a walk, a skip, a shout, a cry (chrismail 5.2)

An hour or so past sunset. The merciful night breeze, the muezzin's throttled moan, the never-ceasing cacophony of car horns, whistles and tinny stereos from the streets below. We are in the living room, my housemates and I, under the steady whir of the one speed ceiling fan, limbs-a-kimbo on the floral sofas, relishing in the freedom our apartment affords us to dress in shorts and tank tops. Foster Clarkes powdered beverage, pineapple flavour, and Koshari with fried onion and both hot and lemon sauce, in plastic bowls. Blackened soles, ingrained with Cairo grime.

Here in Cairo I live with four girls, across the road from the school where we are all students. Our landlord, a tall smiley man who reminds me of a father in an African American sit-com, and who is very 'modern' and has 'spent time in Europe', does not seem to have any problem with the mixed-sex household, although I think we are one of the only set of students from the school who are permitted such arrangements. We walk, just four of us – Dutch (x2), Austrian, and I (the fourth girl (hybrid French/Vietnamese/Canadian) mixing mostly in different circles) through the clogged streets, and everywhere we go the men come up to me and praise my three wives. In English, its called being a 'pimp' I tell them. Kuwayyes, they respond. Alhamdulillah.

And we walk on, and it's Friday and the streets around Midan Sayyida Zeinab, the square of the granddaughter of the prophet, are clogged with people, people gathered outside the mosques, people drinking shai under tent-like tarpaulins, people buying and selling and begging and playing grab-ass with the three western girls. Hello! they shout. Welcome to Egypt! they shout. You want Egyptian Husband?! they shout. When walking by myself I get none of this attention, no one even looks my way. When they grab ass a little too much, the girl makes a sound, and I am forced to retort: 'Ayb ya hiwan! Shame on you, animal! I throw glares with diamond-cutter eyes.

And we walk through old Cairo, through the thickets of Egyptians, women selling tissues, men smoking shisha, line-ups at the koshari houses, grinning boys sitting around slowly fixing cars, men carrying huge trestle trays of fresh bread on their heads, old men with big beards, stumbling as they walk, black shapes with holes cut for eyes, gliding like ghosts, wide eyed children yapping, 'hi, hi, hi!'. We walk barefoot and slow, down the stone hallways and dusty courtyard of the mosque of Ibn Tulun, the huge vacant square an inverse of the city, a beautiful and simple, hollow space, the noise of Cairo only barely making it over the carved walls. We climb the minaret of the semi-restored Blue Mosque, hands clasped and stepping slow and cautious in the ultimate blackness, and we emerge on top of the city, above the ancient houses and lane-ways, the view stretched out across everything, the many minarets of the many mosques rising up like slender stone candles, the distant pyramids like sharpened teeth in the haze, nine flapping kites in a nearby park. And we walk on, though the leafy laneways and dirt paths, under the endless stream of Mubarek election posters, by the ahwas and their clouds of flavoured smoke, onwards and downwards, from the high crest of the citadel to the swarming hive of Khan-al-Khalili and Midan Hussein. Along the way, crumbling palaces, tombs and monuments, the high walls of mosques, madrassas and mausoleums. The men raise glasses full of brown tea and beckon us to join. The spice sellers, the harnessed donkeys, the café touts, the young women wearing thick make-up and headscarves, the snot-nosed kids, the old men playing backgammon, they all watch us as we walk on.

I've lived in Cairo for three weeks now, and I have seven weeks to go. I have decided to stay on for a second course, because it is mighty fine and I am learning a lot, and I don't feel like strapping a big bag to my back and walking through the sand dunes in this heat. I am taking two main classes, one in Modern Standard Arabic, and one in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic – the two languages clash like goats in my head and I stumble on the words, but it's incredible to learn them side by side. There are students from everywhere, and its fun and weird to work out the reasons why everyone has decided to learn this– the anorexic Japanese girl with bleached hair, the goofy black guy called Melvin from Maryland, the tiny, silent Russian girl with grey clothes. But then the truth is that none of us have, really, any better reason than any others, except that it pulls you in, it entraps you, that the language becomes, in time, an obsession.

I could tell you all about so much, of course; the upcoming Egyptian elections and the means of control being used to ensure the 'right' outcome is guaranteed, the incredible lute player from Iraq, the lovely slow days in Dahab on the Sinai peninsular, the nights spent eating falafel and smoking apple shisha and voting on the most beautiful singer on the music video channel (after many nights of close examination, I would like to announce Hifa from Lebanon as the winner over Nicole Saba). But the night is advancing, and the muezzin is telling me that God is, indeed, great, and the housemates are getting restless. So, instead, I shall tell you these few things:

1. My mobile telephone number here in Egypt is +20128242471. I very much enjoy text messages, particularly ones that refer to President Mubarek as Hosni.

