Upon the arrival of the esteemed Mr. Razi.

Gentle readers.

Tomorrow begins my first day of vacation, marking almost precisely my 3-month anniversary in the city of sand and smog.
Lovely as my life has been here, it’s about damn time.

Cairo, I find, is a month-at-a-time kind of city. Cairenes will tell you the same. It wasn’t until yesterday, accompanied down the busy streets by the long-anticipated and esteemed Mr. Razi, that I realized just how loud the city is. When you’re shouting to someone walking 6 inches away from you and you still can’t hear what they’re saying, you know that the New York Times wasn’t lying when they rated Cairo as the loudest city in the world. The decibel level equivalent of standing 15 feet away from a freight train, to be precise. No wonder people here down sugary tea and cigarettes by the fistful—horns blaring night and day makes you edgy after a while.

So, a break is much welcomed. Here’s to hoping that this week’s adventures will be tamer than the Weekend at the Crackhouse—or, at least, that we aren’t threatened with swords at any point on our journeys.

This weekend will likely find us at the desert oasis of Siwa, famous for its unique Bedouin culture, hot springs, and date palm groves.

In an aside, Ramadan is one big date fest (as in the fruit, right). I never really took to them the last time I was here, as their color, size, and texture reminded me a bit too much of cockroaches. This Ramadan, though, I realized with the rest of the world that they are delicious. At the moment, I’m completely inundated with them, however. On Monday, I bought a half kilo of dried and fresh dates to snack on and share with Nod. On Tuesday, the delegation from the UAE bought everyone in my department (and possibly in the entire building?) a kilo of dates from the Persian gulf. As much as I like them, I’m not sure anyone needs quite that many.

As I was musing over my surplus of dates yesterday with my co-workers, they suggested that I 1. Fry them and 2. Then put them on top of scrambled eggs. What?! But, I gave it a shot this morning. I’m not sure it’s necessary to mix them with the scrambled eggs, but fried dates are delicious, and—sugar coated and fried—strikes me as predictably Egyptian.

In fact, I’m coming to realize just how much my tastes have been adapted to the sugar and grease (actually, make that sugar and lard—the preferred cooking oil here) of Egyptian food. Nod and I stopped by a Ramadan tent last night to break the fast after sunset. I asked the waiter what they had to eat, and he rattled off a list of dishes, too fast for me to keep straight. “Um…let’s have rice, pita bread, and cucumber tomato salad… what else do you have?”
“Kebab, chicken, pigeon…”
Done. Two pigeons, please.
Our little friends arrived with heads (and eyes) fully intact, but bodies stuffed with brown rice. Not really any meat to be eaten off these guys, and I was a little unnerved when I suddenly found a detached pigeon head staring back at me on my plate. But, all in all, not bad.
Nod was finished long before me—citing smaller Ethiopian portions and the large amount of grease Egyptians cook with for a full stomach. I was still ravenously hungry, picking at the rice and fried eggplant and hummus until the waiter started stacking up the tables in the street and looked like he wanted us to leave. Fine—one last chunk of pita bread, and we were off.

I had a small, gnawing headache all day, though, which persisted after dinner as well. I had drunk plenty of water that day, so I wondered aloud if perhaps I needed some more sugar. After all, I hadn’t really eaten that much today. Nod looked at me incredulously. “What about the two glasses of pineapple-coconut juice and the sweet tea you drank?”
“Oh, right. But I meant that maybe I hadn’t had enough sugar at regular intervals today.”
Nod just shook his head. Take that, Rift Valley—let’s see who’s really the king of Type II Diabetes.

Further proof of BAMF-ness

Yesterday I stepped out onto my balcony in the morning before work, drinking a cup of tea and feeling out the weather for the day. "Wow, it feels kind of hot today," I thought--but then again, it's at least 80 every day, so this is nothing new. I put on khakis and a V-neck cotton sweater, and headed off to work on the shaded side of the street. A little swack when I arrived at the office, but nothing major--but then again, no one gives that a second glance here. Happens to the best of us.

It wasn't until I stepped outside around 8pm and was hit with a wall of hot air that I began to really think about the weather--it normally cools off around 5pm or so.

We checked the forecast online-- 100 degrees today in Cairo. Yep, and I wore a sweater, no problem. What now, Egypt? I can take you. 

Egyptian grooming.

Culturally, there's nothing you can take for granted. From meal times to bed times, gestures and non-words ("uh" means "yes" here, biting your thumb at someone simply means that they're stingy, not that you're insinuating something unseemly about their mother), from feminine hygiene to shaving, everything is different than what you'd expect.

Take the razor, for instance. Ordinary. You couldn't find a more normal bathroom accessory, for men or women. For generations, the razor has been the veritable symbol of the everywoman feminist movement, suddenly marketed in pink when women's armpits and legs became public space (1920s-1950s) and, for most women, hairless. Now, while some women may opt for laser hair removal or waxing, they're the exception to the norm. What do American women do? They shave.

When I told my host family that I shaved my legs, they just about fell over. "Like a man??" they gaped, incredulously. Now, men here often go to the barber to be shaved with a straight razor, so I might have been conjuring up much more fearsome images in their mind.

But, needless to say, women here don't shave. They wax. Everything. Neck, hands, feet, everything. It's not wax, exactly—Egyptians make this sugar mixture that does the trick, called "Sweet"—which makes sense if you think about the ingredients, not if you think about the stinging pain that it brings.

It's roughly a once-a-month ritual for the family, which is about how long it takes for the hair to come back. Today is the 16 year old's first day of school, so Um Hani whipped up a batch of Sweet in honor of the occasion, and I participated in my first ever waxing fest.

It should also be mentioned that Egyptian standards for appropriate body hair are different. Ever since spotting my forearms—which are perfectly fine by American standards, thank you—my Egyptian family has been dying to wax them. "Man! Man!" they say, pointing at the blondish hair on my arms.

