Its that time again

source

Check out cool Ramadan pics from around the world courtesy of the BBC.

Happy Ramadan!

Ramadan Kareem!

Ramadan Mubarak!

Ramadan Mubarak-ho!

Tomorrow Ramadan will start inshAllah, and I’m not sure I’m ready. Not not ready for the fasting, but not ready for the iftars and the suhoors and the expectations that come with them. I don’t know whats normal here, what foods I’m supposed to cook, how much food I’m supposed to cook, etc. All of my Ramadans thus far (all three of them) have been in the US where I only had to worry about feeding myself, and I’m not sure about anyone else but I personally am quite easy-going in terms of food. If I only fed myself a TV dinner I was quite alright with that but somehow I don’t think Mr MM would be very happy.

He says that I can just keep cooking like I normally do, and I’m lucky because he focuses more on the spiritual aspect of Ramadan rather than the traditional aspect: feasting until you can’t move. He scoffs at the Muslims who make 20 different courses of food and spend ridiculous amounts of money on sweets and meat. He’s all about the prayer, mashAllah, not the ostentatiousness. Yay for me, alhumdulillah, that means I’m not expected to cook for half the day. I’m lucky like that. But when it comes to us holding an iftar here in our home, well… I’ll be dead in the water.

And in the back of my mind I’m thinking about the iftars I was invited to and the iftars at the mosque and my cooking just doesn’t quite match up with that. Hopefully things will move smoothly for me and I’ll be able to fulfill both his expectations and my own. And I’m looking forward to spending Ramadan here in Egypt; in the US I had to mold my fasting around life whereas here life molds itself around fasting, which is great. It will be a big difference.

Anyways, I’m wishing all of you a blessed Ramada filled with love, family, happiness, and the acceptance of your prayers.

May it be a joyous time.

God bless.

* All Arabic words like iftar and suhoor can be found in the Glossary of Terms.

Some notes on Ramadan:

Fasting: nothing to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset, this includes no smoking and no chewing gum as well.

Fasting lasts for 30-31 days and at the end is a big celebration called Eid al-Fitr which lasts for three days.

Those who have a medical condition, are pregnant or nursing, or may be somehow harmed by fasting are not supposed to fast as the religion prohibits causing harm to yourself.

The meaning of Ramadan is to remember God and pray.

F*ck Fox News

Hilarity! I love it. It gets good around 1:35 none of the protesters would talk with Fox News (good for them) and then listen to what all of the people begin shouting at the reporter and the camera.

White Society

Anyone coming to the Middle East thinking that they are entering into a more Muslim-friendly place is in for a rude awakening. Especially when one looks at the expat societies of westerners who have come, whether for economic or philanthropic reasons, to the ‘heathen lands.’ International companies often have no hijab/beard policies and Egyptian companies mostly have no beard policies. To wear either, to them, means that you are less intelligent, less worthy, less competent at your job and therefor unemployable.

Expat societies are even worse. You can see them all the time walking around in Maadi, pasty white, usually carrying umbrellas, grouped together into nervous herds of touristic tendency, standing bewildered on street corners. They attempt to immerse themselves in local culture while at the same time keeping it at arms length, congratulating themselves when they thank the waiter in his native language and figuring that it makes them more endearing to have lowered themselves enough to speak the heathen tongue. No matter how many years have passed since the revolution the British still come here with the same attitude as they did when it was a colony, and Egypt has since never been able to fully shake the colonized mentality. Young Egyptian business women throw off the chains of oppression and submit themselves instead to the chains of western fashion, speaking English, driving foreign cars, looking down on anything too Egyptian.

Thats why companies here carry the no Islam policies, to better endear themselves to their western financiers.  As if in order to make it in this world you must needs be like them and abandon all vestiges of your ethnicity. It is better on all accounts to be, look, and act like you’re white.

But I’m white, you see, and its not enough. I’m white but I’m not a foreigner here. I may not speak Arabic, but I’m not really an expat. I wear the hijab, I’ve gone “mooslim”… I’ve gone ‘native.’

I was interviewed at a posh British private primary school in Maadi a few days ago. On paper I looked perfect: American, Anglo name, Western B.A. and in living in Egypt; but unfortunately when I showed up for the appointment I broke the illusion. Walking around the school and observing a party for the employees first day back I saw nothing so much as a large group of British people standing around and congratulating each other on still being British.

