alexandria's old town

As of today, I have fifty days left in Egypt. This is roughly halfway through the semester. And in the tradition of things falling apart halfway through anything, we had quite the scare yesterday. One of my good friends was in a very serious accident involving the tram here, and he is currently in the hospital (doing better, but being the progeny of two doctors makes you wary of saying things are fine when they can suddenly be not-fine in the space of a few hours) and will be returning to the States next week for real medical treatment. We did not have class yesterday. We, and especially the Middlebury students, were a bit of a junk show -- Khalid scared the shit out of us, since he walked into the center where we study with the most ghastly look of fright on his face, and you could tell he was trying to keep it together, but that there was clearly something very, very wrong. We'd already heard the news about our friend, but Khalid's expression made it even more gut-wrenching.

At any rate, Karim took Chelsea and I out on the town last night for a drive, to clear our heads. We went for a jaunt on the Corniche, out on the highway to Cairo, and then finally to the old part of Alexandria, where buildings date back hundreds of years, where wooden support beams and roofs are still the norm, and where the streets were not constructed with any sort of rhyme or reason. It was very interesting, especially since it was about midnight and anyone respectable was most likely in bed. We went to the Jew's Alley, where all the Jewish families used to live until they left, of their own free will or not (there are only 12 official Jewish people living right now in Alexandria). We drove Taht as-Sur, literally Under the Wall, which is the old wall separating the town from the original harbor. We saw the harbor. We saw the shrine of a martyr, built hundreds of years ago when Egypt was Shi'a and not Sunni, and which was left standing when the Alexandrians built their tram line (they curved the tram tracks around the shrine). We also drove over one of the first concrete bridges in Egypt.

That concrete bridge took thirty-one years to complete. Why? Because back in the 1800s, Egyptians were mostly using steel to build, and had just heard about concrete. Because they didn't have the technological know-how to produce concrete structures, they would usually sub-contract out to a French or other European engineer to design whatever was needed. The Egyptian contractor in charge of this bridge, however, decided it was time his country got the knowledge itself so they would no longer have to rely on foreign help for concrete buildings. So, he sent his son to France to learn engineering.

And then they had to wait for their bridge, for 31 years.

Funny story. Kind of cute, in a silly way. We had to return to the dorms after that, though, because we told the women we'd be back before one and they have gotten more and more pissy each time we tell them we'll be back late. Two girls were locked out for an hour and a half, until three am, the other morning.

I think this weekend will be a tame one, for us. We're all feeling a bit... subdued, you might say. Our friend's accident has given most of us some food for thought, concerning mortality and our own ways of tempting fate, just by daring to cross the streets. It's Halloween weekend, back home, but I think the scariest thing I have in store is listening to ten minutes of a BBC presentation on the future of formal, modern standard Arabic for my fosha class.

... I'm not sure life lessons on mortality are the main thing that students are supposed to bring back with them after a study abroad, but I think that will figure prominently in our experiences here in Egypt, at least. And I suppose that's both a good and a bad thing.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

siwa oh nine

This weekend we took the semesterly school-sponsored trip to Siwa Oasis, a little spot of green on the otherwise dry and arid Libyan border. I was especially eager to get the hell out of Alexandria because the mold on my wall has returned with a vengeance, and I am not enthusiastic about spending more time in my creepy, biohazard room than is absolutely necessary. I will be taking pictures of that shit, by the way, and putting it online -- just gonna wait a few more days until it really gets pretty.

But yes, Siwa. I was interested in Siwa because some of the bottled water we consume here has "Bottled in Siwa Oasis" written on the labels, and I guess I like to know where the food I ingest comes from. The trip is roughly nine or so hours from Alexandria, mostly on a coastal/desert road that I missed the first time around since we left at six pm on Wednesday night (we arrived around three am). I was awakened by the bus rocking violently side to side on the dirt road that led to the hostel -- I found out later that there is only one paved road in Siwa, and it is in the way back of the town (not by our accomodations or anything else central). We stayed at the Palm Trees Hotel, which is a nice name for a vaguely crappy joint -- think Crazy Camel Camp in Dahab, but worse. The rooms were stained with years of cigarette smoke (and smelled like it, too) and the blankets were disgustingly unclean, but it was a place to sleep and so we crashed.

After four or five hours of sleep we woke up to discover the joys of the bathrooms. There is only one on the end of each hall, home to a shady-looking toilet and shower with no hot water, and a sink. Oh, and about five million mosquitoes. Considering my intense allergy/tendency to be a homing beacon for mosquitoes, I was particularly overjoyed to be bitten in the night by those fine specimens of useless evolution.

We took a tour of Siwa Thursday. First, we went to the Mountain of the Dead, which is a hill where rich folks were buried back in the Greek/Roman periods of occupation in the area, when some wealthy families relocated themselves to Siwa for the beauty. It wasn't really touched until World War II, when the locals used the tombs as bomb shelters from air raids, and made a bit of profit from chipping away the paintings and selling them to mostly the British. A few murals remain, though, and honestly they're really quite amazing to see -- I'm vaguely certain that they were restored in a less-than-quality fashion in the not-so-distant past, but it was still a wonder to behold something from so long ago.