So, yesterday I submitted myself to the Sweet, only as far as my arms were concerned. I now feel Dolphin-esque and aerodynamic—awesome. The family was pumped. "See? Now you are white and smooth." At the time, my skin was blotchy red and covered in bits of honey-wax, so I couldn't quite appreciate.

Headscarf article

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2008/09/20089812812445443.html

An interesting article from al-Jazeera about the veil in Cairo, in all of its social and religious varieties.

Alissa's Axis of Evil.

Three months into my post as Intrepid Intern, many of you have sought my budding expert political opinion.
"Alissa," you ask, "in your opinion, what should the candidates be doing about the Transcendent Threat Of Our Time?"
Ah yes, the Transcendent Threat Of Out Time (or TOOT, as it were). Every candidate is eager to show how they could best protect us from it, despite widely varying definitions for what, precisely, is threatening us.
For McCain, Islamo-Fascism is enemy #1 (extra points when pronounced with a Texan twang, or if you're Dr. Ferreiro). For Obama, Pessimism and Despair battle daily against the agents of Hope and Audacity.

In response, I've decided to name my own Axis of Evil, the Unholy Trinity, the almighty TOOT.
Today, I announce to you the true Agents of Evil: the stovetop, the ironing board, and—the newest member of my enemy list—the washing machine.

I have already recounted to you, O upstanding citizens, the evil of the stove (see July 10th entry), and the treacherous vengeance of the iron (see September 14th). Yesterday, as if to prove that the universe is indeed conspiring against me, the washing machine joined their ranks.

An 11 year veteran of washing my own clothes, I have never seen such an ungodly disaster. Two of my favorite clothing items—white pants and a cream colored sweater—were both in need of washing (ironically, my sweater because of tomato stains from cooking, thank you very much). Still saturated with Seattle environmental sensibilities, I felt guilty about running such a small load, and began to scout about for other white clothing that might need a quick cleaning.

My great new white shirt with brown embroidery (see September 13th) hadn't been washed yet, so I decided to throw it in. Now, I knew that there was a chance the brown thread might bleed a little bit, so I made sure to use cold water and turned the shirt inside out. Oh yes, I have washing machine skills and savvy, thank you.

I turned on the washing machine and went out for a fantastic evening spent with my SPU friends Brittalisa and Emily, showing them my favorite outdoor café and hearing about their semester in the Middle East thus far. We spent an hour outside, drinking tea and yogurt, and enjoying the sound of Ramadan streamers zigzagged across the alleyway as they fluttered in the wind.

I came home around 11:30, and went to hang my clean clothes on the line. I popped open the door to the washing machine, suddenly confused. Who put their clothes in after mine? Instead of my white sweater and pants and such, I found a pink shirt and some other unidentifiable articles. One of my roommates must have moved my clothes out already to put hers in. I checked the line—it was empty. No clothes were drying in the living room. Where were my clothes?

I checked the washing machine again, still very confused. I began pulling out these peachy, pink, and salmon colored shirts, still not realizing what I held in my hand. Suddenly spotting a tag that I recognized as my own, I looked in sudden horror at the textile massacre before me. My white sweater: rose pink. My white pants: peach. No, no, God, it can't be! I started rummaging around, looking for the offending culprit.
Finally I realized: the brown thread of my beloved American-Student-Abroad-Feigning-African-Roots shirt, the one my roommate had mocked only days before.

I angrily consigned the shirt to the hell of my wastebasket, and set about bleaching my pants in futile desperation.

If it's any consolation, I know that even if I am doomed to a complete bachelor's lifestyle for the foreseeable future, I'll at least have scrambled eggs, snickers, and my new pink sweater to comfort me. But, lest anyone think I'm suggesting to "cut and run": I will pursue you to the gates of hell and the caves of Afghanistan, O Axis of Domestic Evil. Washing Machine: You're on notice.

But then, while walking to work this morning, I watched a man go out of his way to help walk an old lady across several busy lanes of traffic. If my confidence in household appliances has taken a plunge as of late, my confidence in humanity and the generosity of Egyptian culture makes up for it.

Shattered glass and angry cab drivers.

I could not have guessed yesterday morning—an inauspicious day begun with off-brand Rice Krispies and a v-necked sweater—that I would be covered in broken glass and shouting "I didn't do anything!" in a crowded Egyptian vegetable market by 3pm that afternoon. But then, life is always full of surprises.

I was supposed to meet my friend Nesma at her work in the Giza neighborhood—a busy, congested part of the city cut by two major streets, with shopping districts and neighborhoods tumbling off to either side. She had given me the address, and I had a rough idea of where it was. So I took the metro to the closest stop and planned to hail a cab from there.

The Faysal metro stop is a bit chaotic to get out of: a market place and a busy intersection are both crushed against the side of the building, leaving little room to navigate between banana vendors and oncoming traffic.

I stopped to buy a kilo of bananas, since Nesma and I would be joining her aunt for 'breakfast.' The man kept trying to give me the squished bananas and hassled me about giving me correct change. It was hot. Microbuses and tuktuks kept swerving uncomfortably close. 2 hours before the end of the day's fast and in the full sun, all of us were a little irritable.

Bananas stowed safely away in my purse, I began to hunt for a cab. In Cairo, 1 in every 3 cars seems to be a taxi, thanks to a recent government law that lets anyone with a spare car and some black and white paint hit the streets to earn some extra money. At the Faysal station, however, there were inexplicably few taxis coming by, and all of them were full. One free taxi driver wanted 40 pounds for the ride—10 times the fair price. I began to think about calling Nesma to cancel.

