Honey, will you decapitate the chicken for me?

Ok, so Cairo isn’t so nitty gritty that one has to catch dinner in the backyard, but food IS very fresh and often comes much more intact than how we usually get it in the US. Take the chicken I cooked this evening for example: the neck in its entirety comes still attached and chicken necks are much longer than I ever imagined.

Now maybe this doesn’t seem as gruesome as some other ways that meat is presented in Egypt but it’s still annoying when neither I nor my husband eat the neck. Attempting to hack it off this afternoon proved much too nauseating for me so it stayed attached, and you will find me in the future recruiting Mr. MM for decapitation duty.

Getting food so fresh is wonderful; the eggs we buy are laid the morning we buy them. No kidding. Some come with feathers still clinging to the shells and are laid by free-range chickens. Lettuce, here, has a season for growing and when it’s not the season, like now, it’s almost impossible to find it and definitely impossible to find good stuff.

There’s three ways to buy meat here: supermarket meat section, frozen-packaged, or butcher shop. I recommend the butcher shop, but only if you know it and trust it. If you don’t have the assistance of Egyptian family/friends who know a good butcher then the next best choice is the supermarket meat section, I don’t like to buy there only because it’s slightly less fresh but a lot more expensive. Butcher shops were an odd sight to me when I first came to Egypt because many of them are open-air (which means lots of flies) and don’t really employ refrigeration and I couldn’t get over the idea of non-refrigerated meat. I was also completely creeped out by the sight of whole hanging animals and cows’ heads on platters. Apparently there is something about displaying the head that proves the animal was butchered in a halal manner, but I don’t know what it is.

Some of you may be as disgusted as I was by the thought of buying meat that’s been hanging out in the Egyptian heat all day but the fact of it is that the animals are butchered that very morning, or possibly even a few hours before you buy it. It’s like the eggs we buy: laid that morning and not refrigerated but definitely good. Another thing you will find is that some butchers will have small herds of goats and sheep hanging out in front or in back for you to pick your dinner from. Now that would be called fresh meat. Mom, know how you order your steak so rare its still mooing? Definitely possible in Egypt. It IS very important that you know and trust the butcher though, and you will find that butchers in better parts of Cairo, like Maadi for example, are often enclosed and air-conditioned. Rule of thumb: if you don’t know the butcher, and it looks dodgy, don’t buy there.

I haven’t lived only in Maadi, I lived for a little while in one of the slummier parts of Cairo called Warraq. In Warraq, late at night, the sheep owners (herders? shepherds?) allow their flock to graze the trash that’s strewn around the neighborhoods. That trash is a particularity of Warraq, which does not benefit from a garbage collector it is so poor, so don’t take this as an example of all of Cairo. It’s not something you would see in Maadi or Heliopolis or 6^th of October for example. When I commented to Mr. MM about the garbage-grazing sheep, wondering if one of them might in the future end up on our family’s table (you are what you eat and so on) he assured me that his family does not buy from the butchers who use those animals, but only go to a butcher they know and is good. That’s just one, disgusting I know, example of why when in Egypt you should only buy from a butcher you know or has been recommended to you.

And as for the frozen-packaged meat you can buy from supermarkets like Metro, Carrefour, or Abou Zekry- DON’T. Just don’t. Butchers and supermarket meat sections are open and on display, meat factories are not and be assured that I do not trust what I can’t see for myself in Egypt. I learned this the hard way: strapped for time I had Mr. MM stop by the market to buy a package of minced meat (that would be Egyptian for ground beef for all of us Americans out there.) When he got home and I set about cooking it I found, horrifically, a whole moth (and I mean a moth bigger than my thumb) mixed in with the meat. If the moth got in there whole and un-minced, what may have gotten in and minced along with the meat? And what kind of meat was I cooking? Anyways, the whole lot went into the garbage and I won’t touch any packaged-meat with a ten-foot pole now.

A recap: butchers are good if you trust them, supermarket meat departments are clean and refrigerated but much more expensive, and pre-packaged meat is a no-no.

And while we’re on the subject of where to go and where not to go to eat: its tempting to stick to international fast-food chains while overseas but may not actually be the best option. I, myself, ate many times in Egyptian restaurants and even some less-than-sanitary koshari and fuul shops without a problem but managed to get food poisoning from a Burger King hamburger. I’m not the only one, I’ve chatted with at least two other foreigners who had the same thing happen to them with other fast food chains here in Cairo.

The best bet is to have trustworthy contacts who know the ins and outs of the city. I’m going to be posting a list of good places and bad places to eat in Egypt sometime in the future; especially on American restaurants here as I’m slightly obsessed with finding food that tastes like home.