The Temple of the Oracle was next. Although the area is pretty much wrecked you can still tell that one of the buildings was definitely a temple. We stopped at 3in Cleopatra in the afternoon, which is a clear spring where the locals usually hang out. The boys swam -- the girls were less than eager. At the restaurant next to the springs we met our first Asshole Tourist, and he was damned lucky Chelsea responded to him first otherwise I would've laid into him like none other. That douchebag had the nerve to tell us, "HEY. You're in an Egyptian house -- take your shoes off!" I mean, dude, 1) we're not in a house, we're on the roof of a restaurant, 2) we're been here for two months and know a little bit about Egyptian culture, 3) you are shirtless, wearing shorts, and speaking in a British accent, and 4) you don't know jack shit about Arabic otherwise you would've understood the nasty names I called you from across the room.

But I drank an amazing mango-pomegranate smoothie there.

We watched the sunset from a little peninsula on a natural lake in the oasis, looking out over the Libyan border. It was beautiful for sure, although sadly enough there were lots of clouds and we were unable to actually watch a sunset. Dinner was at a rather nice place with interesting architecture if only moderately passable food, and after all the hubbub we went off exploring the ruins of Shali, the old, original fortress-town of Siwa.

Shali was built out of a special salt/sand/rock mixture, and stood the test of time until three days of rain made the thing melt. We climbed around there at night like a bunch of hooligans, and got scared away by a pack of wild dogs that seemed none too friendly. But hey, it was entertaining. At the base, I found the most beautiful scarf in the world, but I am poor and I do not have the four hundred guinea necessary to pay for it. Two hundred, deal. Four hundred? Not on your life.

It was Thursday night that we all realized why we felt so weird in Siwa -- of the total three or so adult women we'd seen, they were all veiled, but not veiled in your typical burqa way. I can handle the burqa. It is irritating, but I can handle it. I cannot handle this: the women in Siwa wear black mesh to obscure the entirety of their bodies, including the whole face, with a large traditional Siwan shawl draped over their heads and the rest of their bodies. They simply sit there, usually in the bed of the donkey carts driven by their husbands or sons. And because of their appearances, they scared the shit out of me -- they were like ghosts, or some sort of sinister priestesses. It really was unnerving.

The next day we took a random trip out to Mount Dakroor, in the back of Hameida's (our tour guide) pickup truck, and shopped around for some souvenirs. Chelsea and I met a nice man who claimed to have lived in San Francisco for thirty-two years, and he had the California driver's license to prove it, so while I'm sure he bs-ed half of his life's story I think some of it was true. At any rate we bought a lot from him and he gave us tea, so I liked him.

Then, in the afternoon, we loaded ourselves into cars and went off to spend the night in the desert. When I say the desert, I really do mean The Desert -- this is the Great Sand Sea, or something like that. When we went joyriding with the Bedouins in Sinai, I was entertained by the desert driving -- here, it was the Real McCoy. We slid down more hundred-foot dunes than I ever thought I would see in my life, let alone crest them and then gun down them, engines blazing and passengers yelping like a pack of puppies. It was amazingly fun, and amazingly beautiful, too. We stopped at two natural springs in the middle of the desert, one cold and one hot, neither of which I partook in, since I do not want bilharzia and I was too lazy to change my clothes. We also harassed our first tourists in Egypt. They were Italians, and if by some weird chance one of them reads this: don't take it personally, Sameh is just an ass anyway and we've been in Egypt too long.

We stopped for the night at a Bedouin camp. Instead of spending the night in the camp, we trekked out into the desert and laid under the stars, which sounded like a great idea but ended up being the coldest, least-prepared night of my life. I enjoyed, despite probably making my existant cold worse -- I saw a total of nine shooting stars, including one with a bright orange tail and one with a long, long green and blue tail. We watched the sunrise, too, since it was buttfuck cold out and no one could really sleep -- Khalid wussed out and left in the middle of the night, back to the camp where they had a fire going.

My glory of the weekend? Wearing the same clothes for two and a half days in a row (too cold and lazy to change after the night in the desert) and getting seven mosquito bites on my face in the middle of the Great Sand Sea. The middle of the desert. I also did not take a crap for three days, leaving my penance to be using a roadside "restaurant" in the middle of nowhere, where the kid charged my half a guinea for nothing but a bowel movement and stomach pains the rest of the five hours back to Alexandria. I leave you all to beat that.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

cairo, take two (part two)

We woke up Friday around twelve-thirty. Understandable -- we went to bed six hours earlier and I was grumpy as hell because I pretty much just wasted a whole day doing nothing but snoozing. Karim actually woke me up with his incessant bleating, "Amanda, ana gao3an neek," which basically meant he was fucking hungry and wanted food. There was no food in the apartment -- I mean, come on, four young bachelors, four young Egyptian bachelors, were not going to have more than a box of corn flakes and a frying pan sporting orange mold. So after kicking Karim and Yamila out of bed, we went to the gas station for the worst croissant I have ever eaten in my life (no joke) and then headed into the city for my second visit to Khan el-Khalili.

The first time we went to Khan el-Khalili it was during Ramadan, and it was honestly one of the strangest experiences in my life. The place is an enormous tourist pit, full of hapless Americans and Europeans and Asians who dress in horribly inappropriate ways, get very obviously ripped off by the Egyptian salesmen, or both. But amongst all the kitchsy crap (i.e. the pyramid/camel/miscellaneous statues, "Rolex" watches, etc.) there are some real gems of items. I managed to barter my way down forty guinea for a white tunic, which was still vastly overpriced but a lot better than the original price. Khan el-Khalili was much more vibrant and lively this time around -- while the hawkers more or less left us alone (I have developed a very good "piss the fuck off or I will punch you in the kidneys" look), they were very enthusiastic when it came to the other tourists, and it was highly entertaining to watch some interactions. The place is a veritable maze -- I do not know how Karim knew where we were going.