Finally, an empty taxi came by. I shouted out the address to the driver, who motioned me in. He unlocked the door for me. I opened it, sat inside, tucking my oversized purse safely beside me. I gingerly shut the door.
The moment the latch clicked, the entire window cracked and crumbled down shards of broken glass over me, the taxi floor, and the street outside. It was like a special effect in a movie—the sound of tinkling glass, and then an empty space where the window used to be.
"Well, that sucks," thought I, not believing for a moment that the breaking of the glass could possibly have anything to do with my gentle shutting of the door. I glanced at the driver. He seemed non-plussed. "Well, nothing we can do about it now," I thought to myself again, and proceeded to repeat the address I wanted to the driver.
He responded by calling me something—I'm not sure what, but undoubtedly something not to be translated in polite company. After crossing the intersection, he pulled over. I got out, said goodbye, and began walking away.
He caught up with me sometime near the dried dates stand, by now waving his arms and shouting loudly. Six or seven bystanders immediately came over to see what the matter was.

Now, it's a simple thing to know enough of a language to dig yourself into a whole, or stick your foot in your mouth (if you want to mix metaphors), but something else entirely to be able to talk your way out of trouble. In this, my Arabic had heretofore been untested. Luckily, the words didn't fail me—even it if did involve my rather inarticulate and repeated insistence that "I didn't do anything!" Prompted by the bystanders' questions, I was able to explain my case to their satisfaction. In the meantime, the taxi driver kept angrily punching numbers into his cellphone, as if to convince us that he was going to call someone to prove to me what was what. Who he could possibly call or what that was going to prove was a mystery to any of us.
Our street arbitrators, acting as Judge Judy and jury all in one, decided I didn't owe him any money, and forcibly separated us and made us walk in opposite directions.

I went inside the metro station, called Nesma, and told her that if she wanted to see me, she was going to have to come get me—I wasn't about to the pile of broken glass to flag down another cab. Minus a small shard of glass I discovered in my big toe walking to work this morning, I weathered my first street fight in Egypt just fine.

Domestic dysfunction.

As if the universe needed more proof of my domestic inabilities: 

I decided on Saturday night that I was going to face the facts. A world without dryers is a world that requires ironing in order to show up at work and retain the respect of my colleagues and co-workers. 

(With a combination of quick re-heats in the dryer and gallons of Downy wrinkle-release spray, I'm not sure I wielded an iron in the past 5 years of independent living. )

Inspired by an impromptu apartment cleaning--in honor of the fact that all 4 of my roommates were miraculously home at the same time--I decided to bite the bullet and iron all of my work shirts in one go.

Our apartment came complete with a 1960's iron--no steam function, just 15 pounds of don't-mess-with-me-metal, the kind of iron that the term "blunt object" undoubtedly was coined for in murder trials. I'd say that I hate the iron, but the truth is, it's more that I'm afraid of it.

And, ok, ok, I managed to burn a shirt with it a few weeks ago, so I have a small grudge against it and was eager to vindicate myself. The iron apparently wasn't ready to settle the score--no, it's angling for a full-on blood feud. 

I finished the first shirt without incident. To be honest, I was a little proud of it.

I moved onto the second shirt, meanwhile chatting along happily with my roommates.

I should mention that I wasn't wearing pants.

In one innocent moment, looking up to laugh along with something a roommate said, I felt the sudden sizzling of flesh. Yes, right there on my hip bone, a mere inch or two away from my last burn in Egypt (a chemical burn from 2 years ago), an errant motion of my hand had pressed the side of the 5-ton iron against my leg.

Two days later, it's turned into a blistered, welted purple stripe of shame.  I saw this as proof that I was never intended to be a domestic woman. My roommates insist that this is proof you should do your ironing with pants on. Potatoes, Patatas. 

Awkwardly unfashionable moments.

We have now reached that stage in ex-pat living where we can no longer distingush between stylish/exotic and downright ugly. Our wardrobes are beginning to resemble the 50+ year old art teachers and librarians who--once fashionably sensible, I'm sure--now dress only in watercolor silk skirts and single-handedly support the "decorative pins and brooches" sector of the fashion industry. In the same way, my roommates and I are now in danger of haphazardly living somewhere in the netherworld between American and Egyptian fashion, tragically failing to dress ourselves properly in either.

The four of us (unlike all of my hipster friends in Seattle, my roommates and I have yet to name ourselves [G8] or our place of residence [drama house, the barn, our house--I'm looking at you]) took the metro an hour south to go shopping at some very local (ie, cheap) stores in the neighborhood of Helwan. While our fashion sense may be eroding, our Middle Class American penchant for sales racks has not. 

Egyptians dress to the motto of "Go big or go home." As I have mentioned before, headscarves are one outlet for their affection for all things multi-colored, sequined, and hyper-coordinated. But clothing takes this principle and carries it out to the nth degree: shockingly tight low-cut shirts to be layered over turtlenecks, super-ruffled dresses worn over matching pants, tunic shirts with beads and embroidery, wide skirts that touch the ground, sequined jackets to match a sequined flowery pant suit. If you want a piece of flair, you've got it. 

The other catch: nothing comes in a size small. Nope, not a thing. At first, my roommates and I assumed this was for modesty--and I think there's something to that. Even really skinny girls here generally wear things a little bit big (unless they're doing that tight-shirt-over-turtleneck trick, which is a big hit with high school girls. Extra gutsy if you're we

aring a skin-colored turtleneck).

Then we realized the other truth: most Egyptian women are not size small. No, we are in a country of healthy eaters who prize round (and as pale as possible) faces. Not too many petites around. Having lost 7 pounds or so since I arrived, this has fated me to look a bit frumpy in slightly over-sized clothing. 

But it was as we were picking through the rows of fluttering skirts and rayon tunics, we found ourselves drawn to clothes that were uncomfortably limboed between fashion sensibilities. 

At one point, I spotted a tunic shirt with brown embroidery on it. Love at first sight.

"What do you think of this?" I excitedly asked K. She burst out laughing.

"Uh...well, I would never wear it."

"What do you mean you would never wear it? It's beautiful!" I protested.

"In that 'I'm an American student abroad trying to pretend I'm an African' kind of way." 

I bought it anyway. 

After our shopping trip--complete with a few other similarly awkward purchases--we spent the evening in Maasara to attend a two-week festival at the local Orthodox monastery. While relaxing with the family at their home and waiting for the weather to cool off a bit, I tried to teach the host mom how to thumb wrestle. She didn't really take to it, but 16

 year-old Sara was a natural.