My Journey Here

Leaving my mom at the airport was one of the hardest things I’ve done. In this time, these past few years, she has become like my best friend, a lifeline, and we’ve come to have the mother-daughter relationship that novels and Hallmark movies are built on. We’ve definitely become closer since I became Muslim, but I really noticed it when I moved to Arizona and then when I moved back to Minnesota last year it seemed like our closeness was cemented. Leaving her in the airport was like leaving behind a body part, but I was able to put one foot in front of the other and embark. Its my destiny, you see, to be here.

I arrived obscenely early for my flight, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, but I didn’t know it right away. So the first thing I did was find the prayer room which had no obvious markings, nor dot on the map to call its own. After getting slightly dubious directions I took an elevator up one floor and entered through doors I wasn’t sure I had proper security to go through, around a few corners, across a bridge (and through the woods to grandmother’s…), until I was finally directed to a miniscule, cramped, dusty, and all around hoopty room with a few frayed prayer rugs and a tattered copy of the Bible in four languages. Amsterdam has a Japanese zen(and Ikea)-inspired prayer hall with well-organized sections and black marble floors. Or is it Munich I’m thinking of? Anyways, it’s a site worth seeing and a definitely peaceful place to actually pray. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport I just prayed that I didn’t catch something from the stained seats on the broken chairs.

Prayed up and with still a long time to wait for my flight I found my gate and settled in only to notice that “delayed” was written across my flight time. I crisscrossed the E-wing trying to find someone to explain to me what was going on to finally locate someone 10 minutes later who looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “we’ve been calling for you the past 30 minutes, your flight number was changed. Look its here on the boarding pass.” I debated missing my flight for the chance to choke the smugness out of the front desk check-in attendant who knew my flight was changed and yet printed me out two boarding passes, stapled the wrong one on the front, circled the gate of the flight I was no longer flying on, and didn’t say a word about the change. I also wanted to smack the woman who acted as if she personally had been screaming my name over the loudspeaker (I was never called at all) but I just turned and ran as fast as I could to the correct gate, squeezed into the plane as they were getting ready to shut the doors, and was properly sardined between an uncommunicative linebacker (or so he was built) and a disgruntled German businessman. I can only thank God that it was a short flight from MSP to O’Hare.

My baggage was supposedly checked through all the way to Cairo, but I had a heart-stopping moment of wondering if American-Airline’s check-in attendant of the year had managed to properly screw me over and send my baggage on the original flight which wasn’t going to arrive in Chicago in enough time to catch my connecting to Amman and consequently to Cairo. I was assured, when I arrived, that while she tried really hard to put me on the wrong flight, she had actually gotten my baggage onto the right one. So off I trekked, much relieved, to perform the pretty much completely unnecessary act of leaving the airport only to stand in line yet again to check in with Royal Jordanian, my airline du journee and go through security once more. Standing in the slow-moving, tightly-bunched, line to check in I marveled at the ability of Arabs to be completely disorganized no matter where they are. Checked-in once more I made it through security to sit and wait for the longest flight of my life: Chicago to Amman Jordan.

I flew Royal Jordanian, as I mentioned, and I was all excited to fly a “Muslim” airline for the first time in my life. In my excitement I forgot that while it was “Muslim” it was Arab as well and as such was the most obnoxiously ill-organized airline I’ve ever had the misfortune to fly on. As I was getting onto the plane I was quickly stripped of my rolling carry-on to be assured that it would arrive in Cairo with me, no problem. As I was handed the claim ticket I had a sinking feeling my gut which later bore fruit when I arrived in Cairo. But first things first: apparently for RJ when one buys a plane-ticket with a particular seat assignment this only counts if the people who got onto the plane before him do not want the seat. First come, first serve. I got my particular seat, however I was asked nicely by a stewardess if I would consider moving so that a family could all stay together, and I did, only to be placed next to a woman with a loudly-crying baby who later moved again and was replaced by an elderly Sudanese with bladder-issues. Needless to say I was up a lot to let them out as I refused to give up my aisle seat.

I could wax poetic on how horrid this flight was, but in respect for my, and my readers’, time I will just sum it up instead. A thirteen hour flight filled with noisy Arabs staffed by air-headed Indian stewardesses and no sufficient air- conditioning makes for the longest thirteen hours of my life. The things that made me excited to fly RJ- the Quran and Fayrouz channels- weren’t worth it because the sound quality made it impossible to enjoy either of them. I must say that there are two things that did make me appreciate that Jordan is a majority-Muslim country and the passengers were the same: the lack of guess-work needed for the in-flight meals and the du’a that the pilot recited before taking off. Oh, and at every entrance point I was wished “Allah maaki” (God be with you) which was nice even if it did take me half of the thirteen hour flight to translate the Arabic in my head.

