A Traveling Teacher

One Year Ago....

2012-01-24T19:49:00.044-03:00

Brooklyn, NY, USA

A year ago tomorrow, I was sitting on the other side of the Hudson, in Wes and Lindsay's Manhattan apartment, glued to my Facebook feed and Al-Jazeera's live blog of events unfolding in Cairo, just blocks from my apartment. Should I return to Egypt, or be worried about things falling apart there? I'm just a couple miles from where I was then, but so much has happened in that year, and I'm in such an unbelievably different place now than I was then.

Who could have guessed then how much I would grow to love Egypt in the months that followed? A year ago, I still hated Cairo, still compared it to Amman and found it lacking in almost every way. A year ago, I didn't have the confidence to follow what was happening in Egypt on Al-Jazeera Arabic, which now seems, if not easy, at least manageable! I have, in the intervening year, written dozens of pages of academic papers in Arabic on topics as diverse as politics, rhetoric and Islamic philosophy. A year ago, I couldn't have imagined that I would date one of the original January 25th protestors, or be following his every journalistic dispatch from Tahrir Square with such interest and trepidation.

And why was I even in NYC a year ago? I was here to interview for the New York City Teaching Fellows ... a successful interview! But I had no idea then what I was getting myself into. I thought, intrepid international traveler and multi-cultural adventurer that I am, that teaching in NYC, in my native language, in a school system very similar to the one I grew up in, would come easily to me after teaching English in Peace Corps Jordan and Arabic to Somali refugees. I could never have imagined the challenges that awaited me here in the Five Boroughs, nor how much I would long some days for the simple excitement of tear gas and "isqat an-nidham"!

So tonight, as crowds are gathering on Tahrir Square in Cairo's pre-dawn hours, I can only marvel at where I've been, and how I wish I were celebrating with the Egyptians right now!

Winter Waves

2011-12-28T22:45:00.043-03:00

Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA

From Winter Waves

Mom and Dad have this regular circuit they like to make with guests, a circuit of the homes of the rich (think Pebble Beach, California, with colder weather!) and the rocky beaches of Cape Elizabeth, south of Portland, Maine. Not only do they take guests, but they also go themselves to practice the delicate art of wave photography.

They've been telling me about it for more than a year, and I was even doing a little wave photography of my own in Egypt. It's a challenge to get the sense of scale, the feeling of movement, and frame it all in an interesting way. But the waves I was trying to capture on the Red Sea and the North Coast had none of the scale and excitement of the ocean swell on the Maine coast.

Not only was the swell bigger, but there was a strong wind blowing offshore. As the waves broke into the wind, the spray would curl back over the froth in a plume. It was incredible, and good quality fun with the folks! Clearly, Dad thought so, too!

Christmas In Maine

2011-12-25T22:35:00.022-03:00

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Christmas Eve, Christmas Day

After 3 years of "celebrating" Christmas in the Middle East, I managed to make it home to my parents' house, the family home in Maine. With Grandma and Grandpa living across the road and Nana, Auntie Di and my cousin Pete up from Massachusetts, it was a full house for our annual waffles-with-raspberry-sauce-and-whipped-cream Christmas brunch.

In the afternoon, Auntie Viv and George showed up from giving Christmas Sunday services up north, and there were more gifts to open. More importantly, Auntie Viv had brought half of Christmas dinner with her, and it was soon time to sit down for more food and merriment.

Merry Christmas!

My Space

2011-12-18T18:01:00.000-03:00

Brooklyn, NY, USA

From Brooklyn Abode

Last weekend, I went out and bought photo collage frames to fill with photos of friends and family, Thursday I finally bought the brads, and yesterday I got out the hammer and made space on my walls for my collages. So, I thought it was time to give you all a glimpse of my little Brooklyn home. And I do mean little!

This is our kitchen, and it's the only common space in our apartment! Not that I'm complaining. It's really quite perfect for Olga and I, and we hang out quite a bit in our little kitchen, but if we were ever to have company over, much less want to have a gathering of any sort, I'm not sure where we'd put people! In my office?

I was trying, with these bookshelves, to divide my bedroom into a sleeping space and a working space. In Egypt, I used my bed as a chair to sit at my desk, and that blurring of the lines between work and sleep was not always especially productive. This is somewhat of an improvement.

And that's pretty much the whole sha-bang!

Together At Last

2011-11-24T18:04:00.051-03:00

somewhere in Massachusetts, USA

From Thanksgiving 2011

On the bus to Boston, I added it up in my head.

Last year at Thanksgiving, I was celebrating with the CASAween at Sarah, Rachel and Erin's house.
The year before that, 2009, I celebrated both Thanksgiving and Eid in Mshairfeh, Jordan, with Wijdan's family.
The year before that, 2008, I was in Amman, Jordan, and I don't even remember who I celebrated with.
The Thanksgiving before that, 2007, Carter took me home to his family for Thanksgiving in Anderson, Indiana.
The year before that, 2006, it was an Italian potluck Thanksgiving with my blogger buddy Chris and a multi-national group of friends from the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, including 2 Palestinians, a Turk and a Filipino.
The year before that, 2005, was when fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Lynn and I attempted to dine on Thomasina, the toughest little turkey in all of Jordan!
I believe the year before that, 2004, found me at the Thanksgiving table of Peace Corps Jordan Director Darcy Neill in Amman, Jordan, with some 50 or so other Peace Corps people.

That makes this the first time in 8 years that I've had the pleasure of dining with my family on what is, for me, the most important holiday of the year. Christmas often sneaks up or even slips past without me even noticing when I'm abroad, but Thanksgiving I never forget.

So, this year, more than ever, I am thankful for family and our traditions of good food and lots of it!

Kids Say....

2011-11-16T16:31:00.001-03:00

Brooklyn, NY, USA

Today, my student K says, "Miss Converse, can I come to your wedding?"
"Who says I'm getting married?" I reply.
"Well, of course you're getting married! We know you have a boyfriend!" she says, with that sassy slide of the head my students do so well.
"What would make you think that?" I asked, smiling inside because it's patently not true.
"Well, you always dress so nicely!" she says.
"That's called professional," I reply.
"No, that's not professional," she insists. "You dress that way cuz you're going on dates after school!"

So thank you, K. Now I know what's wrong with my personal life. I don't have a boyfriend because I dress too well. Perhaps if I dressed more like a slob, men would think I was actually single...?

America's Tahrir Moment? Well....

2011-10-08T17:56:00.069-04:00

Manhattan, New York, USA

I woke up this morning to a call from my cousin Hannah. She's helping to organize an Occupy Worcester movement, and wanted to know if I could translate their flier into Arabic for her. (No problem!) I told her it was exciting to see people out in the streets, even if I wasn't sure what they were protesting for, exactly. "I don't think it's as important what they're for," she said, "as that they're out there practicing direct democracy."

Perhaps that's why I dragged my feet this morning. The very idea of protesting for the sake of having a protest seemed so hollow to me, especially after my experiences of the last year with the Egyptian revolution. Before the April 6 and Khaled Said youth movements ever stepped out into the streets of Cairo, they had a definite plan of what they wanted and how they would get it. They studied with Velvet Revolutionary Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, and spent months deciding on their demands, their tactics, their slogans, even what they would chant in the streets was scripted in advance.

So when I got down to Zuccotti Park this afternoon, I was not impressed. After standing on Tahrir Square, shoulder to shoulder with several million Egyptians chanting "The regime must fall" and "Christian and Muslim, hand in hand," I guess my standards are unreasonably high. For me, though, the few hundred hippies, college students and veterans I saw with their cardboard boxes and dreadlocks were not as impressive as they'd been made out to be on the news.

If you add up all the protestors across the country, from Boston and Worcester to Oakland and San Fransisco, you probably have a substantial number. There's credence, too, to the stories I've heard on NPR comparing the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Tea Party. They're probably comparable in size and coherence given the number of months they've been protesting ... it's just that Occupy Wall Street made it into the national headlines within weeks of starting, and the Tea Party took months to garner national attention.

But who do they represent? Who are the 99%? I've spoken to a number of activists who work with impoverished communities of color in New York City and elsewhere, and they all voice the same frustration: The people of color who are really suffering from the failing economy are not able to "occupy Wall Street," can hardly even follow it on the news, because they're working three part-time, under-the-table jobs just to cobble together a meal every day. The people who are in Zuccotti Park may be unemployed, underemployed or frustrated with their circumstances, but they come from circumstances that allow them the luxury of coming to Zuccotti Park. This isn't Egypt, where the entire economy screeched to a halt because even the bodega owners and French fry friers were leaving their jobs to rally on Tahrir Square.

I am pleased to see the unions rallying to the cry. I saw striking Verizon workers in Zuccotti Park, and while they are fortunate to have the luxury to even be on strike, the issues that they're striking for are so similar to the Occupy Wall Street complaints that they have real legitimacy in my eyes. I was delighted that the United Federation of Teachers marched with Occupy Wall Street, because so many of our students and their parents are among the truly disenfranchised ... but here's my beef with them: Why would the UFT march on a Tuesday morning? I would have gladly marched with them, but ... I had to be at school, teaching!

So, yes, Hannah, it's important to practice direct democracy. And yes, to that guy at Occupy Boston who had the sign reading, "It's not that we're disorganized, it's just that America has so many problems!" But if this movement is going to have a real impact, it needs an agenda, a message, a unifying purpose. Within 3 days of occupying Tahrir Square, the Egyptian protestors had a list of 11 core demands, despite being a leaderless movement. That doesn't mean that Egyptians only have 11 complaints about the way Mubarak and the National Democratic Party ran their country into the ground ... it just means they had a platform for their first steps. Where are Occupy Wall Street's core demands?

Changed Everything

2011-09-11T21:42:00.001-04:00

I woke up early this morning with the thought, "This is the Sunday I'm finally going to make it to All Souls UU Church and make some friends in NYC who aren't teachers." Then, I remembered that today was September 11th, and decided I didn't really want to get out of bed after all, let alone leave the house and have to face New York City in full mourning.

Maybe it's because I wasn't in New York on that day, wasn't even in the United States.
Maybe it's because of all the time I've spent in the Middle East since then and the collateral damage I've born witness to in that time.
Maybe it's because of all the harassment and difficulty my Muslim and "brown" friends across the country and the world have suffered in the interim.
Or maybe it's just because I was raised to be such a radical humanist.

I'm so tired of America putting on this big parade about how unfortunate we were to be attacked on 9/11. We've been attacked ONCE in SIXTY-FIVE years by foreign adversaries. How many nations around the world can say that? Or as my friend Ginny noted on Facebook today:

9/11 death toll = 2,819.
US casualties in the wars that followed = 6,686.
non-US casualties in the wars that followed = 148,000.

It's not that I begrudge the families of the dead their mourning, their anger, their remembrance. They suffered. I would never deny them acknowledgement of that.

But I really struggle with the self-indulgence of people in Florida and California and Kansas and everywhere in between who think their lives have been irrevocably marked by what happened in New York, DC and Pennsylvania. Did the bombing of Sarajevo change the world? Did the fall of Mogadishu change the world? Did the massacre on the Pearl Circle change the world? Did the blockade of Gaza change the world? And these are just the tragedies of the last 65 years that I can recall off the cuff. How many hundreds more are there that we never even heard about? It seems so arrogant to think 9/11 is so much more important.

But, of course, it's not arrogant. It's fact. 9/11 did change the world, starting a chain reaction of a magnitude we never could have imagined, which resulted directly or indirectly in massive deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, civil war in Yemen, liberation in North Africa, increased oppression in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, increased Kurdish autonomy, God-only-knows in Iran....

And maybe that's what makes me angry most of all ... that we have such overwhelming power to impose our judgements, our grief and our consequences on the rest of the world.

You're Not American

2011-09-04T15:10:00.020-04:00

Manhattan, NY, USA

This morning, on my way back from a Pakistani wedding reception in New Jersey last night that was a delightfully glittering, delicious affair, I was doing my best to navigate through weekends on the subway. There are so many cancellations and track changes that it can be very hard to maneuver. I'm beginning to get the hang of it, but the poor Israeli tourist I met was having a much more difficult time working it out.

So there I was, trying with little success to get him to his cousin's house in Queens. "Where are you from?" he asks. "You're not American."
I protest that I am.
"But you have an accent that's not American," he insists.
"Oh, well, I've been living in Egypt and Jordan for the last few years," I offer.
He starts backing quickly away from me. "I'm your neighbor, but I speak Hebrew, not Arabic!" he calls back down the corridor at me.

I think that's the first time a complete and total stranger has ever been afraid of me!

After Irene

2011-08-29T22:12:00.003-04:00

Fryeburg, ME, and North Conway, NH, USA

We took a ride around the area to see the hurricane-swollen rivers of New Hampshire ... already at least 7 feet down from their crest!

Recognizing White Priviledge

2011-07-26T20:47:00.038-04:00

Bronx, NY, USA

We were just talking in class today about what Michelle Martin has been talking about all week on NPR's Tell Me More. To be honest, we've been talking about it all summer, with some in our program having to really restrain themselves not to let talk boil over into rage. Is there still racism in America? Is there racial inequality? Is there still (or again) segregation in our schools? Is it inevitable? What can we do about it?

Of course there is. More black and Latino boys are diagnosed with Emotional Disabilities and ADHD than white boys, certainly more than girls. More black and Latino boys drop out. Why? Is it because of the culture of their communities, or the culture of their schools? We used to think it was the culture of the communities. Kids in urban, ethnic, poor neighborhoods grow up with families that don't care about them, fill that gap with gangs and crime, and end up in prison or dead, right?

We watched "Waiting for Superman" today and we've been reading about the KIPP Academies and Uncommon Schools all summer long, and the reality today is that we cannot blame where they come from for the problems our kids have in schools. Schools across the country, many of them urban charters in low income, high crime neighborhoods, are proving that black and Latino boys, given the right instruction, can pass state exams at the same rate as white children. (Now, only about 20% of charter schools are more successful than your average public school, so I don't want you to think "Waiting for Superman" is right about that ... but he is right about a lot of things!)

Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, features prominently in "Waiting for Superman," and he's proven that schools and communities have to work together, from birth through college, to achieve wide-spread success. That doesn't discourage me, though. I'm more convinced than ever that there are things I can do in my classroom that will have far-reaching effects. (I'm thinking about Kawthar and her sister...)

It makes me see my own youth and young adulthood with a lot more humility. Yes, I was most definitely discriminated against in grade school because of my lack of religion and because my parents were from out of state. I thought I was such a persecuted teenager. (What teenager doesn't?) I had it so easy. I know this; I knew it before I came to New York City. I learned it in the Peace Corps, in Jordan, but all along I said, 'Being poor in those places is so different from being poor in America!' And it is. But I didn't really realize until this summer just how difficult it was to be a poor black or Latino kid in America. And I've no doubt I'm only seeing the beginning of what will be a very enlightening--and probably heart-breaking--journey.

Why Art Is Important to Education

2011-07-16T16:39:00.021-04:00

An Example You Have To See To Believe!

Brooklyn, NY, USA

I was doing research today about some of the New York City schools I've been told have significant Arab-American and Arab immigrant populations, where I think I have particularly relevant skills to offer. One of them is William McKinley High School. I found this video on their Website, and it is simply amazing! These kids understand history, English language arts, art theory, and the way that they intersect on a level I'm just not seeing in my summer school teaching experience. That's without even mentioning the images of amazing whimsy, like the image of Phaeton in a chariot pulling the sun across the sky in which the sun is the red bell of the fire alarm system.

This is precisely why we need to fight for room in school budgets for arts education.

Another Theorist on Collaborative Teaching

2011-07-14T14:20:00.026-04:00

Don Tapscott was speaking on NPR about re-designing the way universities deliver education, but I think this applies all the way down to pre-K. I noticed that he said again and again that our teaching methodologies are "the very best that the Industrial Revolution can offer," and are completely out-dated. Of course, this is exactly what Sir Ken Robinson has been saying for years, and I agree completely.

It's the same theory behind Karl Fisch's "Shift Happens" meme that went viral four years ago. The Fall 2009 update is equally enlightening in the age of social networking. (Amazing how 4 years just became an "age" in that sentence....) We need to start envisioning 21st Century education. I'm not sure what that means yet, but I'm on a quest to find out!

Comic Differentiation

2011-07-10T14:45:00.052-04:00

NPR reported today on something that's been on my mind for a few days, an often overlooked tool for teaching and encouraging literacy.

One of the challenges in special education is this ubiquitous, vague term we call "differentiation." (It's funny think back to myself in Peace Corps teaching two whole Saturday seminars for the Jerash Directorate of Education on the term, and today feeling like I haven't a clue what it means.) Essentially this means varying your instruction to play to the strengths to as many students in the classroom as possible. This could be playing to the strengths of visual, aural, kinesthetic and interpersonal learners. It could mean providing support to weak readers, children who struggle to concentrate and self-regulate, students with processing disorders, as well as high-achieving students.

In our public schools, especially in high need schools like the ones where we as Teaching Fellows will be teaching, one of the biggest problems is with reading. Students in NYC schools tend to be at least 3 grade levels behind in reading. A surprisingly high number of high school students are still reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. Add to that the significant population of English Language Learners, and you have a serious problem across the curriculum.

But more daunting than students' inability to read is their disinterest and resentment of reading. This is where I think the graphic novel could be a high quality tool, and I know that my friend Nicole Bailey and other researchers are really pushing the literary and literacy value of the graphic novel. They're not just superhero stories.

There's Maus by Art Spiegelman about his father's journey to and survival of Auschwitz, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. There's Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi about growing up in Iran during and after the Iranian Revolution. The Book of Genesis Illustrated by legendary comic book artist R. Crumb generated lots of headlines in the past year for its absolutely faithful but surprisingly unique adaptation of the first book of the Bible. In short, comic books aren't just for kids and nerds anymore, and I'd like to incorporate them into my classroom in the fall as part of that all-powerful, pervasive imperative to differentiate instruction.

Field in the Sky

2011-07-08T14:46:00.051-04:00

Manhattan, New York, USA

Today I met up with CASA Fellow Andrew. He told me that since I "live in New York City now," I should decide where we would go. I'd recently seen this video about the founding of the High Line Park in Manhattan, and posted it to Facebook. Immediately, our mutual friend Emily had said it should be one of the first things I did in NYC, so I decided on that as our excursion for the day.

Even though it rained, it was an excellent choice. A little piece of wild 3 stories up in Manhattan. It was an excellent opportunity to walk, talk about the Egyptian Revolution and Andrew's trip to India, see some of the interesting architecture that's 5 or 6 stories up in the city, not to mention the Hudson River and the Empire State Building. There were some vendors set up along the way. We got these excellent rhubarb sno-cones and reminisced about our childhood Snoopy sno-cone makers.

I'll be going back again on a sunny day with my camera. Next year, I've decided to get there early on the morning of the 4th of July to watch the Macy's fireworks on the Hudson from there.

Holy Cleavage, Batman!

2011-07-04T14:48:00.023-04:00

New York, NY, USA

As I've written before, reverse culture shock strikes differently every time I come home. I'd been mentally preparing for my return to the United States for months before it happened. This time I thought I was ready for American fashion, tank tops and short skirts. I'd even walked around Cairo with Mohannad in a knee-length skirt on my last night in Egypt. I was even prepped for Daisy Duke's.

What I wasn't ready for at all was cleavage! As much as 6 or 8 inches of it sticking out of necklines. Not just teenagers and young adults in full mating plumage, but professionals in pencil skirts and business-like pumps. Even my colleagues at the Teaching Fellows, where we're all on probation for the summer and "professional dress" is one of our measures of success, sometimes surprise me with the amount of cleavage they see as professional. I realize I'm not in the Middle East anymore, but we're still teaching teenagers, half of them hormonal boys, the other half girls in search of good role models.

Nor was I prepared for the prevalence of tattoos. Not just the discreet little shoulder blade or ankle tattoo, or the ubiquitous tramp stamp. I'm talking professionals on the train with tattoos on their forearms or the inside of the wrist, on the collarbone, behind the ear, curling around the bicep below the hem of a modest short sleeve.

I feel so out of touch!

"Reading Problems Are a Public Health Problem"

2011-06-26T13:57:00.013-04:00

New York, NY, USA

We're getting to the more detailed part of our look at disability in the schools, and I found this video while working on my homework. It's an amazing look not only at what it's like to be a child with a disability, but also what it's like to be the parent or sibling of someone with a disability.

In the second half of the program, we're introduced to the tragic story a young man in Boston from whom this post gets its title. It was startling to me to hear that some states estimate the prison space to build based on third grade reading levels! It's a controversial measure, but you can imagine how it might have come into being. Imagine being 2 or 4 or 6 grade levels behind in reading, and failing all your exams, just because you're not getting the right support for an emotional or learning disability! It would be enough to anger even the most even-tempered of us!

Bronx: First Impressions

2011-06-22T19:14:00.048-04:00

Bronx, New York, USA

This morning I went to two interviews in the South and East Bronx, both of which involved long bus rides through the borough, and I had a lot of time to think about the area.

We're all familiar with the Bronx's reputation from the 1990s. That's probably why one recruiter at a recent DOE Job Fair said, "You're willing to teach in the Bronx? We will definitely be getting in touch with you!" I must have looked surprised, because she said, "I'm serious! We have such a hard time finding teachers who are willing to work in the Bronx!" I know my father likes to tell about a story he'd heard on NPR about an experiment leaving cars broken down on the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I95), and finding them stripped of everything but the frame within 2 hours. That's not even to mention the reputation for gangs, violence and crushing poverty.

It's not like that anymore. Crime rates are way, way down all across New York City since the bad ole days of the 90s, and that goes for the Bronx, as well. In fact, there's some serious gentrification going on around here. It makes sense. No one can afford to live in Manhattan anymore, and even Harlem, Washington Heights, and Brooklyn are getting too expensive for the middle class. So people are starting to move into the Bronx.

All along the 6 line uptown to my neighborhood, for example, are these huge brick buildings that I want to know a lot more about. I think they must have been built in the early 1900s as tenements or workers' housing, because they have these really interesting sculptures on their corners, almost Socialist-Realist in style. Now, though, they're condominiums with solidly middle class restaurants and stores like UNOs and Macy's in their lowest levels.

From the bus today, I saw a wide range of homes: rowhomes, duplexes, apartment complexes, and even one small neighborhood that was all one-story ranch houses with half- or quarter-acre grassy lawns. Surreal, really.

The Bronx is also much more multi-cultural than I had expected. The small businesses in my neighborhood - restaurants, halal groceries, 99 cent stores, hair and nail salons - tend to market to a Latino, African-American or Bengali customer base. I think almost a quarter of the people in my building complex are Muslim by the women's headscarves, mostly Arabic-speaking as far as I can tell, though I've heard Turkish, lots of Spanish, and some languages I can't identify.

Actually, as I walk down the street, I'm often reminded of when I taught that course on Islam at "nerd camp." We read an essay from Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out about Hispanic women in the United States converting to Islam in significant numbers, putting on the hijab and all. When their families protested, these women said that the "uniform" that Hispanic girls have to wear to be respected - short skirts, tight shirts, teased hair, lots of make-up - was just as restrictive but far less respectful than the hijab. It was an interesting academic inquiry for me, but I didn't know how true it was. Now, though, I've noticed quite a few young Muslim women, wearing hijab and speaking fluent Spanish.

I think I'll be glad to live here!

Techniques of Teaching

2011-06-20T20:59:00.022-04:00

Bronx, New York, USA

I've been hearing about Doug Lemov's book for more than two years, and it's been on my "to buy when I'm back in America" list since I first heard it mentioned. I almost bought it yesterday, but decided I should wait till I got my first paycheck in September ... or at least the last of my summer stipend!

It's lucky I didn't buy it yesterday, because today all 450 New York City Teaching Fellows received a copy of Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov!

Obviously, I haven't read it yet, but this is what I know about it: Doug Lemov was, by his own admission, not a great teacher. So he set out to study, in a quantitative, scientific manner, what makes a great teacher. After thousands of hours of observing teachers who just seemed to know what it took to get all students to succeed and close the dreaded achievement gap, he distilled 49 techniques. Use these techniques and know your subject matter, he says, and your students can't help but learn! Since then, his Uncommon Schools network has trained hundreds of teachers to use these techniques, and they have achieved unbelievable successes. I want to be one of those great teachers, and now I have this great tool (or 49 of them) for getting there!

Also at today's Welcoming Event we saw performances by special needs students of a variety of former Fellows, and listened to inspiring stories from city administrators and successful Fellows. One of the latter read, with tears in his eyes, one of my favorite poems by Taylor Mali, Undivided Attention: What All Teachers Want and Few of Us Ever Get:

the one where she works herself sick

2011-06-18T22:55:00.009-04:00

Bronx, New York, USA

Well, it may have been the pollen allergies and the shock of the climate change between Cairo and Maine that actually made me sick, aggravated by the pace at which I've driven myself to complete all the prerequisites for the New York City Teaching Fellowship I began this week.

In any case, I'm now almost completely over almost two weeks of a left tonsil and ear infection (only the left!) and almost completely recovered and ready to start blogging again! (As my very busy Fellowship schedule permits, I hasten to add!)

Wish me luck!

Lobster Leavings

2011-06-13T08:22:00.009-04:00

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Lobster Dinner by Dad

After our lobster dinner two nights ago, we left the shells of the lobsters and steamers on the back patio till we could take them out to the compost ... and then we didn't take them to the compost. Yesterday I noticed that the cats had been in the lobster shells ... but this morning it turned out not to be cats! Lots more pictures on the Web Album!
...and then I moved to the Bronx, leaving lobsters and raccoons alike behind me for awhile!