We also ate pigeon at a little... I wouldn't call it a restaurant, but there were tables and food was served and I ate it, so I guess it might qualify as a restaurant, but that's just being way too generous. Anyway. Pigeon. It was delicious. There is not a lot of meat on a pigeon, but they stuffed it full of brown rice, which was amazingly tasty, and I managed to discover the hidden treasure trove of pigeon meat on the hips of the bird. The spine, amusingly enough, is very, very elastic and stretchy. Also, the ribs are very small and tend to show up in random and surprising bites. But yes, I would eat it again. My fosha professor stared at me in confusion and a little bit of disgust when I told him I liked pigeon -- he claims Cairo food is the worst, and has vowed to take us all to a restaurant here in Alexandria that serves "the best pigeon in the world." Hanshouf -- we'll see.

We returned to the apartment after Khan el-Khalili and Karim and Yamila slept -- I did homework. Kar Kar came back from... wherever he was, and we left that night to go to a club we were not able to get into the night before: Rithmo, by the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel.

We ate there because we were starving. There is no dance floor at Rithmo -- rather, people just stand up by their tables and dance. Kar Kar and his friend, a man studying to become a neurosurgeon (a terrifying prospect, seriously. I would rather do my own brain surgery than let him do it), drank more or less an entire bottle of tequila, with Yamila's help, of course. Karim and I sat and critiqued people's apparel. We danced a bit, then left.

This is where my night got fucking ridiculous. I would appreciate if my sisters are reading this, that they not tell dad or my mom. Standing outside the club, waiting for someone to bring Karim's car, Kar Kar and his friend, Gamal, were being stupid-drunk and standing in the middle of the street. Now, while I mentioned before that streets here are vicious and dangerous, the fact remains that people will stop if they see someone in the road, not moving. Usually, at least. And for the first two or three times, the cars did stop for Kar Kar's drunken antics. The third time, however, they did not. As I watched, there was a squeal of tires, the sound of roughly 160 pounds of human flesh hitting a car hood, and the sight of Kar Kar spinning off the car and sprawling gracelessly into the street.

The guy took off, and the valet bringing Karim's car tried to chase him down, but to no avail. Everyone was freaking out -- we drove Kar Kar to the hospital (mistake: we should have waited for the ambulance, but like I said, Gamal was a sketchy doctor to compliment sketchy Egyptian healthcare), then to another hospital where Gamal works, to get him checked out. He was fine -- a broken wrist and a bruised knee, but nothing serious. I knew he would be fine -- the car was only going at most 30 mph and Kar Kar was drunk and relaxed, so no serious injuries were likely. I also have no pity for him -- that was his fucking fault. So we stayed out again until seven thirty in the morning, and I watched my second Egyptian sunrise in two days -- that's two more than I wanted to watch.

I slept for two hours or so that morning. Karim and Yamila slept together in the same bed until probably two in the afternoon, when Chelsea and Molly finally got them out of bed to drive us back to Alexandria. By this point, my grump the morning before was nothing -- I was fucking livid, and I am still honestly pissed off at Karim and Yamila. I did not go to Cairo to party, sleep, watch them hook up, and waste my weekend. I went to see Cairo, to see the antiquities, the museums, the city itself. I went to be a tourist, and instead I ended up a stupid American in two nightclubs. The point that really gets me is that Yamila asked me to stay with her -- she didn't want to be alone with Karim. Apparently she did.

A waste of a weekend. On the up side, now I can say I've seen someone get run over by a car. That's... a conversation starter?

another truck stop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

cairo, take two (part one)

Wednesday night we took a mini-vacation to Cairo for the weekend, since we technically are supposed to have three day weekends although we sure haven't seen many of those of late. Karim drove Chelsea, Yamila, and I to the city, which was about as entertaining of a drive as I expected -- bumping along the highway at 130 kilometers an hour, blasting techno and trance and various bad hip-hop songs, singing along and stuffing our faces with an impromptu McDonald's dinner. Drive-thrus in Egypt do not work like the drive-thrus in the US, and by that I mean they don't really work at all. All processes involved, like ordering and paying and getting food, were quite disorganized and inefficient, much like the traffic system. But we got our food (cheeseburger and an M&M McFlurry on my part) and scarfed that shit before setting off along the highway again. Yamila was scared shitless of Karim's speeding, but given my past experiences driving with BJ and Donny G and me by myself, he's got nothing on my own set of harrowing driving tales. Seriously, a dry asphalt road in Egypt is nothing compared to doing the Pass last Christmas during the blizzards.

Karim decided to race some cars as we were on our way, which was a bad idea on his part because his little VW Golf cannot hold a candle to the engine under the hood of a souped-up Mercedes, both Mercedes sedan and Mercedes tow truck. We lost to both. Apparently, Karim's car is about as efficient at accelerating as the Subaru Outback that my folks own, and though his pedal was to the floor all he could do as we were puttering along was smack the dashboard and shout, "GOD DAMNIT AZIZA, IMSHI, IMSHI!" which translates more or less as you'd imagine (imshi = go).