“Did you have a good holiday?” “Yes, it was wonderful to be back home.” “Oh, I stayed here for the summer.” A faint look of horror crosses the face the other woman. “Did you really? And you survived?” “Well yes, it was dreadful but I spent most of it in Dahab and Sharm.”

As far as I could tell very few of the teachers and TA’s were Egyptian, that was reserved for the janitorial staff and those who were serving the food. The few Egyptians I did see employed as something other than chattel were Egyptian Christians and as such less distasteful for employment. I was eyed mostly as if I were an oddity. White, un-accented English, but quite obviously gone over to the other side. This of course while I was dressed in a pinstripe suit jacket, a tailored skirt, and my headscarf wrapped unobtrusively into a knot at the back of my head.

When I got the call later that the position was given to someone else, I wasn’t too terribly surprised, even though I knew that there were at least two other open positions in the school.

I don’t belong to their white society.

Birth, Life, and Death in Egypt: Birth

This is a series of posts I will write about my observations in Egypt regarding birth, life, and death and how they are dealt with.

Birth

I have found that when talking of children here most people will use the phrase that “God has blessed [so and so] with a son/daughter/five sons/daughters,” and so on. Children are viewed as a blessing from God which has been given as a gift to the parents to cherish and raise in tenderness and love. It is taught in Islam that when a child is born he brings with him all the sustenance he needs and as such parents should not worry about whether they will or will not be able to provide for him, but sometimes its a hard lesson to swallow when one sees crushing poverty around every corner.

Egyptian parents not only worry about having their own children, but they go on in later life to worry about their children having children. My mother-in-law is suitably obsessed with my husband and I procreating as quickly as possible; the last time I saw her she pinned me down with an inscrutable eye and demanded to know when I would deliver her grandchild to her. My husband being her youngest child she feels that once she sees that he has ensured the passing on of his gene pool she can die in peace having fulfilled her role in this world. And truly Egyptians are raised with the mentality that life is about worshiping God firstly and then working to make enough money to marry and have children coming in a close second. Occasionally even these two are reversed and having children comes in first even before duties to God. Girls are raised with the thought that all that matters is their ability to have children and often times I find that I feel I am watching a race to see who can get to finish line first, with the most babies, and the most money. Whether you consider this worthy of focusing your life on, it is most obvious how treasured children really are.

When I first arrived in Egypt we stayed for a week with my sister-in-law who lives in an impoverished area in Cairo where many of the inhabitants are uneducated and make very little by way of wages and their lives are often month to month or week to week. But a few days into my arrival my husband and I were sitting in a darkened room with the windows open, attempting to wait out the heat of the afternoon when our conversation was cut short by the window rattling thumps of what sounded to be a large sound system sitting right beneath us. It sounded quite literally like the man with the largest boom-box in the world took up residence beneath the balcony and turned the music on high. Unable to continue what we had been talking about, both because of the ear-splitting decibels and because the bass-line literally thumped the breath right out of our lungs, it was too hot for either of us to want to get up to see what the music was about. But some twenty minutes later the music switched from random Enimem/50 Cent/ Madonna songs to down-home Egyptian balady music which was accompanied by a large group of women zagratting. This was too much for me to ignore and when my sister-in-law called me from the balcony I got up and threw on a cover and went outside to watch the hubbub below.In the dusty alley beneath us a group of about thirty people had assembled next to some subwoofers loaded onto the back of a pick-up truck, in the middle of said group was a man carrying a newborn baby. As the Arabic music blasted out he lifted his daughter above his head and began dancing exuberantly shaking his hips and the women around him clapped and zagratted some more. The ecstasy on his face and on the face of the women around him rose up like a smoke and infected all of us who had come to our windows and balconies, as I could see heads hanging out from balconies and windows all the way down the alley, and lodged itself in our hearts bringing smiles and tears to our eyes. This sheer abandonment to the delight and happiness a new life brings is like everything else in Egypt, embraced passionately. The baby was passed around for about five minutes, five minutes I’m sure will take a toll on the poor girl’s hearing in later years, before being brought back inside while the party raged on for another hour of belly-dancing, and what little chatting could be snatched between songs. Those of us who while not officially a part of the party were unofficially embraced by it, could only go about our work silently until the celebration was ended.