But really, I just don’t think they make up.

I was excited to see Amman, but when I arrived I found probably the dirtiest, most broken-down airport that I’ve yet to see in my life. You know it has to be bad when it makes Cairo International look like the Space Station. Most of the airport was roped off for construction, although there were no workers or work going on and finding a restroom was like searching for gold. I spent the layover with an awesome family from Chicago whose final destination was Syria for a three-week visit with family. They kept me sane and gave me some wonderful moments of companionship. Amman itself looked like the surface of the moon. If you told me that it was populated solely by nomadic Bedouin I would believe you without question.

Getting onto the next flight from Amman to Cairo I had to pass through at least two stages of security, why? Dunno. I guess in the fifteen feet between security check-points I could miraculously find and assemble a bomb without being noticed. We passengers were corralled in a small room before being ushered down a ramp and onto a bus which brought us out to our plane which we ascended via a Presidential-style roll-away staircase complete with red carpet. Once on the plane I partook of the first come first served rule and commandeered the window seat that was not rightfully mine but was next to the seat that was. It didn’t faze the very sweet Jordanian businessman who must be used to that rule by now; he took my seat without a word and even let me read his NatGeo mag once he was done with it. It was worth it because as our luggage was being loaded I watched as over-zealous security guards (actually Jordanian Army I believe from their uniforms) patted down a steward only to, two seconds later, call him over and pat him down again. Apparently he as well was suspected of, in those two seconds, finding and stashing weapons on his personage. He took it without complaint or surprise which leads me to believe that it is not an uncommon event in his daily interaction. As we taxied out to the runway I had the opportunity to watch a lively game of volleyball being played by what I can only hope were off-duty soldiers, set up, net and all, on a runway that must not have been (I hope) used for actual take offs or landings. But knowing the Middle East this is not an assumption one could hold water in.

I took a few snapshots of the moonscapeAmman countryside and the moon rise which was quite beautiful against the starkness of the desert. Unfortunately my arrival in Cairo was at night and I was, therefore, unable to get the same view I received the first time I landed in Cairo which was where the pilot did a nice little fly by and turn around right over the pyramids. To you tourists out there I have to say that seeing the pyramids from the air is much more impressive than standing in the hot sun, sweating, and staring up at them.

My arrival in Egypt… Well let us just remember, for a second, that the national past-time in Egypt is catcalling. It is closely seconded by playing/watching soccer, but really harassing women and smoking hookah take the number one slot any day any time. I was in the land of the pharaohs all of five minutes when I caught an Egyptian businessman wiggling his eyebrows at me. It is a peculiar thing, this wiggling of eyebrows. Apparently in Egypt it’s the cat’s meow and at the merest of a twitch a woman struggles to restrain herself from begging the twitcher to take her there and then. I guess it doesn’t do much for foreigners because to me it just appeared as if he were quite surprised to see me there. “Well hello, I didn’t think I’d see YOU here, its been years! *wiggle wiggle*” It was easy to ignore him but oh how Egyptian men can never take a hint and my lack of breast-heaving response only goaded him to try harder. I think he nearly wiggled his eyebrows clean off and almost stared a hole in the back of my scarf, and in a last-ditch effort to win my heart he made sure to walk past me and loudly murmur in heavily-accented English, “beautiful.” If he had been in a car he would have blinded me with his high-beams and deafened me with his horn before yelling out the window “Eh el amar da!”

When I ignored that as well he disappeared, thankfully, and I was left to stand there with all my other luggage waiting for my lonesome little rolling carry-on, the one I had been assured of arriving with me in Cairo. After forty-five minutes of waiting for the single lost baggage attendant to finally get off the phone and assist me I had a claim ticket, a phone number, and the single hope that my carry-on would be found. See, it had all of the baby pictures of my husband that my mother-in-law, who NEVER lets anyone take pictures from her stash, had given to me after my wedding last year, and all of the baby pictures of me that I was able to round up. I figured if I lost those baby pics my mil would probably put out a contract on my life.

I resolutely turned and gathering up my dignity, my luggage, and my courage I headed towards the port into Cairo where my husband, completely out of his mind with worry when I didn’t come out with all the other passengers, waited for me with a bouquet of flowers and a smile.

I did, later, receive my poor little carry-on but that is a post in and of itself to be written another day.

Yup

Still. No. Internet.

pleaseshootmenow

Learn to Drive a Donkey in Seven Days

Still no reliable internet access, just a weak wireless connection that works when it wants to, and it often doesn’t want to.