Dad Does Lobster

2011-06-11T14:55:00.022-04:00

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Lobster Dinner by Dad

Mom had told me that Dad had become quite the professional at cooking lobster, so I asked if it was in the budget to have a lobster dinner. "Is that what you want for your birthday dinner?" asked Mom. My birthday's not for another month, but I'll be in the Bronx then, and won't have enough time to come to Maine. I said yes, and made sure to have my camera to document the process.
My brother was right when he said that Dad had an impressive apparatus for boiling lobsters. It was a fun process to watch as he steamed the clams (steamers) first, and then the lobsters themselves.

And, oh, was it yummy! Happy birthday to me!

Monson and Sturbridge Tornado

2011-06-07T14:03:00.000-04:00

Monson & Sturbridge, Mass., USA

From Monson Tornado

Yesterday and the day before, my father and I got to see two different sites along the trail of the tornado that ripped through the greater Springfield, Mass., area this past week. There's a glare on the pictures, because they were taken through the window, but they turned out surprisingly well, catching a swath of damage, including a house in Monson with a FEMA tarp and it's roof next door.

Computers in Education

2011-06-06T10:24:00.002-04:00

If a computer can do it better than a teacher, get rid of the teacher!

- Arthur C Clarke
to Sugata Mitra

(I don't mean to say that I agree with Mr. Clarke ... but it's an interesting idea!)

Despite the mountain of work I have left to do before I start the New York Teaching Fellowship on the 15th, I keep getting lost on TED again. It's so easy to just keep clicking on video after video. I started showing my artist mother my perennial favorite on education, Sir Ken Robinson's "Schools Kill Creativity", because I knew she'd agree totally with it.

Then I discovered an awesome guy, Salman Khan, whose Khan Academy is transforming the way kids learn math - and now other subjects - across the world, and particularly in the Oakland city schools where he's been running a fascinating experiment in teaching and tracking student understanding.

So I was telling my friend Sean about this when I surfed his couch last week, because it seemed like the perfect job for him when he said he wanted to use his computer skills to help technology do something transformative in the classroom. Sean jumped right up to grab his laptop. "You have to see this guy!" he said, and headed for TED.com to show me another visionary in technology transforming learning, Sugatra Mitra.

I know there's more of this out there. As the famous "Shift Happens" videos have been expressing for years, we are training our students for careers that haven't even been invented yet, and the old models of education aren't going to work. Moreover, we can't even begin to appreciate what education will look like in 10 years, but these and other innovative education and IT thinkers are working towards something really transformative. Getting lost on TED this week has only fed my enthusiasm about my "new" career in education...

...so I'm calling it "research" instead of "procrastination"!

Lady Slippers and Lupines

2011-06-03T10:38:00.007-04:00

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Lady Slippers and Gardens

I almost finished my Intro to Special Education online course today, and rewarded myself by taking my camera out in the sunshine to take pictures of butterflies and flowers, especially Grandma's pride and joy, her lady slipper orchids.

First Rain Since Cairo

2011-06-01T09:50:00.014-04:00

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From First Rain Since Cairo

It doesn't rain much in Cairo, and when it does, the result is more depressing than cleansing. Cairene rain just brings down the smog and dust in the air, swirls it around a little with the smog and dust already settled over everything, and leaves the city a streaky sort of smudgy. So just as I vowed back in April, when I saw that it had begun raining today, I went out and danced in it! Never mind the lightning, the tornado warnings.... I wanted to feel the rain on my face, my shoulders, my outstretched arms. I wanted to spin around under the raindrops and revel in the cleansing power of a good country rain. And so I did!
Then, because everything was so fresh and beautiful, especially in my mother's extensive flower gardens, I grabbed my camera and went out to document raindrops on leaves and flower petals.

Metro Logistics

2011-05-31T14:20:00.033-04:00

Boston, Mass., USA

An alien, shown the ticket-taking systems of the New York or Boston subway systems versus Cairo's Metro would have to conclude that Cairo had the more efficient system. Half the ticket-taking machines in Cairo are marked as entrances, half marked as exits, and there are 2 or 3 times as many of them as in New York or Boston, where the ticket-checking machines are simultaneously both entrance and exit. Less efficient, right? Our alien would be wrong.

Put people in those machines, and the result will surprise our curious ET. In Cairo, delays and snarl-ups are common on your way in or out of the Metro, and I don't just mean the (frequent) instances of machines jamming and eating your card. But New Yorkers and Bostonians just slide right through their un-intuitive system. I didn't see a single snarl-up in more than a dozen rides on those subways in these last couple days!

Don't get me wrong. I think it's fantastic that Cairo has a Metro at all - the only subway system on the entire African continent! It was just my first real episode of culture shock on this return to the U.S.

A Different Souq

2011-05-21T16:29:00.021-04:00

Khan al-Khalili, Cairo, Egypt

This evening, around 10pm, Mohannad and I went to Khan al-Khalili for a little last-minute souvenir shopping. Ordinarily Khan al-Khalili would be hopping. Six months ago when I was there with my cousin, the place was thronging with tourists. Two years ago when I visited as a tourist, only months after a deadly bombing right there in the market, you had to elbow your way through the crowd.

By 10:30 last night, the sidewalks were mostly rolled up. Virtually the only shops open were the ones with TVs around which Egyptians were crowded to watch Zamalek Football Club get their asses kicked.

This is the way of the world in a volatile region of absolute dictatorships and grinding oppression. Revolutions and other violence happens. Other kinds of major crime - and even most petty crime other than corruption - tend to be much lower in police states like Egypt, Jordan and Syria, but that doesn't make headlines like revolutions, terrorist attacks and American invasions. When such major events do happen, though, we have long memories.

A few months later, the tourists have begun to trickle back - probably more in the Sinai than in Egypt proper - but in such small numbers that the tourist economy is seriously suffering. Khan al-Khalili should never be so quiet that the empty alleyways fairly echo.

"The Look," But Different

2011-05-20T16:16:00.004-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

My Egyptian friend Mohannad's been squiring me around Cairo for the last couple of weeks, and there's been a striking difference in my experience of the city. I still draw as much attention as I usually do, but it's a very different kind of attention.

When I walk alone or with other girls, we get stared at by everyone, cat-called, lots of "Welcome to Egypt!" and Borat-esque "Verrry niiice!", occasional groping, and sometimes even more explicit invitations. My favorite is the plaintive whine, "Why won't you answer me...?" which has got to be the stupidest-ever follow-up to a terrible pick-up line! (For a few precious weeks during and immediately after the revolution, we encountered almost none of that, but it was too good a utopia to last!)

In the last few days, walking around with Mohannad, I've really clued in to the differences between then and now. At first, it seemed like the harassment was gone entirely, but eventually I noticed that we were receiving just as much attention. Only this time, it wasn't just baldly appraising looks and frustrated glares at me, but also at Mohannad. What's he done to get a foreign girl like that to walk around with him? they seem to be thinking.

Back at the beginning of the year, I remember Heather and Kirsten talking about this same phenomenon, when they were seen out with their Arab husbands. If the Egyptian Revolution often felt like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights movement, Cairo sometimes feels like MLK Jr.'s South, where interracial relationships are rare, and draw a lot of uncomfortable attention.

Graffiti for Grades

2011-05-19T05:42:00.044-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

From Art School Grafitti

Six months ago, you could be arrested and detained in Egypt for acts of graffiti. In fact, I met a guy who was. But like so many things in "the New Egypt," that's changed now. Starting with the slogans scribbled haphazardly on every conceivable surface during the revolution, and evolving to the murals painted across downtown during the post-revolutionary youth clean-up, a graffiti and street art culture is growing here in ways Egypt hasn't really seen before.

(The Arabic word for elephant is pronounced "feel.")

A wide range of graffiti has emerged, from beautiful Arabic calligraphy to simple humorous stencils.
Yasmeen introduced me to these beautiful murals painted around an art college in Zamalek. Perhaps not technically graffiti, these murals were designed, drawn to scale and then painted by groups of students. There are a lot of interesting themes and symbols here, but I'm particularly struck by the appearances of Facebook and Twitter, and the use of English.

"7rya" is SMS-speak for "freedom." Notice al-Jazeera's logo, too.

Sure, it's reductive and misleading to call the January 25th movement a social media revolution. Facebook, Twitter and the youth alone probably couldn't have toppled the regime. It does, however, reflect a reality of a certain segment of Egyptian youth who consider themselves citizens of the knowledge century, of a global marketplace of ideas and values. Where that leads them, leads Egypt ... Allahu 3alem [God knows]. All I know is that I can't wait to see where Egypt and the Middle East finds itself in ten years!

Palestinian Solidarity

2011-05-13T12:43:00.076-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Yesterday we received a message from the US Embassy in Cairo that included the following:

May 15 is the anniversary of the Palestinian-Israeli territorial demarcations and is considered to be a significant date in the current Palestinian political situation involving Gaza and the West Bank.

Several Egyptian political groups have announced plans to commemorate this anniversary by staging large-scale prayer and protest gatherings, characterizing Friday as Unity Day. On Friday after mid-day prayers, there are plans for a large demonstration in Tahrir Square, with a number of protesters planning to proceed to the Israeli Embassy near Cairo University and to the Israeli Ambassador’s residence in Maadi....

On Saturday, May 14, political activists plan to converge on Tahrir Square and begin a march toward Suez, where they will link with groups from other Egyptian cities and then continue their march toward the Rafah border crossing.

The embassy probably thought this rally - as opposed to the usual Friday protests - would be of particular interest to Americans in Cairo because it can be a very short couple steps from pro-Palestinian to anti-Israeli to anti-American. As Lara Logan knows well, it only takes one person shouting "Spy!" to make a whole crowd turn on you. It certainly gave me pause.

Fajr Prayers on Tahrir
I was woken up in the wee hours of this morning to the news that thousands had started a Facebook page since yesterday, planning to have pre-dawn prayers for Palestine on Tahrir Square, led by prominent Salafi sheikhs. Since it involved defying curfew, my friend didn't go, but video was on YouTube almost immediately showing at least a couple thousand praying

By the time I did go down to Tahrir Square today, it was the biggest crowds I've seen on Tahrir Square since mid-February, though I understand the crowds were as big on April 9th.

Mixed Messages
In light of the violence and church-burning on Wednesday, there had been a call to make today a rally for Egyptian unity between Christians and Muslims, and there were plenty of signs to that effect. However, calls for solidarity with Occupied Palestine largely drowned out pretty much everything else, and there were plenty of other causes, too.

"The people want the opening of the Rafah Crossing, permanently and completely."

"The people want peace and security,"
i.e. new faces in charge of the Egyptian security forces.

The flag of Bahrain on the left, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as Hitler.

This one's calling for reform of traffic laws!

...and many more!

"Egypt and Palestine, one hand."

Third Intifada?
What concerns me even more amid these protests and calls for a Third Intifada on Sunday, the 63rd anniversary of the first Palestinian refugee crisis, is the ambiguity about who is calling for these actions and why. Egyptians are calling for a Third Intifada in an excess of revolutionary zeal, and I have to admit to a wild hope that Palestinians might have their own success in the Arab Spring, but are Palestinians themselves calling for an uprising? If they are, I haven't heard.

In fact, a spokesman for Hamas said today that it was "not necessary" for Egyptians to come to Gaza. On the one hand, this could be a neat way of avoiding responsibility. On the other hand, though, Hamas has taken bold steps this month to form a coalition with Fatah and work politically and peacefully towards greater Palestinian unity. An Intifada now would undo everything that's been achieved in the last couple years.

(Thanks to Emma for the photos!)

Egyptian Sectarianism: How Bad Is It?

2011-05-11T08:57:00.122-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

The Corniche is closed again in front of the Media Ministry because of protests, primarily by Egypt's minority Coptic Christians, in response to the worst sectarian violence in months that broke out few days ago in the working class Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba.

Word spread like wildfire in Imbaba that Abeer Talaat, a Christian woman, had converted to Islam, and when church officials found out, they had kidnapped her and held her prisoner. Angry mobs gathered, churches were burned, rocks were thrown, shots were fired, a dozen were killed, a couple hundred wounded, and all because of an unsubstantiated rumor. My colleague Andrew wrote about it in his blog immediately after, but more information is coming out every day about the incident and its causes.

I'm sorry to say, it's not an unprecedented occurrence in Egypt, but present circumstances make this particular case especially interesting and different in important ways.

History of Controversial Conversions

This image has been everywhere in Egypt in the last year. Her name is Camilla Shehata. She was born a Coptic Christian, but she famously converted to Islam last year, and was allegedly kidnapped and imprisoned in a monastery by the Coptic leadership. Hers is not the only story like this, but certainly the most famous face. During Ramadan last August, large protests were held by Islamist and/or Salafi groups outside the Husseini Mosque demanding Camilla's immediate release. They wanted her to go on state television and state personally and unequivocally her current religious preference, and to confirm or deny her incarceration by church officials. Although she posted a video on YouTube, it was not until the night of the Imbaba violence this week that she went live on television to tell her story. Throughout the intervening 9 months, the name Camilla Shehata has become a rallying cry for both Muslims and Christians, far beyond the significance of her individual story.

For Americans, it may be difficult to understand what the fuss is about. In present-day American culture is enshrined a very clear personal freedom of religious choice, and children turn away from their parents' religions all the time. In fact, for many, it's almost a right of passage. It can be a painful strain on family relationships, but it's not a matter of public scrutiny.

But imagine for a moment that you're a Native American in colonial or ante-bellum America, and your children are being lured and even kidnapped away by the government to schools where they are forced to perform the rituals and profess the beliefs of Christianity and forsake the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. You're already a tiny minority population, and shrinking, in a society that's often hostile towards you, and where there is a blatant government policy to use religious conversion to obliterate your cultural uniqueness. How far will you go to preserve your religion, your individuality, your identity? The US Government has since apologized for what is now acknowledged to be cultural genocide, but it took America centuries to reach an uneasy compromise with the Native Nations among us.

Many Egyptian Christians feel that they are under the same kind of threat, while the Muslim protesters feel that they are bringing enlightenment to the damned. But then again, if it were merely a matter of religion, this would be a different story.

Flotsam of the Former Regime
Yesterday the Supreme Military Council announced further arrests in the case of the church burnings and violence in Imbaba. They have released information that at least one but perhaps dozens of the arrested individuals, both Copts and Muslims, were members of the former ruling party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), what's become known by a revival of an antiquated phrase faloul an-nizam [flotsam of the regime]. The man who first opened fire is allegedly the Coptic owner of a cafe next to the church. The assumption is that he did so to instigate some sort of sectarian conflict.

Rumors abound that former NDP members are trying to cause a fitna (sectarian civil war) between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, presumably in order to create the kind of chaos that could bring the NDP back to power. For years, former Pres. Mubarak used fear of sectarian violence, anti-Christian attacks, fundamentalist Islamist involvement and jihadi terrorism to hold on to power. "Support me," he told the West, "or have Muslim extremists ruling Egypt!" It seems that some remnants of the former regime are hoping that the same fears might bring them back to power again.

Kul-oh waHad! / One for All!

2011-05-07T12:54:00.068-04:00

Gazeerat ad-Dahab, Nile River, Egypt

From Island of Gold

Rachel's been doing research on some political issues on this island in the Nile in the south end of Cairo. Today she took me along to see it. It was one of the best afternoons I've had in Egypt, sipping tea with villagers. I almost felt like I was back in Peace Corps!

The Island of Gold is a strange little anomaly in the middle of Umm ad-Dunya (the Mother of the World, aka Cairo). These low-lying islands used to disappear under the yearly floods, but since the construction of the Aswan Dam, they stay above water all year, and several generations have now lived there. But the government refuses to provide them water, electricity or sewage treatment. For the most part, it seems they may be okay with that. As one woman told us today, "We grow everything we eat. Some of our neighbors don't farm, so we give them what we grow. Kul-oh waHad! [We're all one.]"

On Their Own Protest Movement
The Ring Road (Cairo's Beltway) passes over the island, but there are neither on- nor off-ramps. It's just a place to stand. At one time, there was a stairway down, but it was too often used to steal goods and livestock from the island. For that reason, and because of their lack of resources, a number of years ago the islanders finally had enough. The entire island - men, women, children - climbed up that staircase and filled the bridge. They stopped traffic in both directions on one of the most important roads in Cairo. State Security forces were sent in to disburse the crowd, but according to the woman who told us the story, they were afraid to shoot at women and small children, and refused. (After what happened at the end of January, we were a little surprised at that.)

The government removed the staircase leading down to the island. There's still no public services on the island, but there haven't been more protests on that scale.

On the January 25 Revolution
People from the island did go down to Tahrir Square for the January 25 Revolution this spring. At the time, I imagine, they were as inspired as anyone. Now, however, they're not so happy. Every time the topic came up, there was nothing but disgust for the chaos that still reigns in many parts of Egypt: crime, lawlessness, and instability.

On the other hand, as Rachel noted, they've been building like crazy across the island, since a long-standing building ban on the island isn't being enforced any more.

Flora and Fauna of the Island
The logic for the building ban is that the islands have been named as nature preserves. Rachel asked, "But where's the nature?" I was inclined to agree, since nearly every possible inch of the island is being used for agriculture. But the longer we were there, the more I began to notice the wildlife, mostly birds. I saw Hoopoes, at least two kinds of egret, Pied Kingfishers, crows, fish, and a rust-red dragonfly.

And, miraculously, I made it 6+ hours in Egyptian villages with only one person asking "Why aren't you married yet?"

More Bird Shots

2011-05-06T11:01:00.001-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

From Springtime in the New Egypt

I think this time I got a picture of an immature egret, not a bittern.

I also caught the elusive little moorhen on land, preening, and the mature egret with a snack.

These little interludes with waterbirds and my camera are the highlight of my long walks to and from class!

Ding, dong! The Warlord's Dead!

2011-05-03T04:39:00.074-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
- Mark Twain

It's not that I'm happy Bin Laden the man is dead. I would have preferred a trial, public humiliation, and a long prison sentence in Guantanamo or some Saudi shit-hole of a prison ... but even as I write that I'm conflicted, because those words descend to a level of vindictiveness that I don't want to live by. In the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Standing By the Side of Love:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
(Thanks to Carter for the quote.)

No, mostly I'm happy that Bin Laden the symbol and the excuse is dead. I'm listening to Talk of the Nation's coverage of Bin Laden's death on NPR, and one of their Middle East correspondents was talking about how Arabs see this as an end to a decade of collective punishments of the Arabs and other Muslims for the actions of Bin Laden and a few other fanatics. Afghanistan, Iraq, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, Pakistani drone attacks ... all of these look from the Middle East like punishment for 9/11, the USS Cole, the African embassy bombings, the first WTC bombing.... Now, finally, we've gotten rid of the man who, for the West, represents the deepest evil that Islam has to offer and too often blinds us to the great good that's present in Islam. True, Zawahiri and al-Masri are still out there, and hundreds of others bent on wreaking havoc on the West and Western installations in the East, but the biggest, baddest wolf is gone. It doesn't mean we automatically withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, close Guantanamo and put it all behind us, but it's a powerful step in the right direction.

At the same time, I think it's important to put this event into context. While Americans are making a big deal out of this attack, Arabs have other things on their minds. Hundreds are dying in Syria every day, and in Libya, standing up to mad, relentless dictators. The outlook for Yemen is not much better. Egypt and Tunisia are busy rebuilding - or, I should say, building - nations they can be proud of. Jordanians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Bahrainis, Saudis, Lebanese ... they're all busy with extremely important and emotional domestic issues.

Osama Bin Laden is barely relevant here anymore, and the single desperate act of a fruit vendor in Tunisia deserves more credit for that than a 10-year, trillions-of-dollars manhunt. The youth of the Arab Spring are disciples of Rev. King and Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, with whom some of the April 6 Youth studied nonviolent resistance techniques. Even when they were being attacked with horses and Molotov cocktails on Tahrir Square, Egyptian protesters were chanting "Peaceful! Peaceful!" to hold themselves and each other to a philosophy that rejects violence, even in retaliation for violence. Disciples of Osama Bin Laden still exist, but a much larger portion of Arab youth have found a far more powerful and effective means of expression.

Easter Brunch

2011-04-24T10:38:00.027-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

From Easter Brunch

Emma and Erin gave up sweets for Lent, and Erin fasted altogether for the last two days of Lent, so by Easter Sunday morning, they were starved for sugary treats! We took advantage of that as a chance to get together. In the tradition of the Potluck Crew, we made ourselves a potluck Easter brunch, heavy on the sweet stuff: cinnabuns, Danish, fruit pizza with frosting, baked oatmeal.... It was a feast worthy of the holiday!

Some Egyptian friends of Emma and Erin joined us, too, and we had long conversations about the revolution, about Egyptian universities, about our families that tend towards the intellectual and eccentric, and all kinds of other fascinating things. Also, we had a ton of fun playing with their little cousin. Erin gave him the toy gun Andrew gave her for Christmas. First he played "shoot the girls" and then we played "hide the ammo" and "hide the gun" and ultimately, "hide and seek." Hilarity ensued!

Free Cupcakes!
Yesterday, a knock on Emma's door revealed a delivery from NOLA Bakery, the fabulous cupcake shop in Zamalek ... a delivery she hadn't ordered and wasn't expecting. This morning, she got a call from the bakery, apologizing for delivering the cupcakes a day early. A gift called in by her parents in Vermont, the cupcakes were supposed to be in lieu of an Easter basket. So, to apologize, the cupcake shop sent her another half dozen cupcakes on Easter Sunday, free of charge! Yum!

Coptic Easter Mass

2011-04-23T16:41:00.034-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

One of our program administrators invited a group of CASIC students to the man Coptic church in Giza with him this evening for Easter Mass. I love to visit services in other religions, and I'm collecting exotic Easters (at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II, on Mt. Nebo at sunrise), so I was quick to accept the invitation.

Like a traditional Greek Orthodox mass, it's a long affair, starting at 7pm and going till at least midnight (we lasted almost 3 hours), and people come and go throughout. Women sat on the right, men on the left. Some women wore veils draped symbolically over their heads, many of them embroidered with crosses or images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary, but as in modern Catholicism, covering one's hair has become optional.

I wish I had understood more, but most of the chanting was done in Coptic. Like modern Hebrew, Coptic is a language revived from old texts, the Rosetta Stone, and a lot of guesswork about its pronunciation and more mundane vocabulary that didn't make it into written form. I understood at one point from the text on TV screens around the sanctuary that they were praying for the martyrs of the January 25 Revolution and their families. The rest was pretty, but not particularly meaningful.

The Bible readings I definitely did recognize, because they were read in plain Arabic, and were about the Virgin and the Magdalene opening the tomb and finding Jesus' body gone, and then being spoken to by the ascended Jesus.

By far the most dramatic part was the blessing of the Host. The lights were turned off all across the sanctuary, and the curtains were drawn between the priest at the altar and the congregants in our pews. By that time, incense hung heavy in the air. There was a great deal of chanting and singing, and then a great crescendo as the curtains parted, the lights came up, torches were lit in the courtyard outside, and the Host was paraded with all its robed attendants 3 times around the entire sanctuary.

At one point, there was a good deal of commotion as a number of military personnel and men in suits were ushered in. During the sermon, also in Arabic, we learned that these were representatives of the Giza Governorate, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the local division of State Security, and the Egyptian Army. The Army got resounding applause from the congregants. The sermon talked about Egyptian unity, and standing with our Muslim brothers, and honoring the sacrifices of the revolutionaries. Apparently we were at the most important church in Giza.

Good Friday on Mount Sinai

2011-04-22T10:43:00.042-04:00

St. Katherine's, Sinai Peninsula, Egypt

From Good Friday on Mount Sinai

It was long and cold and may have given me bronchitis ... but it was definitely worth it! This wasn't my first hike up to the top of Mount Sinai, where Moses spoke to God - the only man in history to do so directly! - and received the 10 Commandments ... and then hiked all the way back down just to find his people worshiping some golden cow they'd made...! Let me tell you, if it had been me, I'd have done more than break a couple stone tablets!
I mean, granted, they'd been walking from the Nile Delta, which is 10+ hours by tour bus, and a whole lot farther on foot! But still, Mount Sinai is no little hill, and talking to God has got to be frightening (I mean, even the angels have to preface every encounter with "Be not afraid!"), so I can only imagine Moses' frustration to find the Chosen People distracted by a bit of bling!

my classmates and fellow pilgrims, Emma and Erin

It was a great hike with excellent company, though. Emma and Erin are always saucy companions. We picked up this nice Japanese guy at the hotel who is studying Hebrew in Beersheva; we didn't manage much conversation with his limited English, but he was a quick, uncomplaining hiker. Our guide Mohammad was just home for a few days on leave from the army, and very pleased to say that he had only a month left. He's been stationed in the coastal city of Alexandria, which was a much more violent place than Cairo during the Revolution, during which time his wrist was sprained while he was part of a human chain of soldiers holding protesters in place. He also showed me a nice little video of the girl he'll be getting engaged to later this year. All in all, he was exactly the right amount of chatty and friendly, and not at all smarmy, and he got us an extra blanket to ward off the cold at the top, and a perfect place to watch the sunrise.
Unfortunately, St. Katherine's Monastery was closed for Good Friday celebrations. Their little museum has the most extensive collection of pre-Iconoclasm religious icons in the world. See, the tribe in this area was charged by the Prophet Mohammad himself to protect the monks of the monastery from any and all attackers, so when the Iconoclasm happened and people came to destroy the icons brought by pilgrims from all over Christendom, the Muslim Bedouin kept them out, and not an icon was harmed. I saw the museum when I visited the Sinai with a Peace Corps colleague back in 2005, but I would have liked to see it again.