I felt honored to have been a part of something so essentially Egyptian, to have witnessed, like the wilderness photographer who catches sight of a rarely seen snow cat playing with its cubs, something I had never seen before. Despite poverty and the instability of the future, life was taken and rejoiced in as it came. Here children are the sun of their parents’ universe and Egyptians, or any Arabs for that matter, will often give up their own identities to become to everyone else in the world ‘the father of Mohamed’ [Abu Mohamed] or ‘the mother of Mohamed’ [Umm Mohamed], giving themselves totally to their offspring. Children are not sent out into the world to make their way, but instead are succored and raised up until they get to an age where they in turn succor and embrace their parents in their old age. It is a cycle of renewal: birth, life, and death, bound by the ties of family and blood.

Whats said and not said

News in Egypt often stymies the imagination and there is a fine line between what is said and not said. As my husband so blithely stated yesterday as we were walking through Tehrir Square, “Journalism in Egypt is very free! They’re just not allowed to talk about the President, his family, or the government.”

In a country where political bloggers are routinely arrested for little reason, publishers kidnapped, and an editor on trial for printing a story about the President being in the hospital, I’m afraid I’m not quite sure by what standard my husband measures the word “free.” I personally don’t consider Journalism in Egypt to be free, but I do notice that its not exactly the strictly controlled iron curtain method I thought it was before I came.

Back in April when there was a widespread strike against the rising food prices and stagnant wages I usually knew more from reading Egyptian blogs than my husband, who did not read the blogs but relied on TV news reports, about the rioting and police brutality in a city north of Cairo. He didn’t even know it had happened because the news was not allowed to talk about it. And yet I know of a few particular newspapers, the English-language ones of course, that talk about disputes between the people and the government and as far as I know have suffered no ill consequences.

Take these two recent occurrences for example: yesterday the Shoura Council burned to the ground near Tehrir Square. I personally feel sad because the Council was one of the places I always recognized when I drove past, and I always admired the really cool old architecture. My point in bringing it up though is that it was and is all over the news.

And yet last week something just as news-worthy, in my humble opinion, happened and not a word about it anywhere. A section of the Metro (the subway system in Cairo) collapsed through both floors (there were two underground tracks built one underneath the other) and it took out a large portion of the road not far from the Ministry of (in)Justice. Nothing on the news. To me this seems just as important as the Shoura Council burning down, but why has it been kept secret? The only reason I know about it is because when my husband and I were going to the Mo(in)J we noticed that a main road we would have taken was blocked off and when he asked the taxi driver, he was told about the Metro.

Did anyone die in the collapse? No idea. But knowing how full the metro usually is, I can only imagine that unless it happened after 1am when the trains stop, or it happened somewhere in between two stations and no train was passing through, then there had to be at least a few people involved. But theres no way to know as certainly the taxi driver wouldn’t have had the information, or correct information, and nothing was said on the news. It kind of freaks me out because I dislike tunnels anyways, and knowing that at any moment any section of the Metro could come down…. oy. Maybe thats why it wasn’t broadcast.

Journalism here is free, as long as you don’t talk about….

And just because we’re on the topic of news, how many have heard about the Egyptian septuplets born last week? I just want to say a few things:

1.) If the father only makes $4 a day, how in the HELL did they get money for Invitro? I don’t believe they’re poor because only the richest in Egypt have access to that kind of medical treatment.

2.) Why were they trying for more if they really were that poor? And with Invitro? When, supposedly, they’re fellahin from a small village without doctors?

3.) How many of you want to bet that idiots from Western countries like the UK are going to start sending money to these morons to help them out? Buy them a flat nearer to the doctors they obviously could get to easily enough to have Invitro visits?

4.) Again, if they’re from a village in Beheira (like the most fellahin of all the fellahin provinces) how did they have access to Invitro??????

Its crap! They’re not fellahin! They’re from the cities! They gots money! They just want more! Don’t fall for it!

Ugh. Seriously the stuff people pull here.