Will soon subscribe to DSL and Satellite cable inshAllah. Because really, just having the Nile TV channel for my English-language viewing pleasure is driving me slowly insane. On an upward note my French is improving greatly as half the time I turn on the TV it is during the French broadcasts.

Continuing on insanity: I drove yesterday all around Cairo. From Maadi to Tahrir (gasp) and then to Abbasseya which is a fitting destination as it is quite clear that my driving in Cairo really only means that I have basically lost my sanity. Completely. The only people who venture onto the roads are legally insane, or will be shortly.

I’m just happy I didn’t hit anyone or anything although there were a number of pedestrians who had to throw themselves out of the way. But really, being a pedestrian in Cairo is taking your life in your hands anyways. It is a confirmed step forward as I had hitherto been considering hijacking the local watermelon-seller’s donkey to get to where I needed to go.

Maadi is lovely, quiet, shaded and until now I have not needed to throw rocks at anyone or anything. Once my husband secures the internet I have much to blog about.

Oh boy do I have stuff to blog about.

B is for Bureaucracy

Today we went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take care of some paperwork given to us by the US Embassy. We entered into a clean, brightly-lit, air conditioned room that was not crowded and were called within five minutes to get the necessary stamps, paid the small fee, and were done in less than ten.

This is in direct opposition to our experience at the Ministry of Justice less than an hour before where we entered into a run-down, dirty, un-lit, and non-air conditioned building filled to the walls with random people waiting around with the patience (and facial expressions) of donkeys expecting to be hitched to a cart. There we waited to be called, got nothing done, and were dismissed summarily with a list of stupid and unnecessary things we “needed” to do before we could get the single stamp we came for.

Why can’t everything run like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? And if I have to wait around why can’t it be in a clean air-conditioned place like that? The one place that was at least comfortable was the place I stayed the least amount of time for.

Its just not fair.

InshAllah moving into our flat in Maadi tomorrow, I am looking forward to being in my own place and no longer living out of my suitcase (and also having reliable internet). Not that I don’t enjoy my gorgeous twin neices (Nunu and Gameela if you recall) but I’m a bit tired of three-year old fists pounding on the bedroom door at three am because they’re still awake and want to play.

Funny anecdote. My husband loves to play fight with them, and they’re so adorable because they’re so much smaller than him but just as feisty. One night after sparring a bit, something like swatting at gnats, he ran into our bedroom with Gameela hard on his heels shaking her {tiny} fists in the air yelling “Fih haga tani?! Fih haga tani?!” Which could loosely be translated as, “Is that all you got punk?!”

So cute, mashAllah.

I’m going to miss them.

For future reference, I will be collecting a pile of rocks on my balcony for the kerosene sellers who come by at 8:30 am banging on the metal containers with a wrench and calling out at the top of their lungs. Its completely unnecessary, what Egyptians are awake buying gas for their stoves at that time of the morning? What Egyptians are awake at that time period?

I’m only hoping that things are quieter when I get to Maadi and I don’t need to go to jail for beaning a 70 year-old woman selling kerosene.

Edit: And by kerosene I actually meant propane, as UmLayla pointed out.

4th of July

This is my second 4th of July away from home, and my 1 year anniversary (alhumdulillah).

I kind of miss the fireworks and the carnivals.

Happy Fourth to all the Amreekans. Celebrate it for me.

Bugspray anyone?

There’s been some blogosphere outrage over a recent Egyptian(?) advert about hijab.

 

The text says, “You can’t stop them, but you can protect yourself. Your Creator knows whats best for you.” The men are the flies and the women are the lollipops, and the wrapper is supposed to represent the hijab.

  I won’t waste time on what kind of propagandist, misogynistic, retarded bullshit this is; I think its obvious enough without me stating it. Of course I agree that our Creator does know whats best for us, but that doesn’t excuse men behaving like dogs. What Arab men lack is liability for their actions and this advert does nothing but propagate approval for them continuing to get away with whatever they want to get away with solely because they are men and can’t be held responsible for their actions; especially when a woman who doesn’t cover herself is in their line of sight. Its like blaming a rape victim because her skirt was an inch above her knees.