A Lawyer And Everything!

2011-04-15T14:11:00.043-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

I've started going to the grocery around the corner more frequently. They carry fresh milk and most of my other staples, and they're open after dark unlike the supermarket I used to frequent. The cashier there is enchanted by an American who speaks Arabic as well as I do, and he always engages me in conversation.

Tonight he was very pleased to my attention the prosecution of former president Mubarak. "There's going to be a real trial, with a judge, and they've given him an attorney. They're giving him his human rights!" As if to say, after all the years he denied us our human rights, we're better people than that.

Then he said, getting serious, "You know, America talks all the time about human rights, but they don't really mean it, do they? As soon as they want something from a leader like Mubarak, there's no more talk of human rights." I agreed with him, and clearly that wasn't the response he was looking for. "Really? You know this?" Of course, I agreed, governments are inherently selfish institutions. "And Americans know this?" he wanted to know.

Of course, that's where the conversation gets tricky, isn't it? My friends and family know that America is not the paragon of democratic virtues it claims to be, that it operates both domestically and abroad in ways that don't always serve the rights and interests of the people effected. Jon Stewart's audience knows this, and those who listen to NPR and watch PBS and stream al-Jazeera. Unitarian Universalists know this, and MoveOn.org members know this, and Peace Corps Volunteers see this.

But do "Americans" know that their government, for its own self-interests, is propping up evil despots and oil barons and CIA stooges and oppressive states who are willing to torture for the US Government? How do I answer that question?

It begs another question, too, that's been on my mind for a couple weeks now. When I go back to America, how do I answer the inevitable questions about what "Egyptians" or "Jordanians" or, worse, "Arabs" and "Muslims" think about America, about democracy, about freedom, about terrorism, about revolution...? As if any of those terms represented a uniform monolithic entity that had one opinion about anything!

Meanwhile....
They've been chanting on Tahrir Square since last night. I don't know what they're chanting, but there are a lot of them, and they're very enthusiastic, not about to back down until they've got everything they demand.

Rewind, Play Again

2011-04-10T11:00:00.028-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Sometimes you have to take a step backwards to go forwards.

As I walked across Tahrir Square at noon today on my way to class, I felt like the clock had been wound back a month or more. Starting about two blocks back from Tahrir Square were roadblocks of cinderblocks, metal table frames, 4X4s and other "found items," as it were. They seemed to have been erected by the neighborhood watch committees, directing traffic away from Tahrir Square, because there were no police in sight.

Ahead of me on the edges of Tahrir Square, those roadblocks had been reinforced with concertina wire, making it hard to know whether they'd been set up by the protesters or the military.

I was a little hesitant to go forward, remembering Saturday morning's gunfire, but I'd decided to treat myself to a Hardees Jalapeno Chicken sandwich to break a 100-pound note, and I had my patriotic ribbon on my backpack, so I kept going. Unfortunately for me, Hardees had learned a hard lesson in the 25 Jan Revolution when all their windows and been smashed and the restaurant torn apart. When they rebuilt, they installed brand new metal shutters to pull down over their shop windows, and the place was buttoned up tight at noon today.

There were only a few hundred people there, mostly clustered near Talat Harb Street and the KFC (where I later found out they were painting a mural of the military attacking protesters) and out of my way across the square. There was no military or police in sight. It seemed pretty safe, so I strode across what had become, for all intents and purposes, a giant pedestrian plaza.

Vehicle burnt by protesters during bloody clashes with armed forces, Tahrir Square, 9 April, 2011. Soldiers had forcibly dispersed protesters leaving two killed, 71 injured. (Al-Masry Al-Youm)

As I got to the Nile side of the square, I saw a couple burnt-out police transports, which took me straight back to the violent early days of the revolution. But typically enough for the spirit of the New Egypt, the scorched hulks had been put to good use. They were filled to the ceilings with plastic garbage bags full of detritus from the weekend's protests.

Between Tahrir Square and Kasr al-Aini Bridge, cars were parked bumper-to-bumper and people were trickling onto the square in fours and sixes and pairs.

An hour ago, when I came home from class, we skirted around Tahrir Square. I was feeling uncertain about what we might find on Tahrir Square now that schools are out and some businesses are beginning to close for the day. In the streets around the square, police were directing traffic away from the makeshift barriers extending a few blocks away from the square. I glimpsed tanks around the Interior Ministry, but I couldn't say that they haven't been there all along since 28 Jan.

From all directions, people were walking towards the square. It's going to be an interesting week.

Meanwhile, let me recommend some reading from Sandmonkey, who is emerging as one of the premier bloggers in Egypt, on 7 Popular Myths About the Revolution.

Gunshots

2011-04-09T07:39:00.000-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

It started around 3am. At first I thought it was fireworks. There had been fireworks all over downtown Thursday night while my classmates and I were celebrating Sarah's birthday on top of the Happy City Hotel, and it's a sound I certainly got used to in my years in Amman.

Then I realized that I could still hear chanting and the distant roar of a crowd coming from Tahrir Square. There hadn't been crowds on Tahrir at 3am since I got back from Jordan, and even though the curfew has been eased a bit more, it's still in effect from 2am-5am, and usually pretty well enforced here in the downtown.

Gunfire, some of it semi-automatic, waxed and waned through the next couple hours. There wasn't much to see from where we live, though at one point early on my roommates saw several hundreds of people come flooding across Falaky Square, running from Tahrir. Al-Jazeera was busy talking about how the US Congress avoided a government shut-down, and Twitter only revealed to me that "protesters are being cleared from the square" amid sounds of gunfire and possibly teargas, and these videos by YouTube user Kikhote:

After the first call to prayer near 5am, things went quiet again.

This noon, I can still hear chanting on Tahrir Square and traffic is unusually light on Tahrir Street in front of our apartment. The neighborhood watch is out again. Reuters and Al-Jazeera report that some but probably not all of the military officers who joined the protests last night were arrested by Central Security and the military, who had been promising court martial for any officers joining protests last night. Also, a video has emerged of the officers' demands:

Their demands include: dissolution of the military government, appointment of a civil governing council, removal of Tantawi from leadership of the country, prosecution of the "symbols of corruption" (Mubarak, al-Adly, etc.), and of those who killed protesters during the revolution.

'Copters and Cops

2011-04-08T11:45:00.002-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Helicopters have been circling downtown all day today, and when the wind is right you can hear the cacophony of voices down the street on Tahrir Square.

I'm under the weather and haven't gone out to see for myself, but my German roommate says there's a bigger crowd than (the new) usual gathered on the square. They're protesting a hodgepodge of things on behalf of Egyptians and the greater so-called Arab Spring: against military control, in support of the budding Syrian revolution, against Gaddhafi, for the release of political prisoners, death to Israel, support for Palestine, against the Emergency Laws ... you name it.

Al-Jazeera English is reporting that the protesters are concentrating on a call for Mubarak and his cronies to be put on trial, and for the military to hand over power to a civilian council.

There's a rumor that there will be 1,300 officers coming sometime today to march against abuses by the State Security, with al-Jazeera reporting that any military personnel participating in today's protests will do so under threat of court martial.

Al-Masry al-Youm (Egypt Today), English Edition, is reporting that tens of thousands are marching on what they've dubbed the "Friday of Cleansing" and calling for a renewed groundswell of protests until the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces demonstrates a significant commitment to fulfilling the demands of the original January 25 Revolution.

My classmate Yasmine has posted pictures on Facebook from today's protests that include several banners from unions demanding a new Labor Union Law and more protection of their right to organize (take that, Teaparty!), independence and freedom of expression for the ancient and revered Islamic institution of al-Azhar University, independence of the judiciary, and more.

Some Fridays are like this. Sometimes there's a unifying cause like Muslim-Coptic unity following events of sectarian violence, or opposition to the constitutional amendments in the next day's referendum. Other Fridays, without specific events to focus their attention, people come to Tahrir Square on behalf of whatever cause is dear to them, or whatever slogans they think will make a splash. Today is one of the latter, except that the numbers seem to be unprecedented for this sort of a free-for-all Friday rally. As I've said before, they sometimes seem drunk with people power in the New Egypt.

As usual, when things get interesting again, I find myself wondering if they'll turn off the Internet again, but I think Egypt has learned its lesson there. As one protester put it, "When your government shuts down the Internet, shut down your government!"

It's a Bird, It's a.... Yeah, it's a bird.

2011-04-05T15:43:00.012-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Who needs to join a gym? I spent three hours walking and doing stairs today just getting to and from my classes, and every muscle below the hips is telling me I earned that brownie I had with lunch!

From Springtime in the New Egypt

All that walking is not without its little joys, though. Along the way, I saw this bird in my usual birdwatching spot. I've never seen one like it before. I love the colors. A little research leaves me guessing that it's a White-Throated Kingfisher.

Raindrops Are Falling On My Head....

2011-04-03T08:04:00.002-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

There's nothing quite so wonderful as the smell of rain. Even above the dusty, decaying, dismal odors of Cairo, the smell of rain manages to take over the air, wake me from a dismal day. Thick, gray clouds have been hanging low over Cairo since yesterday, but I haven't paid them much attention. Cairo never gets more than a few minutes of desultory little showers every now and then ... or so I thought!

Not, in fact, the case. Today we've got real rain. Not just a few piddling drops, but an all-out, blustering, thunder-and-lightning rainstorm! It's thrilling, invigorating, and I'm not the only one to think so!

I make it a habit, when living in the Middle East, to go out and dance in the first rain of the year ... since it comes so seldom! Okay, I didn't exactly dance on our balcony, but I did go out and stand in the rain, and I wasn't the only one drawn to the windows. I had no idea that every apartment in the horrendously ugly building across the street is actually occupied. Even during the revolution, only two or three apartments showed hesitant faces at the window. Today, every single apartment raised a shutter, opened a window, stepped out on the balcony, all smiling ... though perhaps none so broadly as I!

Let me tell you, when I get home in May, the very first time it rains, I'll be dancing in it till my lips are blue!

Add that to the little tremor we felt from Friday's earthquake in Crete, and it's been an exciting weekend!

Ah, Cairo! Just when I think I've got you figured out....

Springtime in the New Egypt

2011-03-29T17:29:00.000-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

From Springtime in the New Egypt

The first thing I loved about Cairo was its flora. After all that time in Jordan, it was so refreshing to live with towering old trees and big bright hibiscus flowers and all sorts of other greens and colors. Now that the gardens of Zamalek line my route to school and are awash in spring blooms, I've been carrying my camera with me everywhere I go.

My route to class also follows along the banks of Zamalek Island over looking the gardens that line the Nile. In particular are some shallow waters, docks and moorings under the 15 May Bridge that attract a selection of water birds that I've been stalking for weeks now.

Now, not only is it springtime in the literal sense of the word, but commentators are beginning to speak of an "Arab Spring" as a collective term for the rash of revolutions across the region. In that spirit, let me also share my images of the Egyptian Spring, as portrayed by the youth in murals across downtown Cairo.

ANNOUNCING TAHRIR DOCUMENTS

2011-03-26T16:54:00.000-04:00

I'm pleased to share this press release for a project I and many of my CASIC colleagues have been participating in here in Cairo.

ANNOUNCING TAHRIR DOCUMENTS

We are pleased to announce the launch of Tahrir Documents, an ongoing project to archive and translate printed discourse from the 2011 Egyptian revolution and its aftermath. The website presents a diverse collection of materials — among them activist newspapers, personal essays, advertisements, missives, and party communications —- in complete English translation alongside reproductions of the Arabic-language originals. The site will be updated regularly, frequently, and indefinitely as new writings appear in response to post-revolution developments, and as we locate earlier materials.

The assembled documents address a variety of contemporary concerns including Muslim-Christian relations, constitutional amendments, moral conduct, revolutionary strategy, and the women's rights movement. Some of the highlights of the collection:

A defense of protestors' continued sit-in at Tahrir Square released on March 9th, the same day on which their encampment was destroyed by thugs
Guidelines for personal behavior after the revolution
Numerous denunciations of sectarian violence
The announcement of new political parties and presidential candidates.
Numerous articles debating the constitutional amendments passed last week
Selections from Gurnal and Revolutionary Egypt, activist newspapers founded after the revolution

We invite you to examine the the website, and to return regularly as we post communications and commentaries from the post-Mubarak era. We believe the archive indicative of the diversity of political thought and action in contemporary Egypt, and hope that this diversity is of interest to anyone following the country's transforming situation. The archive is searchable.

Tahrir Documents is the work of volunteer translators in Egypt and abroad. It is not affiliated with any of those authors or groups whose works appear in translation on the website, nor with any organization foreign or domestic.

For more information please write to the editorial board at tahrirdocuments@gmail.com. We invite the submission of materials for translation and publication on the website.

Regards,

The Editors and Staff of Tahrir Documents

www.tahrirdocuments.org / tahrirdocuments@gmail.com / twitter.com/tahrirdocuments

A Little Further Up the Rift Valley....

2011-03-22T17:10:00.013-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

After reviewing an essay assignment for which I assessed the effects of geography on Jordan's economy, my professor asked me why I thought there hadn't been widespread protests in Jordan. Naturally, I was all to happy to explicate. In fact, it's a question I've discussed before in the last month, and I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the matter.

I think it's obvious to most Jordanians, both in the cities and the villages, both the educated elite and the less educated middle and lower classes, that reform actually is happening in Jordan at a fairly rapid pace, and that the king is the primary impetus behind it. They may have their critiques about what the king pushes, how and why, but they can see positive change happening from year to year.

Since King Abdullah II came into power, there have been drastic ongoing improvements in education at all levels, with a focus on an IT economy, and Jordanian Internet entrepreneurs have been among the most successful in the Arab world. The national debt has decreased, the salaries of teachers have more than doubled in the last two years, tourism and medical tourism have steadily increased despite regional instability, and many other factors of economic health have shown obvious evidence of improvement. Freedom of expression continues to expand, and Jordanian bloggers are award-winning. There has also been significant development in infrastructure.

In addition, King Abdullah II has demonstrated repeatedly that he listens to the concerns of his people, and acts decisively to address those concerns whenever possible. I don't know anyone in Jordan who really believes that a significant segment of Jordanians have any intention of being rid of the king that has done so well by them.

I think it is also worth noting that in a kingdom with relatively low oppression, like Jordan and Morocco, it is neither a surprise nor an imposition when the son of that king is next in line to lead the country. The effect of Presidents Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddhafi in Libya and Saleh in Yemen all conspiring to put their sons in the presidency after them should not be underestimated in determining the reasons for their respective ousters and attempted ousters.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....
When I arrived at St. Andrews to teach my Arabic class for Somali refugees, the education coordinator said to me, "So the Interior Ministry's burning down, is it?"
"What?" I asked. "That's two blocks from my apartment, and I've just come from there! How could I not have noticed?" If I'd known, I might not have left home for fear that my road would be blocked off when I came home.
So we turned to the local paper's Website and found this stunning image. Apparently Interior Ministry employees were also protesting downtown today, and I had no idea, holed up taking classes and doing homework in the AUC dorms in cozy Zamalek - an island in more ways than one!

The Center Party

2011-03-21T13:37:00.120-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Today in our Islamic Political Movements class, we had a special guest, Dr. Tareq Malt of the al-Wasat Party, or Center Party, one of the few "opposition" parties allowed under the Mubarak regime, and therefore one of the best-prepared players in Saturday's referendum and the elections coming up in late May.

The Center: from liberation ... to reconstruction

The al-Wasat Party formed in 1996 when about 20 leaders of the younger generation in the Muslim Brotherhood differed on political matters and broke away. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks an Islamic state that protects women and religious minorities but excludes them from full participation in public life. The al-Wasat Party, however, promotes a secular political system inspired by Islamic values, which are after all the same values on which Judaism and Christianity, and therefore liberalism are built. (There are obvious parallels to be drawn here with the Justice and Development Party that has been so successful in Turkey.)

They affirm the right of any Egyptian, regardless of religion, race or gender, to achieve even the presidency of the republic. They promote freedom of expression, human rights including women's rights, and full social and political equality of all Egyptians. They support a free market economy so long as there are regulations in place to protect the rights of the poor. Above all, they promote education as the surest path towards development of the economy and standard of living in Egypt. The regime of Hosni Mubarak, said Dr. Malt, blamed Egypt's problems on overpopulation, but that's a faulty analysis. With proper education, Egypt could exploit their human, historical and natural resources much more effectively, and this is the key to improving Egypt's economy.

Naturally, as a teacher by trade, I jumped on the idea of education as the key to development. I believe this wholeheartedly, and I've written about it for graduate school, so I know that one of the fundamental challenges to education reform in Egypt is financial. The Ministry of Education simply doesn't have the money to provide a living wage to teachers, which makes teaching a job of last resort and consequently of very low quality. When I asked Dr. Tareq how he proposed to solve the financial crisis in education, he said, "Without corruption, we'll have all the money we need!" There are so many problems with that statement! For starters:
1) Assuming that corruption will simply disappear post-revolution is incredibly naive.
2) Ending corruption doesn't guarantee the appearance of that money in public coffers.

In general, this was the problem with his presentation, and frankly with the platform and program of the al-Wasat Party in general. They have high, idealistic aspirations to find a "third way" between Islamism and liberal democracy, at least on paper, but they don't have a sufficiently detailed plans to achieve them.

al-Wasat Party and the Amendments
I think we were all most disappointed in al-Wasat Party's stance on the constitutional amendments approved by referendum on Saturday. The party supported a "yes" vote on the amendments, as a way of returning stability to the nation. Like many of the youth movements and other liberal parties, most CASAween believe that the constitutional amendments are the most powerful weapon of the counter-revolution, an effort to block real democratic change. Al-Wasat Party, on the other hand, believes that approving the amendments is necessary to provide the necessary political infrastructure to write a new constitution, which will be the first order of business of the new Parliament later this year. Of course, as one of the few political parties with an established apparatus before the revolution, the al-Wasat Party has a great deal to gain from a continuation of the former system and the accelerated timetable of 3 elections (Lower House, Upper House and presidential) and 2 referendum (on the constitutional amendments, and then the new constitution) in 12 months.

Dr. Tareq on the Revolution
What interested me most was his editorializing on the Egyptian Revolution. It was not Egypt's elites, intellectuals, politicians or Islamists who caused the revolution to succeed, he said (even if elites and intellectuals may have started it). It was the apolitical families and the poor who brought the real power to the revolution when they came out late in the second week of protests. They're the real power behind the revolution, and they're the ones to whom the New Egypt is accountable.

Moreover, he said, "Don't be afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood!" They were not the power behind this revolution, and that they represented less than 20% of participation in the revolution. (I don't know how he calculates that number, so we'll call it opinion.)

He also noted that "unlike some of those other parties" who were against the revolution at first, and then for the revolution when it was politically expedient, the al-Wasat Party was with the revolution from the very first ... even before! The founders of the Kefaya movement, he claimed, were members of al-Wasat Party, and the party has supported all the youth movements of recent years, and will continue to work with youth as the New Egypt emerges.

Then again, he's a politician, so take that as you will!

Voting In Egypt

2011-03-19T14:19:00.007-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Congratulations to my Egyptian-American classmate Yasmine, and to all my other Egyptian friends who voted today in Egypt's referendum on the military's proposed amendments to the constitution. Whatever the outcome, it's wonderful to know that your voices are being heard!

No to the Amendments!

2011-03-18T14:08:00.017-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Today, when I took my Friday stroll through the protests with Emma and Erin, there was pretty much only one message being delivered: No to the constitutional amendments!

From No To The Amendments!

I also read today about the Association for the Protection of the Revolution, an umbrella activist organization from Port Said doing great things to sustain the power of a peaceful revolution in one of its most violent centers.

Foreign Interference

2011-03-17T17:19:00.014-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

There was a protest of mostly women in black headscarves and big trendy sunglasses on the sidewalk in front of the Embassy of Bahrain in Zamalek today as I was walking home.

From Bahrain Embassy, Zamalek

What's happening in Bahrain is in some ways the most disturbing of all the uprisings in the Middle East. Until Sunday, those uprisings were domestic affairs. Financial assets have been frozen in foreign accounts, and plenty of rhetoric has flown about concerning the rest of the world's recommendations to the leaders of Algeria, Egypt, Yemen.... After weeks of discussing it and making proclamations, no country has even stepped in militarily to stop the atrocities in Libya.

On Sunday, the Saudi army rolled across the border into Bahrain to assist the police there in crushing the opposition protests. By Tuesday there was blood in the streets. It doesn't bode well for the future of democracy in the oil-rich Persian Gulf states. The interests of oppressive Arab governments in that region are too deeply entrenched to allow free expression, and too essential to the global economy for the international community to intervene.

"In Order to Form a More Perfect Union"

2011-03-16T14:13:00.042-04:00

Cairo, Egypt

Tonight Erin and I went to a meeting of the Popular Coalition for Reform, one of the many fledgling political organizations just beginning to find their feet. The topic was "Why we oppose the amendments to the constitution."

The basic argument boils down to this: The constitution was written under Pres. Anwar Sadat to support a military intelligence state, and expanded under Mubarak to lock in that dictatorship. Amending that dictatorial constitution is not reform; it's a cosmetic change to the process of presidential elections that doesn't alter the fundamental oppression of the constitution or the political system.

They point to the banner that went up on Tahrir Square in the last days of January, listing the main demands of the revolutionaries, and a new constitution was on that list, as was a reform of the Parliament and political party system. These amendments, written by a council formed by the military that put the dictatorship in power in the first place, and pushed through so quickly on the heels of the revolution, is an attempt to placate Egyptian revolutionaries without any substantive changes.

All of that I'd heard before. The most energetic speaker, however, had a slightly different angle that I hadn't heard before:

This, he claimed, was Egypt's first broadly based popular revolution since Moses led the Israelites away from the the pharaoh. (Some would argue that the 1919 Revolution was also a broadly based popular revolution, but I don't know enough to quibble about the details.) Unlike the military coups that brought Nasser and Sadat to power, this was a grassroots revolution supported by intellectuals, the working classes, the poor, women, students ... all walks of life. As such, the creation of a new government should not be left to the military, but should include the participation of all those parties that demanded the reform. He quoted the Constitution of the United States: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." He quoted a similar line from the constitution of the French Revolution (in French, so I didn't quite catch it). He quoted Rousseau, saying that this Egyptian Revolution also called for a tabula rasa, a clean slate on which to draft a new constitution, a new political system such as Egypt has never seen.

But however impassioned the words of the new revolutionary parties, with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis and al-Azhar University supporting the amendments and the recommendations of the Supreme Military Council, there's still a great deal of doubt as to whether the amendments will truly be rejected.

It Was Fun Until....

2011-03-12T16:37:00.025-03:00

Fayoum, Egypt

From Fayoum

My old roommate Pip always raved about Fayoum as her weekend getaway of choice for recovering from the stresses of Cairo life, so I was excited when Noel organized a trip there for a dozen CASAween plus Heather's family. Fayoum is the first manmade oasis, built by the pharaohs, and was sacred to the crocodile god, so we began by visiting a pyramid.

This pyramid was once covered with limestone, but the Ptolemies pirated the good stone for their own structures in the later dynasties. All that remains now is the mud brick core of the pyramid.

Unfortunately, when we went into town to see Fayoum's famous waterwheels, we also picked up a police escort. Any group of Americans larger than 10 is supposed to have one "for security." From a tourist's perspective, though, if you can avoid it, do! We spent all afternoon arguing with the police escort, who insisted that it was only "safe" to eat at the most expensive restaurants along the lake (where they could get a free meal for their trouble) and it pretty much ruined the rest of the day!

Egyptian Unity

2011-03-11T18:18:00.036-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

From Unity March

The cross and the crescent raised together!

It was one of the slogans of the 1919 Revolution in Egypt against the British. Finally tiring of the British Empire's time-honored tradition of "divide and conquer," Muslims and Christians rose up together to throw off the imperialist yoke. Past is future in the New Egypt. In the wake of so-called Muslim-Christian violence this week, which some people have attributed to remnants of the former State Security apparatus, one of the focuses of this week's Friday protest is Christian-Muslim unity.

No to the constitutional amendments!

We're also only 8 days away from a referendum on amendments the Supreme Military Council is proposing to the constitution, and protesters on Tahrir are adamantly opposed to amending the constitution that kept Hosni Mubarak in power for 30 years. They will only accept the drafting of an entirely new constitution, they say. It has been their demand since the very first week of the protests.

One Lord: Muslim, Christian, one people. Destroy churches, destroy homes, [but] the voice of the Copts will not die.

Ten minutes' walk down the Nile, Coptic Christian Egyptians have been protesting for days. They're demanding respect for their rights as a minority, and insisting on a secular state. They're not the only ones. I saw plenty of Salafis there, with their distinctive beards, skullcaps and high-water thobes, bearing banners that called for Muslim-Christian unity, supporting the argument that Salafis were probably not behind the sectarian violence of this past week.

As we came back to Tahrir, we walked past a group of youth painting a banner along the edge of the street.

