Thursday, April 21, 2005

Cairo-Lucky-Aug. 4 2002

I’ve been thinking about luck a lot lately. Today I had an appointment with a bright, young Egyptian woman. She is a career development director for a company called Career Egypt. I am trying to convince her to contribute a monthly column on career advice for a new section that I am launching in the magazine. Inji is about 27 years old and just had her very first hip replacement surgery and walks with a cane. Apparently, she has arthritis and has been living with it for so many years that she has done irreparable muscle damage. Four years ago, she went to a "very famous" Egyptian doctor who -- after making her wait for two hours in the waiting room -- told her she was just a girl trying to get attention and that her problem was most likely a symptom of a childhood accident and to live with it. At the beginning of this year, she went to London where she was clearly told after some simple tests that she has early-onset arthritis.

Another woman I have become close to is one of my colleagues at our sister magazine, which is produced out of the same office. Rania is a beautiful, sweet and smart Egyptian. She is 30, single and lives with her family. She has been engaged to be married three times. Each time, her parents seem to like the boy and then change their minds and forbid the marriage. Last week she told me she may get married soon. When I expressed surprise (I hadn’t heard her mention any boyfriend) she rolled her eyes and said, "Well, my parents brought him over and he looks good on paper." So this woman, who has a master’s degree, speaks perfect English, is well aware of norms in other worlds, will follow her parents’ wishes in what should be one of the most important decisions of her life.

One of the most popular phrases in Egypt is "insha ‘allah." This means "God willing." It is used umpteen times a day after almost any sentence. For example, "The satellite repairman is coming by today, insha ‘allah" or "Today is payday, insha ‘allah" or "Maybe it won’t be so hot today insha ‘allah."

Egyptians (maybe all Arabs) go about their lives with seemingly little control over anything. Inji and her health issues -- in America, that doctor would have been sued and she would most likely have received proper treatment before it came to surgery. My single friend? In America, she would have told her parents where to stick it and married the one boyfriend she truly loved (and still does love). Government and God. The two prevailing forces in this world. The government keeps the people so busy and preoccupied with byzantine bureaucracy that they feel lucky to just make it through the procedure. Obtaining any official paper, getting it signed and delivered and approved and re-approved and mailed and mailed back and mailed to a new place and re-signed is mind-numbing at best.

Davin and I have been trying to buy sheets for our guest bed. (This is Egypt -- home of the fancy "400-count Egyptian cotton sheets," right? Wrong. These fabulous sheets are not sold in Egypt. At all. They are only exported.)

We kept hearing the name of a big department store. People said, "Oh, you can buy sheets at Omar Effendi, very nice, very nice." We find the place and indeed, it looks like a Sears/JC Penney-type store. Alas, it’s closed. We tried again the next weekend. Closed. Turns out Omar Effendi is a government-run department store, so its hours are more akin to a drivers license office. So we return on a weeknight and it’s open. Great. We find the least offensive floral-pattern sheets (no plain-colored sheets at all) for a good price. No fitted sheets. They don’t exist here. The guy behind the counter hands me a rather large receipt and tells me to pay for and retrieve the item on the first floor. OK. So we try the elevator. Wrong. Although it worked when we got there, its power is now cut off for some reason. So we walk down to the fourth floor and see some bowls we need. I grab two, show the guy who gives me another large receipt and sends me to the first floor. Head to the first floor. I see my items on a table and go to get them. No, no, I am told, you must pay first. So I head to the cashier (by the way, we are the only customers in the entire store and there’s at least three people standing bored behind every counter). At the back of the store, the cashier tells me credit card payments are paid on the third floor only. So I head back up the stairs to the third floor, fin d the credit card cashier in the back and hand her my two tickets. She then proceeds to fill out another, even larger receipt, stamp my other two receipts, runs my credit card, hands me another receipt and sends me on my way. Back on the first floor, I hand over my four stamped receipts and receive my sheets and plastic bowls.

And you know what? I too felt like I had truly accomplished something. I felt grateful to get in and out with an actual purchase.

To add to the government’s heavy hand, there’s religion. In Islam, there is another, better life after this one. So, here, once again, is the underlying message -- don’t try to change anything, you don’t have control, it’s all in God’s hands and there is nothing you can do except try to be a good person.