Our first night we spent in the apartment of Karim's friends, on the outskirts of Cairo in a suburb called Rehab (yes, that's what I think of the name, too). His friends are interesting people, one of which wound up playing a major role in our weekend events. The next morning we wanted to see the Pyramids, and after kicking Karim awake at eight thirty or so, we, the girls, bought a six-pack of classic Cinnabons at the Cinnabon store in Rehab and proceeded to eat two of them each. The guys working there clearly did not understand what we meant to do with those cinnamon buns, because they did not heat them up for us -- not that that mattered, mind you. I proudly/shamedly admit that I am the only one who actually finished both buns completely. Karim's friend Mohi got us lost getting our of Rehab, which is ironic since he was late for work and claimed he knew a shortcut. But I liked that guy -- he was entertaining.

The Pyramids of Giza are amazing. I learned a lot about Egyptian scams in the two minutes it took us to drive up the hill to buy real tickets from the real government vendor in the real ticket booth -- at least eight different men mobbed the car at different points, trying to get us to pay for various services. Tickets (real ones) cost only thirty pounds for us, since we are Egyptian residents in addition to being students. Wonderfully ineffective Egyptian security greeted us after checking the validity of our tickets -- we put our bags through an X-ray machine with no one sitting behind it, and walked unescorted through a metal detector that I am fairly positive was not turned on.

More scams awaited us inside the perimeter. Mind you, the Egyptian government takes harassment of tourists very, very seriously, and if anyone is reported to the tourism police who roam around on foot or on camel, they are immediately whisked away and most likely never heard from again. But that doesn't stop the enterprising young men who would occasionally stop us and ask to "see our tickets." For what, I don't know, and I never found out because I either never answered or I practiced my newly-learned Egyptian colloquial vocabulary and told them to fuck off.

But the Pyramids! The Pyramids are enormous. They are gigantic. They are behemoth. There are no words to describe it accurately. As I stood there I could barely comprehend what this massive pile of rocks signified -- its size didn't truly register in my mind until later, when I flipped through the pictures on my camera and realized that those tiny black specks next to the base were people. We only walked around the outside of the two nearest pyramids, since the last one was far and we were (are) lazy, and it was har neek (fucking hot). We also paid a visit to the Sphinx, which is... small. Very small. Not big and imposing like you'd imagine from the pictures and the hype, but tiny, especially compared to the colossal pyramids right behind it. It is also in sad shape -- by all accounts, it's rotting or wearing away from the inside due to pollution and rising groundwater, but restoration efforts have done more harm than good.

You're also not allowed in close to the Sphinx. It's guarded by an iron wrought fence, where guys sit just inside and tell you to pay them five guinea in order to come in. I don't know how they got there in the first place, but if you pay them you might as well light your five guinea on fire 'cause that'd be just as useful. Additionally, as Karim and I were walking up for a photo-op that he wanted, I glanced at a man wearing a nice black suit and James Bond sunglasses. He looked familiar. It wasn't until he said in a very surprised voice, "Iskanderani!" that I realized it really was our Special Travel Buddy, the man who escorted us through Sinai and put me and Chelsea up in a hotel for the night of Mount Mousa. I guess his job is to ride along with tourist buses from Alexandria to various destinations. He looked a little uncomfortable wearing such a fancy outfit in the hundred-degree weather. Har neek, and I was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

We took the afternoon to go to a little cafe in the building where Karim used to live, in Zamalek. Zamalek is a nice spot of Cairo that I missed last time -- there are trees, peace, and things seem tranquil and more relaxed than the rest of the hustle-bustle of the city. The juice we got was bad, but we did leave them some nice doodles on the paper they covered their tables with.

Afterwards, we took a felucca ride into the Nile to watch the sunset. That was beautiful and relaxing, and very delightful considering we ate at a delicious Lebanese restaurant afterwards. I succeeded in stuffing my face with food yet again, and went back to Karim's friends' apartment sated.

Two of his friends left for Alexandria that day, while one remained -- Kar Kar was supposed to take us to the opening of a club, but since that was two hundred fifty guinea entrance fee (fifty dollars US) we were not going to pay. Instead, we wound up just at a club called Latex, which is attached to the Hilton and is just as weird as its name suggests. We stayed until closing, when Kar Kar decided he wanted to pay a friend a visit before returning home -- we stayed out until five thirty am and I was very, very, very grumpy. Eff that shit, man. I wanted to go home two hours before, but no. I had no say. Whatever. I could go for maybe a few hours of sleep and then go out to see the city later.


TO BE CONTINUED.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

the continuing adventures of the nonabsorbent towel

This past weekend I went to my roommate's house in the country. None of the Egyptian girls in the dorms, at least those on our floor, are from Alexandria itself -- they're mostly from the surrounding countryside, from little villages (I won't say towns) that dot the countryside between the coast and the only other big, important town in Lower Egypt, Cairo. She wanted to show me her home and introduce me to her family, and while it was a bit of a surprise that she wanted to take me there at that particular time, I figured I might as well do it and get out of the dorms for a few days. I was really not unhappy about dorm life in the States -- I absolutely fucking despise it here.