Behind them, on the fence of a construction site, they were displaying artwork about the revolution.

We also picked up a lot of revolutionary literature and other swag!

What's a Salafi?

2011-03-09T18:08:00.039-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Last night there was an altercation in Mokattam, aka Garbage City, a largely Christian suburb of Cairo. It was reported in the paper that a mob of Salafi Muslims attacked some Christians. When Andrew mentioned this headline in our class on Islamist political movements, it changed the course of the whole lesson.

Our teacher was adamant that it couldn't have been Salafis who attacked those Copts, and I found myself convinced by his arguments and what I know about Salafis. They're academics, scholars of Islam and followers of a literal interpretation of the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad. They're men who know not only exactly what the Quran and the Prophet say, but also understand the context in which those things were said. They understand that Islam is an Abrahamic religion that protects Christians and Jews, that advocates peace whenever possible, and abhors violence except in self defense. They are pacifists to a broad extent.

Moreover, they do not participate as a group in Egyptian politics. That is to say, they are not a united voting block behind any one party. A few vote with the Muslim Brotherhood, some with the National Party, some with the Wafd Party. Others don't participate at all in the corrupt, immoral, un-Islamic government that has made a practice of oppressing Egypt.

The common explanation for this week's violence is that the state newspapers' use of the term "Salafism" is a smoke screen. Nearly everyone I've asked is of the same opinion: the so-called "Salafis" attacking Christians could only be thugs of the old security apparatus. This conclusion is fueled by the evidence uncovered during the days of the revolution that the church bombing in Alexandria was, in fact, orchestrated by the former head of State Security. It became evident during the revolution that reports of a "sectarian conflict" between Muslims in Christians in Egypt was not a reality on the ground, but rather a divide-and-conquer tactic of the Mubarak regime.

The Slow Slog Forward

2011-03-08T18:58:00.000-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Sometimes it seems that Egyptians have just gone mad with people power. The handicapped are camped out on Kasr al-Aini Street, tents have gone back up on Tahrir for various causes, there's a solidarity demonstration of some sort in front of the Arab League every day, and different workers are on strike every day. And over and over, in taxis and stores and metro cars and coffee shops, you hear the same refrain: "There's no more government! There's no more order!" While a few Egyptians are mad with people power, most of them are slowly wearying of constant disruption by protesters.

Here's what I think is going on. 6 of April and other organizations of young people have very clear insight into the democratic process. I remember how impressed I was on 1 February when the pro-Mubarak supporters first started to appear. Everywhere I went, I heard pro-democracy protesters engaging Mubarak's supporters (or trying to) in quiet exchanges of opinion. They demonstrated a clear understanding that real democracy is about dialogue with the opposition. Others used tactics from Balkan nonviolent resistance movements like hugging policemen and chanting for national unity to show that they wanted respectful discourse with the regime and its security apparatus.

What these youth movements didn't have was hierarchy or leadership. They did this deliberately. It was all part and parcel of their message that despotism and the cult of personality wasn't getting Egypt anywhere they wanted to be. Perhaps they even have the humility to recognize that while they were able to topple their government, they don't have the skills or experience to constitute a new one. Community organizing is one thing, but not all community organizers are Barack Obama! Unfortunately, no one has yet stepped up who does have the skills and experience, or even the charisma to lead the New Egypt.

What we're seeing instead is evidence of the part of democracy that Egypt hasn't quite wrapped its head around yet. Yes, demonstrations and nonviolent resistance are powerful tools to end a policy, law, institution or regime you don't like. That, however, is the easy part of democracy. It's where we go from here that's difficult, and a hundred people pitching tents on Tahrir Square is not going to build institutions, write laws, implement policies or in other words, govern the most populous country in the Arab world!

In 2010, hardly anyone imagined that people power could topple thirty years of dictatorship and megalomania in just 18 days. In 2011, that failure of imagination has made a quagmire of the already chaotic downtown of the Mother of the World.

Inter-Taxi Chit-Chat

2011-03-07T09:42:00.022-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

I don't ride around in taxis in America, so I don't know if this is just taxi driver culture, or specific to Arab taxi driver culture, but there are lots of conversations that go on between the open windows of taxis stuck in traffic. Especially Cairo traffic, and especially in the complete disaster that surrounds Tahrir Square for several blocks around.

Often drivers lean out their windows to ask a taxi driver for directions. Sometimes they're checking traffic conditions. "Is it better to go this way or that way?" In these exciting times, they talk more and more about politics, too. I noticed today that a great many taxis have "25 January" stickers on their cars; there are the ones that look like license plates, banners with the faces of the martyrs, "I was there" stickers, Egyptian flags, and more.

Today my driver spent half his time screaming invectives out his window: "You ass!" or "That's my spot, man!" He was definitely not loving his job today.

As we were sitting in traffic in front of the Arab League Headquarters, there was a small protest on the sidewalk. The driver on the other side of us asked, "Is that a protest for Libya?" That was the topic of protests in that spot last week. "No," said my driver, "that flag is for Iraq." Replied the other driver, "Whatever do they want in Iraq?" Said my driver, "God only knows! Some beans for their bread, maybe? The whole world is falling apart!"

It was a common refrain from him after that. The whole world is falling apart. And sometimes it seems that way in Egypt post-revolution. As I commiserated with my driver, Tahrir Square was a traffic disaster before the revolution. Now it's a place taxi drivers avoid whenever possible. Before picking up me, he turned down three fares to the same neighborhood because they would entail crossing Tahrir as he did with me. As a result, he gets angry, and I feel guilty and overpay for my ride. Having classes in Zamalek is getting damned expensive!

But it wasn't all politics. Along the way, as we were waiting on a corner for our turn to go around Tahrir Square, he shouted out his window for a cup of tea from a street vendor.

Security Leaks

2011-03-06T05:52:00.035-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

I was all set to be abed by midnight for the first time in weeks. Lights were out and I was settling in when I started to hear shouting down the street towards Tahrir Square. A unified chant began to emerge, and as I came out on my roommate's balcony over Tahrir Street, there was a mob of young men and women shouting, "The people demand the fall of the system!" as they marched with Egyptian flags from Tahrir Square towards Abdeen Palace.

Not ten minutes later, I was out on the balcony again. Some of the protesters were coming back down the street. Residents of the street had come out in the "popular committees" or "neighborhood watch groups" that were so familiar during the 18 days of revolution, with their sticks and thin plastic pipes. They beat a few youth as they ran back down the street towards Tahrir Square.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, I was back out on the balcony watching an argument that had broken out on the intersection below. I noticed that the neighborhood watch and the employees of the gas station on the corner had once again erected a roadblock on the street heading towards the Interior Ministry. They were turning cars away from both the Ministry and the street to Abdeen Palace, but I couldn't hear clearly enough to understand why.

Eventually, sometime after 1am, things settled down enough that I could sleep.

The Leaking Begins
When I woke up this morning (not as rested as I'd planned), I discovered in Egypt Today that protesters had stormed a number of buildings of the Central Security, the intelligence service in the police force, to stop them from destroying documents, videos and other evidence proving their corruption and use of torture.

There are also rumors that senior police officials have been relieved of their jobs, and that they stormed several government offices in protest. My roommate, who was watching from a nearby balcony, heard that one of those government buildings was the Abdeen Prison down the street, where they supposedly released prisoners who attacked the Interior Ministry. I can't confirm either, just to say that rumors are rampant and the revolution is far from over yet!

Center for Arabic Study In Cairo (CASIC)

2011-02-28T16:40:00.083-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Today was our first day back to classes, in our new program: Center for Arabic Study In Cairo (CASIC). We're not back on the old Tahrir campus, as there are still demonstrations of varying sizes on Tahrir Square every day. Instead, we are having our classes in the AUC dorms in the ritzy, super-secure neighborhood of Zamalek.

Thanks To AUC...
Zeinab Taha is our hero! We thanked her often and effusively yesterday at our orientation, but I don't think we can thank her enough. When the University of Texas canceled CASA for the rest of the academic year, we felt stranded and abandoned, academically and financially. Thanks to the Zeinab, and AUC's new president and CASA alumna Lisa Anderson, we now have an academic home again, and much-needed financial support.

We're also very happy that our teachers will have the work that was promised to them. So are they, it seems, since several professors report having asked AUC to let them teach us without compensation during the revolution! With CASA canceled and all but 20 of AUC's 350 Arabic students having fled the country, if they didn't have CASIC, they'd have nothing!

We're Back To Business...
It was great to be in class again. I haven't forgotten quite as much Arabic as I thought I had over our 10 very long weeks of break. In fact, it's pretty amazing how much I've learned since June, and I'm excited to see how much I'll learn by the coming June!

It was also great to hear our professors talk a little about the revolution and their experience of it. We'd been asking ourselves all through the revolution if they were on Tahrir Square, and they certainly were.

Wael was out almost every day, playing bodyguard to his friend the Chief Supreme Court Justice, as one of the volunteers protecting the Egyptian Museum, and even being shot at by pro-Mubarak thugs. His friend the amazing interpreter was also there, leading the Muslim Brotherhood's defense of Tahrir Square from those pro-Mubarak thugs on horses and camels. And of course we saw his friend from the leadership of the Lawyers Syndicate on TV to announce that the lawyers were taking the side of the people against Mubarak.

Sayyed was also very excited about the revolution. For a decade, he explained, he's been arguing that the only way Egypt would change is from within the NDP. Some prominent party voice would have to publicly declare their disgust with the NDP and break away to form a new party. He'd never imagined that the people would effect change from beyond the party, and he's delighted to be wrong. I'm excited to take this class with him on Islamic political movements, especially in light of the current curiosity about the Muslim Brotherhood's next move here in Egypt.

But Not Quite As Usual!
Things are not yet back to normal in Cairo, whatever normal is going to be. There are still dozens of tanks blocking the streets around the Radio and TV Building, the heart and soul of the Egyptian propaganda machine. The only public transportation between my apartment in Tahrir and our classes in Zamalek should go down those streets. Consequently, there is no public transportation to class, and I refuse and can't afford to pay 30 pounds ($6) a day in taxi fare to get to class on my stipend. That's a whole week worth of koshary lunches!

This means that I practically ran to class this morning, for lack of public transportation, which took me an hour and left me with half a dozen blisters and all my clothes soaked in sweat. I don't mean to whine. I'm grateful that we have classes to go to! But I chose my apartment for its proximity to class and public transportation, and it's so frustrating to be stranded there now!

HR 1 and the Future of International Education

2011-02-25T18:57:00.032-03:00

The memo below on budget cuts in the US Congress was circulated on Cairo Scholars today. The proposed budget cuts detailed below have profound effects on study abroad, cultural exchange, peace work and critical language teaching in the Egypt, the Middle East and beyond. These reductions effect both American students, professors and scholars seeking opportunities abroad, and also foreign students, professors and scholars wishing to enrich American institutions with their wealth of experience. It also represents a drastic reduction in resources and opportunities for American students starting at the kindergarten level to interact with the greater world.

In this era of globalization, interconnectivity and interdependence, we should be increasing our understanding of the rest of the world. I've seen photos of Egyptians holding placards in solidarity with striking government workers in Wisconsin, and government workers in Wisconsin holding placards in solidarity with Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Bahrain. This is how the world works now, and failing to prepare our youth for that reality will, in the long run, worsen our economic, political and cultural power far more than the deficit it reduces.

Dear MESA members,

Many of you will have been immersed in the news of the extraordinary events taking place in the Middle East over the last month or so. This update is to bring to your attention some important developments happening in the U. S. Congress that could affect programs in foreign language and area studies. A number of programs funded by the U.S government have been targeted for either major budget cuts or complete elimination.

Thinking that area studies specialists may be concerned about this possibility, I pass on information about a few programs particularly relevant to the broad disciplinary interests of MESA members.

Background
The U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 1 (H.R.1) last week. What is H.R.1? It is the 2011 full-year continuing appropriations Act. It would extend the current 2011 fiscal year funding which expires March 4, 2011.The Senate returns from recess next Monday (February 28) to begin work on its version of a budget for the remainder of FY11. Many things can happen in the negotiations between the House and the Senate.

In H.R. 1:

State Department international exchange programs would receive a 21 per cent cut, or a reduction to $501.3 million from the current funding level of $635 million. Two examples of programs funded under this program (http://exchanges.state.gov/scho-pro.html) are the Fulbright Program for Scholars serving scholars and the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program serving undergraduate and graduate students.
All funding from the United States Institute of Peace ($42.6 million) would be eliminated. www.usip.org USIP funds have supported hundreds of scholars and practitioners through its Senior Fellows program and hundreds of students through its Peace Scholars program. Its Grant Program has provided over 2,000 awards since 1986, a majority of which have supported the work of individual scholars around the world.
Funding for the K-12 Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) would be eliminated ($26.9 million). This is the Education Department's only dedicated grant program for K-12 foreign language education.
Funding for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education--FIPSE (including the International Consortia Programs) would be cut entirely ($58 million).
$350 million from the National Science Foundation would be cut. This could affect research funds for such disciplines and fields as Anthropology, Election Studies, Geography, Linguistics and Political Science.
For the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), H.R. 1 provides a FY 2011 budget of $145 million. This figure represents a $22 million (13%) cut from the agency's FY 2010 enacted budget. Examples of NEH grants are the NEH Research Fellowships, NEH Summer Institutes and Seminars for College and University Teachers, Collaborative Research Awards, Scholarly Editions and Translations Awards, etc.: http://www.neh.gov/news/recentawards.html
Funding for the Grants and Administration portion of the National Endowment for the Arts would be reduced by $20.5 million. NEA has funded Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects.

Finally, although H.R 1 did not propose any changes to the funding levels for The Higher Education Act, Title VI and Fulbright-Hays 102(b)(6), changes may come up in next week's Senate deliberations or in negotiations with the House. Funded at $125.881 million in FY 2010, these programs represent less than 0.2 percent of the U.S. Department of Education’s discretionary budget. A cost-effective investment, this federal-university partnership stimulates substantial additional funding by universities and foundations.

Sincerely,
Amy W. Newhall
Executive Director

Reviving Downtown

2011-02-23T18:50:00.068-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

I strolled down Mohammad Mahmoud Street and her side streets this afternoon, the first time I've been there in daylight, and finally saw the murals people have been talking about there.

"You're in my eyes, oh Egypt!"plays on a common Arabic endearment.


"I'm Egyptian / I'm Egyptian, Mother of the World / With the passing of time / Peace and love in each person's hands." It's signed, "25 January: the beginning of Egyptian freedom"

"Raise your head up high...."

"...you're Egyptian!"

"Oh Lord, protect those who reform!"

"I love my country."

Woo. Rah.

2011-02-22T18:37:00.015-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Pro-democracy advocates had called for another day of protests today to put pressure on the caretaker government to include more opposition members in the interim government, and to set a solid timetable for a handover of power. Some are calling for protests every Tuesday and Friday until free and fair elections take place.

The government was ready. Tanks still line Kasr al-Aini Street between Tahrir Square and the Parliament. As I was walking across downtown, they had increased roadblocks around the Interior Ministry, site of some of the heaviest fighting during the revolution, to a two block radius. On Sheikh Rihan Street by the American University, exactly in the middle between the Interior Ministry, Parliament and Tahrir Square, there were half a dozen ambulances and MASH units waiting.

In fact, only a few hundred showed up on Tahrir Square for a very quiet protest. They didn't stop or even hinder traffic, which is still being directed by military police in this very sensitive downtown spot. It was not much of a protest.

But it is a reminder of the warning people were giving the Supreme Military Council as they left Tahrir Square after Mubarak's resignation on the 11th: Everyone knows the way back to Tahrir.

You Bought WHAT??

2011-02-21T19:22:00.000-03:00

On a lighter note.... I am pleased to finally be able to publish this blog entry, now that the recipient of the secret gift detailed therein has received her surprise!

Cairo, Egypt, 29 December 2010

From Gwen Comes To Egypt

My cousin Gwen arrived safe and sound last night, after some sightseeing in Amsterdam along the way. We started out light on the first day, sleeping in till noon, having a leisurely lunch at Costa Coffee, and wandering across the Qasr al-Aini Bridge to the Opera to get tickets for tonight’s Nutcracker. They were sold out, so we got tickets for a piano concert instead.

When we arrived at the Egyptian Museum, it was closed. (FYI, it closes early on Wednesdays, which the guidebooks all neglected to mention.) So we decided to head over to Khan al-Khalili to do a little shopping and experience the Arab souq. Gwen’s good at bargaining!

We were on our way out when we spotted the man laying out animal skins and leather footrests. He also had a taxidermied fox and a pair of taxidermied rabbits. It was that latter that made Gwen stop and say, “That would a perfect gift for my mom!” It’s a long story best summed up by a phrase my mother loves to use in her defense, “But Auntie Viv is the only eccentric in the family!”

When we went out to dinner later, we left the rabbit on the coffee table in our living room, where my German roommate Amir agreed it looked hilarious. When my French roommate Sana'a came home, however, she startled Amir away from the book he was reading with a scream. It took him several minutes to remember the rabbit in the living room, and it took Sana'a several hours to get used to it, but eventually everyone agreed it was great for a laugh!

Boo CASA! Yay AUC!

2011-02-21T17:37:00.027-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

The Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) has canceled their spring semester, despite the resumption of near-normality in the streets of Cairo. They are also withdrawing funding for our stipends.

However, we've just received confirmation from the Arabic Language Institute at American University in Cairo. They will be providing our spring semester anyway, hopefully beginning as soon as Monday the 28th. They will also be providing our stipends.

For background, after recommending to CASA students that they return to Cairo, the University of Texas canceled the remainder of the CASA program for this year, including the stipends on which we were expecting to live until summer. (One of us is supporting two households on her stipend, while most of the rest of us at the very least have no other source of income until September, having counted on this fellowship to last until 1 June.) It took the University of Texas and their woefully misinformed security "specialists" two weeks to make this decision, and we have had no further communication from them since that decision 10 days ago, despite repeated emails from CASA Fellows for more details of how various elements of the program will be resolved.

Academically, CASA is one of the best Arabic language programs in the world, and has been for 40 years. However, I will not be able to recommend it to colleagues in future without serious caveats. The actions of the University of Texas regarding the CASA program have been chaotic, unorganized, and unprofessional. Had CASA students been in any real danger - and fortunately there was only one life-threatening but safely resolved incident during the revolution - there is no indication that UT would have even known about it in time to do anything. Only now, when the danger is passed, are they concerned about the "liability" of our staying on in Cairo, when we've already signed paperwork absolving them of all liability.

Despite operating for 40 years in Cairo, it became clear in this crisis that no one in CASA knew who was authorized to make critical decisions about student safety, evacuation, financial concerns like the distribution of stipends to pay our rent and food, or about the continuation of the program itself. It took 18 days, until the day Mubarak stepped down and the revolution ended, for CASA and UT to make the decision to suspend the program. It took them a further 10 days to respond to a single emailed question from CASA Fellows. If we had questions, we were instructed to contact the program director via Skype (she was not responding to emails, either) and when contacted she could only say that she was not authorized to make any decisions or recommendations.

I have worked with Rotary Youth Exchange, studied abroad with Goucher College, and was a Peace Corps Volunteer. In all those circumstances, not only were lines of communication and responsibility made clear to program staff, but also to program participants. Emergency plans were in place, lines of communication established, and participants were trained to take advantage of them. Not so with CASA and the University of Texas. Though this crisis was unexpected at this time, it was not unimaginable that an increasingly impoverished, overpopulated country ruled by a brutal dictator might some day, quite suddenly, fall apart. We are only lucky that Egypt did not do so as spectacularly and tragically as Libya. CASA and UT's lack of preparedness is inexcusable.

On the other hand, I am happy to report that the Arabic Language Institute (ALI) at AUC, which hosts CASA in Cairo, has stepped in to fill the gap. They have arranged for our classes to resume, our stipends to be paid, our health insurance coverage to continue, and the CASA/Cairo office to reopen. While they may not have communicated with us as often as we might have wished, lines of communication were always open, and emails have always been responded to promptly and as completely as was possible under the circumstances.

Of course, this is a mutually beneficial arrangement for ALI. Most of their students have left Egypt for good, and most of their teachers were looking at having no jobs this semester. With all CASA students - without exception! - expressing a strong desire to complete our studies despite (or perhaps because of) uncertainty about Egypt's political future, it makes sense for ALI to provide our classes. And we are glad to give the work to the amazing teachers who have helped us understand Egypt's revolution on a deep level most foreigners in Egypt don't.

Close Encounter with a Protester

2011-02-16T18:52:00.000-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

From the moment I returned to Egypt, it was a different place. I wrote about it for New Matilda.

Everywhere I go in Egypt, the atmosphere is different. I went to pick up a book for class at Diwan Bookstore, and the salesmen gathered around to hear me answer the question, "What do you think of Egypt now?" The same thing happened at the mini-market around the corner from my apartment.

Simply standing on my roommate's balcony is a different experience now. People are talking in the streets more than I remember from a month ago. Before the revolution, people went where they were going and kept their heads down. Now they're having conversations, hopeful conversations, animated conversations!

Of course, not everyone's happy. There was a man in the women's car when I was on the Metro today, and as usual he was screamed at to get out. But there was a different undercurrent. "There's no police to arrest me!" he said. And it echoed around the women's car: "There's no police, no regime, no government, no order...." As much as there is excitement in the wake of the revolution, there is also trepidation and uncertainty.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, and I'm just waiting for the CASA Executive Board to realize that, and allow us to start our classes again.

Revolutionary Detritus

2011-02-16T12:15:00.037-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

I returned from Jordan today to find my apartment showing signs of its time as a refuge for Egyptian revolutionaries and their allies. From this detritus, I learned a few lessons.

1. Less is more. I couldn't have put it more eloquently than that!

2. Sometimes you can't think too much. My roommate and the other revolutionaries and refugees who took shelter here worked there way through all of his alcohol, and then ravaged mine. It was the least I could do for Egypt!

3. Nicotine is a necessity. At least if you were already a smoker. My roommate is working on a sculpture of found objects. He hopes to eventually reach the top of the mirror....

4. Take your vitamins to harden your resolve! Actually, I don't know if this bottle of calcium was here before the revolution, left by some earlier roommate. The candles, though, were a wise precaution in case the pharaoh cut the electricity along with the Internet....

5. Pick up after yourself. Young people were out all over Tahrir Square and the surrounding streets with buckets of paint. They were repainting fences, railings, bridges, curbs.... I even saw a group of youth enlist a military policeman to divert traffic so they could repaint a crosswalk that probably hasn't been white for years!

More From Me!

2011-02-14T07:03:00.011-03:00

I've been published again on New Matilda! Read about the cleanup and a new attitude in Egypt, and see them in action on YouTube:

Egyptian People Power

2011-02-14T05:29:00.018-03:00

Busting some myths about the Egyptian Revolution:

Did the revolution in Tunisia inspire Egypt's youth movement? No.
It certainly encouraged and strengthened it, but movements like the Youth of 6 April, Kefaya, elBaradei's National Association for Change, and the youth mobilized by the death of Khalid Said have been working towards this moment much longer than that.

Was the 25 January Movement a leaderless movement? No.
Most people participating in the revolution probably knew nothing about who was behind it, but there was definitely an organizing committee, a plan, training, and oversight. That there was trash pickup, a clinic and other amenities of civilization on Tahrir Square was no spontaneous manifestation. This excellent behind-the-scenes look by al-Jazeera's People and Power explains:

Cycling in Celebration!

2011-02-12T16:06:00.043-03:00

Dead Sea, Jordan

I chose to celebrate Egypt's new-found democracy with a Bike & Hike with the group that was formerly known as Tareef Cycling Club.

From Wadi Himara Once More

Jad warmed me that cycling and hiking with the organization Tareef had become was not the same experience as outings with Tareef. Even so, I'd really missed those weekly trips, and I wanted to get out of the city and get some exercise while I was here. Plus, I knew when I'd RSVP'ed to Aktham that he, at least, would be going, and I was looking forward to seeing him. He brought along a fellow Iraqi Kurdish refugee who's been living in Orange County, California, since she was relocated several years ago, and she was also fun to spend time with. We talked a lot about the cultural differences between Jordan and the US: what she and I had learned and Aktham will discover when his resettlement to Anaheim finally comes through.

Sure enough, it was not the same mixed demographic I remember. It was almost entirely 16-18 year old boys. In fact, it reminded me of backpacking with the Boy Scouts in high school, where everything's a race, and the boys were literally climbing the walls of the canyon. Still, it was the same beautiful Wadi Himara I remember from previous trips!

Politics was Inevitable
One of the things I always loved about Tareef was that even while we were raising money for the Gazans in the Hannukah War, no one spoiled our fun with discussions of politics. But Egypt's revolution is something entirely different. It has infused Arabs with a sense of hope they can't remember ever having, perhaps best explained by the Black Iris and Christine Makhamra of 7iber.com. When they find out that I fled Egypt to Jordan, everyone wants to know what it was like to be there at this exciting time. I keep coming back to the same point: for the first time since I've been in Egypt, I'm finally seeing Egyptians proud of their country, hopeful for the future, and believing in their ability to influence national politics. It's inspiring, and I can't wait to go back on Wednesday!

THEY DID IT!!