The mom then challenged me to arm wrestle. I should mention that she was arm wrestling me laying down, which should have given me an extra advantage--and, as a former power lifter and avid swing dancer, I'm used to having a bit better upper body strength 

than most women.

She had me down in one second flat. Raising 4 children and 3 grandchildren, washing, cleaning, and cooking by hand--and outweighing me by a solid 50 or 60 pounds, she is 

a force to be reckoned with. Kirsten captured the moment: 

The monastery was beautiful. Hundreds of people were streaming into the large church complex, which would make it the largest group of non-Muslims I've ever be

en in within Egypt. It was strange to suddenly feel a bit in the majority (though as a white foreigner, that feeling wasn't quite complete). Along with rows of stands selling homemade candy, fresh roasted peanuts, dried fruit, and monk-made artisan crafts, we were also serenaded by the loud buzzing of 3 tattoo stands. Could you imagine that at an Evangelical mega church? Maybe at Mars Hill, just to show that they were, you know, tough and edgy.  But hey--want a tattoo of Mary, or maybe the Orthodox Archbishop? Walk right up. 

We staked out a patch of the dirt road as our own and laid out a blanket to sit on (bits of garbage blowing by not bothering us in the slightest) and set ourselves to enjoy an evening of people watching and browsing the monastery gift shop (i bought a nice icon for 85 cents). The family was deliberately trying to keep a low profile, though, knowing that 4 American girls were going to attract a bunch of attention. (Think Midwest 4th of July street fair, and you'd have a sense of the atmosphere. Lots of families enjoying a pleasant evning, but also lots of packs of adolescent boys wandering about free from adult supervision)

Despite our best efforts to stay out of sight, however, a man wandered over and approached Um Hani. "Where are they from?" he asked. Now, I couldn't follow all of the conversation, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of what I'm about to say. But after a few exchanges, he began to cross himself repeatedly. "This is a holy place," he said--seemingly implying that the presence of wanton American women was polluting the monastery.

Now, if I actually had the power to defile an entire monastery complex--which fills up a half mile x half mile area and houses several nuns and monks--I'd be pretty impressed with myself. Somehow, I don't think my sins are worse than anyone elses in the area, blue eyes and an American flag or otherwise. I was a bit amused. 

Today I proudly wore my brown embroidered shirt and did our weekly vegetable shopping at the Saturday markets with my roommate J. Since I don't do much cooking, I haven't actually participated in the weekly ritual yet. Toting around a few kilos of tomatoes, rice, and eggplants, I felt pretty BAMF. That is, until I couldn't understand the zuccini vendor when he asked me to grab 2 more zucc's to make a kilo, but whatev. Can't win them all. 

Pictures from the crackhouse.

Pictures from the crackhouse can finally be viewed here: 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044153&id=42900626

Hard news.

I found out today that my mom's breast cancer is back, after 7 years of remission. Right now everyone is confident that a masectomy will take care of it--no chemo or radiation should be necessary. My parents told me to stay in Egypt for the time being; there's no much that I can really do by coming home. 

Please keep us in your prayers. 

Upon which Alissa relies upon the great "Inshah Allah".

While I've known this would happen since Day One in Egypt, it occurred to me today that I will soon be unemployed, and I have no idea what will come next.

My internship, which I have enjoyed so much, was always intended to be temporary: two months long, actually, to be exact. So I've already beaten the odds by being granted an extension (from the secretary general hisself, thank you). Instead of leaving September 1st, I've been allowed to stay "for the American election."
Note the diplomatic speak: not until the election, but simply for the election, which did deliberately leave the door open for my internship to be extended still further.

Still, facts must be faced: unless they decide to forsake their 50 year policy on hiring non-Arabs, this internship will inevitably end. A quick job search on google reveals what I already knew—that unless you're highly proficient in oral and written Arabic, you can't be all that useful. Duh.

Not that this signals the end of my stay in Egypt. Even if the work is less stimulating, my English teaching gig actually pays me, and will afford me more time to study oral and written Arabic so that I can someday take the jobs that I'd like to.

My disappointment stems from a wounded ego more than anything else: it's nice to march off to the office every day and be able to tell taxi drivers that no, I am not another f.o.b. student at the American University in Cairo. Having credentials to wave about in the streets is endlessly satisfying, and helps me feel more at home. And, to be honest—with the insights afforded me at my internship and my relationships with my colleagues—I am more at home as a result of my day job. I'm sad to lose all of that, along with the work I find so satisfying. Likely no one else will give me a job like this until I have a Ph.D. in my hand.

Sigh. So, what next? Grad school is sounding best, though the idea of taking my GREs and writing applications from Cairo is daunting. But, if something else holds my attention here in Egypt for another year, that's fine, too. With a nice community here to be a part of, there's no need to run off too quickly.

So, for now, all of this is in God's hands. What can we say, but 'inshah Allah'?

Ramadan: Pros and Cons

Ramadan greetings again, gentle readers.
Now, not to be repetitive ("Yes, Alissa, we've already had the "Ramadan Special" post"), but Ramadan Egypt is simply not the same as ordinary Egypt, and is the cause of much reflection and new experiences. Imagine you were an (insert nationality) exchange student in America, and it was Thanksgiving every day for a month, over and over again. You'd find more than a few things to write home about.

Today I bring you the pros and cons of Ramadan.

Pro: There is now always toilet paper in our carefully rationed and usually TP-less bathroom at work, since, uh, fasting people seem to use the bathroom less often.
Con: I know this because I now eat my lunch in the bathroom stall every day.

Pro: There is a steady stream of invitations to eat homemade, 7 course meals in the homes of Egyptian friends: great food, and no grocery shopping or cooking for me.
Con: Type II diabetes and lethal blood pressure by Christmas.

