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