2011-02-11T18:13:00.027-03:00

Amman, Jordan

I never wanted to be in Egypt more than I do right now! History is being made, and I could have gotten on a plane to Cairo this morning and been there to celebrate with my latest host country right now. Hosni Mubarak is out, and Omar Suleiman seems to be, too. The fraudulently elected Parliament has been dissolved. The cabinet has been dismissed.

The regime is half fallen!

But as much as I want to celebrate with the Egyptians, I'm worried. What we basically have in Egypt now is a military coup. Egypt doesn't have a good history with military coups. Everything hinges now on the limits of Tantawi's ambitions. Does he think of himself as the next Nasser? Because then things will get ugly fast!

Best case scenario, Egypt goes the way of Turkey: the military takes control for a few months, until a new government can be democratically elected, and then steps aside until democracy is threatened again. But only time will tell.

The regime is only half fallen.

Proletariat Rising!

2011-02-11T09:09:00.002-03:00

Amman, Jordan

In Egypt on Wednesday, the revolution was gaining even greater popular momentum. Workers began striking all over the country, demonstrating a much broader base of support among Egypt’s lower classes. It’s true that the crowds on Tahrir Square include protesters from all walks of Egyptian life; I’ve seen them myself. The protests in Cairo, though, have been attended by a disproportionately large share of young intellectuals, and until Wednesday it was hard to know if they really represented the majority of their countrymen.

Workers’ strikes shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been watching Egypt over the last several years. Strikes, sit-ins and work slowdowns in Egypt’s factories have been a sporadic nuisance to the business interests of both military and civilian employers for some time. Workers have even been able to gain some concessions in recent years, but Wednesday proved that those concessions were not nearly enough.

That’s why virtually everyone I know, in Egypt, Jordan and America, was certain that Hosni Mubarak would relinquish the presidency in his speech Thursday night. It’s increasingly clear that what’s happening in Egypt is not an intellectual exercise, or a mere youth movement. My roommate confirms that at least three young junior officers of the army have also joined protesters on Tahrir Square, and perhaps as many as fifteen. The military brass may have other plans, but the rank and file are beginning to show their sympathy for the protesters and their own desire for freedom and democracy.

Even as a youth movement, it had power. More than half of Egypt’s population is under 35 years old, and most of them unemployed or underemployed, unable to marry, and with little hope for the future before 25 January. With the working class joining demonstrations, it seems inevitable that the old regime must fall. It seems that only the regime hasn’t yet recognized its fate.

Hosni Speaks Again

2011-02-10T17:46:00.113-03:00

Amman, Jordan

I'm watching Hosni Mubarak's speech on Egyptian national television, which protesters have been waiting with great anticipation.

He's promising to bring to justice those who caused the violence and deaths of the last 3 weeks. He praises the youth for calling for justice, but refuses to be dictated to by outside forces.

[As he says this, protesters are giving him thumbs-down from Tahrir Square.]

He refuses to take orders from outside, and repeats his commitment to not run in the upcoming elections, and his commitment to continue in his office until the September elections. He says that he has initiated the requested dialogue with the opposition, and that he is leading the nation out of crisis over the coming months.

[The crowd on Tahrir is erupting in shouting and thumbs-down.]

Yesterday, he says, the committee examining the constitution gave its first recommendations. In response, he is proposing to amend Articles 76, 77, 88, 93 and 189 of the Constitution, and to anull Article 179. At a later stage, he promises to amend further articles as recommended by the committee. This will, he says, ensure fair and transparent elections, under the authority of the judiciary. In time, he says, he will lift the Emergency Laws. For now, it is more important to restore confidence in Egypt's people that progress is being made. He is threatening that the economic crisis related to the protests will effect the youth first.

[Now people are holding up their shoes in the crowd on Tahrir, soles facing the televised image of Mubarak, a grave insult in Arab culture.]

He declares that these demonstrations are not about Hosni Mubarak personally. He repeats that he has done everything for Egypt, gone to war for her, lived through her occupation, and liberated Sinai.

[The crowd is roaring and shaking their shoes in the air.]

He insists he has only ever worked for the betterment of Egypt, and denies that he has never sought power or popularity, and that all people know this. He says that he has realized the necessity of turning over some of his power to VP Omar Suleiman. Egypt, he says, will prove that it is an independent state that does not bow to foreign pressure. At great length, he speaks about the eternal uniqueness and strength of the Egyptian nation. He repeats his determination to die in Egypt [one way or another, Hosni!], and says goodbye.

Now the crowds are shouting, "He must leave!" It was a patronizing speech, by a president who seems delusional in his apparently sincere belief that he is a hero of Egyptian history. I can't even express the disbelief I'm feeling right now. My heart is pounding. If I were Egyptian, I would.... I can't even imagine what. The hubris of this man is unbelievable!

11:37PM
Now I'm listening to Omar Suleiman's response.

He's saying that Pres. Mubarak has put the needs of Egypt above all else. He says they have opened the door to dialogue, and commits himself to anything necessary for a peaceful transfer of power, including national dialogue. He calls on all Egyptians to look together to the future, a free and democratic future for a nation of heroes. He asks the youth of Egypt to go home, to go back to work, and to return to the development of the country. He accuses the satellite television stations of fomenting discord. He praises the armed forces that defended both the revolution and the nation. He invokes the blessings of God in conclusion.

On al-Jazeera, John Bradley is calling this "political suicide" and a "double insult to the Egyptian people," a catalyst for the people to stage a real revolution. I have my problems with some of the analysis in Bradley's book Inside Egypt, but I have to agree with his analysis today. Now not only do Egyptians have incredible hatred for Mubarak, but they've got reason to see that the army is not the savior that they've thought it would be. Furious crowds are already marching towards the Television Building in Cairo, and the military base in Alexandria. I'm afraid that things are going to get really nasty now, and I'm worried about tonight and tomorrow.

This afternoon, as recently as 2 hours ago, I was sorry to be here in Jordan, and sorry that I had changed my plane ticket from tomorrow till Wednesday, wishing I could be in Cairo tomorrow to celebrate the fall of Mubarak. Now I think I'm glad I'll be here. In fact, I'm pretty doubtful now that CASA will resume at all this spring. But of course, my future in Egypt is not nearly as important as the future of Egypt's citizens there. I wish them the best, but am braced for the worst. Viva la revolution!

The pertinent bits of the Constitution:
Article 76:
The People’s Assembly shall nominate the President of the Republic. The nomination shall be referred to the people for a plebiscite. The nomination for the President of the Republic shall be made in the People’ Assembly upon the proposal of at least one third of its members. The candidate who obtains two thirds of the votes of the members of the People’s Assembly shall be referred to the people for a plebiscite . If he does not obtain the said majority the nomination process shall be repeated two days after the first vote. The candidate obtaining an absolute majority of the votes of the Assembly members shall be referred to the citizens for a plebiscite. The candidate shall be considered President of the Republic when he obtains an absolute majority of votes cast in the plebiscite. If the candidate does not obtain this majority, the Assembly shall propose the nomination of another candidate and the same procedure shall follow concerning his candidature and election.

Article 77:
The term of the presidency shall be six Gregorian years starting from the date of the announcement of result of the plebiscite. The President of the Republic may be re-elected for other successive terms.
(**) Amended according to the unanimity of the people's approval to the constitutional amendment in the plebiscite conducted May, 22nd 1980.

Article 88:
The Law shall determine the conditions which members of the Assembly must fulfil as well as the rules of election and referendum, while the ballot shall be conducted under the supervision of the members of a judiciary organ.

Article 93:
The People’s Assembly shall be competent to decide upon the validity of the membership of its members. The Court of Cassation shall be competent to investigate the validity of contestations on membership presented to the Assembly after referring them to the Court by the Speaker of the Assembly. The contestation shall be referred to the Court of Cassation within fifteen days as from the date on which the Assembly has been informed thereof while the investigation shall be completed within ninety days from the date on which the contestation is referred to the Court of Cassation. The result of the investigation and the decision reached by the Court shall be submitted to the Assembly to decide upon the validity of the contestation within sixty days from the date of submission of the result of the investigation to the Assembly. Memberships shall not be deemed invalid expect by a decision taken by a majority of two-thirds of the Assembly members.

Article 189:
The President of the Republic as well as the People’s Assembly may request the amendment of one or more of the articles of the Constitution. The articles to be amended and the reasons justifying such amendments shall be mentioned in the request for amendment . If the request emanates from the People’s Assembly, it should be signed by at least one third of the Assembly members . In all cases, the Assembly shall discuss the amendment in principle, and the decision in this respect shall be taken by the majority of its members. If the request is rejected, the amendment of the same particular articles may not be requested again before the expiration of one year from the date of such rejection. If the People’s Assembly approves an amendment, in principle, the articles requested to be amended shall be discussed two months after the date of the said approval. If the amendment is approved by two thirds of the members of the Assembly, it shall be referred to the people for a plebiscite. If it is approved by the people it shall be considered in force from the date of the announcement of the result of the plebiscite.

Article 179:
The Socialist Public Prosecutor shall be responsible for taking the measures which secure the people’s rights, the safety of the society and its political regime, the preservation of the socialist achievements and commitment to socialist behaviour. The law shall prescribe his other competences. He shall be subject to the control of the People’s Assembly in accordance with what is prescribed by law.

A Breather From Revolution

2011-02-09T15:01:00.091-03:00

al-Mshairfeh, Jerash, Jordan

I want to support Egypt, and I've been glued to the TV day after day, but I needed a breather. I don't have the constitution to sit on tenterhooks day and night. And where better to have that break than in my favorite place in Jordan, Wijdan's house! Since I had extended my hospitality (and that of my Jordanian friends) to CASA Fellow Rachel, I extended the village's hospitality as well.

From A Breather From Revolution

I was particularly excited about taking Rachel to Mshairfeh because she's been doing research for her Masters thesis in a small town in Egypt, and I am interested in how she sees them comparatively. We also spent a lot of time on the bus to Jerash comparing the Jordanian Bedouin and Cairene dialects, and I just love people who like to talk linguistics!

Along the way, we took some time to visit the sites of the Roman ruins at Jerash, of course. It was the first time in a long time that I'd been to Jerash and not had anyone marvel at how I talked like a native. It's true, I really do sound like an Egyptian these days! Rachel even more so, which probably contributed to the confusion.

When we got on the bus to Mshairfeh, with a new bus driver who doesn't know me, there was some confusion as to what "those foreigners" were doing on their bus. "She speaks Arabic," I heard one say, "so ask her!" but no one did. "She used to teach in Mshairfeh," said one older man I recognized from West Msharifeh. Then Wijdan's nephew Sahim got on the bus, whose father owns the bus, and explained, "That's Maryah! She's going to my uncle's house. And she speaks Arabic!" As my pedigree was examined, Rachel and I were listening in and laughing quietly.

When we got to Mshairfeh and Wijdan started asking about where we'd been and what we'd done, Rachel said something I hadn't expected. "Maryah," she said, "is like a completely different person in Jordan. She's so happy all the time, so happy to be here." It's true, but I hadn't known it was obvious.

Watching Rachel play with the little kids reminded me of the early days of Peace Corps, when I really struggled to follow adult conversations at the neighbors' houses, and playing with the little kids was such a welcome distraction. I don't mean to suggest that Rachel's Arabic is bad. In fact, I was impressed at how quickly she was able to make a switch to understanding and even beginning to use Jordanian Bedouin Arabic. But as I said to Tareq when he commented on how much fun Rachel was having with the kids, sometimes it's such a relief to play with little kids that don't speak more Arabic than you do!

Abu Tareq On Egypt
At some point, in our conversations about the protests in Egypt, I said something to Abu Tareq that I expected to be controversial. "When I lived in Jordan," I said, "I thought I was living in a very poor country, but then I went to Egypt and realized that Jordan is not a poor country." I expected Abu Tareq, who sometimes has to borrow from his brother to put food on the table, to think that I was belittling the suffering of poor Jordanians. Instead, without a moment's thought, he agreed wholeheartedly, and started citing statistics of how little money most Egyptians live on. "That's why Egyptians come to Jordan to work for just 5JD a day," he said. "For an Egyptian, Jordan is paradise!" Even as we were hearing on TV that Jordanian hospital doctors were going on strike for 5 hours yesterday, Abu Tareq agreed that Jordan is in no danger of revolution. Jordan is a relatively good place to live, and I think even her worst domestic detractors would agree (off the record, of course!)

Google's Ghoneim Goes Public

2011-02-08T10:56:00.025-03:00

If you're interested in understanding the perspective of the organizers of the January 25th protests, and their feelings on how things have proceeded, you must see Wael Ghonim's interview.

In fact, you should check out more than just that interview on U Michigan professor Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment. He appears frequently on NPR and other media experts as a Middle East expert, and is very respected by many of my friends who study the contemporary Middle East.

In particular, check out my friend and fellow blogger Chris Anzalone's explanation of what we misunderstand about the Muslim Brotherhood, and why we shouldn't be worried about a repeat of the Iranian Revolution if the protests on Tahrir Square succeed. Chris is now a doctoral student at McGill University, but was already recognized by many of our professors as an expert on political Islam when we were Masters candidates together at Indiana University.

Breaking Silence in Egypt: A West African Perspective

2011-02-07T13:34:00.000-03:00

by Melinda Holmes on Monday, February 7, 2011 at 6:14pm

The following article was written by my neighbor in Cairo. Please feel free to forward it to anyone you feel would be interested. He is documenting and writing about the situation facing the refugee community now and the work that we, the few foreigners from the NGO community continuing to function here in Egypt, are doing.

Breaking Silence in Egypt: A West African Perspective
By Mouctar Diallo.
Written on Thursday February 3rd 2011, at 05:15 am.

It is four in the morning. I reside about two blocks from Tahrir square. I cannot sleep with the sporadic gunshots ringing around me. I have Al Jazeera on and surfing the Internet to have some sense of freedom. I have a lot of activist and blogger friends experiencing a siege as I write. People I have known for the last four years. All of them, part of the amazing organic community who is putting pressure on the Egyptian government.

The fall of the Berlin Wall is a great comparison in terms of the potential magnitude of the ramifications of the current events on the region. The difference: the reunification of Europe was simple, predictable in terms of the direction the old continent took.

In the Middle East, things are extremely more complex.

The future seems obscure. Egypt, the center of Arab and Islamic culture a few decades ago, with its population representing a quarter of the Arab demography, is going to set the tone for the region. At the moment that leading role is pointing at more chaos, more radicalization and more violence to come.

Here, there is no leading figure capable of effectively maintaining the socio-political fabric. Political fragmentation is occurring at an incredible speed. This is especially true with the government strategy to create a "pro-Mubarak" movement to give the police forces the capacity to continue their repressive work with the assistance of thugs recruited in the slums around Cairo, a city of 18 million people. Consequently, gangs and vigilantes are controlling the streets; some to practice all kind of pillage, others to protect their properties. Thus far, they are using knifes, wood, steel, chains and many other types of medieval weapons.

What will happen when the use of the barrels of firearms expands beyond the security forces and the army as Al Jazeera is currently showing? There are too many unknowns for now and probably still after the uprising becomes successful. For, undoubtedly, it will be successful.

The Black Africans, in this disorder of things, are the silenced community. Of the four years I have spent in Egypt, racism has been a constant companion, at all levels of the Egyptian social structure. This constancy of racial prejudice during times of peace cannot be imaginable during the current period of violence and suspicion. This is not to say that the racist behavior has to be generalized to all Egyptians, but the facts are the facts. See for yourself.

There is a considerable sub-Saharan African community in Cairo: refugees, students, migrant workers, international bureaucrats and government or political officials and their families. I spent about half of yesterday at the airport. I saw those with the financial means attempting to leave the country.

But there are other members of this robust community. Cairo is home to a significant refugee community from various countries. The bulk of them are from sub-Saharan Africa mainly Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Their whereabouts and welfare should be of public concern in these difficult moments. Their injuries and deaths (if any) should not be devaluated when considering the growing number of victims of the Egyptian State’s repression. Racism is as virulent in the Middle East as in the U.S. in the 1960s.

I was told, by a friend working at AMIRA, an organization involved in the relocation process of the refugees, that some Sudanese and Eritreans have been arrested and chased from their apartments. She also mentioned how it has been more difficult for them to feed themselves since the protests started. With some friends, she was working on getting some groceries to some Somali refugees. Prior to his departure for Turkey, another acquaintance and employee of the American University in Cairo, shared with me how he had to financially assist the Sudanese refugees he had befriended. Unable to work, deprived of any assistance in this time of chaos, their survival capacities have been substantively undermined. Abdul Kader, one of the leaders of the Somali refugee community in Cairo told me that their vulnerable financial situation has now been aggravated by pressures put on them by landlords, who themselves are strapped in an economy that has come to a halt. Even still, the landlords are pressuring the refugees to vacate their living quarters.

It does not stop there. Two Somali refugee women have been sexually abused in their home at El Ashra two days ago in the heat of the uprising. The Somali community leader, Ali Dahiradin, received the report this afternoon. The women have been beaten and sexually abused by a gang of young and armed Egyptians. Dahiradin was vexed, relaying to me that the women are complaining that there is no justice and that they cannot go to the police.

Even as I have ventured out, dedicated to my passion of documenting society, to capture these ongoing events, I have to deal with some remarks from some of the protesters. At the moment, it will not be fair and ethical for me to further comment on the faith of the sub-Saharan Africans, not knowing all the details. So far, I know that many are exiting the country and I am now thinking about it myself.

As everyone, I hope things will get better. But the reality is actually worse than what is shown on TV. Once again, the Media is exposing its weaknesses to manipulations through different political agendas defending different political and economic interests. Many have been hurt; many are unaccounted for; people are being killed. My utmost consideration and respect to the Egyptian people braving the state and its rigid structures of oppression and exploitation.

Egypt and the region will never be the same. The multitude are already on the move in Algeria, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen, whatever their specific differences.

It is now five fifteen. The call to prayer is being interrupted by the gunshots killing the children of Egypt in a place supposedly incarnating freedom, Tahrir Square. Their spilled blood will certainly give it back its symbolic grandeur as a space dedicated to liberty. As I am about to put my forehead to the ground, let us all pray to the all Mighty for the souls of those that fell today to the bullets of the wicked.

--
Mouctar Diallo
MA Candidate
Department of Political Science
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
The American University in Cairo

My Opinion In Print!

2011-02-07T05:26:00.000-03:00

Cairo From The Streets | newmatilda.com
Maryah Converse is an American student in Cairo and the reports of the protests she’s seeing on television don’t look much like what’s happening on the streets.

I've been published! This is an opinion piece I wrote about what I was seeing on the streets in Cairo versus what I and my parents were seeing on the news.

The Not-Egypt

2011-02-06T08:56:00.000-03:00

or, Jordan Is Approaching Modern and Entirely Stable

Amman, Jordan

I've been having the same conversation over and over again in the last few days ... no, in the last few weeks, in fact! I've had it with Returned Peace Corps/Jordan Volunteers, with Jordanians, with Egyptians, with Americans. While everyone in the media is calling Jordan "the next Egypt" and expecting Jordan's imminent collapse in its own revolution, my friends and I are talking about what a mistake it is to consider Jordan and Egypt even remotely in the same category.

As Peace Corps/Jordan Volunteers, we thought we were living in a really poor country. That's what Peace Corps Volunteers do, after all. And I don't mean to suggest that Jordan isn't a place with pervasive, urgent problems of poverty, unemployment, corruption, education and infrastructure. But those of us, Peace Corps Volunteers and Jordanians, who have been to Egypt have a very different view now. Jordan is not a Third World country anymore; it's solidly Second World, on its way to the First World. Poverty, education, corruption and infrastructure in Egypt are in a completely different category.

The degree of despair and hopelessness in Egypt was, until last week, an oppressive weight on me nearly everywhere I went in my daily life in Egypt. When you asked Egyptians about their future, they generally shrugged hopelessly and invoked God. "As God wills," or "It's in God's hands." It's not that you don't see such fatalism in Jordan, but it's not so nearly universal as it seemed to be in Egypt.

I think it's why there's so much more harassment in Egypt. Everywhere we girls go in Cairo, almost every young man we pass shouts "Ya muzza [banana]!" or "Ya buTTa [duck]!" or "Ya 3assal [honey]!" or one of a hundred other variations on "Hey, baby!" These are young men who probably hold a Bachelor's degree, but are likely unemployed or underemployed. They can't expect to marry before 40, or even have a girlfriend. They're socially, economically, sexually and emotionally frustrated. With no hope in sight, they amuse themselves by harassing passing women - not just foreigners, but Egyptian women, too, both with and without the hijab. You get a little of that in Jordan, but again, not on the same scale.

Since I returned to Egypt on Jan 27, though, I only heard these variations on "Hey, baby!" twice, and both times from pro-Mubarak thugs. For the first time Egyptians are feeling like they have some hope, some agency in their own futures. Jordanians have been developing that sense of agency for many years, and don't show the kind of hopelessness and despair I'm accustomed to in Egypt. A Bachelor's degree means something in Jordan; not as much as it means in America, but something. Men can expect to marry in their late 20s and early 30s. The job market is not as tight. An entrepreneurial Jordanian, especially among the increasing number with computer and English skills, can hope to make something of himself or herself that's better than what his or her father could achieve.

The country has a long way to go, but it's definitely going there. King Abdullah II's school reforms have transformed education in the Kingdom, and I watched it happen first hand as a Peace Corps Volunteer. University reforms are still necessary, but as today's schoolkids enter university, that change is inevitable. There are now computers in 99% of Jordanian schools, and more and more Jordanian families are acquiring computers and Internet access. From school reforms, the culture of the whole country is changing, becoming more aware of the greater world, learning more critical thinking skills, and becoming more politically active at home.

What's essential to understand about Jordan is that, though things are in need of significant improvement, you can see that improvement happening, bit by bit, around the country. The Jordanian standard of living is slowly going up, and the people know that their king, for all that he's controversial, has had a lot to do with how the country has improved. He has pushed for economic, educational and social reform. While many Jordanians may feel that he and his wife are more Westernized than Jordanian, they still see the tangible benefits of modernization, of conforming to the international standards of the Western, developed nations. Though privately they complain about this or that the king is doing, I still believe that most Jordanians are proud of their king.

You could see this clearly by comparing the massive protests in Egypt to the small demonstrations in Jordan. On Friday, 28 January, Egyptians came into the streets by the millions demanding "the fall of the system," i.e. of the whole government leadership, and the resignation of Pres. Mubarak. In contrast, a couple hundred Jordanians came out to ask for certain laws to be repealed. The Egyptian police responded with teargas, water cannons and rubber bullets, but the Jordanian police brought Pepsi and sandwiches to the demonstrators. On Friday, 4 January, millions of Egyptians came out again, demanding freedom of expression and the fall of the government. In Jordan, about 50 Communists gathered to chant a few slogans in the most desultory, bored fashion you could imagine for a demonstration. Even the sensationalists at CNN, when they went around downtown Amman, Jordan, looking for revolutionaries, couldn't find anyone who even wanted to protest, let along overthrow the government.

The Sad Consequences
Knowing what I know about Jordan, and what my American and Jordanian friends see on the streets here, I know that Jordan is still the safest place I've ever lived in the world. I've heard that hundreds of tourists have canceled their plans to vacation in Jordan, because it's an inch away from Cairo on a map, or because of the media's attempt to portray Jordan as the next powderkeg. Jordan depends heavily on those tourists and their money, and this will be a blow for Jordan's already shaky economy. But Jordan has been through this before, with 9/11, the War in Iraq, the Amman hotel bombings in 2005, and the economic crisis of 2008. Every time it seems that Jordan's tourism sector is finally stable, some global event sends it into a tailspin. Every time Jordan comes back, though, they come back stronger. In the long term, I think Jordan and Jordanians will find themselves in an even better position than ever: more foreign aid, more foreign investment, and more tourism, as Jordan becomes ever better known as the most stable nation on the Red Sea or in the Arab World entirely.

a day in revolutionary times

2011-02-05T06:28:00.000-03:00

by Amir Heinitz on Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 1:33am

i start having difficulties with mastering the information influx and the various events that occur during one day, together with my current two flatmates we try to keep order in our thoughts and memories, but sometimes it's hard to remember what happened in the morning, what was said by whom yesterday, or was the time order the other way around.

let me try to write a bit about today - the morning was fine, the atmosphere ahead of the day of departure (tomorrow will be day of departure II) was much better than the last two days. people were smiling again, at least on my street people were being let through road blocks. trying to organize our thoughts, posting things on the internet and getting in touch with people outside the country, we only managed to leave the flat after lunch time. on midan falky we met up with two more friends for a juice, after a few minutes army police approached us, check our papers, asked us, where we were going, we replied correctly, to my friends place, and it was ok. we went to my friends place, from the roof we could see masses streaming into tahrir. we went down and walked in. the street there was controlled by muslim bortherhood, discernible by the large numbers of beards, but more importantly by me getting an escort by a muslim brotherhood member, who showed his MB membership card to everybody at the approximately 10 civilian checkpoints along the way and said that i was german, and that it was ok. we left cameras at home, and came as students and tried to keep a low profile. inside the square the atmosphere was a lot better than the last time we had been there. but even though the festive mood had returned to some degree, people were anxious, nervous and their conversations confused. people still welcomed us in the typical egyptian way, though we started being more of a curiosity, since many foreigners left during the last two days. some people were afraid of muslim brotherhood taking over, others of a military dictatorship being established and liberties being continued to be curtailed, but everybody wanted mubarak gone. the state media had been spreading that kfc was providing free food to demonstrators in an attempt to mark demonstrators as foreign directed stooges. we had gotten some koshary (typical egyptian food, rice noodles, lentils with a tomato onion sauce on top) from one of the local places. while we were eating it, people approached us and took pictures of us, making fun of the state media for its failing efforts to frame public opinion. obviously foreigners eating koshary on midan tahrir was a good sign for them. as we were leaving a rumour spread that mubarak had left the country - people started kissing each other men had tears in their eyes, a woman with veil started shouting at us, that this was the best day of her life, that she had been oppressed by the regime since she was a child, that mubarak killed his own people and stole the money of the egyptians. she was vehement about being an egyptian first, that she has christian friends, and repeatedly screamed that the outside world should know that she is not a terrorist.

the way back home went smoothly, but all of us were confused with the different impressions, while we were on the square an announcement came out that a committee to represent the people on tahrir square was formed - it numbered 100 people and as the names were announced later on, none of the political opposition parties, whether baradei MB, kefaya or 6th of april were included. it was a non-ideological non-religious committee solely intended to represent the egyptian people [i hear shots outside again, and people are shouting in big masses] later on we got into a discussion whether the MB or the army was the bigger threat, someone who was well informed came by, and we discussed the events of the day and what will happen on the next day. [i'm shutting the lights, the shots are getting closer, and my cat horreya wants to cuddle] the opposition will continue, but outside activity will be come paramount, there needs to be more pressure from the outside, the man needs to leave, and foreign governments need to get actively involved in whatever capacity they see fit in the transition process. foreign meddling won't lead to anything good, but offers of assistance in general terms will probably be heard. the people here are very capable, but mubarak is still fighting desperately and, if, like two of my egyptian friends have told me know, he shall not turn cairo into the rome that nero burned, more needs to happen from the outside, in culturally and politically appropriate manner, and the egyptian people shall overcome. [street hunts are continuing on the streets.] some prayers wherever would be nice

Amir Heinitz is my roommate, still living in our apartment just a few blocks from Tahrir Square in Cairo where the protests and street fights have been raging for 12 days.

