constantly trying to push it out of the way of irrate drivers, and then bent backwards and headed up Tahrir Street, towards the Syndicate of Journalists. Through the cars and up the street it flowed, but the whole protest refused to grow, refused to change into anything but what it had started as.

Which, when you are judging it by western standards of protest is really very small, but when you consider that a year ago this sort of thing was impossible in Egypt, it was a great sight to see.

I'll put up some photos soon.

democrazy

So, tomorrow is supposed to be the second last day of term, but school has been cancelled because of the Egyptian election and the security risks attached to running a school full of international kids. In addition, the staff at the school have advised us strongly to stay inside all day long, and to absolutely avoid the downtown area of Cairo - they say hovering anywhere near the (hopefully) massive demonstrations which will be taking place is too risky, especially for the girls.

This is Egypt's first 'democratic' election, meaning that it will be the first ever election in which multiple candidates have been allowed. The president, I'm sure most of you are aware, is and has been for the past 24 years, Hosni Mubarek, who took over after the assasination of Sadat shortly after he secured a peace deal with Israel. By governing for a quarter of a century under 'emergency law', Mubarek has managed to maintain a degree of political stability in the country, and has both cracked down heavily on religious fundamentalism and retained a level of acceptance of and from Egypt's various neighbours. All this has come at the cost, however, of both the economic interests of Egypt and the basic human rights of its people. The people of Egypt have been crippled by the corruption, violence, control and poor management of Mubarek's regime, and have never before now had any opportunity to allow for change.


For this reason, this election is a symbol of the slow advancement forward. Media control and police coercion have undoubtably decreased in the past year, and this along with the very fact that Mubarek is allowing himself to have to work to keep his job for the first time, is a promising sign. However things are not so rosy as all that... In the last few months, the Kifaya (Enough) group have held a number of peaceful demonstrations across Egypt which have ended in police violence, including a large protest on July 30th in Cairo which resulted in a swarm of plain clothes policemen, wielding trunchons, attacking the crowd and making scores of arrests. Certain candidates, both religious and non-religious, who pose a serious democratic threat to Mubarek have been banned from running in the poll. The remaining opposition, despite such policies as introducing an effective democratic parliament, a less powerful president and total media freedom, are seen by Egyptians as ranging from too weak to totally inept. Despite pressure from both inside and outside the country, international monitors have been completely banned, while a number of local organisations and 500 judges (the ones who insisted on free and fair monitoring) have been disallowed from the process, leaving the remaining local observers unable to cover even a fraction of the polling stations (the locations of which, by the way, have not yet even been announced, due to the threat of terrorism)...

So, basically, its Mubarek's game. Campaign posters of the other candidates are scattered here and there, but Mubarek's solid face is everywhere. Every candidate has a symbol associated with his campaign, to allow illiterate voters from recognising who is who - when one candidate (who was the first to nominate himself) choose the extremely popular Islamic crescent moon as his symbol, Mubarek complained and took the symbol for himself. There is absolutely no way he can not win - in the unlikely event that the elections actually are totally fraud-free, the Egyptian people themselves feel powerless to change a thing, and many will not even turn up to vote at all, or if they do, vote for Mubarek (a) because there's no point in doing anything else or (b) because they believe that he is the strongest and most experienced candidate, despite his many flaws. The election is a symbol of hope for democracy and improved civil rights in Egypt, but more that this it is a simple show for the western world that Mubarek is trying, that at least he's making some, minimum, effort for change.


I really don't know what tomorrow is going to be like - already a theatre which was rumoured to be a polling station has been bombed, and local media is predicting violence across the country, both from the Islamic brotherhood, and from the police force. My housemates are paying a small fortune to isolate themselves in the swimming pool and gym of an expensive hotel for the day, but as for me... I cannot be here in Cairo and not go and see what is happening. I cannot sit inside my apartment and just listen to the streets.

Lets hope the day is totally peaceful.

Insh'allah.

cairo, the victorious

this is my new city.

nimsa eats koshari

this is andrea, my austrian roommate. we call her nimsa, which means austria in arabic. she has just recently decided she doesn't want to be called that anymore. she prefers her name.
nimsa is eating koshari which is one of the dishes egypt is most proud of. it is macaroni, rice, lentils, tomato sauce and fried onion. it will cost you about 1 or 2 egyptian pounds, which is only twice as much as you are expected to give the guy who holds your toilet door open and turns on the tap for you in resturant bathrooms.

western desert

roadstop between cairo and nowhere


the black desert

the fringes of the white desert

dutch housemate #1, danielle

with dutch housemates #s 1 and 2, danielle & lisa

the white desert

the edge of the oasis

footprints from a midnight walk