Pro: Men are generally more well-behaved during the day, reducing the usual stream of catcalls to a mere and manageable trickle.
Con: Large packs of men roam the streets all night, eating and smoking and generally making up for their daytime discretion.

Pro: The month is full of evening concerts, boat rides, walks along the Nile, holiday discounts, and celebrations.
Con: I haven't slept in 5 days, neither has the rest of the country, and sleep-deprived fasting people on hot afternoons are a bit touchy to deal with, to say the least.

Pro: Work ends a half hour early, to give everyone ample time to get home and prepare for "breakfast" at sunset.
Con: We need 4 hours to get home because the whole country is doing the same thing. You have never seen traffic gridlock until you have 20 million hungry people in a city without adequate infrastructure all scrambling to get home first.

Pro: It's well understood that not everyone will be fasting—Christians, children, people with health problems, and so on—so I can enjoy the festive atmosphere without feeling awkward.
Con: Politeness dictates that those who aren't fasting are still discreet. I hide behind a bush last weekend to scarf my eggplant and mashed potato sandwich undetected.

Of course, there are other little things: seeing the decorations in the streets (which include lots of brightly colored lanterns and slit plastic bags to make a kind of streamer effect) is lovely, the skyrocketing price of food (classic supply/demand pressure) is not. Ample opportunity to discuss religion with my Egyptian friends, both Christian and Muslim, is great. Missing my usual afternoon Nescafe break at work is not.
Just a few notes from Egypt.

Alissa, in Egypt?

After eating my second Ramadan "breakfast" in a series of four in a row that I have been invited to this week, I have the sense of being a calf fattened for slaughter.

Friday night was spent with several of my co-workers in a poor neighborhood near the pyramids. The table was heaped with meat, soup, bread, salad, and plates of this fantastic sticky coconut dessert. Despite the Egyptians' best efforts, however, my stomach remains obstinately too small to possibly digest everything they pile onto my plate. Happily, the family on Friday was eventually convinced with my cries of "I'm full! I'm happy! Please, no more!" and they let me stop eating before my stomach ruptured.

Last night, however, they would not take "no" for an answer. Visiting the family of a beloved female co-worker (Sally, a feisty and complex character with impeccable English, who would be a natural friend no matter what country I encountered her in), I was made to eat the following over the course of two hours:

Dates in hot milk, 2 large pieces of rabbit, lentil soup, a garlic leafy soup, meat turnovers, cucumber yogurt salad, rice with pasta mixed in it, grape leaves stuffed with rice, eggplants stuffed with rice, homemade pita bread, 2 scoops of ice cream, pancakes soaked with corn syrup and filled with whipped cream, 7-up, fruit juice, and Egyptian tap water (so far, so good on that front).

"Full" doesn't even begin to describe it. The mix of excruciating pain from overly-full bellies and pleasure from eating delicious food with friends is all part of the joy of Ramadan.

On another point, which I am soon to relate back to my tales of digestive festivities:

Many of you have asked me, "Now, Walter, you're the kind of girl who's always hung with the guys, who has had no scruples about wearing mini skirts on a Christian campus, smoking cigars, or hashing out politics over a beer. You've been rankled by relatively softcore gender roles pushed in certain Christian circles. What in the world are you going to do in a Muslim country with conservative and explicit gender roles?"

Now, depending on the person who's asking, I might instead counter by busting myths about gender in Egypt—how women attend university in droves, work as professionals, drive and dress with more freedom than most in the West imagine when they think of majority-Muslim countries—implying that gender is hardly a constraint to me as I go about my daily life.

Now, that is somewhat true. On the one hand, gender roles here are different than what the West assumes. It's also true that as a foreigner and a Christian who appears to be "upper class" within the society, I am not held to the same standards as most Egyptian women. Without Egyptian parents to keep an eye on my honor, I freely associate with Egyptian guy friends, walk about by myself at night, and shrug off questions about my marital status without too much worry.

The truth is, though, that all of these things stack against my reputation here. Even with the extra dispensation afforded to me by the culture for being a foreigner, I'm sure that our door man thinks that we're running a brothel upstairs, and without a doubt there's more than one circle in Cairo that considers me a "bad" woman.

Sally and I spoke frankly last night about Egyptian standards for women, and the conflicting set of expectations that I face as being both a foreigner, but a woman who's living here for the long term.

Sally has a university degree and works full time. Nevertheless, she must come straight home from work, isn't allowed to meet up with girlfriends outside the house, and can't even discuss male colleagues in front of her father without creating problems. I had invited her to come to my apartment before, but she wasn't allowed to go. Sally's parents are overly strict, even within the Egyptian context, but the attitudes underlying their rules are absolutely the norm.

As Sally described it: unmarried women should mostly stay in the house, be quiet and obedient, and help with cooking and cleaning. Once they're married, they should stay in the house, be quiet and obedient, and do the cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. In this view, there's not a lot of incentive to permit your daughters to run about in the streets, especially with the risk of shame and poor reputations that could be acquired in the process.

In another example, my 16 year old host sister was recently embroiled in a small-scale scandal. She was in the street with two girl friends from school. One of the other girls began talking to a boy that she knew that drove by in his car. Someone from my host sister's church saw Sara standing near a girl who was talking to a boy in the street, and began spreading rumors that Sara was a "bad woman." Never mind that Sara herself wasn't actually talking to a boy, or that talking to a boy in the street is something even worthy of scandal. It was enough that Sara and her mother had to go and confront this church member in the attempt to set the record straight—lest the family's reputation take a hit or Sara have difficulty getting married in a few years.

In contrast, while eating "breakfast" with several male co-workers on Friday (and the only female coworker in attendance), I smoked in front of our host's Egyptian family, crashed an all-male coffee shop on the street, played pool, took a boat ride on the Nile with some guys friends well after midnight, and stayed up with them until 3am at a park near my house, swapping stories from the Bible and the Qur'an. And it felt great.