Refugees in Cairo Are Starving

2011-02-05T06:21:00.000-03:00

Egyptians Evict them from their Apartments and Attack them with Machetes and Guns
by Amir Heinitz on Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 11:28am

At eight o’clock, after a night interrupted by pistol and machine gun shots and loud arguments between pro-Mubarak and pro-Democracy Egyptians on my street, I was woken up by a phone call from one of the Somali community leaders from the low-class Cairo neighbourhood Ardiliwa. “Amir, our people are starving, we don’t know what to do. Some of the Egyptian landlords have threatened to evict us from our apartments, if we don’t pay them the rent right away.”

The tension on the streets is high. When I walked through Cairo’s downtown streets close to my apartment at lunch time, people were suspicious of each other, some quarrelled. Later on fights broke out, Mubarak thugs and supporters and protestors attacked each other with stones. Plainclothes police officers used their guns against protesters. The army was standing by, not going further than occasionally firing with their machine guns into the air.

The exact number of the refugee population from Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea and other African countries in Egypt is unknown. Numbers vary between one and three million, most of these refugees come from South-Sudan and Darfur. The numbers of Somalis seeking refuge in Egypt, particularly in Cairo is rising, due to the continued warfare in the Horn of Africa. Since refugees took to the streets in 2005 and protested against their inability to earn money legally, get access to any form of proper health care system, send their children to school and constant racial and religious discrimination faced in daily life in Egypt, the UNHCR moved its operations an hour outside of dowtown Cairo to 6th October City. Refugees struggle to gather the money to take a bus there, and since then no real relations exist between the communities and UNHCR, which according to its platform is the agency for assisting refugees. Refugees complain regularly of being turned away and being beaten up by UNHCR security personnel.

During the current crisis the army has not deployed in Ardiliwa, neither in the neighbourhoods of Arab Maadi, where many Ethiopian refugees live, nor in the parts of Nasr city populated by large numbers of Sudanese. During the last days all my phone calls were dominated by one topic: “Amir, we cannot leave our apartments anymore. What can we do? We are worried. I hope you are safe.” Those that managed to get work as security guards of factories, packers, house maids or those who have to sell their bodies for money in less dignified ways, could no longer bring in the few Egyptian Pounds they were contributing to their families and communities.

Before the revolution broke out my colleagues and I were working on urgent resettlement cases of Ethiopians that had been tortured by the Ethiopian regime in ways unimaginable and for whom life in Cairo only intensifies their traumas. We were working on the cases of Iraqi women, with cancerous growths in their breasts, who are harassed by Egyptians on a daily basis because they refuse to cover their hair. A Somali father with ten children approached me for help with his and his ten children’s resettlement case. He could only buy 3 kilograms of lemon per week for his family, that is 40 grams of vitamin C per head each day; the WHO recommend 400 grams. I was supposed to see a Sudanese women last week whose daughter is becoming progressively paralyzed due to the lack of treatment for her leg which was shot in Darfur. During the last few winter months everybody I met suffered colds or influenza. These refugees who are extraordinarily vulnerable should, according to UNHCR instruments, be resettled to countries where they can overcome their psychological trauma, grow up and live healthily, with access to health care and education and free of harassment.

The UNHCR has closed down. A few days ago I heard that they would open again yesterday, they did not. The road to 6th October City is too dangerous, criminals are roaming the highways, cars are stopped and plundered. The staff, mostly consisting of Egyptians who live in the affluent areas of Cairo, cannot go or want not to go to work. Talk is that UNHCR will be closed at least for another seven days. Caritas, located among the five-star hotels, embassies and villas of Garden City, is unreachable for refugees from the outskirts of Cairo. Walking down Garden City myself I am subject to road blocks erected by army and popular committees every second road. Despite the favourable treatment I receive with my white skin, a reality which is changing rapidly, a thirty minute walk turns into mental exhaustion.

One of the Iraqi community leaders in 6th October was approached by a number of Iraqis while on the market today: what can we do? We have our residence on our UNHCR refugee papers, we cannot even leave the country. We do not have valid passports anymore. A few days ago the Iraqi government sent two airplanes to evacuate Iraqi citizens, refugees from civil war in Iraq, how can they be expected to flee back. Another Iraqi reported how thugs attacked his house with sticks, machetes and guns. One of the men protecting the house was shot. Eventually, they managed to overpower the intruders and turn them over to the authorities. There were reports today saying that the government not only set criminals free, but that some NDP members take part in robbery and assault to spread fear among the people. Iraqis, confronted with an array of stereotypes against them and little means of effective protection, make easy prey.

At night another Somali community leader called me. His breath was short and he was shouting into the phone “They started coming, Amir. They were at our cafeteria. They have knifes and sticks, they are firing at us. I heard someone screaming of pain. What can we do? What can we do?” “Run, Abdikadir, run, get inside your home, look after your family.” The gate to Abdikadir’s house was later on broken. He stayed up all night guarding the house and protecting his young siblings and his old father. Ethiopians and Sudanese on the phone complained about the lack of food all day long - their diet is already beyond meagre. Their gratitude for someone caring only increased my feeling of powerlessness. My nerves were shot but tears would no longer come after having seen uncountable injured Egyptians being carried inside from the edges of Tahrir Square by pro-Democracy demonstrators.

Amir Heinitz is my roommate, still living just a few blocks from Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Things Heat Up In Cairo

2011-02-04T08:46:00.000-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Wednesday, 2 February 2011, 9:30AM
Alex and Lev are leaving on the American-organized evacuation flights for Europe today, and my parents have bought me a ticket to Jordan for tomorrow. I’m feeling quite conflicted, as I know Alex has been as well. We want to be here to see Egypt get the democratic, popularly-driven government it wants and deserves. This is the first time I’ve really wanted to be here in Egypt, felt real, deep affection for the people of Egypt. But if Mubarak doesn’t get his head out of his ass and step down by Friday, we’re afraid of what might happen after the afternoon sermon. The military still hasn’t said whose side they’re on, and the pro-Mubarak rally we saw this afternoon was unsettling at best. Discretion being the better part of valor, we’re running for the hills.

It’s not just our safety that’s driving us abroad. For three days, Egyptians have been begging us to get our pictures and experiences out to the rest of the world, to let them know what’s really happening here, and to urge our governments to support the protesters. All along, we’ve been promising to do just that, but we’ve only been able to get things out in bits and pieces over our periodic phone calls from home. Without Internet, the bulk of what we have to show and say to the world is trapped in Egypt. Not to mention that our family and friends are worried at best, frantic at worst, watching on CNN and Fox the repeated reports of looting, vandalism, anti-Americanism and violence in Egypt. If we leave the country, we can get the truth out and better support our Egyptian brothers and sisters in their struggle. We can do our part to put pressure on our government representatives to intervene. And with Skype, we can easily stay in touch with our friends here to keep the lines of communication open.

As I left Zamalek, it became more and more apparent that my taxi driver was an outspoken pro-Mubarak supporter. He had national radio on in the cab, and spoke at great length on how it’s time to end the violence and destruction, to reunite as one Egyptian people behind their president, and to restart an economy that was already failing. I’m reminded of a placard I saw yesterday at the Million Man March that read, “Egypt’s heart has stopped. We’re giving CPR.” As we came across the 6 October Bridge, there were few pro-Mubarak supporters in sight below. As we reached street-level, traffic was backed up as usual in the interchange near Ramsis street. “Did you ever think,” I joked with my driver, “that you’d be happy to see a traffic jam in Cairo? Things feel so normal again!” He agreed, assuring me that the worst was over and today would be the last day of protests. The government had already announced that Internet service would resume today, and by tomorrow the country would be back to normal, he said. I hope he’s right, but I’m skeptical.

Here in my apartment near Tahrir Square, things look quiet. My French roommate is moving the last of her things to her new apartment around the corner, a move she’s been planning on for a couple weeks now. My German roommate, meanwhile, filled up all the beds and couches in the apartment with protesters and foreign observers who hadn’t been able to go home last night. They are very apologetic about sleeping in my bed, but I’m glad to have been able to extend that service, even unknowingly, in support of the revolution. The Eritrean-German girl across the hall is back in her apartment, looking much more confident and optimistic than the last time I saw her.

11:30AM
My taxi to Dokki had to take the long way around, through Mounira down to the Botanical Garden, and then back up along the Nile to Tahrir Street in Dokki. These are mostly lower middle class neighborhoods, very different from Zamalek where I’ve been staying until today. As we drove through, things looked pretty normal. About two thirds of shops, restaurants and businesses seemed to be open. Despite widespread rumors of food shortages, especially bread, shelves seem to be pretty well stocked here and the usual street vendors are out selling government-subsidized bread. Traffic was still nothing like its usual snarl, but seemed to be up to almost half its usual volume. There were police deployed in their usual numbers. We passed several knots of protesters, but it was unclear which side they were on. Those holding signs on the square in front of the Sheraton seemed to be pro-Mubarak supporters, calling for national unity.

The best news is that Internet is now back up, and I can start putting up pictures and updating my blog again, not to mention reassuring the dozens of people who’ve sent emails, Facebook messages and posts and tweets to express their concern and lend their support. It makes me feel a little more guilty about leaving Egypt at this critical juncture, knowing that I could still get this information out if I stayed, but there’s no telling how long Internet will remain available, and discretion is still the better part of valor!

12:30PM
Before we got sucked into all the things we have to do on the Internet (and while it’s still night in America and no one in America is sitting by their email and Facebook in suspense), we decided to walk to Tahrir Square and see for ourselves what demonstrations look like today. On our way down the main street of Dokki, we were stopped by several groups of men who told us that “the real protest” (the pro-Mubarak protest) was in the other direction. As we crossed over onto Gezira Island, we noticed that almost all the taxis had “Yes to Mubarak” signs in their windshields. Not only that, but they were all relatively late-model taxis, which prompted Rachel to mention that there’s a government program that helps taxi drivers buy new vehicles. We suspect the government may have been using that as leverage to get these drivers out with a pro-government message.

As we crossed Kasr al-Aini Bridge, we started to get an uneasy feeling. All along the bridge there were knots of people arguing. Most were having pretty civil conversations. The anti-government protesters understand that real democracy means dialogue with the opposition, and they’re seeking opportunities to do that. They’re also whole-heartedly dedicated to non-violence, which includes verbal non-violence, and they were demonstrating that all along the bridge. The pro-Mubarak supporters, though, were very different. They were shouting, even screaming, with a very angry edge to their tones. And they were arriving by the minibus-full, as they were at yesterday’s pro-Mubarak rally down the Corniche. We’re pretty sure that they’re being bussed in by the government.

The closer we got to the military roadblock on the far side of the bridge, the more uneasy we became. Arguments became more and more heated, and there was a definite threat of violence in the air. We decided we didn’t want to take the risk of getting stuck on Tahrir Square if violence does break out, and retreated back to Dokki.

On our way back towards Dokki, Rachel was stopped by a father moving towards Kasr al-Aini Bridge with his five grown daughters. They had heard reports of violence breaking out on Tahrir Square, and were stopping people coming from that direction to see if they could get more information. As we talked to them, several knots of men tried to start an angry political discussion with the father, but he was very quietly refusing to engage in political debate, and asking only for the facts. Eventually, several anti-government protesters came by, pointing out that the anti-government faction was so much bigger than the pro-Mubarak faction that they would be crazy to start violence.

4:00PM
Andrew and Cosette are on Tahrir Square, where things are getting scary. Pro-Mubarak supporters have gotten onto Tahrir Square and are picking fights with anti-government protesters. Hoping to maintain a peaceful protest, the anti-government protesters are surrounding pro-government instigators, moving them off the square, and throwing over the fence in front of the Mugamma to be arrested by the military. We’ve urged Andrew and Cosette to get out of there quickly, before it gets worse.

Yesterday on Tahrir Square felt very much like I imagine it would have felt to be on the National Mall in Washington, DC, listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Today, though, it feels more like Birmingham, Alabama. Even under threat of very real violence against them, protesters continue to stand by their vow of nonviolence, the vast majority of them refusing to engage in violence even when they’ve been attacked and their lives are at very real risk. I can only hope that they can maintain the peace.

In the interim, someone’s mother has passed on the gist of an interview she saw with one of the “pro-Mubarak supporters.” Apparently he told journalists that he didn’t particularly want to be there, but that he works for the national petroleum company, and his superiors ordered him to Tahrir Square to support his president. None of us are the least bit surprised by this.

4:58PM
We’re watching on al-Jazeera English the action on Tahrir Square. There is definite violence happening on the street, with pro-government supporters attacking the thus-far peaceful protesters in running street battles, with the battle lines flowing back and forth. Anti-government protesters are holding their ground as best as they can without weapons. Pro-government “protesters” have hijacked several military trucks, are hurling rocks and bricks and other debris from rooftops onto the protesters below, and are attacking anti-government protesters from horse- and camel-back. The army is just standing by and watching. Rumor is that many of these instigators are plain-clothes or secret police sent by the Mubarak government to foment violence. Others are claiming that pro-Mubarak supporters have been delivered to points near the square in police transports. Foreign journalists are reporting that pro-Mubarak supporters have attacked them. Meanwhile, there are no ambulances around to take away the injured, whose numbers are growing.

5:26PM
The Government is claiming that there are no plain-clothes or secret police among the pro-Mubarak supporters, and that these are simply ordinary Egyptians coming out to protest the violence and instability that has filled their streets for the last nine days. Of course, this jives with Mubarak’s attempt last night to paint himself as a force for stability and order. Moreover, the army is not making any effort to stop the pro-Mubarak supporters from their frightening acts of violence. That seems a pretty fair indication that the military has taken the side of the regime. The government is also denying that shots have been fired, though of course reporters have them on tape by this time.

5:37PM
Buildings are burning and tear gas is billowing on Ramsis Street beside the Egyptian Museum. El-Baradei is calling for the army to intervene, but it’s clear they have no intention to do any such thing. One emergency vehicle is coming up the Corniche towards Tahrir as night falls, but it’s unlikely it will come close enough to the square to be of any assistance. Only one emergency vehicle is not going to help a conflict of this scale. Now a second is on its way, but it’s still a mere palliative.

10:19PM
After hours of relative quiet on Tahrir Square, now there’s gunfire sounding over the plaza. My German roommate is making frequent reports over Facebook on the state of things in the downtown. He’s been onto Tahrir Square several times with medical supplies, water and moral support. I’m concerned for his safety, but impressed by his dedication to Egypt’s cause. He says that it’s a war zone down there, and with very little help in sight. Among other things, he reports that they’ve given shelter in our apartment to a foreign journalist who was attacked by pro-Mubarak supporters near Tahrir Square. I know a couple of German journalists who previously lived in our building have also been using our apartment as one their refuges.

My roommate also works with refugees in his usual job, and considers many of them his friends. As he gets them, he’s posting updates on Facebook about the refugee experience in the revolution. On a good day, it’s tough to be a refugee in Egypt, where unemployment is so high and wages so low for Egyptian citizens that they begrudge every pound spent on refugees they didn’t ask for. Now, with most ATMs out of cash and all the banks closed, UNHCR has been unable to pay out the usual food stipends that refugees depend on. At the same time, with rampant rumors of food shortages, shops are refusing to sell to refugees. This evening, as violence broke out on Tahrir Square, it’s also breaking out in refugee neighborhoods across the city, and many of the city’s Sudanese, Somali, Iraqi and other refugees now fear for their lives.

11:30PM
I’ve just spoken to an old Peace Corps friend, Ashley Bates, who works as a journalist with Mother Jones. I’ve linked in the past to her excellent reporting on the Gaza Strip, where she lived for a year as a freelance reporter, so she can relate more than almost anyone else I know to what it’s been like here. I’m not sure if it was an interview exactly, or just checking in and getting some background, but either way it was great to talk to her. She’s been tracking the experiences of Sudanese refugees in this crisis, the role of the Muslim Brotherhood, and other stories periphery to the street fighting. She’s putting me in touch with some of her other contacts, as well.

Thursday, 3 February 2011, 8:11AM
I’m at the airport. We decided it was best to leave Dokki as early as possible, to be sure that we could find a cab and get through the streets before too many pro- or anti-government protesters were awake and, in the case of the former, spoiling for a fight. As we walked out towards the main thoroughfare, there were amateur roadblocks set up every hundred meters or so, and a cluster of tough-looking men standing on the corner between the King Hotel and the Wafd Party offices. The neighborhood was well-protected and showed no signs of any sort of struggle last night. Out on Tahrir Street, it was easy to flag down a taxi. We didn’t even bother to ask about price, just deciding among ourselves that we’d pay LE150, a little more than twice the usual fare to the airport, and be glad to get there safe and sound. After all, it’s a number easily divisible by 3!

Our taxi was stopped once on the Dokki side by a neighborhood watch who wanted to see the driver’s license and peek in the trunk, but everyone was very calm and collected about it, and we went on easily enough. The streets were virtually empty, except for the overpasses on the east end of the 6 October Bridge. We’d seen footage on al-Jazeera last night of pro-government supporters throwing stones and Molotov cocktails off those overpasses on the anti-government protesters below. Men were still clustered between burnt-out carcasses of cars along those overpasses, brandishing machetes, kitchen knives, and big sticks. I’m just glad not to have seen any guns. After that it was smooth sailing through virtually deserted streets to the airport.

It’s crowded here, with long lines at the Domestic Departures end of Terminal 3, and every seat filled with people waiting for later flights here at the International Departures end. Emma and Sarah have gone through the first security checkpoint to Check-In. I’ve been told to wait out in the Entrance Hall until 1:30, as my flight will not leave till quarter of five. But I managed to find an electrical outlet to plug in my laptop (the battery only lasts about 20 minutes these days) and am settled in for the long haul on the floor along the wall. Now that I’m here at the airport, I feel safer than I have in more than a day. My flight is as scheduled, as have almost all flights been in the last 48 hours. We’ve heard that they’re loading people on their planes as soon as they’re checked in and through security, instead of the usual loitering in the terminal, so that when the plane is cleared for take-off, they can leave immediately.

I was telling the girls, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this emotional about flying, maybe even since I left for Switzerland at 16. I’ve been doing my best to pull what my mother calls “the stoic Maryah act,” but one thing’s for sure: I’ll never be a war reporter! Yesterday was really scary, and no one knows if today and especially tomorrow (Friday) will be any better. I’m incredibly excited for Egypt right now. For the first time, people have a pride in their country and a sense of agency to improve it that I’ve never seen. At the same time, I worry that things may get far worse before they get better. I’m sorry to go, but also relieved.

As I leave for Jordan, let me also put to rest any concerns you may have about Jordan. As an expression of how different the conditions are in Egypt and Jordan, take demonstrations last Friday. While the Egyptian police met protesters with teargas and rubber bullets, the Jordanian police met protesters with Pepsi and sandwiches. They handed out a light lunch, King Abdullah went on state television and said he’d make some changes, people said, “We just wanted to know you were listening,” and they went home. In the last six years that I’ve been following Jordan’s politics, I can assure you that asking for the resignation of the Jordanian government is a normal thing for King Abdullah. It happens about every 6 months or so. Furthermore, anyone who’s been to both Jordan and Egypt can tell you that the situations there are completely different. Jordan is a relatively poor country, but it does not have the kind of abject poverty you find in Egypt, and certainly not on the scale you see in Egypt. Jordan is a stable country. None of my dozens of friends there are the least bit worried, which includes officials of both the Jordanian and American governments, activist bloggers, expats and ordinary Jordanians. There are always changes being asked for in Jordan, but the people know that King Abdullah has their best interests at heart, and they see things getting better all the time.

The Lotus Revolution Picks Up Steam

2011-02-03T15:12:00.000-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Tuesday, February 01, 2011, 8:30AM
Down the street at the AUC dorms, all the CASA Fellows met up with our director to get our monthly stipend. It was great to see everybody, assure ourselves that we’re okay and even excited to be here in this historic time. Meanwhile, the lobby of the dorm was filling up with students who were getting ready to evacuate. It’s amazing to think that my fellow CASA students are most of them just a year or less away from being undergraduates. The difference in our very enthusiastic and engaged group of scholars and the very nervous, subdued undergrads waiting for evacuation was almost tangible. While many of them are here taking theoretical classes on Middle Eastern politics or literature on the pristine little bubble of the New Campus, many of us are students of revolution with experience living in Yemen, Lebanon, and even Iraq. This kind of experience is the bread and butter of many of my colleagues’ specialties, and we’re actually quite excited to be here to witness history (and more than a little aware of how it will look in a cover letter, job interview or grad school application to be able to say that we lived through the Lotus Revolution!). As I said on NPR last night, we’re proud to support the best chance of real change in Middle East authoritarianism in a long time.

10:30AM
A steady stream of protestors was coming across Kasr al-Aini to Tahrir Square, enthusiastic and positive. Where men would normally be leering and harassing us as we cross the bridge, instead they were stopping to tell us their political aspirations, to thank us for supporting their cause, and to have their pictures taken with their signs. As we came up to the military roadblock at Tahrir Square, we were waved right through, and then stopped by a line of protestors providing their own security. They were dividing incoming protestors by gender for pat-downs, to go through their bags, and to read their placards to make sure they’re appropriate. It’s impressive to see how organized and thoughtful the protestors have been, how pro-active in not only organizing the protests over the last year, but also the measures they’ve taken to make sure the people are peaceful, that they’re fed so they won’t break into any more restaurants or stores, and generally assuring the military has no reason to use force.

There were a wide variety of protestors in Tahrir Square today. Not only signs, but effigies of Mubarak hanging from the streetlights, men in shrouds laid out on the ground in “die-ins,” bullhorns leading the chanting, and much more. There were a lot more women today, and a lot more women in niqab and long khimar and other conservative dress. We felt like we were seeing more men with beards as well. Sheikhs from al-Azhar University, the most respected institution of Islamic law in the world, were out in full force in their distinctive red and white Ottoman turbans. There were also a lot more people who didn’t speak English, who were not educated in international and private schools, who were clearly of the middle and even lower classes. This crowd seemed like a truer cross-section of Egyptian society. It was still dominated by young intellectuals, but it’s now evident that the Facebook generation is expressing frustrations that are felt across all socio-economic levels.

Easily identified as foreigners, we were stopped repeatedly by Egyptians with a plea and a message. “You’ll show these pictures to the Americans, right? You’ll show them what’s really happening in Egypt!” As we agreed, we wished fervently for Internet to be restored so we could make good on those promises. We were also witness to many harangues about the American government. Egyptians have had extraordinarily high hopes for Obama, perhaps unreasonably high hopes (as have many Americans, I must add!), and they are furious that the Obama Administration can’t take a stand with the people against Mubarak. We foreigners find ourselves equally furious. There is real Thomas-Jefferson-and-Martin-Luther-King democracy going on today in the streets of Cairo, and we don’t understand how Obama can fail to support it.

11:30AM
We’re back on the square after a quick trip to my apartment, and numbers have swelled considerably in just the half hour we were down the street. Hundreds are lined up on each side of all the streets leading into Tahrir, waiting for a security check by teams of protesters. The girls who’ve patted me down and gone through my bag have been very apologetic about the intrusion, but I am anything but bothered. In fact, as I’ve told them all, I’m very glad to see them making sure that there’s security and peaceful protest on the square. I’m so impressed by the organization and responsibility and leadership that protesters have shown over the last few days. It reminds me of the aftermath of the Cairo Meeting in October, when volunteers who had never before had an opportunity for leadership suddenly discovered the sense of pride and fulfillment that comes from volunteering and leadership. I see the same spirit on Tahrir Square today, and the same exuberant feeling of community. It’s like they’ve suddenly woken up and realized that they can have a say in their future, that they can build a better nation for themselves, and that there’s a vast community of like-minded people - instant friends – that will stand beside them as they do.