Dates

The dates are hanging
from the trees and I
when reaching for the fruit
now find my hands
have take root
in self-defense against
the mutiny.
An old man fights
to swim the sea of
inhumane humanity
of dogs and cats
and flies and bats
and history brought to its knees.
My feet are set to sing a tune
but when I walk
refuse to move
instead they wander
room to room in
soul-less robbing ministries.
And I, I only aim to
please find me the quickest
route to leave
but I see the metro
has collapsed with
disregard to best-laid plans
of power and money
hand in hand to
rid the arid desertland
of burgeoning democracy.
The dates are hanging
from the trees and I
when reaching for the fruit
now find my limbs
have taken root
in self-defense against
bureaucracy.

© Molly Elian 2008

I also wanted to remind everyone that the Brass Crescent Awards are coming up soon, they will open for nominations at the end of Ramadan. They are the reason I got into blogging in the first place and I can only hope one day to see my own blog listed there. InshAllah. But please nominate any and all of the bloggers you feel should be given more publicity, theres many out there writing great blogs.

Ismael Pasha El-Mofattesh Palace

An illicit bit of history fell into my lap today, totally by accident and most certainly without the necessary permissions or guarantee of personal safety needed to explore such crumbling historical locations. My husband and I were strolling down a street in the Sayeda Zaineb neighborhood (one of the more historical parts of Cairo), walking along a mysterious palace-looking building (one of many strewn about in different areas of the city) when we came across one of its ornate wooden doors open into the courtyard. We took the opportunity to step in and look about in the attempt to ascertain exactly what the building had been, as it was obviously now fallen into disuse and disrepair. To the contrary it had been partially converted into governmental offices (wherever they can stick them I suppose,) as we were later informed. Initially we were turned away by the single guard bent studiously over his Quran who was set to send us out with the single factoid that it had once been a palace when, hearing me ask Mr. MM in English how old it was, instead asked if I was Egyptian. Learning that I was American he eagerly left the desk and, explaining that where he was taking us was against the rules and slightly dangerous, led us quickly past the refurbished government offices into another more dilapidated courtyard and further past into the oldest and most rundown section of the old palace which was built in the mid-1800’s by this guy.

For a moment I wondered if he was leading us to a place where he could rob us in privacy, and I thought about halting and retreating, but the inner-adventurer in me could not resist the experience and so we followed him into the dark recesses of the crumbling palace. Coming from the sunlit courtyard into the pitch black interior of the entry, which had no electricity and was, in fact, filled in with mounds of the dirt and debris of centuries, we couldn’t see much of anything at all. Approaching a gloriously ornate set of wooden stairs (you know the kind seen in Gone with the Wind that crisscrosses itself as it winds its way upwards) I thought he had brought us here to show us only this but to my dismay he indicated that we were to follow him up what were still very beautiful but not visibly stable stairs. When the only thing left standing in the hall (as far as I could see in the dark at least) are a set of wooden stairs it take cojones the size of bowling balls to trust someone of dubious intention and whom you met only minutes before. But, follow him we did. Mwahaha. The only thing that lit our path was the sunlight that filtered in through the holes in the ceiling high above our heads and as we approached the staircase a street dog burst out from the darkness and passed us at a gallop, startled by our presence. In fact the dirt all over the palace, on all floors, was littered with paw prints and feces, but dogs were not the only creatures inhabiting the uninhabitable ruins. As we ascended the top floor I realized that the squeaking I had not immediately registered, much too taken with not falling through any holes or weak spots in the stairs, was that of the hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling still frescoed (with cherubs and angels of course) and edged with gold painted moldings. Having already cheated death on the staircase I did my best to ignore the winged rats (which were the size of Chihuahuas) and follow our guard-cum-tour guide as he took us around the rooms which were crumbling but still painted and decorated in the French castle style (Louis the Fourteenth can you hear me?) The rooms were enormous, it being a palace of course, but I must admit I spent most of the tour alternately watching for weak spots in the floor and trying to remember what diseases might be caught from breathing in the dust of powdered bat droppings. We disturbed more bats in every room we entered, but we were given, and consented to be led on, a very extensive tour of the palace floors. Descending the steps again, me still with an iron-grip on my husband’s hand, we emerged into the sunlit courtyard alive and well. When we attempted to pay him for his wonderful but dangerous tour he resisted, eliminating the second explanation I had for why he seemed so eager to bring us around despite it being against the rules. And why he had only been eager to take us after he learned I was American. Rob us, nope. Extract money for showing us antiquities, nah. Pride in the history of his country, probably. Either way it was awesome. Check out the pics on my flickr page as soon as Mr. MM figures out where he stashed the cable for my phone. And yes I know I promised to post pics of Marsa Matruh and those will be forthcoming as well.