While timid to push back on gender norms when by myself or with other foreigners, all of the doors are open when accompanied with Egyptian guys. Whenever I nervously ask them, "Are you sure it's ok for me to do this? There aren't any other women here." They shrug and tell me not to worry so much. Easy for them to say. Their honor isn't on the line.

While my reputation might take a hit, no one will say anything to me so long as I'm with Egyptian men—even as I sit with the lone pair of ovaries in the middle of a crowded all-male café. I have to admit, it feels pretty fantastic to be able to occasionally be "one of the guys" here still in Egypt. I wasn't sure at first if it would ever be possible to do so in the Middle East.

My recent and mild rebellion has been part of a pendulum swing reaction to the culture, to be sure—from my "Pollyanna" post a few weeks ago to my road trip to Alexandria with our guy friends last week. The biggest challenge in adjusting to the culture here is to battle out the war for your mind. What is cultural sensitivity, and what is selling out your identity? How can I be Alissa, in Egypt? To what extent should I internalize the culture; to what extent can I push back against what I don't like?
It's a question to wrestle with every day.

Religious revelation.

There are times when I think I have the religious climate in Egypt all figured out. Then, there are days like today that leave us all--Egyptians and myself included--all a little bewildered.

I had a private English conversation lesson with a 14 year old girl today, as I have for the past 3 weeks. She's a bit shy and has been hard to figure out what will really get her talking. We start doing hypothetical situations today, and it's doing the trick. "Would you rather be the most wealthy person in Egypt, or the most beautiful?" turns into a lecture on the Evil Eye and why we should watch out for it in America, even if most people have never even heard of it.

Then she asked me (a bit out of the blue) if I prayed, making the Islamic gesture when she asked me.

"Sure," I said, "but I pray a little bit differently than you. I don't make the prostrations."
She looked at me quizzicly. 
"You know, there are Muslims who veil and Muslims who don't."

"uhh.. right," I said, a bit confused why she brought that up. "Is that ok?"

"Sure, that's ok. Are you fasting?"

"No, I'm not fasting in Ramadan, but there's a time of the year when Christians fast called "lent." It comes before Easter."

At this point, her eyes bugged out as she realized for the first time after 3 or 4 weeks of class that I am not, in fact, Muslim. This seemed to be a complete surprise to her. What? Then again, she's only 14, might be a bit too sheltered to figure that a foreigner from the West probably isn't a Muslim, too.

Then she asks me what Easter is. Hoo boy.
"Ok. you know 'Jesus' ? "
"Yes."

I drew a cross. "You've seen this before?"
"Yes."

"ok. So Christians believe that Jesus died and was buried. After 3 days, he became alive again."

"What??!!" She flipped out. Clearly, this was tantamount to telling her I worshipped aliens.
She tried to take this all politely in stride, but it was pretty funny. When I relayed the experience to another Egyptian co-worker, he explained that for many Egyptians, when they come to really like someone, they only naturally want to invite them to share their religion. Sure, I understood that--I think many evangelical Christians are driven by the same sentiment. But I think the shock today came when my student had already come to like me, assuming all the while that I was a Muslim--only to realize suddenly that she liked someone who was quite different than what she thought! Always a pleasure to see people's nice categories ruffled a bit.

Then our dear friend Amir (of the crack house escapade) found out today that Jesus was a Jew. He hit the wall. He loves to debate religion, and for the most part, is enjoyable enough to discuss it with.
He had just finished a rant about how he likes Jesus, but hates all Jews everywhere. He especially liked Jesus because he was a Palestinian, and that there were no Jews in Palestine then.

Bret--our slightlty dense and definitely non-religious co-worker--was the one to pipe up and point out that there certainly were Jews in Palestine at the time ,because Jesus was one of them.
 Oh man. Amir didn't buy this for a moment. "impossible! impossible!" he kept shouting, while frantically double-checking with us to see if we weren't mistaken to think that it said as much in the Bible. Sorry, Amir. Jesus was certainly a Jew.

In the meantime, I've taken up the task of reading the entire Qur'an by the end of Ramadan--I figure that I've been meaning to read it forever, and that this time of year is as appropriate as any. My 14 year old student assures me that finishing the Qur'an in Ramadan gets me special rewards. Hey, I'll take it.

Tales from the crackhouse.

It began innocently enough.
My roommate K and I decided to mark our two-month anniversary in Egypt with our first weekend trip outside Cairo. We picked for our destination the beautiful Marina—a resort town on the Mediterranean Sea, far away from the crowds, heat, and pollution of Cairo.
Three friends planned to come along: Bret, an American teacher and co-worker of K., Alaa (pronounced: a-LET) and Amir—Egyptian co-workers of K. and good friends of ours.
In the typical Egyptian style, there was only a minimal level of planning that went into the weekend. The day we were set to leave, I was told to meet up with everyone at 8:30pm, and that we'd crash with Alaa's cousin for the night in Alexandria before continuing onto Marina the next day.

Easy enough. Unfortunately, I had been suffering from a bit of digestive funk the day before, so I was bracing myself for an uncomfortable, long ride in a microbus, some 3 hours on a dark desert road that connects the two cities. I had learned from an Egyptian friend that guavas naturally soothe a number of stomach ailments, so I popped a few small ones in my purse and prayed for the best.

Burping guava might be one of the worst things ever. Four of us crunched into the back of a janky van (Bret took the front seat by the driver), and passed a hand fan back and forth between us to try not to suffocate. I closed my eyes and tried to will the stomach pain away.

We finally arrived in Alexandria around 2 a.m. The air smelled sweeter. The Mediterranean Sea was within reach. Outdoor cafes bustled with brightly dressed Egyptian families and strands of colored lights. Ahh. How good to be out of Cairo.

We caught a taxi and gave the driver the address of Alaa's cousin. We passed by the overflowing cafes…then passed the famous library…into deserted streets...on the edge of the city… the driver finally dropped us off at what had to be the edge of Alexandria—and, as far as we were concerned, sitting on the street curb at 3 in the morning—the edge of civilization and the world as we knew it.