2:00PM
There must be almost a million people, maybe more, on Tahrir Square by now. It’s an amazing sight, an amazing atmosphere. They’re chanting, they’re praying together in massive unified rows, they’re hanging effigies of Hosni Mubarak from the traffic lights. They’re painting a massive banner that says “The people want to change the regime.” We’re packed in shoulder to shoulder, back to front, and I with my claustrophobia and my constant distrust of Arab men should be really uncomfortable, but that’s not the case at all! In fact, I feel quite safe, like I’m part of a community of like-minded people. Occasionally people come over to complain to us about the Obama Administration’s unwillingness to take the side of the demonstrators, a frustration we share whole-heartedly. Sometimes their harangues are quite heated. One man, if we weren’t such good Arabic speakers, would have been absolutely terrifying. Egyptians tend to be loud people by nature, and this man was shouting at the top of his lungs, with a big graying beard and spittle flying, and I could suddenly understand why foreign correspondents who didn’t speak Arabic might be saying that there was a threat to foreigners from the protesters. But I don’t feel that at all.

In fact, we’ve run into a crowd of foreigners, including my journalist friend Sylvia and some of her Italian, American and other friends, holding signs with slogans like, “The foreigners in Egypt are with the people of Egypt,” or “We support the choice of the people of Egypt,” and “Game over, Obama!” They are drawing quite an excited crowd of Egyptians, filming them on their mobile phones, thanking them for support, giving them messages to deliver to their governments. A few feet away, a father and his daughters ask me to take their picture, holding signs saying “The children of Egypt want Mubarak to leave,” and “Leave, Mubarak! Tel Aviv is waiting for you!” The only foreign government the Egyptians seem to be more mad at than the Obama Administration is the Netanyahu government. After three decades of Mubarak’s propaganda machine deflecting all his people’s rage off himself onto Israel, now Israel has come out more strongly than any other government in support of Mubarak. The feeling here is definitely, if Tel Aviv wants him, they can take him, because Cairo won’t have him!

3:26PM
Alex, Lev and I have just gotten home from our observation of the protestors. As we were walking along the edge of the island looking over at the downtown, we found ourselves curious about the pro-Mubarak counter-demonstration we could see in front of the Foreign Ministry at the foot of 6 October Bridge. We stopped to ask a man along the way if he could make out what they were chanting across the river. At that moment, their slogan was “Stop the destruction!” he said, but they were shouting a variety of things. Mostly, he said, they were angry about the vandalism and violence, and the disruption to their livelihoods, and were ready for order to be restored to their country. That didn’t seem so unreasonable. But then it became apparent that he wasn’t just watching the pro-Mubarak demonstration, he approved of it. He started telling us what a force for stability Hosni Mubarak was in Egypt, that he had ruled in wartime and peacetime and was good for Egypt. At that moment, a group of men was walking past, and they were incensed by his little speech. They started scolding him for filling the poor foreigners’ heads with all this nonsense. When he started defending his point of view, the loudest of the other men kept repeating, “Have respect for yourself, man!” Things started to get emotional, and we took that as our cue to leave.

Having had that impassioned introduction, though, we wanted to get a closer look at the demonstration. As we walked across 6 October Bridge, the first thing I noticed was that people – mostly young men – were arriving by the minibus-load, not on foot as they were in Tahrir Square. I began to wonder in earnest then how sincere these demonstrators were. I remember during the recent parliamentary elections hearing stories from multiple sources of the NDP riding around the poorer neighborhoods, handing out 20 pound notes to anyone who would jump in the microbus and go off to the polling stations to vote for the NDP. In some neighborhoods, according to youth from Cairo University, votes could be bought for as little as a falafel sandwich (market value 1 Egyptian pound). I wonder how much it takes to convince angry, unemployed young men to go to a pro-Mubarak rally?

When we arrived at the other side of the bridge, on the edge of a significantly poorer neighborhood than the Tahrir Square area, we immediately sensed a difference. Instead of the camaraderie of Tahrir, the atmosphere was contentious. People were in shouting matches with a sharp, angry edge. There was an edge of violence in the air, and we quickly decided that we didn’t want to come any closer than the edge of the bridge, about 200m from the demonstration.

Now that we’re home, we’re plugged back into Al-Jazeera English. They’re saying that the youth movement Kafiya has formed a 10-person organizing committee which is offering to begin a dialogue with Sulaiman, but not Mubarak. Al-Jazeera is estimating up to 2 million protesters in Tahrir and the surrounding streets, 250,000 in Al-Arish in the Sinai, hundreds of thousands in Alexandria, plus protests in Suez, Mansouria, Ismailia, Luxor, Aswan, Tanta, Kufr Sheikh, Mahalla, etc. Based on al-Jazeera’s estimates, we estimate that there must be at least 4 million demonstrating across the country, or 5% of the population. Protesters on Tahrir Square are claiming (unverifiably) that 8 million people are marching across the nation, which would be 10% of the total population.

7:25PM
Egyptian state television has finally sent reporters to the protests, for the first time in a week of demonstrations. One of the first and best protected buildings in all of Egypt has been the Radio and Television Building on the Corniche, and they’ve shown no pictures at all of protestors up till now. Their reporters have thus far been clueless at best, outright liars at worst. They’ve reported on a mass prison break, which included political Palestinian prisoners. They’ve reported on the “heroic citizens” who have worked to defend their homes and national treasures. Finally, however, they’ve sent reporters to interview protesters, and Al-Jazeera says protesters on the square are interpreting it as a critical change in the government’s response to their demands.

7:35PM
Al-Jazeera is showing state television, and claiming that these are shots from Tahrir Square. As any beginning student of Arabic should know, though, the signs they’re showing on state television say “Yes to Mubarak!” Clearly this is the pro-government rally at 6 October Bridge, not Tahrir Square at all.

10:43PM
Sa’ad ad-Din Ibrahim, writer and activist, is on al-Jazeera English praising the young intellectuals who have brought about this peaceful “Lotus Revolution.” He is stressing that these protests have not been organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, but by young, secular, democratic, Westernized middle class young people. The Muslim Brotherhood is supporting regime change, but they are not the driving force behind this movement. He’s also speaking about the army, which has kept the trust of the people by living up to its promise not to use force against Egyptian civilians. His hope, and mine, is that the Egyptian army will take the traditional position of the Turkish army, as the guardian of democracy and secularism and peaceful demonstration. My fear, and my classmates’, is that the people are making a mistake by placing their faith in the military, which has not yet declared which side it’s on, but which is led by old cronies of President Mubarak.

Both the White House and President Mubarak are supposed to speak imminently, and we’re staying up to hear them both. Meanwhile, Egyptian state television is still showing images of “the protests,” but al-Jazeera English has now figured out that the signs saying “Yes to Mubarak” are from the little pro-Mubarak rally downstream, and not from Tahrir Square.

10:57PM
Pres. Mubarak is on State television. He’s praising the Egyptian people for exercising “their right to freedom of expression,” and condemning those who took advantage of those demonstrations to commit acts of violence. He goes on to extol the steps he took over the last week to reform the government in reaction to popular demands, and condemning those “political forces” that opposed his attempts to restore stability. He denies ever having any intention of running in the next presidential elections in September, or indeed ever seeking power except for the sake of his nation, but asserted his intention to stay in office until elections and supervise a peaceful transition to the next government. He’s calling on the Parliament to amend the qualifications for presidency in the constitution and in law, and for the Parliament to abide by rulings of the courts, especially regarding matters of electoral law. He promises economic and social reform. He’s charging the police to treat citizens with respect and dignity. He’s demanding that all measures be taken to bring to justice all looters, arsonists and other perpetrators of criminal acts.

It’s a preposterous speech, demonstrating once again how completely ignorant and blind Mubarak is to the realities of Egyptian life in general, and in particular to what’s happening on the streets right now. Demonstrators had set up televisions on Tahrir Square in anticipation of this speech, and their reaction was immediate and vehement. It was evident yesterday and this afternoon to anyone on the streets that protestors have no intention of stopping their demonstrations until Mubarak resigns and leaves the country, or is convicted and sentenced to death. They’re chanting, a million voices at once, “Leave, leave!” and “The people want the president to fall.”

The Revolution Down the Street

2011-02-02T12:33:00.000-03:00

Cairo, Egypt

Friday, 28 January 2011, 3:00PM
My German roommate let me know this morning that there’s no Internet or mobile phone service in Egypt today. I guess the authorities got fed up with blocking Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other individual Websites, and just went for the whole shebang. I had to laugh a little, because just yesterday my mother and I were marveling at how revolution has changed. How did Martin Luther King, Jr., manage to organize the demonstrations he did without Facebook? How did Ghandi pull it off without telephones? The Minute Men didn’t even have the telegraph! We’re slowly losing the ability to even imagine such a thing. Meanwhile, of course, I promised my parents I’d keep my blog updated so they’d know I was okay. I was in touch with my brother on Facebook last night to let him know I’d arrived safely in Cairo, but there’s no telling when I’ll be online again. I’m keeping this little journal so I’ll be ready to post as soon as the Internet comes back.

For a little background, today is Friday, the Muslim holy day. If things are going to go down in a Muslim country, you can bet it’ll be most urgent on a Friday afternoon, as the men emerge en masse from sermons in their neighborhood mosques. In Jordan during the Gaza War, the biggest demonstrations happened on Fridays, but I was fortunate enough to always be out of town with the cycling or hiking clubs (by design on their part, I think). As of last night, according to my much better informed roommate, the city’s major mosques had already announced their intentions to march today. Among them he cited al-Azhar Mosque, which surprises me a bit, since the sheikhs of al-Azhar usually side with the government. [Later I found out that the mosques all preached in support of the government, but as soon as the sermon was over, the congregants began their anti-government slogans.] And, he said, all the Egyptians he’d spoken to had said, “Tomorrow we’ll be on Tahrir Square!” The broad traffic circle in between the Nile and the old campus of the American University where my classes are held is called Tahrir [Freedom] Square, and is where the biggest protests have been centered for the last 3 days. It’s also where you’ll find the Mogamma, a government building infamous for its Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and often cited as a symbol of what’s wrong with the Egyptian government. It’s about 3 or 4 blocks from my apartment.

This morning, as my roommate was heading out to observe the demonstrations firsthand, I was on the balcony looking down Tahrir Street towards Tahrir Square and the Nile. It was like a ghost town. The only time I’ve seen fewer people or cars in the streets was at sunset on the first night of Ramadan. But this time was different. The cross-street below us, the one that leads to the Interior Ministry two blocks away, was blocked off by police. Two blocks up the road, in front of Abdeen Palace, was a whole phalanx of riot police. There were a few men on the street, but you can bet that most of them were plainclothes police and secret police. I feel sorry for the police, really. They’re just doing what they’re ordered to do. It’s not like they have much choice. I wouldn’t want to be imprisoned for insubordination to the state (or anything else) in this country!

Sure enough, around the time sermons were ending, Falaki Square began to fill up, the plaza about 200 meters down the street. Ordinarily it’s a very full parking lot, but today there are less than a dozen cars and dozens of people, mostly men. They’re chanting, waving Egyptian flags. I see a few figures that I think are women, but might be men with kafiyya wrapped around their heads. Sometimes they just seem to be milling about. From time to time they surge in one direction or another. After awhile, we begin to hear a loud pop, pop, pop, and then we see the tear gas drifting across the street. There are hundreds of people close to Talat Harb Street, as well as police wagons and a dense, growing fog of teargas trapped between the tall buildings.

A car drives past with a big hole in its rear window. A few minutes later, a crowd comes up the street carrying a middle-aged man with what looks like a broken foot from this distance. They bring him to the roadblock, and the police take him behind the barricade and call an ambulance. I wonder about his ultimate fate. There were reports yesterday that anyone taken to the hospital for injuries was immediately arrested, and that at least one death had come of it.

Afternoon prayer begins to sound across the city. It seems so incongruous, hearing the call to prayer against the backdrop of shouting protesters, punctuated by the loud pops of teargas canisters. The crowds are thinning, perhaps headed up Kasr al-Aini where the Parliament is, or perhaps in the other direction down Talat Harb towards the Lawyers Syndicate. The occasional pop of teargas canisters becomes increasingly intermittent.

3:30PM
My French roommate has just called me back to the front of the apartment, in time to see a phalanx of riot police come charging down our street, shouting. They pause at the intersection to regroup, then charge around the corner towards Huda Sha’rawi Street. As they go, the kids watching from the balcony across the street laugh at their zeal. Further in that direction, towards Talat Harb Street and the Egyptian Museum, a cloud hangs over the rooftops. It doesn’t look white like the teargas in the streets. It looks more like smoke. Then again, it could just be teargas mixed with Cairo’s infamous smog….

3:55PM
A crowd is gathering at the intersection below our balcony, arguing with the officer at the roadblock. The wind has changed, and the air is acrid with the remnants of tear gas. One young man comes from the direction of Tahrir Square with a bandanna wrapped around his face, and is promptly detained by plainclothes police and frogmarched up the street, two police with their hands wrapped securely around the waistband of his jeans.

Now the crowd is marching down the street towards Abdeen and back again. It’s about 75 or 100 people, about a dozen of them women, mostly young and middle aged. They’re shouting a variety of slogans, of which I can make out about half:
“The Egyptian people want the end of the regime!”
“Where is the journalism?”
“Gamal Mubarak [unclear] we hate you!” Gamal, the son of Pres. Hosni Mubarak, was widely expected run for president next year, but has already fled with his family to London. There’s a chant about Hosni Mubarak, too, but I can’t make it out. The protesters disappear around the corner towards Huda Sha’rawi Street, but now there’s a squad of police in our street, waving what I guess are tear gas launchers and rubber bullet rifles, telling all the shopkeepers along the street to get back inside. We decide it’s prudent to retreat from our windows.

5:00PM
My German roommate and his friends are back. They said there’d been Molotov cocktails and burning cars in Ramses behind the Egyptian Museum. That would be the smoke I saw beyond Talat Harb Street. Things have been quiet here for awhile, but I’m beginning to hear the crowds again, towards Tahrir Square and Ramsis. As far as I can see from my balcony, though, the streets are clear; maybe a dozen people other than uniformed police in a half-mile stretch of road.

On a side note, one of my roommate’s friends is not only from Maine, but from the same town in Maine where my parents now live. That makes two girls from Bridgton I’ve met in the Middle East….

6:10PM
Things are heating up again down the street. Crowds have gathered again between Falaki Square and Tahrir Square, shouting slogans I can’t make out. The sound of police and ambulance sirens has been almost constant for about a quarter of an hour.

6:36PM
About ten minutes ago, a hundred or so protesters came up the street. They knocked down the roadblock on the corner, with the police nowhere in sight. They milled around outside our apartment for awhile, and eventually settled onto the curb. It seemed they were taking a break from the hard work of revolution. A man showed up selling fatayer. My German roommate says there are women on Falaky Square beside Houreya Bar selling Pepsi at a “revolution discount” (half price) and doing booming business. Capitalism at work! Another protester walked past with a riot shield he’d somehow gotten from the police. After awhile, a pair of women came up the street from Tahrir Square, shouting for everyone to join the next round of protesting. The men crowded around and followed them back down the street. The sounds of sirens and teargas launchers has picked up again down the street.

6:52PM
We’ve put on Egyptian television and discovered that there’s a curfew in place in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez from 6PM this evening until 7AM tomorrow, and every night until further notice, “for the protection of the Egyptian people.” Exceptions will be made for the press, emergency services, and anyone on their way home or to the hospital. The curfew will be enforced by the army, which is on its way into the city in support of the police. It’s unclear to me, but Egypt may have declared martial law. It’s hard to tell how that’s different from the State of Emergency that Egypt’s been under for 30 years. We’re wondering if they’ll cut the electricity altogether later tonight.

Meanwhile, the commentators on the news seem to be from another planet. One Member of Parliament went on at length on how it’s always better to talk civilly about our problems than to resort to violence. Another commentator talked about how violent protests of this sort are “inappropriate conduct for the 21st Century.”

7:10PM
My German roommate and his friends have headed back out into the streets. I hope he makes it home. He’s given me some phone numbers in Germany to call if he doesn’t come home, but I don’t know quite what I’d say, or how I’d call with my mobile phone service blocked! As they’re leaving, the barrage of teargas canisters (and probably rubber bullets) down by Tahrir Square has picked up again. It’s an almost constant tattoo now, more constant than it’s been all day. You can hear an inchoate roar of the crowd, and whistling, but we can’t see anything from our place. The police on the corner are gone, as well as the phalanx up the street at Abdeen Palace. Oddly enough, the traffic lights are still flashing green, yellow, red, but there are virtually no cars, just a few clusters of men walking up the street away from the demonstrations. About a hundred riot police and several more trucks full of riot police drove down the cross-street towards the Interior Ministry, but without the shouting and stomping of earlier.

8:00PM
The sound of a helicopter circling over downtown brought me back out onto the balcony. The wind has picked up and the air is colder and smells heavily of something burning. The police are completely gone from our street still, and there are only a few small knots of men, mostly middle-aged. The sound of the crowd and the teargas canisters down at Tahrir Square has quieted. I catch sight of a helicopter silhouetted against the clouds, and it looks military to me.

10:33PM
Our street remains clear, but intermittent teargas fire still sounds from a distance. Sometimes, like now, it’s a veritable barrage. Most of the time it’s just occasional. It’s nearing my bedtime, but I’m sure if there’s any real excitement it will wake me up. I’m also keeping an ear out for the return of my German roommate, though if he’s smart, he’ll take the girl from Maine home and stay at her place!

Saturday, 29 January 2011, 2:10AM
My German roommate’s home. He’s been watching things unfold from a rooftop over Mohammad Mahmoud Street, close enough to Tahrir Square to have a clear view of the Cilantro coffee shop and McDonalds towards the end of the street. He has interesting tales to tell. He tells me that the police, who seem not to have been fed all day, started looting and destroying kiosks, the lowest of the low on the totem pole of legal businesses in Egypt. Meanwhile, the protesters liberated their dinner from Cilantro and McDonalds, which is a 4-star restaurant in Egypt. Clashes continued, with battle lines shifting up and down the street, until a handful of army men appeared in the street. Just a handful, but they commanded more respect from the protesters than dozens of police. The soldiers sent the police home, and my roommate says the whole mood in the street changed, with people applauding the soldiers, bringing them water and biscuits.

For context, it’s important to understand that all Egyptian men have to do military service or police service in their late teens or twenties. Those who have skill, education, social status or other advantages are assigned to the army. Anyone with a degree in engineering, for example, the most prestigious and therefore usually most expensive degree in Egypt, are drafted into the military. These are young men who are used to having some control over their circumstances, a little say in their own destinies, and some responsibility. In addition, there’s a long history of the military helping the Egyptian people, starting with the 1952 Revolution when the military deposed the monarchy, and including the retaking of the Sinai Peninsula in 1973.

On the other hand, the police is sort of a catch-all for anyone not good enough to get into the army. Police recruits tend to be the worst educated, most impoverished of conscripts, young men who, for the first time in their lives, have just a scrap of power and authority over someone else. They have a reputation for abusing that power, and are known to wield it in defense of the government, not in protection of the people. This was the reason that Egyptians chose Police Day to go on strike, protesting police brutality, torture and mistreatment under police custody, and other abuses of power by the police. Handling the protesters with rubber bullets, teargas and further brutality did nothing to improve the mood of protesters. But now the army is in power, and the tenor of demonstrations is likely to change.

3:10PM
It’s been a quiet day. Mobile phones have been working again, though the Internet is still out, and my calls on Vodafone have been mostly free today, perhaps because protesters stormed the Vodafone headquarters yesterday. Smoke hangs over Tahrir Square and Ramsis, where the headquarters of the Democratic National Party has been burning since yesterday. There’s some concern that the neighboring Egyptian Museum may also be in danger. Certainly it was in danger of looting last night, which the police were apparently helpless to stop, but protesters formed a cordon around the museum, conducted citizen’s arrests of many of the would-be looters, and held them until the army showed up around 10pm.

The Egyptian state television is praising the noble citizens who defended the nation’s greatest treasure, and playing down the impotence of the police. They’re also reporting on the Arab leaders – Gaddafi of Libya, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO – who have called Pres. Mubarak to express their trust in his government and support of the people of Egypt (the ones who aren’t protesting, of course!). There have been reports that dozens of Egyptair flights to and from both Cairo and Sharm al-Sheikh have been canceled. They’re also warning Egyptians forcefully and repeatedly to respect the curfew, which will begin at 4pm and continue until 8am.

I’ve managed to talk to a number of people from CASA. Many of them are gathering at our usual potluck haunt in Dokki, including everyone else who lives here in downtown. I’ve decided to stay, though, to keep my French roommate and German neighbors company. The German girls in particular are quite worried. You can see it on their faces every moment.

I went to the grocery store with my French roommate and her friends a little bit ago. It was rather like York County before a snowstorm; the stores were packed with people buying a week’s worth of supplies, just in case. While we were out, we were approached by several Egyptians who warned us of the 4:00 curfew, and which streets to stay away from already at 2:30. It’s a strange atmosphere, tense but at the same time convivial, with a strong sense of community. People who would ordinarily pass anonymously in the streets are passing information about where to go and not to go. In the store, they were showing al-Jazeera, which was reporting over a hundred dead in yesterday’s protests.

3:28PM
We’re beginning to hear the sound of teargas canisters firing down towards the Nile. People are gathered in Falaky Square, and the streets leading towards Tahrir Square and Ramsis. Across the street, some guys spot a shop with its protective metal curtain up and its big glass windows exposed, and spend several minutes trying to pull down the curtain. It’s not even their shop. After awhile, a tank comes rolling down Tahrir Street towards Tahrir Square, to the cheers of the crowd in Falaky Square.

4:02PM
One of the French girls called to say al-Jazeera is showing protesters attacking the Ministry of the Interior. A minute later, we see tanks come thundering up Tahrir Street and around the corner towards the ministry. A few minutes after that, we see a man walking the same way with a pair of Molotov cocktails. We aren’t the only ones. He’s mobbed by about a dozen men who pour out his cocktails and start arguing with him about the best response to events. Not long after, we spot a pair of men on a scooter with an unconscious woman sandwiched between them. On television they’re begging people to “help the army keep order, respect private property, your message has been heard.”

4:53PM
Just now there was a big gathering at the corner, running down the cross-street from the Ministry of the Interior. It broke up when a delivery truck came down the road, rear doors hanging open, two men in the back shouting “There is no God but God!” Between them were the feet of a body wrapped in its burial shroud. The men on the corner followed the deceased down the road. Something [a tax office] is burning in the direction of AUC. A big black cloud of smoke is rising above Mohammad Mahmoud Street.

5:27PM
President Mubarak has just sworn in his Intelligence Chief Omar Sulaiman as the new Vice President. Teargas cannons and shouting have risen to a crescendo all over downtown. I can’t say that the two are related, but the timing is conspicuous. Meanwhile, the Maghreb call to prayer is sounding. Egyptian TV is praising citizens who beat back looters and confiscated looted goods to store them in mosques until they could be returned to their rightful owners. They’re reporting “a small number of casualties” yesterday, as well as the burning of police stations and government buildings, and attacks on banks, ATMs and hotels. Across the street, a kiosk owner is busy emptying out his own stock before vandals can do it for him.

5:38PM
There’s a fascinating report on Nile International, introduced as coming “in response to protesters’ calls for more freedom of expression.” In a collection of interviews with protesters, they asserted their commitment to peaceful resistance unless forced to defend themselves. They called for greater press freedom, freedom of expression, more equal distribution of the benefits of development in the economy, and an end to corruption. The reporter emphasized that there were children and teens in the crowd, not the sort of protesters bent on violence and vandalism.

5:54PM
My German roommate and his Egyptian friend are back. They tried to get to the girl from Maine, but she’s too close to the Interior Ministry. They say it’s a battle over there, with the military using real ammunition in addition to teargas. While they were out, they asked some Egyptians why they were there. “We’re fighting for the fun of it,” they all said. As sociologists and political scientists say, the greatest threat to global stability is frustrated, unemployed young men. Now they feel they’ve been given license to work out some of that frustration on government and police targets, and they’re taking advantage.

6:41PM
Things are very quiet for now. The fire at the NDP seems to be out, and possibly the fire in Mohammad Mahmoud Street as well. The sounds of gunshots and teargas cannons are minimal. A military helicopter is circling over downtown, but there’s no other police or military presence. There are a few people wandering around Falaky Square, and up and down Tahrir Street, but they’re quiet and orderly. On our block, it seems that most of the men stalking the sidewalks are residents and local shopkeepers, patrolling the street to keep the random mischief-makers from making their mischief here.

7:00PM
I called my parents to ask my brother to put a message up on my Facebook profile that I’m okay (if housebound), since I know people must be worried. As I got off the phone, my German roommate made an astute observation. By cutting off Internet in Egypt, the government may indeed have hampered the efforts of the civic-minded, politically motivated students and activists who started this whole uprising on Tuesday. By allowing mobile phone service to continue today, though, they’ve allowed the organization of the very vandals and looters they’ve been complaining about on TV all day today!