I remember when my father first moved to Moscow and he said something to the effect of "life is simpler in Russia than it is in the US." I remember thinking at the time, "How in the hell can it be easier to live in Moscow?" I think I know what he means now. When so many things are out of reach for the majority of people living in a government-controlled state and in poverty, simple things are more enjoyed. An errand in the US (buying some dumb sheets) was a weeks-long sojourn, a major accomplishment. A game of backgammon when there is no TV and you’ve read all your books. Walking to the market with your husband and spending an hour just picking out the best, cleanest fruits and veggies and chatting with the locals who have time to chat. It doesn’t mean life is easier, but simple things become the sweetness of life. It forces you to slow down and savor each day.

I also remember my only visit to Russia to see my dad and thinking, "wow, he needs so many things, there’s so much lacking." But he didn’t. Nor do we. In unpacking my seven boxes that I had shipped here, there are probably two boxes of useless junk. Five extra purses. Two hairdryers. Gobs of earrings. I call it the de-Americanizing of Elizabeth and Davin. Hopefully, it
sticks.

Things that used to seem important but are no longer:
1. My stupid Palm Pilot. What a piece of irrelevant garbage.
2. Perfectly painted toenails.
3. Keeping up with every new movie that comes out.
4. Trying to stop biting my nails. (Once I moved here and stopped trying, it happened. I have stopped biting my nails.)
5. Cute purses, cute shoes. OK, fashion in general.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Cairo-Food-Aug. 1 2002

My day-to-day life is not so different from life in any other major city except for the following things:

* I pass tens of stray cats and dogs a day -- many of them bathing in sewage overflow.
* I am the object of most people’s stares and attention because I am so different from them.
* I literally take my life into my own hands every day as I climb into a taxi that has no seat belt, no air conditioning, often no door handle nor window handle and venture into congested streets in a city that has no traffic rules, with a driver who speaks no English.

Yet these things, as do all things, become normal after a while and we all adjust.

My mother wants to know what I’m eating. As part of the deal of moving to Cairo in the first place, my husband and I agreed that he would cook all the meals since he is now a student and I am the breadwinner. This is a good thing. Otherwise, we’d be eating cans of peas and bread every day.

Davin is doing yummy things with produce, which is plentiful and inexpensive. Our favorite dinner so far is simple: tomato, cucumber, onion and tuna salad. We eat this twice a week. Another good one is tamarind chicken. You can get a 2-liter bottle of tamarind juice at the souk (an outside marketplace where you buy the best fruits and vegetables...and live chickens and rabbits) for 2 pounds (less than 50 cents). You can drink the juice outright but it is wonderful as a marinade for chicken or lamb. We also eat frozen veggies or some other kinds of beans. Breakfast? Boring corn flakes and coffee.

My lunches are little more authentic Egyptian. First of all, every single restaurant in Cairo delivers. Even Hardees and McDonalds. And get this: for the 1.2% percent of the population that goes online, you can order from McDonalds online and they will bring it to you. But alas, I have been staying away from the fast food -- at least American-style fast food. I have been rotating between three yummy types of food. One is a fuul sandwich. This is basically a bean burrito. It is beans in pita bread. One fuul sandwich is 75 piasters. That is less than 1 pound, which is about a quarter. And one sandwich will do you. The next is called tamiyya. This is cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and falafel in a pita. Again, it costs 75 piasters. If I am really hungry, I go for kosherie. This is like spaghetti. It is sundried tomatoes, garlic, lentils and onions on top of rice and pasta. This costs 1 pound and a half -- so cheap. Of course there are regular lunches available like burgers or sandwiches, but these tend to cost more like 6 to 14 pounds. There is no such thing as a salad bar. We had a coupon for a nice restaurant, which we used last week, and they did have lots of American-style salads on the menu. So I think we can find that stuff but it is only in restaurants and there you are talking about spending 50 pounds (about 11 dollars).

Enough about food. I am entertaining myself by playing soccer once a week, watching the BBC and reading. We work out inside the apartment with some resistance bands we bought in the states. We haven’t seen a movie yet. Right now, there are only four American films playing here: Men in Black, Ice Age, Panic Room and Spiderman, I think. So, our movie-going days will have to remain on hiatus. Before they play American movies here, they are of course censored, all sex scenes are removed and then the movie gets Arabic subtitles. I think there is a booming black market here for DVDs (which the Egyptian government has declared illegal) and some music CDs that the government would not allow. We spend a lot of time with our cats. They are one of our best reminders of home.

The people in general are conservative. They are definitely religious people. Many of them walk around literally reading the Koran aloud. They have little tiny books that contain Koranic verses that people sell outside the subway stations. It is not abnormal to see people mouthing verses as they stroll along down streets. The men and women at work pray a couple times a day and of course no matter where you live, you will hear the calls to prayer over loudspeakers.