While we are on this topic I would like to tell you about what I saw in Alexandria on Khaled Ibn Waleed Street in the Miami neighborhood one night around midnight. This street, at night, is completely clogged with humanity and cars and getting through that street quickly is an impossibility. My husband and I were in a taxi at a dead standstill when two crotch-rockets (you know, the flashy mydickisbiggerthanyours motorbikes) snaked past us carrying two passengers each: one man and one woman. Neither of the women wore hijab but one woman was much more scantily clad than the other, wearing tight capri pants and a tight sleeveless tank top. Her outfit wouldn’t have elicited a second glance in the US but in Egypt it was in stark contrast to the majority hijab/jilbab/malhaffa and even a few niqabi women shopping. The CR (crotch-rocket) carrying the second, more scantily clad, woman got blocked at an impasse and had to stop at which point the wild packs of young men noticed the girl and turned, in unison quite like a school of fish or a flock of birds do, and began to surround the seriously outnumbered duo on the bike. Unable to fight off the crowd the man driving tried to force his way through the traffic while the boys reached out to grab at the woman, or spit on her, while yelling garbled things in Arabic. It was all very reminiscent of the Eid attacks captured on video by Wael Abbas. ‘Within a matter of a few seconds the driver got through the cars and drove off as fast as possible leaving the crowd of unsatisfied animals to disperse back into their regular hunting parties.

The incident left an indelible impression on me. I felt bad for the girl, because no matter what she chooses to wear, no one should ever be molested in such a fashion and have it be approved of on the basis that she didn’t wear hijab. I was angry for her.

I must admit, however, that one must take into consideration the society that one is attempting to function in. As I said, in the US she wouldn’t have been looked at twice because her outfit showed less skin than many I have personally seen. However she is not in the US, she is in a society in which modesty is the expectation whether with hijab or not. I don’t think the incident was based on whether she wore hijab because the woman on the bike in front of her was hijabless as well and went completely unmolested in her baggy 3/4 sleeve shirt and capri pants. After a lot of thinking I believe it was the tightness of her clothing and the manner in which she straddled her CR-driving boyfriend, as well as his stupidity because as he got stopped at the impasse he revved the bike and cracked the muffler bringing the attention of the surrounding crowds upon himself and his girlfriend.

Does this condone the actions of the rabid masses? No. And something should be done about the mentality of a society that aprroves of this kind of action and places the blame on the woman no matter what. Its misogynistic and allows the men to shirk the blame. An endless supply of victimhood.

It isn’t my fault I raped her, your honor, she deserved it because she wore red/perfume/a tight shirt/I could see her hair and I couldn’t control myself.

It isn’t my fault, she deserved it because she is female.

It makes me sick.

And it makes me wonder about an ideology that basks in a mentality that compares them to flies, an organism even lower and more disgusting than dogs.

I call for accountability, and a religious authority that remembers the teachings of God that command men to lower their gaze rather than molest.

In religion there is accountability, but most of the time men forget that part in their zeal to be sure women do.

For me, I carry bug spray. And a mean right-hook.

Welcome to Egypt: Where wasting time is a competitive sport.

So today I was supposed to have the aforementioned interview at eleven o’clock in the morning, which is practically daybreak by Egyptian standards. And of course my in-laws, since its the summer vacation for the children, had us all up until three in the morning the night before so I woke up a bit groggy. We finally got moving and by a miracle were actually able to get through Cairo traffic and arrive on time.

Silly me thinking Egyptians ever care about being on time.

I arrived at the school only to find that the woman I was supposed to be meeting with was still in the office with the Headmaster so I sat down to wait.

And wait…

Forty minutes passed of my valiantly attempting to stay awake before I gave into inevitability and fell asleep against the armrest of the offensively ostentatious Louis IVX loveseat, which happened to be as tall as my head so it made a convenient place to lean against as if I were merely resting and not actually fast asleep. I think I was only out for about fifteen minutes and once I woke myself up I still had yet another round of waiting left to do.

I called her, she cancelled my call. I asked the receptionist, her answer was “maalesh.” And I waited. People went back and forth, important looking people went in and out of the office I was waiting to be admitted into but my name was not called nor was I apprised of any ongoing situations. For all I knew she didn’t even remember that she had made a meeting with me and I was waiting in vain. Finally after an hour and a half I called her once more and she answered with a cool and collected “oh, where are you?” as if I had not been waiting there for all that time. She came upstairs, where I was still sitting on the Louis IVX knock-off, and lo and behold she was one of the important-looking people who had been coming in and out of the office the whole time I was sitting there. So, the receptionist with her ‘maalesh’ couldn’t even point me out and the woman I was meeting didn’t try to make sure I was there.

Then, just to add insult to injury, as I thought I was about to have the meeting I had originally trekked all the way to Zamalak for, she turns to me with a self-depreciating smile and says, “I’m so sorry, I’m very busy today, could we postpone until tomorrow?”

. . . .

I could say more but I’m just not going to waste anymore of my time.