We took a taxi from the dorms to a bus station in Alexandria on Thursday afternoon, which was apparently not the brightest idea -- there is a mass exodus of everyone who works or studies in Alex back out to their hometowns on Thursdays, especially in the evenings. The bus station was like a bus barn, only much more enormous and packed full of people trying to hitch rides on the numerous microbuses that make the round trip a few times a day between here and the outlying areas. There was absolutely no room for us on any bus, so my roommate dialed in what I assume to be a favor from someone and got us three assured seats on the next microbus. It came in maybe half an hour -- in that half hour, no other bus to al-Dalingaat showed up, so by the time our ride appeared our part of the station was filled with other hopefuls. As the microbus pulled into the station, slowing down of course, people swarmed it. There was a literal mob surrounding the vehicle, as the sliding door was wrenched open and men crammed themselves into the opening in a desperate attempt to get home. There were a few ladies attempting to join the fray, but for some reason they were at the back of the line -- if I had been there, I would've used the elbows that God gave me and gotten to the head of the line. At any rate, the microbus stopped, the driver got out, screamed "TALAT BINAAT BAS" (three girls only) and threw all the newcomers off the bus. He spotted us, waved us in, and off we went.

We were dropped off more or less right in front of my roommate's house. It is a five story, pretty blue building with expansive apartments, a roof, a duck/miscellaneous fowl house, and an orchard, in addition to some goats and rabbits. The animal pens are disgusting, really -- I hate chickens anyway but those were evil demon chickens and I did not want to get near them. The goat area was full of bones and traces of blood, a generally scary place where I'm sure the goats had some pretty severe PTSD. The orchard was great, though -- there were guava and pomegranate trees, date palms, and some currently-nonproductive grapevines. I ate a bit of everything, excluding the imaginary grapes.

Our first meal there was the most delicious thing I have ever consumed. The ful and fresh bread were absolutely amazing, as was the mahshi (cabbage leaves stuffed with rice) -- screw everything else, I could subsist of those three home-cooked items for years and not get sick of it. My roommate's sister made our dinner and my god it was wonderful. She will forever hold a special place in my heart for her cooking abilities. That, and she reminded me a lot of my eldest sister, so I liked her anyway. All our meals were fabulous that weekend -- I will have wonderous dreams about it in the future, deprived as I am of any food with taste here in the women's dorms.

My roommate has an enormous family. There were at least seven children running around, and she had two brothers at least, in addition to her grandparents, cousins, and all the various spouses. Everyone lives in that one building, each family with their own apartments. We were on the second floor. The ground/first floor is where her grandparents live, I think, but it also doubles as the dining room and area for preparing food, so I guess it's sort of a social room more than anything else.

I slept under a mosquito net for the first time of my life and still came away with a total of fifteen mosquito bites, one of which swelled up into a blister almost immediately and proceeded to make my life miserable when it popped. I was also loaned a towel, which to my not-surprise was just as nonabsorbent as the other towel I bought here, which leads me to the conclusion that "fine Egyptian cotton products" are a myth, at least within in Egypt itself (export the good stuff, give the low-quality items to your own populace, amirite?).

Friday I awoke late, but not later than the rest of her family (nine thirty or so). I went into the bathroom and promptly held my bowels, because that toilet was easily the most frightening thing I've seen here in Egypt. I am of the belief that you can tell a lot about the governance of a country from the state of its bathrooms. Egyptian bathrooms are smelly, dirty, and generally not very efficient, much like the corrupt government. Anyway, I attempted to use my roommate's family's bathroom for the first time the night we arrived, and was scared away by the poo floating in the bowl that refused to flush. The next morning, it was still there, and it still refused to flush. The suction is not strong enough, I suppose, and solid items tend to just stick around, so to speak. Friday afternoon I returned to see if my luck had changed -- it did, sort of. Instead of one manageable poo there was an elephantine turd wedged in the bowl, one that I assume came from her father, and that made me... averse to using the restroom, as you might say. The next morning it was a pile of shit that would not go down. I don't know how they managed it, but dear lord, that was just the most awful thing to not crap for two days because of a terrifying toilet. You might say I'm a bit toilet shy.

Friday morning I met the members of her family who I hadn't met when we arrived. A guy I think is her cousin but could actually be her brother apologized for calling me not-American the night before, because I guess it's weird to see non-whites claiming to be Americans. He was a funny fellow, though, and I find it amusing when people can't figure out my nationality, so everything was all good. We hung around the house for the morning and early afternoon, and I listened to an Egyptian soap opera and the vehement anti-Semitic rhetoric being belted out from the nearby mosque speakers.

A word here, if I may. In Alexandria, and in Cairo, I have never heard any imams preaching anything anti-Semitic. In the countryside, however, it was clear as day. An interesting thing to note.

In the afternoon, we played Playstation with my roommate's cousin/brother, who then made us watch the Dark Knight and then took us out into their agricultural fields. We walked around for a bit, took a tour of the elementary school where my roommate's father teaches and where all the little spawnlings of her family go for routine government indoctrination, then returned to shoot the bull and get dragged around the neighborhood to be shown off to all the family friends. I drank more mango juice then than I ever have in my life (three full glasses) and since my brain was too tired to process any more Arabic I amused myself by marveling at the gaudy decorations and items that Egyptian houses seem to accumulate. I have always liked modern, streamlined, simple things that make a statement, and the trends in Egypt go exactly in the opposite direction. For example, my roommate's fiancee gave her a ring (not the wedding ring) -- it is gold, with a very large, awkward floral attachment covered in what looks like beaten silver. A very strange, flashy thing that looks to me something like I'd receive as a carnival prize.