But there are also many, many up-and-coming Egyptians who look just like Westerners and who are running businesses and fighting for rights in the private sector. And as conservative as the middle and lower class is here, it will never, never be like Saudi Arabia. Cairennes laugh and roll their eyes when they think of how horrible it must be there. They are definitely opinionated about the Palestinian issue. There is no debate on the subject. They want the Israelis out. However, I am constantly amazed at how little you hear about the whole situation. Egyptians don’t seem to care as much about the situation as I expected them to. Whether for good or bad, they are much more concerned with their own country's problems and their own lives.

Apparently Cairo has a happening nightlife. We wouldn’t know since we are a boring, old married couple. But even a jaunt out for milk one night at 10:30 p.m. showed a whole new side of the city. Cairennes are nocturnal beings. Partly due to the heat and partly as a result of late afternoon naps, people stay up very late here. And most stores accommodate this lifestyle, so that almost every place is open past midnight.

One favorite Egyptian pastime is smoking shisha. That sounds a lot more wicked than it really is. A Shisha pipe works like a marijuana bong, but the content is just tobacco mixed with flavored molasses. They smell wonderfully sweet and the shisha pipe itself is downright exotic looking. Some of them are pieces of art.

1. Types of animals I see everyday: Goats, sheep, cats, dogs, chickens, rabbits, horses, donkeys.

2. Best place for an insider’s view of Cairo -- a shisha bar. Here you can hear discussions of what went wrong in the Arab world, the latest Slim Shady song or how cheap a ticket to Jordan is these days.

3. Number of times a Cairenne honks his horn in 30 minutes: 15-18.

4. Number of times it has been over 100 degrees F but been underreported by the government: At least 5 days. (Apparently, many government buildings are not air conditioned and there’s a rule that once it hits a certain temperature, employees cannot work. So, the running joke is that it is never hotter than 43 (Celsius) in Cairo because the govn’t owns the weather service. Even though it feels more like 50.)

5. One in five Arabs live on less than $2 a day.

6. For the past 1,000 years, Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year.

7. One in every two Arab women can neither read nor write.

8. How to say "You are ripping me off!" -- Inta bitithak alayya!

Monday, April 18, 2005

Cairo-Landing-July 2002

First off I want to apologize for not posting sooner. To be perfectly blunt, the culture shock is keener than I expected and I felt I needed some perspective before I sent out a missive damning the whole country. Today was a good day. Today I have some perspective.

Many, probably most of you, asked me over and over was I scared to come here. I’m sure I answered a most assuredly ‘no.’ And I wasn’t scared at the time. My brother was perhaps the only witness to my first real fright. He took me to the airport in Atlanta where we had to jump through some hoops in order to make sure my bags were properly packed and tagged, etc., that Harley had her proper pet paperwork and such. After this ordeal was over, Brian walked me to the gate and suddenly it hit. I was scared. Not of Egypt. Not of anti-Americanism. Not of the water. Not of getting robbed. Just scared. Not knowing what I was getting myself into. Not knowing what I’d find on the other end of the next 16 hours.

Upon landing, getting my bags, and going through customs, I finally pushed my enormous luggage through the gates in search of my husband. I barely recognized him. His face looked almost gaunt. He was about 15 pounds or more thinner than he was a month prior. He negotiated with a cabbie, put my luggage on the roof and we were off. The long cab ride through city toward Maadi, some 45 minutes south of the airport, was grisly. Taxis are not air-conditioned of course and the method of driving in Cairo is thus: Rules be damned. Lanes don’t exist, you just drive on any part of the street and honk your horn about every two minutes. I saw my first donkey-pulled carriage on this ride. These are very common in Cairo. It is not at all an unlikely scene to watch a young, rich Egyptian chat on his hands-free cell phone while a galabeya-robed farmer passes by leading his donkeys or goats.

The heat hits you first Ð particularly after living two years the cold, foggy clime of SF. It rushes through your nose, your ears, your eyes, heating you from the inside. After this sensation, the next thing that hits you is your utter foreign-ness. Your eye color, skin color, your odor - all so different and strange.

After reaching the apartment, which is quite large and nice with a/c and all the proper amenities - even a clothes washer - we crashed out.

The next morning while Davin was in class I did my first exploring. This is where I got my first taste of the female harassment that you hear so much about. It is pretty bad, but I had prepared myself for worse, so I shouldn’t complain. It just gets old, very fast. And all it is really is staring. Staring without end. All around you, every man’s eyes watching your face, your neck, your arms, your legs if they are showing, even your feet in sandals.