Alaa called his cousin, but he wasn't picking up. We shuffled our feet and tried to think of what other options we had.
Suddenly, a car came screeching around the corner, slamming on its breaks right beside us. A guy in his mid 20s staggered out of the car and stumbled towards us. Yusef, Alaa's cousin. I peered at him through the darkness. Did we just wake him up, and he's sleepy? After a moment, it became abundantly clear. Nope, not sleepy at all—he was high out of his mind.
We all exchanged glances. What should we do? What were our choices?

(Now, gentle readers, I know that you are all going to going to start shouting advice at the computer screen as you read this, much as people usually do when they watch their favorite characters in horror movies stupidly bumble towards their own deaths. Let me assure you that I suddenly share a new empathy with such characters—choices are harder to make in such moments than you'd think).

Sighing, we all loaded ourselves and backpacks into his car. Scarcely before the doors had shut, he began tearing down narrow, winding streets at 80 mph, slamming on his breaks at each block as the car skid over the dust on the road. Now, there have been many moments in my 3rd world travels when I have waited to die in car crashes or from driving off of a cliff. In those moments, I have closed my eyes and acknowledged my powerlessness with a certain fatalism.

Never has the threat of bursting into flames on sudden impact been so real. I found a seatbelt and strapped myself in, with the conscious thought that I might be the only one with a chance of surviving. All of the other cars on the road pulled over to let us pass, staring out at us with terrified expressions on their faces. Right. If you were ever thinking about getting in a car with someone high out of their minds on cocaine, I would recommend against it.

By some grace of God, we finally came to a screeching halt, and we all stumbled out of the car, pretty weak in the knees. Yusef stared us down. "I need to get something. Alaa, come with me."
We were left alone on a fairy empty street, save for one lit up convenience store a block away. I figure they're going to buy hash. Instead, Yusef returns moments later with a chainsaw blade in his hand.

We blanched collectively--we were suddenly watching our own low-budget horror flick Yusef points to the dark building beside the car, and swings open a metal gate. He motions us in.
I stared at the ground for a moment. I could walk away—or more appropriately, run away screaming—but here we were, reluctantly shuffling our way towards the door like sheep to the slaughter. The moment was too unreal to actually be afraid, and there was the comfort of safety in numbers. I wasn't about to head off alone.

Two enormous guard dogs slept inside the doorway—all the more troubling to see, since dogs are unclean animals in Islam, and are never kept as pets.
We climbed a set of stairs, and were suddenly greeted by Yusef's very ordinary, sweet mother who started fussing a bit over where we should put down our things, welcoming us to her house. "Alright," I thought. "At least we have an ally."

Yusef motioned the guys to keep following up him upstairs, but told K. and I to stay put in this disconcertingly barren, piss-smelling room. Hell no, he's not going to keep us down here without the guys around! K. and I sat on the ratty sofa—the one piece of furniture in the entire room—and contemplated our options. We didn't have long to think, because Yusef soon reemerged. He put a key in the door so that we could lock ourselves in. "This is for your safety," he deadpanned, and then left.
My stomach sank. Safety from who? Who is Yusef afraid of?

Thus began our night in the crack house.
There were two beds for Kirsten and I to sleep on, dirt smeared on the walls along with pencil graffiti of flowers and English definitions of Qur'anic terms. A rug on the floor was inexplicably soaked. There was no toilet seat, but it worked—kind of. While we could lock ourselves in, none of the windows could shut. Still, we could hear crickets outside, and now that we were alone with a locked door, we felt ourselves relax a bit.

Right before K. and I managed to fall asleep, Alaa called K's cellphone. "I have fear," he said in broken English. "Scary movie, scary movie." We didn't find out until the next morning that Yusef had spent the whole night threatening them with swords. "Don't fall asleep, or I'll kill you," he said. "Converse on your favorite subject," he demanded (in English) of our friend Bret. "You must pray the 4am prayer," he said, brandishing the chainsaw blade when they heard the muezzin's call from the mosque. The guys didn't sleep until well after dawn. He also robbed Alaa at knifepoint at one point.

K. and I made it through the evening without incident, and actually had a pretty good night's sleep. We began calling the guys around 10am. No one answered their phones. K. and I both began seriously considering the possibility that they were dead. Finally, one of the guys picked up, and we began to prepare to get the hell out of there.

Unfortunately, Yusef's mom wandered in and insisted that we eat breakfast. This being Alaa's aunt, there are still family obligations here—even if her son is a heroin addict and crazy (we only found out later that Yusef's brother is currently in prison for killing 3 sailors on the cargo ship they both work on. Right). Breakfast has to be made…then the tea served…. Soon it was 1pm, and we were still in the crackhouse when we suddenly heard the call to Friday prayer (from, of all places, the mosque in the basement of the building).

Alaa and Amir are adamant—they would not miss prayer. It was starting to get uncomfortably warm inside the house, stray cats had begun to wander in, and Yusef's antics were becoming as annoying as they were threatening. K, Bret and I were not about to spend another minute there.
Finally they agreed simply to pray, but not to go to the mosque for the sermon. By 1:30pm, we were finally sitting in the safety of an air-conditioned bus on our way out of Alex.
Suddenly, this was all very, very funny. I made a call to a friend, "Guess what I did last night??" Yusef became the running joke of the weekend—but with a kind of relief that comes from having been in a hellish situation before.

Right. Now we need Plan B, since staying with Yusef for the weekend is out of the question. Alaa and Amir begin making phone calls, seeing what kind of deals they can work out. Alaa gets off the phone. "I have a friend we can stay with," he says.
"Um, Alaa, your track record in this department hasn't been too good so far"
"No, no, trust me."

It turns out that his friend is the son of a general in the Egyptian army, and is staying by himself in a condo at a private seaside resort reserved only for officers in the military. We can stay at his condo for free. When we pull up to the resort, we're greeted by the stunning luxury of a gated resort community, private white sand beaches, Carribean-warm blue water, and everything coming to us for free.