Afterwards we carried on our merry way through Sayeda Zainab, shopping in the souk and then taking the metro home. I did vigorously wash myself off when we got back and put all clothing down to socks and headscarf into the laundry. If I could only take my lungs out and rinse out the insides… Oh but now my husband is convinced that what I point out when we’re walking after the sun has set is actually a bat flying through the air, apparently he previously didn’t believe there were any bats in Cairo.

Ha.

Note: Pics are posted on my flickr, find the link in the right hand column, or click here.

For those who speak Arabic check here to find an article that talks about the disrepair, the government renovation for non-historical purposes, and all of those bats. I wasn’t lyin’ peoples.

Relativity

I remember when I was 15 and my mom graduated from nursing school; we went on a trip, her, her best friend from nursing school, the friend’s ten year-old son, and I, to Disneyworld in Florida. One of the days we drove out from Orlando to Daytona Beach to see the ocean, a thing none of us land-bound Midwesterners had seen before, especially us two kids. As we came over the final large hill before descending to the beach we found the mighty Atlantic stretched out before us disappearing into the horizon. Bewildered, the ten year-old cried out, “but it looks just like Lake Michigan!” And he was right, it did.

Yesterday I was privileged enough to be invited by my husband’s uncle to go with him and his three daughters out to their chalet (as they refer to it in Egypt) in a resort on the Suez Canal. The Canal, of course, is very historical and has quite a story behind it, but what I find most fascinating is that we seemed to be traveling through a never-ending expanse of lifeless desert before we almost stumbled over the greenery surrounding the man-made canal. As I sat, later that day, at the side of the pool lounging in the shade and listening to the Enrique Iglesias being piped over the loudspeaker everything seemed so reminiscent of similar lazy days spent stateside. The heat, so like the heat in Arizona, the smell of chlorine, the unintelligible shrieks of playing children, and me. The only thing that differed was the smattering of Arabic conversation that I could occasionally overhear. I could imagine, for a second, that I wasn’t in a foreign country at all but still in the US as usual.

Relativity.

Later that evening after the sun went down, we went en masse to the beach on the edge of the canal to enjoy the cool breeze coming off the water and look at the stars; a thing we cannot do in light and smog-polluted Cairo. Sitting with my legs dangling over the edge of the canal the waves lapped gently at the rocks and sounded like nothing so much as the waves of a lake splashing onto the shore. The lights of the chalets that dotted the curve of the bay looked like the cabins found on Lake Mille Lacs and I felt again that I could imagine I was home dangling my feet above the lake not far from my house.

Relativity.

My reminiscing was broken a few moments later when one of the lights I mistook for a chalet on the far edge of the shore broke off and turned into the headlamp for a massively huge tanker making its way laboriously from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

The rest of the time we all spent watching the huge ships move in the dark, lit up like Christmas trees from hull to stern.

No matter how far away from home we find ourselves, no matter how different the day to day things may seem, we can find similarities to what we know and are familiar with in the elements.

Relativity.

You know its hot

When your ideal vacation has come to involve anything with snow and ice.

August is the worst month in Egypt, the hottest month, and the month I dreaded the worst. It seems like my time here has flown by- where did July go? I put it down somewhere and can’t find it again and now its August. Sheesh.

And also already the 8th of August which happened to be the beginning of the Olympic Games (whoopdeedoo), and more importantly my beloved’s birthday.

Kol sana wa inta tayeb habibi. Bahebak.

I’ve been so busy with God only knows what, I have so much I want to blog about but there always seems to be something more important to do. Even now I should be sleeping and not online, we’ve got to leave early to go back to my favorite place on earth: the ministry of (in)justice. The flaming hoops are all ready and waiting for us to jump through.

I apologize for the serious lack of postage, but if anyone’s got any spare hours of the day laying around not being used please send them over.

Man its hot in this country, sometimes it seems like I spend more quality time with the A/C than I do with Mr MM.

Ok not so much

The next morning after blogging about finally having internet it goes down.

Welcome to Egypt.