They have no shame. Nothing makes them quit. Not even when 145-pound Davin glares at them. And particularly when you’ve had a rough day at work and you are forced to sit in a hot subway car for the 25-minute ride, the LAST thing you need is men’s eyes boring holes into your body. It puts a permanent frown on your face. It makes you sweat more. It makes your eyes water. This will be an ongoing challenge. I’m sure it will eventually subside. (The most unfortunate side effect of this is that I don’t leave the apartment much. Granted, that is due to the heat as well.)

Speaking of work, it is pretty insane. I came in mid-cycle, so things are hectic. I’ve had to work at home every night since I started last week. I also worked all day on my weekend day, Friday. (Work week here is Sunday-Thursday). Thank god for my laptop. Particularly because there’s a power outage pretty much every day. On Thursday, we lost power FOUR times. When this happens people pretty much just go buy a soda or hang out in the dark trying to not suffer too much from the heat. I already wrote my first 750-word story and edited my first 5,000-word piece. Invaluable experience!

I also work with many Egyptians, most of who are Moslems. And as you probably know, Moslems pray about five times a day, so two of these prayer times come during work. So when I see the girl who sits behind me pull out her rug to pray on the floor, I try not to speak loudly, say any curse words or walk in front of her. The men are required to leave the room. And I am required to leave the room altogether if men are praying.

(Another sidebar about work, in addition to the power outages in the city, which interrupts work constantly, things such as bulletin boards, mouse pads, tape dispensers, are hard to come by. My request for post-it notes is still in the process of being OK’d.)

Davin is enjoying his language course. His Arabic is coming along fast. He has met some extremely smart people. I met some of these folks on our trip to Aswan and Luxor. The four-day trip was fantastic. Since those cities are so far south of Cairo -- close to Sudan -- the heat was intense. The tour schedule was such that we did our sightseeing very early in the morning or late at night. During the day, we hung out on the cruise ship swimming, talking or eating. We visited some of world’s oldest and most famous temples, toured museums, a Nubian village and tombs of pharaohs and kings.

I am signing off now. Pray that we receive our boxes soon, they have yet to arrive. They were supposed to be here weeks ago, and we just found out it will cost us almost $500 to get them out of customs where they have probably stolen everything anyway).

I will leave you with a couple of lists.

Elizabeth’s list of what people said that have proven totally untrue:
1. Tourists get shot in Cairo.
The amount of tourist police armed with machine guns is overwhelming and 110% reassuring that no harm, ever, will come to you. In addition to the tourist police who are on every street corner, on our cruise down the Nile we had real police escorts every time we stepped off the ship.
2. You can live like kings here.
Things are cheap, but that’s the problem. They are cheap, crappy products (no motive, no true competition). You can buy imported products from the US or Europe but they are almost three to four times more expensive than the Egyptian products. In some cases, they are even more expensive than you’d pay in SF. Nivea hand or body lotion for example costs almost $10. All alcohol is also more expensive than in the US (which means we pretty much stopped drinking.)
3. Women in Cairo are totally modern and don’t veil themselves.
The vast majority of the women (probably 80%) wear at least hijab (headscarf) and many of them wear niqab (veil over their face and gloves).
4. Everyone speaks English.
Getting around without knowing some Arabic is almost impossible. Only about 10% of the street signs are in English and the language is just so totally different that you can’t even fake it like you can in countries like France. Not to mention, the country is only half-literate. So your average Joe on the street is unlikely to be able to help you find your way around.
5. Live in Maadi, there’s so many ex-pats that you won’t get harassed.
The neighborhood we chose is amazingly clean compared to the rest of Cairo. It is also home to most of the richest Egyptians and other Westerners. However, on my first day walking around alone I was trailed by at least three men asking various questions. (I’m almost glad I can’t understand what they are saying.)
6. All Arabs hate Americans.
It’s a moot statement because most people have no clue we are even American. We’re simply foreigners (khawaaga). They could care less where we are from. America is not even their first, or second, guess. They definitely have strong feelings against Israel but to be honest, they are most interested in living their own lives and worrying about their own families. The Israeli occupation is not a topic that comes up very often.

Elizabeth’s list of things I was told that have proven true:
1. It is hot. Very hot.
2. You will get sick. Very sick. (But it goes away eventually and it’s a decent weight loss system.)
3. There are hundreds of stray cats and dogs. An insidious, sad problem in a country that even has a verb for scratching a cat (kharbish)
4. Cairo’s pollution is horrible. Luckily, the air in our neighborhood is slightly better.
5. The driving is insane. Two of Davin’s classmates are walking around on crutches due to run-ins with cars.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to WestMeetsEast