We spent the next two days flaunting a western dress code while we pitched a tent on the beach and enjoyed the waves all to ourselves. Why wasn't this plan A?? Alaa's childhood friend turns out to be a very sociable, very rich 21 year old with his own clothing line that he's about to start marketing in Dubai.
The rest of the weekend felt very much like a (posh) American weekend away with friends—here we were as one of the guys, thinking and feeling and acting like Americans for the first time in two months. It had been too, too long to stay in Cairo without any kind of break.

On the microbus home to Cairo (we didn't get back until 5:30am—then off to work in the morning!), I reflected on the deep relief I felt to be outside of the city. I had started to develop a battle mentality in Egypt: always defensive in my interactions, exasperated with harassment on the street, feeling protective of myself and always judging myself against the most critical standards of Egyptian culture and conservatism—and always feeling that I came up short.

Feeling my American self again on the Mediterranean sea, I regained my spine. Cairo looks very different when you stop playing the embattled victim—the men don't actually harass you as often as you suspect them of doing so, I don't need to power down the sidewalks at a breakneck speed as if to apologize for my presence in Egyptian society, I can actually probably relax my dress code a bit. At the very least, I can stop feeling ashamed whenever my elbows are showing.

To respect the culture is one thing, and remains my absolute commitment here. But to swallow in and internalize everything about the culture without disagreement? I've never done that before in my life, and I shouldn't do that here, either. My rebellious coffee break yesterday with my supervisor was a reminder that Egyptians themselves push back against things they don't agree with in the culture. I should feel free to do the same.

Secret tuna sandwiches.

With Ramadan just two days out of the starting blocks, you can sense a few groans across the country as we all adjust to a new rhythm of life: sleepless, exuberant and relieving evenings; and bunkered-down, squinty-eyed days of fatigue and withdrawals in the afternoon sun.

For me, it means remembering that restaurants and grocery stores are closed during the day, stupid. Yesterday was an unintentional fast until I found a convenience store selling my favorite coconut flavored cookie/crackers sometime around 3pm. Keeping with the custom, I then gorged myself (on a half pound burger and milkshake at a western restaurant—delicious, and half of my disposable income for the month) once Ramadan breakfast came around at 6:20pm with a competing chorus of prayers from every mosque in the city.

Today I found myself sneaking off to a bathroom stall at work where I could munch on a smuggled tuna fish pita sandwich in secret, pausing only once I had scarfed down the first half of my lunch that—to anyone from the outside—this was a completely absurd situation.

For now, smuggled food in my purse is as good as it gets--But the best of Ramadan is still to come. The point is to be out in the streets at night, enjoying the desserts and the food tents and the cultural performances and concerts that will only increase as the month goes on. Tonight, with baklava in each hand, it should indeed be a generous Ramadan.

Moments of Ramadan mischief.

Before I bring you the full story of the crackhouse, I wanted to interject with a brief encounter I had with a supervisor of mine today, the first day of Ramadan.
As an aside, here are my Ramadan greetings to you: "Ramadan in Generous!" (You would respond, "God is even more so!") This morning is the first day of fasting, and for many people, it's also marked with a day off from work. Not so for me, but then again, I'm not fasting, so I can't complain.

Actually, I should say that I'm not intentionally fasting, but accidently found myself doing so today--I left for work this morning forgetting that restaurants are closed all day. The cafe at work is closed for the entire month. So much for a lunch break.

Of course, not everyone in Egypt is fasting today. Christians--some 10% of the population--aren't fasting, and there are undoubtedly a number of Muslim Egyptians who are opting out. But everyone respects the month, regardless. I won't eat or drink in front of those who are fasting, for instance, and nor will anyone else who isn't observing Ramadan. For Christians, not fasting is a matter of course. For Muslims who choose not to fast, though, there's room for a lot of quasi-conspiratorial moments as snacks and cigarettes get sneaked behind closed doors. I just witnessed such a moment:

I knocked on the door of a supervisor's office to give her a little half-page write-up I had just done about some negotiations in Iraq. She was on the phone, so she waved me in. There were 3 or 4 other people in the office, all talking amongst themselves and whatnot.
After a few minutes, my supervisor got off the phone and 2 or 3 of the other officials left to go to a meeting. Left are myself, my director, and another colleague who's a friend of my director's and someone I had met briefly once before.

As soon as the door closed and the 3 of us were alone, my director let out a huge sigh of relief. "Who wants coffee?" she asked jubilantly, and promptly began pouring us cups of coffee from a thermos hidden beneath her desk. She had instant coffee, a carton of milk, and a bag of sugar hidden in her purse. She started passing out cigarettes. "Whew," she said, feeling much better. "So, how was your trip this weekend?"

I love my director. There's this certain type of woman in Egypt: 50 years old, chain-smoking, mystics, uncovered hair. They grew up under President Nasser's Egypt, when Egypt was secular and socialist. most of them haven't given in to the society one inch, no matter how popular Islam becomes in the streets. My director said that she hasn't fasted once in the 13 years since she's been working here, and that she's worked out this smuggling system for herself and a few other secularists scattered through the building. Behind closed doors, they smoke and drink coffee whenever they think no one's watching. It was pretty hilarious to share this moment of almost adolescent rebellion with such powerful people. props to them for sticking to their principles--and to those fasting who are doing the same. Peer pressure is such a fixture of the society here (shame/honor and social policing at work), that I really admire those who make choices for themselves, no matter whether they're making a choice to be religiously observant or secular or anything in between.

The biggest difference between my stay in Cairo this time, as opposed to my stint here two years ago, has been my ability to begin to see nuance in the culture. It's been fun and interesting to find these pockets of diverse opinion and lifestyle within Egypt. The country and society appear absolutely monolithic on the surface--unity is the norm and expectation. It took a long time to see any variety at all. Finding that variety has done a lot to help me settle in. Before, I thought the only way to be Egyptian was to be a lower middle class Muslim. Now I'm finding ways that I can--as myself completely--find a legitimate space for myself here within the society.