As we were walking back to my roommate's house that night, she advised us not to walk in front of some men sitting in front of the auto shop next to her building, and instead walk on the road. Then she urged me to walk faster, faster! Not so slow, and no, don't look at the men. This was particularly irritating not only because I find this aspect of Arab culture personally offensive, but because it was so blatantly hypocritical -- my roommate spent the entire first night we arrived talking about how men in the country (especially in her village) were nothing like the rude, salacious men in the city, and how women in the country had none of the harassment issues that women in the city face. A case of the pot calling the kettle black?

Saturday morning I woke up earlier than the day before, way before any other family member. We ate breakfast quickly and left via microbus. From another small, country town we took a real bus back to Alexandria -- I promised in a previous post that I would not take a real bus, but there was no other way back to the city. And yes, for the record, buses are every bit as sketchy as I imagined them to be. My seat had holes in it that looked like a rat chewed through the fabric. What a rat would be doing in a bus, I do not know.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

road rules for the road crew

I promised a post on driving in Egypt, and there's no time like the present to write, considering tomorrow is a national Egyptian holiday and we have no classes. That doesn't mean I don't have work to do -- I merely am going to pull a traditional college student maneuver and procrastinate until tomorrow night.

Egypt is full of vehicles. Cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, rickshaws, carts, donkeys, camels, your own two feet; there are a lot of people who need to get around, and they take any way they can in order to get where they're going. Tons of people own their own cars, but they face the same grevious problem as the rest of the world: chronic shortage of parking spaces. There are cars lining the streets, packed in so tight I'm amazed they can even wiggle into those little spots. There are cars parked on corners, somehow defying the laws of physics and wrapping their otherwise solid bodies around the curved corners, with their sideview mirrors carefully folded in so as to not get removed by a third party. Cars are everywhere. I've only seen three designated parking lots since I've been here, and only was was nearly empty -- that's at Carrefour, where the parking lot is as big as the Sahara, like you'd expect at a Westernized shopping center (it's not exactly Nordstrom's, but it is Wal-Mart's biggest international competitor). Finding a space on the street sometimes entails a half hour circular drive around the block, stalking through miniscule side streets, hunting the elusive prey called Parking with ruthless abandon. It's a miracle people obey the no parking signs here -- I've seen some pretty illegal moves on the roads, but for some reason no one parks where they're not to supposed to. Sometimes, even they just won't park in a certain spot, but there are no signs or warnings, so perhaps it's an unwritten rule that I have yet to figure out.

Anything involving vehicles in Egypt, motorized or not, can be summed up in one sentence: he who has the bigger balls, goes first. Everything, and I mean everything, is a giant game of chicken between cars, bigger cars, buses, and pedestrians. Those who hesitate get cut off, pushed out, forced to wait, or die, and it's really sort of a toss up which outcome you end up with. The actual act of driving consists of a never-ending series of honks and jerky motions, as the raees (driver, sort of) weaves in and out of traffic with careless ease. Don't listen to what the Lonely Planet travel guide tells you -- unless you're on the big intercity highways, no one obeys the speed limit. I am beginning to think that speed limits in Alexandria proper are an apocryphal thing, since everyone I've ever been in a car with has chosen different kilometers per hour to drive, all of which have been equally pant-shitting. There are countless fender-benders on my street every day, let alone in Alexandria or even Egypt. If something happens, the drivers might get out, yell at each other in rapid Arabic, then get back in their cars and drive off -- there's no such thing as insurance, really, and even though people get some decent dents they don't seem to want to repair them.

To avoid accidents such as the above, people rely on honking instead of a system of traffic rules. As you approach an intersection, you start to honk -- hopefully other people will hear you and stop, and again, you play chicken. Someone cuts you off: honk. Someone wants to turn: honk. Speed not fast enough: honk. Celebrating a wedding: honk. Feeling like honking: honk. Karim said there was a system of meanings to go along with said antics, but I am fairly sure he's bullshitting. Of course, I have no idea, so maybe all the drivers who honk three times in rapid succession are, in fact, calling each other sheep fuckers, but that seems a little vulgar for an Islamic society, or at least my perhaps preconceived notions of how an Islamic society should behave.

More severe accidents are dealt with by ambulances, I assume. I have never seen one, and I really don't care to find out firsthand how these emergencies are dealt with. Now that Ramadan is over, there has been an exponential increase in the number of sirens I hear every day. Unfortunately, sirens and ambulance-ness don't really mean much here -- they might be given marginally more leeway in terms of the general mash of "me first" but largely, ambulances are relegated to sitting in traffic just like everyone else. Sirens wailing, lights flashing, but no one cares -- it's frightening, really, and frustrating. Don't other drivers know there's someone dying in the back?

(Speaking of "me first," I was in a fast food joint today, in the huge mess of people shouting their orders and waving money at the cashier, when lo and behold a woman comes up behind me to butt in front. Literally behind me -- she was way too close for comfort with her sweaty boobs pressed against my back, and when I not so politely cut off her means of wiggling in front, she proceeded to rest her arm on my shoulder while waving money at the cashier. What. The. Fuck. Honestly you fucking tart, I was here first, and while I understand that anything that has to do with lines in the U.S. turns into a veritable free-for-all in Egypt, I was five seconds from punching you in the face when the cashier took my money and told you to wait.)