11:41PM
The German girl across the hall is home alone in her apartment. She spent the afternoon here and went back there for the night, but couldn’t sleep. We’ve just installed her on our couch for the night, and she’s thinking of going over to Zamalek tomorrow. I realized two things about myself as we were waiting for her to come over. First, that while she would rather put on noise-canceling headphones and try to distract herself with a movie, I am comforted by information. I want to know what’s going on, even if it’s scary; processing that information for its socio-political implications calms my mind. Second, I lived in Jordan for a long time. Non sequitor? Not really. Jordanians set off fireworks and sometimes even weapons fire in celebration of almost anything. Once I was settled into bed for tonight, it seems I began interpreting and dismissing teargas cannon fire as celebratory fireworks, as if it were Tawjihi night (it’s about that time, actually) and nothing out of the ordinary. It’s only when the crowds start shouting and whistling as they are now that I remember there’s a revolution going on out there.

Sunday, 30 January 2011, 8:08AM
Curfew has officially ended, and it went out with a bang … the bang of teargas canisters being fired just a few blocks away. There’s shouting in the streets, and the sound of barriers being moved. Periodically we hear the whir of a military helicopter circling overhead. I was thinking about going to Dokki to join some other CASA students this morning, but I’m not sure I want to leave the apartment. I feel pretty safe in my block still, with the neighborhood guys in the street doing their best to disarm and calm anyone coming down the street with particularly violent tendencies, and calling on the military for anything they can’t handle. Still, I wouldn’t want to walk to Dokki, since I’d have to walk through Tahrir Square or Ramsis where the protests and the violence have centered, and I don’t know if the Metro is running. Even if it is, a friend said when she was in the Metro yesterday morning, they went through a station that had been hit with teargas and it was no picnic! So I’ll make a cup of coffee and wait an hour.

10:02AM
I’ve been in touch with CASA Fellows across Cairo to get updates. Some of them have been on the Metro and say it’s running normally. You can’t get on or off at Mubarak, the station under Tahrir Square, but you can go through and change trains there without trouble. Another group of CASA Fellows walked across Tahrir Square and down Kasr al-Aini Street to get some supplies from their apartment and didn’t encounter any trouble along the way. The girl from Maine is here and says Mohammad Mahmoud Street was a war zone all night, with the military using live rounds. Vandals burned some cars and a tax office. They also smashed the glass in her building’s doors, but the metal bars remained intact, and the men in her building slept on the ground floor to make sure the building was safe, which it was. This morning the street is empty.

1:42PM
My roommates both decided to go stay with friends, and the Germans across the hall were all told by their program that they were to pack a bag for a few days and move to their school in Zamalek. Things are quiet and orderly in our street, with the neighborhood watch firmly in control, so I still feel safe in my apartment, despite being just a few blocks from the action. I don’t want to stay there alone, though, so I accompanied the Germans to Zamalek and am now camped out at the apartment of another CASA Fellow and her boyfriend, near the AUC dorms. I considered going to Dokki, but they’re already sleeping two to a bed there, so I didn’t want to crowd them too much.

We walked down Tahrir Street and across Tahrir Square, and got a cab on Qasr al-Aini Bridge. It was an interesting procession. The military has tanks on every street leading into Tahrir Square, and they’ve set up checkpoints. They’re patting down anyone who wants to get onto the square to protest, but as long as they don’t find anything dangerous, they’re letting people on the square for peaceful protests. About a third of the crowd are women, and there are children as well. They’re holding signs and chanting, but it is precisely the peaceful protest they were talking about on state television last night. As we walked past, people kept shouting, “Are you reporters? Take pictures!” They want their message to get out any way possible. Others passed us by saying things like “Down with Mubarak!” Someone had spraypainted “Fuck Mubarak” on one of the tanks. Just as they had mentioned on state TV, people were sweeping up garbage all over Tahrir Square. In fact, despite the protests and the vandalism, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the streets so clean! It’s one more sign, like the Egyptian flags waving everywhere through the crowds, that these are people deeply proud of their country, with a deep commitment to bettering their nation.

News is spotty at best. Al-Jazeera has had the best coverage, by all accounts, but today the government ordered them to shut down their office in Egypt, so we’re left with BBC Arabic and state television. My German neighbors were told by a representative of their embassy that today would be the last day of demonstrations, and the army would be cracking down tomorrow when the Egyptians were good and tired of the violence and would welcome the return of the perpetual State of Emergency. Our cab driver seemed to agree with that assessment, but we remain skeptical. BBC Arabic says the US is urging Americans not to go to Egypt, and encouraging voluntary evacuation of those who are here. The embassy has said they will assist any American wishing to leave the country. We’ve been in touch with our program director, though, and she hasn’t heard anything about involuntary evacuation. They’re keeping their eye on things and thinking about how they’re going to get our stipends to us, which we would ordinarily receive tomorrow. The Judges Syndicate has announced that they are supporting the protesters against the government, and hundreds are reportedly marching in Tahrir Square and elsewhere, “not as judges, but as ordinary Egyptians pushing for change.” Iraq, Turkey, Israel and other embassies are evacuating personnel. Other than that, rumors abound.

3:38PM
With curfew approaching, a pair of fighter jets have begun circling downtown, buzzing Tahrir Square where al-Jazeera is now showing perhaps tens of thousands gathered in peaceful protest, and more military vehicles are reportedly moving into downtown. Here in Zamalek, shopkeepers are pulling down their metal curtains or lining up display coolers in front of their storefronts to deter looting, and the doormen are out on the sidewalks with big sticks. It’s a completely different atmosphere here, though, than it was in the downtown yesterday. There are less than a dozen doormen with sticks as far as I can see, whereas there were dozens in my block in Bab al-Luq. The conflict seems so distant from here, which is comforting in terms of my safety, but a little frustrating to not know what’s going on except from repetitive coverage by international media. We are seeing reports that the military was ordered to use live rounds on protesters, and that officers had announced they were refusing those orders and would not fire on anyone who didn’t fire on them first.

5:31PM
As the call to prayer sounds across Cairo, al-Jazeera is showing images of row upon row of protesters prostrating in prayer on Tahrir Square. We’re a solid hour and a half into curfew, and things are quiet here in Zamalek. From here, things look calm.

6:26PM
The BBC is reporting that Mohammad al-Baradei is arriving on Tahrir Square to address protesters there. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was the leader of the International Atomic Energy Agency who stood up to the United States in their claims about WMDs in Iraq, and supervised inspections of nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea until the IAEA was kicked out of those countries. He has serious cachet with the West, but he’s also been a popular political figure in Egypt since his retirement from the IAEA. The Muslim Brotherhood today has declared their support for Baradei to lead negotiations with Mubarak on behalf of the opposition, and there have been calls for his involvement for days. Of course, the government has cracked down on journalists, and the Internet is still blocked to keep Egyptians from uploading videos to YouTube and other Websites, so we don’t know if we’ll actually see or hear his imminent statement to protesters, but al-Jazeera’s live footage certainly brings us the cheers and enthusiasm of the crowd on Tahrir Square for Baradei’s presence.

7:06PM
I’ve checked in with my roommates, who are both still in downtown. My Moroccan roommate says things are quiet in the street near our apartment where she is staying with the other French girls. My German roommate is on Tahrir Square waiting for Baradei to speak, and he says things are quiet and peaceful there. There’s been no teargas and almost no gunfire tonight. Everyone’s talking about tonight as a tipping point, when protests have gone back to peaceful resistance. Consensus among my friends and acquaintances is that if Mubarak resigns tonight, or at least consents to negotiations with Baradei for a change of government, that things could return to normal tomorrow or the next day. If Mubarak doesn’t bow to his inevitable downfall pretty fast, though, things could get ugly again.

10:21PM
The doormen guarding our street are squatting around a small fire they’ve made to keep warm. (I guess if you hadn’t been in a snowstorm in New York City last week, it would seem cold here….) All’s quiet in Zamalek, and demonstrations on Tahrir are still peaceful. It’s bedtime!

Monday, 31 January 2011, 6:03AM
I just received a public service message from Vodafone, more or less saying: The armed forces salute the faithful men of Egypt who stood up to treachery and criminals and protected our people and the demonstrations and our precious Egypt.

القوات المسلحة تناشد رجال مصر المخلصين لمواجهة الخونة والمجرمين وحماية أهلنا وعرضنا ومصرنا الغالية.

7:09AM
Good morning! Zamalek remained quiet during the night. The doormen are still manning a barrier at the end of the block, but others have begun going about their morning routines of washing cars. The air is thick with dust, smog and perhaps smoke low to the ground.

8:08AM
As curfew lifts over Cairo, BBC Arabic is reporting a doubling of the military presence on Tahrir Square, where some camped out all night but many of the protesters had gone home for the night. They are now beginning to return. They’re saying that relations are still friendly between the army and the protesters, but that the army has reduced the space available to protesters on Tahrir Square. Protesters are calling for a national strike again today. There is also beginning to be a police presence in the city again, but in small numbers, by and large to the relief of citizens who’ve been directing traffic and protecting their own communities since police fled their posts on Friday. There are a few sensitive areas like Tahrir Square where traffic is still severely restricted, but in most neighborhoods they’re reporting the beginning of a resumption of regular traffic patterns, though at perhaps a quarter of the regular volume for Cairo streets. We can hear at least one helicopter circling downtown for the third day.

We’ve also heard that any Americans who show up at Terminal 4 will get assistance from the US embassy to fly to Europe. Once in Europe, though, you’d be responsible for your own travel back to the States.

9:11AM
Al-Jazeera Arabic is showing the first images I’ve seen from Suez, where there seems to still be a lot of chaos, despite a heavy army presence. They’re also saying that curfew will begin at 2pm today. The 6th of April Movement, a relatively new youth movement that has been staging big protests all year, is calling for a million Egyptians to protest tomorrow. A funeral march in Alexandria today for an important Muslim Brotherhood figure killed yesterday is also being used as an anti-government protest.

3:16PM
We’ve just returned from a day of walking around town, including several hours on Tahrir Square. Traffic cops are out in Zamalek and Gazira, and many people are happy to see them, thanking them for their service. We did see a group in a heated argument with an officer, but it looked to me more like a venting of grievances than anything. We walked up along the East Bank of the island where Zamalek is, where we could see tanks lined up along the Corniche and limiting traffic across the bridges into the downtown. As we came up onto Kasr an-Nil Bridge, people were streaming steadily across the bridge into Tahrir Square. The army was still sitting on every street leading into Tahrir, but they weren’t patting down as many people as yesterday. Most they were just waving through.

On the square, there were a lot of people still sleeping on the grass from the night before. We saw Heather and her husband and baby, who was a big hit with the protesters; they all wanted to pick him up and have their picture taken with him. We saw one cardboard effigy of Hosni Mubarak hanging from a traffic light pole, and written on it a call for capital punishment for Mubarak. There were also a lot of guys picking up trash, sweeping streets, bringing water to protesters, and otherwise showing their solidarity and patriotism. Many protesters asked us to take pictures of them with their signs, and begged us to get these images and our impressions to Americans. In a way it seems rather disingenuous, knowing that we can’t share anything with anyone until the Internet is working again, but we do intend to get our images out as soon as Internet comes back.

We went down Kasr al-Aini Street past the American embassy, too. All of Garden City is cordoned off by tanks and sandbags, and no one was getting in anywhere. That’s the neighborhood where the US, UK and Canadian embassies are, along with many others. In Kasr al-Aini there were burnt-out police transports in the street, and many of the side streets were barricaded off with more burnt out and vandalized vehicles. Further away, in Nubar Street past the Ministry of Interior and around Sa’ad Zaghloul Metro station, life almost looked normal. The Sa’ad Zaghloul fruit market was booming, so fresh fruit and vegetables are clearly getting into the city.

When we went back to Tahrir Square, the crowds had more than doubled. Lots of people were carrying signs expressing anger at the US government, but they were pleased to see us as Americans there, supporting their aspirations for real agency in their government. A couple of men had taken up positions on top of street lights. There were more and more signs with slogans condemning the US government’s unwillingness to take the side of the Egyptian people, slogans like “USA: We are tired of your hypocrisy.” I heard a few crowds chanting “Mubarak is an agent of Israel.” We saw Emilie, who’s just come back from Erbil in Iraq, where all her colleagues said, “It’s not safe in Egypt, stay here in Iraq!” As curfew was approaching and we were leaving, Egyptians were passing us saying, “Don’t go! It’s perfectly safe! Stay with us!”

As we came back through Zamalek, there was only one sign of vandalism. The Vodafone store by the 26th of July Bridge had been painted with Stars of David and slogans like “Agents of the government.” Clearly people are angry about the cut in mobile phone service on Friday, and free in-network phone calls for the last three days have not made them feel any better!

Now we’re back in Zamalek. We’ve added two more CASA Fellows to our little enclave here, which gives us lots more distraction from the repetitive reporting on al-Jazeera. We’re making another stew (I haven’t eaten so well in months!) and more tea, settling in for the night. It sounds like one of our colleagues is taking advantage of the embassy’s evacuation assistance, but the rest of us are here for the long haul. Things are peaceful, and this is the most interesting week we’ve had all year. We want to see the Egyptian people succeed, and we want to be here to witness it when they do!

10:42PM
Alex and I were interviewed by Larry Abramson of NPR. (First I was on Egyptian national television in October. Now, Mom will get her long-standing wish to hear me on NPR at last.) He was looking for the opinions of American students living in Cairo. He wanted to know if we were intending to stay, if we felt safe, how our parents had reacted, and what our program was recommending. We tried to emphasize that there’s been no violence for days, that what “anti-Americanism” there is consists of anger at the American government, not American citizens, and that Egyptians have repeatedly expressed their thanks for our support and their hope that we’ll bring their message to the Egyptian people.

Flight Into the Unknown

2011-01-26T12:20:00.001-03:00

JFK Airport, New York, USA

“And the flight’s still leaving as scheduled?” I asked the man at the check-in counter.
“Yes, the weather’s good, and expected to stay clear for a few more hours,” he replied.
“I’m not so worried about this end of the trip, but about the Cairo end,” I said. He looked confused. “There’ve been protests in the streets there for a couple of days now.”
“Really? What are they protesting for?”
I have to say, I was taken aback. This is an Egyptair employee, and he doesn’t know about the brewing revolution in Egypt? “It’s kind of like Tunisia,” I said. “They’re trying to drive out the president of 30 years, that kind of thing….”
“Oh,” he said, very casually. “We do that all the time in my country. I’m from Pakistan. As they say, insha’allah it will all be okay.” And that was that. I didn’t know whether to be flabbergasted or reassured!

When I arrived at the appropriate gate, I was sure I was in the right place when I saw the distinctively embroidered skullcap of a Coptic monk along the bank of windows. I’d gotten to the airport quite early, worried that the snow would delay my shuttle, so I had over an hour left till boarding.

As I waited, I called my parents. Mom asked about the weather at the airport, and whether flights seemed to be leaving on time. “I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news,” I said, “but I’m kind of more worried about what I’ll find when I land in Cairo.” In fact, she hadn’t heard the news, and they’d had nothing to talk about for days except Obama’s State of the Union address anyway. She’d heard something about the self-immolations that happened in Egypt last week, but hadn’t understood their significance. Apparently NPR hadn’t commented much on why the Tunisian man who sparked a revolution had been motivated to burn himself alive, so she didn’t understand its correlation to Egyptians burning themselves alive. She hadn’t heard anything about demonstrations and riots in Egypt.

Dad came on the phone, and he knew a little more. His brother and aunt had emailed him to ask if I was okay in Egypt … but since I wasn’t in Egypt, I guess he hadn’t given it too much thought. I’m actually sort of sorry that my great-aunt is so tuned into the news. When I was in Jordan the first time, she used to email me regularly, and between every line of her emails was clear fear for my safety. After about a year, she seemed to have realized how safe Jordan is, and her emails lost their concerned edge. Now, though, she has a reason for concern.

I’m a little worried. My roommate heard yesterday that the airport road had been blocked, perhaps because that’s where the secret police have their headquarters. I know that the heaviest protesting has been going on within a 10-block radius of my apartment in pretty much every direction. Several of my CASA friends have reported encounters with teargas on Facebook, but it’s unclear whether these were chance encounters, or because they went out in the streets to either observe or participate in the protests. On the other hand, we’re on a fellowship from the US government, studying at American University, and registered at the US embassy in Cairo, so if things were really bad, they’d be evacuating my classmates. Instead I’ve gotten just one very generic email from the embassy suggesting that I “avoid places where people gather,” and one from American University saying essentially “we’ll let you know if you should be worried.” Until that email comes, I’ll try not to be.

Defining "Friend"

2011-01-23T15:21:00.013-03:00

Harleyville, Penna., USA
(near Philadelphia)

I was reminded this weekend of a conversation we had in our pre-semester Arabic class in Tubingen, Germany, years back, about the definition of the word "friend." He was speaking about how his American students misuse the German word “Freund” as if it were equivalent to “friend” in English. A friend in German, he explained, is someone you might not talk to for years at a time, even decades, and then you call him up and tell him you’re moving to a new apartment, and he drops everything to come and help you pack. It was similar to a perennial complaint I hear from European exchange students who say, “In America, everyone you meet says they’re your friend, and no one means it!”

But it turns out that I have a lot of friends in the German sense of the word. When I posted on Facebook that I had gotten these interviews, I immediately got a slew of invitations from friends to stay at their places while interviewing in their cities. In the last 3 weeks I’ve gotten together with more than a dozen people that I haven’t seen in 7 years or more. In many cases, we’d barely even been in contact over those years, but they’d been following my exploits, and were ready to welcome me right back into their lives.

Philly Teaching Fellows
I wish I could say I was impressed. I'm no expert, but this was my fourth interviewing event, and I've done a fair amount of recruiting and training of teachers, so I feel that I have a leg to stand on. I was very disappointed in the quality of the applicants in Philly. And they only interview 50% of applicants, while the other programs all say they interview 75% of their applicants. what does that say about the quality of applicants to Philly? Sad for the kids of the Philly schools.

Gwen's Wee Bairn

2011-01-20T13:14:00.025-03:00

York, Penna., USA

Tomorrow I'm leaving my cousin Gwen's in Pennsylvania. By the time I'm back in America, she'll be in a new house in Massachusetts, and I'll officially have no family in Pennsylvania anymore. It's a strange thing to contemplate. I grew up there, even if I never felt like I belonged there. I still have friends there: Philip, Phredd and Nicole B. for a start. I have a million memories there. But I no longer have family there.

Meanwhile, though, I am looking forward to visiting my first-cousin-once-removed Seamus again soon. Isn't he adorable?

From America In January

Country Roads

2011-01-15T12:07:00.058-03:00

Maryland, USA

There's a new Brad Paisley hit on country radio that I heard several times over the last two days driving from York to Washington, DC, and back again. It starts

You’re not supposed to say the word “cancer” in a song.
And tellin’ folks Jesus is the answer can rub ‘em wrong.
It ain’t hip to sing about tractors, trucks, little towns, and mama, yeah that might be true.
But this is country music and we do

This is one of the things I like about country music, and one of the reasons I listen to it when I'm Stateside. They sing about the simple things that are human and important to ordinary America. The things that are universal about humanity: raising kids, falling in love, worrying about your family, watching them die, trying to live up to your parents' hopes and aspirations.

I once heard ethnomusicologists on NPR talking about the popularity of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers in Africa. They talked about country music being not so much for people who live in rural areas. It's more about the people who used to live in rural areas, or whose parents did, and who now have to live in the city and feel out of their element. In a way, that's what I appreciate about country music. Even though I never really considered southern York County to be home, the longer I'm away the more I can appreciate the advantages of that life, in rural America, rural Jordan, rural Switzerland and all around the world. And since I've been living in cities since then....

So, maybe it was the country music. Maybe it was the unexpected thrill I got out of driving, and how easy and orderly it seemed after riding around in Cairo taxi cabs for 6 months. Maybe it was connecting with old friends. Whatever it was, something made me decide to take the long way home from lunch with Elly, through Jarrettsville, Delta, Brogue and Red Lion.

Another Goucher Girl Interlude
It was also great to have lunch with Elly, another friend from my creative writing program in undergrad. Yet another friend I haven't seen since college, and it was so comfortable to sit over Persian food in Towson and chat.

A New Me

2011-01-12T13:28:00.007-03:00

York, Penna., USA

I've really gone and done it now....

I chopped off almost all my hair today. Gwen took me to her hairdresser, and as Seamus pointed out, we made a big mess! A massive pile of chopped off hair drifted to the floor around me as we went for the shortest haircut I've ever had.

From America In January

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old!

2011-01-08T18:58:00.016-03:00

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

It has been such a great day today, despite this awful head cold I picked up by switching climates so drastically! First I had a great interview with the Baltimore City Teaching Residency. Then my sister picked me up for a sandwich and coffee, and we had a simply wonderful visit. It's been over a year since I've seen her, and she really looks good, and sounds even better! She also took me shopping and now, with half the interviews already done, I finally have a suit jacket that doesn't end at my elbows!

Then I went down into Baltimore to an amazing little pizza place called Joe Squared. Apparently it's where all the cool kids hang out in Baltimore ... or at least all my Goucher friends! I got to see Wade, who I haven't seen since April in Jordan, plus a bunch of other people I haven't seen since May in 2003 when we graduated! Shauna's now a published author. Dayo was home on break from her PhD program. Nicole's working at Hopkins now.

After Elly came over to say hello, Nicole turned to me. "How is it that I come here all the time, and I've never seen Elly here, but you come just once from Egypt, and there she is?"
"That's because I invited her!" Unfortunately, I didn't really get a chance to talk to her. I was apparently still on Egypt time when I left my sister, and arrived at Joe Squared almost 45 minutes late to my own party! By the time I had eaten something, Elly had already left. Gotta see if I can catch her for lunch while I'm on this continent....

There's just too many people to see and too little time. I was lucky to get this many old friends in one place at one time!

20 Years of the ADA

2011-01-07T12:00:00.047-03:00

Glen Burnie, Maryland, USA

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and today I have to salute that little piece of legislation, not just for what it's done for the disabled, but for the incidental benefits it's brought the rest of us.

You can really see the difference traveling from the Middle East to the US with a big suitcase on public transportation. In Egypt, I dragged that suitcase up and down stairs everywhere I went. In most American airports, train stations, and subway stops, there's a simple way to get around dragging your suitcase up the stairs: Look for the handicapped access signs, and they'll lead you straight to the elevators, escalators, ramps and other handicapped accessible features of almost any public space! Most modern buildings have elevator access, ramps at their main entrances, and other such assistance that can be as helpful for the suitcase-toting able bodied person as they are for the handicapped.

May I note, however, that we are by no means 100% on this score. There is no handicapped access at the 86th Street subway station where Kirsten lives in New York City. Handicapped access on the Baltimore Light Rail is reserved only for the handicapped because of the complicated nature of the contraptions used to provide it. There are still places where more access could be beneficial. I just can't help but compare everything to Egypt, and feel really good about being back in America!

It's also wonderful to see Candice today. Not snow nor swine flu nor the leaping boxers of Glen Burnie could keep us from meeting up this time!

New York, That Paradise....

2011-01-06T17:16:00.070-03:00

New York, NY, USA

I remember my first trip to New York City, years ago with my good friend Philip. He adores the city, and begged me to go with him. I have never been a fan of cities, but after living in Bern, Switzerland, as an exchange student for a year, I thought I could conquer anything. And I remember quite clearly what I thought of New York City: It's dirty, crowded, noisy and chaotic! I hated it, and I hadn't been to NYC since, so I was concerned as I was applying for the NYC Teaching Fellowship that I wouldn't be able to live in such a big, dirty, complicated place as New York City.

Imagine my surprise, then, to be walking the streets of New York City today and find myself marveling at how polite and respectful the people were, and how clean and orderly the streets were. I said this to my mother on the phone and she said, "But they say the trash collectors are on strike!" I know, I replied, I can see the mountains of plastic trash bags on every street corner, but the trash is in bags, and piled neatly, and not being ripped to shreds by cats.... The subway goes all over. The sidewalks aren't so cluttered with trees and dumpsters and vendors and piles of trash that you have to walk in the streets. When you cross the street, there are crosswalks and pedestrian lights and cars stop to let you use the marked crossings. When you walk into a store, you aren't accosted by a salesperson unless you ask for assistance. I could go on....

Culture Shock on the Subway
Every time I come back from the Middle East, I experience reverse culture shock in a different way. The first time I came home, in July 2005, I felt like all the women were walking around naked. The second time, in June 2006, I was still bargaining for the "volunteer teaching poor Arab children" price, and couldn't make eye contact with men. Last time, in February 2010, I simply couldn't believe that there was so much less free WiFi in "First World" American than there is in "Third World" Jordan! (I'm happy to report, that's no longer true ... free WiFi is as close as the nearest Starbucks now!) But I learn from each experience, and it never hits me quite the same way twice.

When I'm in the Middle East, I've become accustomed to looking at someone and being able to make a pretty educated guess about what language they speak by looking at their faces. Filipinas speak Tagalog and reasonably good English. White people generally speak English quite well, if not fluently, but perhaps with a European accent of some kind. Arabs speak Arabic, and maybe varying degrees of English. And so on. So when I look around the New York City subway, I expect the color of someone's skin and the shape of their face to tell me something about what language they speak, how good their English is, and what kind of accent they speak with. Much to my bewilderment, they all speak fluent English with a New York accent! What's with that??