2. My address is 56 Ahmed Orabi Street, Mohandiseen, Cairo, Egypt. Come and stay in the spare bed, or send me a postcard so I can give some baksheesh to the doorman for something other than opening and closing the gate.

3. The home phone number, if you're really wanting to have a chat, is: (20) 23021790. But, yeah, don't bother, I'm probably not home.

4. Also, don't bother going to see The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johansson, unless (a) you are going in Egypt and get to experience the discomfort of a whole room full of Arabic men during a kissing scene and/or the excitement of an intermission etc, etc. or (b) you are interested in seeing the result of S. Johansson's full career ark from seemingly normal yet heartbreakingly cute indie film-nerd sweetheart to blonde, clone-like (literally! ha!) Hollywood action bimbo. Its sorta impressive. The film, however, is not.

5. Oh, the camp, and my time in the state of Israel ended up just fine and lovely, in a CISV way, of course, of course. I had an incredible time and met many beautiful, wonderful people. Many people have emailed asking about my perspective on the Gaza disengagement, from, like this part of the world etc, but I am saddened to tell you all that my time swimming in Tel Aviv's beaches and touristing it up in Jerusalem al-Quds and Masada was in no way affected, even slightly, by the whole Gaza deal. My time in and near the Palestinian territories proper was limited and non-eventful, this time around. I can tell you nothing more, really, than the newspapers can. After my time in Egypt I will, however, be tracking back into said territories, and a full report of what I see and hear will be forthcoming, I guarantee.

6.Thankyou so much to those who emailed me last time I sent one of these things out. If I didn't reply its because of the craziness of the camp, or my mail didn't get through (it was doing that for a while). Know that any further emails will be dutifully responded to.

7. Oh habibi. Oh, oh habibi.

the beit govrin sheshbesh appreciation society

seminar camp, some photos

carol

toto

helene

eva

erik & genki

the sunset birds

watermelon at the dead sea

eva, me, juanma - waiting for bubble tea

my family group: sophia, lorenz, emily, erik, rakefet and me

things in the sky, sheshbesh, hearing the hearts beating as one (chrismail 5.1)

We are all out on the grass, arms crossed, right over left, right over left.We are singing the CISV song, a ritual we all hold close, a testament to our hope, to everything we are here for. Above us are the stars; around us the brown hills which stretch from here to the Negev. We are standing here, ending the night with this circle, and we are singing these lines: "Here we share our hopes and fears, build a bridge across the years, sow a seed and plant a tree, beneath whose branches there may be, all the nations gathered free"; this is the end of the second verse. And we are singing, and we are passing pecks-on-the-cheeks, as we do (yes we do that), and then across the blackened sky comes the roar of fighter planes, three of them, and their flashing lights blipping as they cut towards Gaza.

Something is happening there tonight.

And as the sound fades away you can hear the whirring of a swarm of helicopters going the same way.

In the streets of Israel the cars fly ribbons from their antennas, colour-coded to proclaim their political opinions - blue and white means the driver is for the current plan to disengage from Gaza; orange means they are against. In the streets of Tel Aviv and Herzilya young girls in long skirts walk up and down by the traffic lights giving the orange ones out, and Israelis hungrily stick out their hands and clutch them passionately. The blue-and-white crowd is, alas, not so well mobilised.

But I am here in this camp, me and 29 others from all over, from Colombia and Brazil, from Canada and Japan, from the UK and France and Germany and Austria and Hungary, from Sweden and Norway and Denmark and Lithuania. And from Israel. We are enclosed here among the brown hills by electified fences with motion sensors, in a kibbutz with bomb shelters which kids have painted with smiling suns and blue flowers, our little home for three weeks. Every evening in the burnt glow of sunset swarming thickets of black birds fill the sky, wings flapping, chortling and squarking. Their arrival heralds another new ritual, my nightly tornament of sheshbesh on the soccer field with the Danish girl who looks just like Mischa Barton and the Swedish punk guy named Erik. Sheshbesh is hebrew for backgammon. The little sun is thick like blood as it sinks on the horizon. It is my favourite moment of every day.

The group is great, the staff are great, I am in love with them all. We cook and clean and dance and talk about gay adoption, about addiction, about Palestine. We play soccer with our limbs tied together, we throw water, we gossip on the stone steps of the building. We are already half way through the camp which makes my heart skip. Then there are five open, strange months to go for me, and I don't really know what to expect.

Except for homus and pita bread. I can expect to eat a lot more of that.

wings above sinai