Crossing streets is enormously dangerous, because the same traffic rules apply even though people are soft and fleshy whereas cars are not. Egyptians just walk right out into the road without too much of a care, and it's simply stunning how they manage to walk right across a busy road without getting run over by the cars who absolutely will not stop for anything save a brick wall. There are no cross-walks since people don't obey traffic lights. Sometimes there will be a policeman who will "direct" traffic, but most of the time you're stuck with attempting to cross on your own. It's best to find a group of people or at least a woman with a child, because no one wants to hit a kid. If you look semi-aged, you're fair game, because eighteen years of plenty of life and there's a dangerous population boom right now anyway.

Public transportation abounds. You can get a taxi to anywhere in Alexandria for two US dollars. Sometimes the driver will try to rip you off -- just get out of the cab and walk away. Cab drivers may also stop and pick up others along the way, so you may end up sharing a ride (you're free to tell him no, of course). You also have the option of riding the cheaper microbuses, but then you are forced to actually share with strangers and you're stuck with a set route that the driver chooses, usually along the Corniche. There are also real buses that patrol the streets, but I've never been on one and I don't really like the looks of them, so I may pass on that. There is also a tram that runs along one or two lines, which only costs 25 piastres (5 cents) but is slow and again, only takes you to certain places. Finding a friend with a car is a nice luxury, but obviously they don't always have time and parking is a bitch, so most of the time a taxi is the best idea.

On a related note, you can squeeze up to nine people in a VW Golf. This is not legal in the US.

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW

bait at-taalibaat or: why is there a grape in the shower?

I need something to do that will help me be Not Pissed, because certain events in the past few days seem to have sparked a downward spiral of my otherwise accomodating and largely accepting mood concerning life and other things in Egypt. It's not even Egypt that's bothering me; it's personal issues, but as I am currently without an outlet for my building rage it seems I am relegated to taking out my anger on the small things that would otherwise be merely annoying, but are now bad enough to make me want to punch someone in the face. I don't want to hate Egypt, but I am starting to severely resent the distance that keeps me from... nevermind. That's personal. That's between me and the problem, and the problem will be solved one way or another; by their hands or my own.

Bait at-Taalibaat, or the women's dorms, are located in a rather convienet location for us. One block from the Corniche/the sea and a handy little tunnel that allows users to skip the literally mortal perils of the street above, three or four blocks from the College of Literature, a few more from the Library of Alexandria, and one block from McDonald's -- all in all, not a bad place to stick a dormitory. In addition to its proximity to all of the above (and the tram line, which passes right in front of Mickey D's), there are also several helpful little stores scattered along the walk between our rooms and the university. There is a fruit shop with a helpful young man who prays a lot (you can tell from the callus on his forehead); a bakery with delicious sweets and a man who makes fun of me for not being able to do quick mental math; a pharmacy where you can buy almost any type of medicine without a prescription and for half or even a third of the price of US meds; and a bunch of other little convenience stores peddling Chipsy, bottles of water, juice, and soda, candy, folders, paper, and refillable Vodafone credit. All in all, you don't really need to go far to find what you're looking for, which is pretty nice.

The medina (another name for the dorms) itself is a collection of large, squat concrete buildings. Outside, there is a guard shack with one policeman (out of a group of three that I've met), who usually sits under the shade of the adjacent trees with a group of who I assume are his friends, and does little else but watch people walk by. Theoretically, he is there to ensure that only those people who belong enter the dorms, but really if you look like you know where you're going, you won't meet with any resistance at all. He doesn't even have a key to the dorms, which is mildly confusing and a bit annoying for the following reason:

We have a curfew. It's not really enforced, so to speak, but it does exist in the nebulous book of unwritten rules that we occasionally hear about, get yelled at for, and then promptly forget. When we leave at night, however, we have to make a stop at what passes for the front office and tell the group of women (who usually wear rather disapproving looks and make it really seem like you're pulling them away from a more important, imaginary task) where you are going and how long you will be gone. They lock the only exit that I know of at night, which can range from anywhere between eight to eleven pm. If you come back later, you need to have one of the women inside unlock the door for you when you return, so if you tell them you're coming back at midnight, you'd better be back at midnight or they might not come to let you in. The door only locks from the inside, and up until yesterday it didn't even have a working handle, so it's necessary for the ladies to let us in and out. Guards don't have keys. That seems like a silly thing for a guard to not have, but then again Egypt works in very odd ways and I suppose in a way it might be considered improper for a man, heaven forbid, to have a way into the women's dorms.

Not that anyone except the Americans walks around downstairs without wearing a hijab, anyways.

There are several parts to the dorms. We seem to be in the only building with air conditioning in the rooms and maybe even the only elevator. If you look out the windows you can see other girls and their laundry, flapping in the breeze, unobstructed by the enormous air conditioning unit that impedes our ability to dry our clothes outside. Now that classes have begun at the university, the dorms are full of students and I've run into tons of girls who I have never seen before. We don't talk.

We, our program, live on floors five and six in our building. There are a set of stairs that can take you up rather quickly to your floor, since the stairs are not very big and they're rather easy to climb, but in this weather and after class it's usually just not worth it. What makes the stairs necessary, however, is the fact that the elevator will break if there are more than five students in it (which makes us feel very fat indeed), and the fact that women here will call the elevator, open the door, and then sit and talk to other people for up to half an hour, thus preventing the elevator from going anywhere else and therefore anyone else from using it. It's rather funny, though, because Egyptians will wait forever for the elevator and bitch when it doesn't come, but will for some reason refuse to take the stairs unless there is no alternative. I've made it a goal to take the stairs at least once a day, which seems like a little thing but really, it's harder than it seems. The elevator is gold colored with etchings of hieroglyphics on two of the walls, and a full-length mirror in the back -- it also has better lighting than anywhere else in the medina, which makes me somewhat jealous but then again I hate that mirror.

Each floor has a salon with sofas and usually a TV, but there's no guarantee that there will be enough plugs for the TV and satellite box at the same time, so unless you have a power strip you probably won't be able to watch anything. Floor six stole our power strip, so we've been without shitty Arab soap operas for the last two weeks. Internet works sporadically, here -- during the day it's usually fine, but at night it gets iffy and lots of times the net just ceases to work, period. Sometimes it only works in the salon, sometimes it only works on floor six, and sometimes we all just pack up and head to McDonalds to use Google translate. There is also a fridge on our floor and a drying rack, which comes in handy for the obvious reasons. In Egypt, however, we do our laundry both more and less than in the States -- more because every week or so it's necessary to wash our clothes, but less in the fact that I've been wearing the same pants for the last five days and I'm probably going to get one more wear out of them before I admit that maybe it's time to switch. Therefore, there is always something on the drying rack, and since it takes a day or so to fully dry, there's usually some sort of struggle going on for dominance of the available space.

The washing machines are located in the bathrooms. There is one on each floor, which is nice, but I guess someone didn't think too hard about it and for a week or so there was only one machine for the whole building, since the others were present but the power cords were about two feet too short. Floor six has very tall doors and walls in the bathroom -- ours are shorter, but both feel rather cramped. There's a wall of sinks with soap for the first week, but now that we're out of soap we don't know who to ask for more and it's rapidly becoming apparent that this is going to present a problem before too long. Somehow, hair has wound up in the sinks, and has clogged some of them up -- while it's an easy problem to fix, it's enormously disgusting (I hate hair that has been shed) and I'm sort of worried that no one else will have the motivation to fix the issue. One of the toilets in the floor five bathroom is very weak and tends to clog, so most of us use the one remaining functional toilet. For some reason, though, someone on our hall doesn't like to flush, and I've occasionally been walking in on some rather unpleasant views for the past month. The showers present the age-old problem of too-hot, too-cold -- you can either have a lukewarm shower or burn your skin off, or you can do what I do and alternate between the two options in a desperate attempt at comfort. There was a grape in the shower a few nights ago, which I do not understand, but I am not going to try because again, this is Egypt.

Our rooms are doubles -- for the most part, one Egyptian and one American. I found myself in a very large room, comparatively speaking, and it's not too shabby. There is adequate closet space (far more than back at college in the States) and we get desks and chairs. We also get beds (obviously) but they are, perhaps, not the best in the world. Mine has a massive crater in the middle, which I solved by slipping one of my pillows underneath the mattress. The pillows, now, are really just plain bad -- the only thing worse than my pillow would have been if they just gave us bricks to put our heads on. Even those square Chinese pillows would be preferable to these ones. Any future students would be well advised to bring their own, if possible -- we've all developed neck and back problems from the sleeping conditions, here.

Food in the medina is okay. I don't know what Egyptian food is supposed to taste like, and I guess the quality here is passable (it's edible, at least), so I don't have many complaints. Vegetables as a general category of food don't really exist here, though, so for my nutrition I'm forced to rely on a few slices of tomato and maybe two or three slices of carrots a day, max. That's a little worrying. Otherwise, there's always tons of carbs and usually some sort of meat. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, for some bizarre reason -- I eat four hard boiled eggs, one or two pieces of bread dipped in honey or fig jam (I LOVE FIG JAM), some yoghurt if it's available, and a mug of tea. Best food I get. Don't know why -- maybe it's because of the familiarity, or maybe just because I wake up ravenous every morning. Who knows.

The roof is the best part of the medina, though. From the roof, you are gifted with a spectacular view of Alexandria and the Mediterranean -- we can even see the line of ships out at sea, heading for the Suez Canal. Sunsets on the roof are amazing, and by that time of day it's generally very nice, temperature-wise, so it's a good time to head up and take a breath of fresh (ish) air. We plan on having a girls' night up there this weekend -- cheap bottle of wine, expensive cheese, and good bread, and nothing but the English language. Getting the wine up there will be the hard part -- while there's a liquor store just down the street, alcohol is absolutely forbidden in the dorms (Islam and all that) and we don't want to get ourselves or the program in trouble. But then again, some of the boys have had gin in their rooms for the last few weeks without a problem, although I'm sure they've been stashing it out of sight.

Well, now that I've successfully written another dry and uninteresting passage about living conditions in the dorms (I haven't really scratched the surface of it), I am going to write an equally dry and uninteresting passage about why Islamic countries failed to modernize to the extent that Western ones did. Hopefully I'll have it done by dinner, in time to do my other piles of work (still piles -- the program director decreed that we'd have less work, but we have yet to witness this prophesied miracle and are beginning to doubt its veracity).

another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say

another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast

WE ARE THE ROAD CREW