12/23

Ma’asalama, ya Misr. Goodbye, Egypt. It’s been a short four months…too short. But I’m ready to go back.

These four months have definitely been some of the best times of my life so far. Whether it was watching the sunrise on Mt. Sinai, eating a huge piece of chocolate cake at the restaurant in Al Azhar Park, high-fiving cab drivers downtown and making jokes with them in Arabic, relaxing on the waterfront in Alexandria, ATVing in Dahab, sitting around the campfire in the White Desert, or exploring ancient ruins, this country has so much to offer…if you’re willing to take the risk and plunge in.

It’s also been some of the most challenging ones. Studying abroad doesn’t just open you up to the world; it forces you to confront things about yourself that you did not see or did not wish to see before. I consider myself a patient person but this means nothing in AUC’s bureaucracy, the long lines at the airport, and confusing and redundant procedures that characterize travel planning in general. For me, language and customs were relatively easy to learn, compared to the radically different conception of being on time or completing tasks when expected. (I guess it goes along with Cairo’s horrendous traffic, the “as you like” mentality.)

I can’t really sum up everything I feel about Cairo at the moment, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s a city of contradictions: the lavish gardens of Maadi, gilded mosque facades, and hyperglobalized City Stars Mall contrasting with the old downtown apartment buildings, garbage-filled slums of Manshiyet Nasr in the shadow of the massive Moqattam mountain, and the ubiquitous thick layer of dust caked on every sidewalk. A city of life and death, where the silent City of the Dead meets the buzzing nightlife of central Cairo.

Upper Egyptians can say what they will about those in Cairo, but to me the city is a microcosm of the country itself. You can find Egyptians of every shape and size here, and the way of life, while not dependent on farming, still is centered around connections between families, friends, and communities. Even the city’s name reflects its centrality: people call Cairo itself “Misr” when this is also used as the larger Arabic term meaning all of Egypt.

This sense of community is really something that makes Egypt so different from the West. There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander; if there’s a problem, everyone who can pitches in to help. On the overcrowded Metro one day, I ran towards the car right before the doors closed. The car was already packed full of people and threatened to dislodge the outermost filling of people like an overstuffed Kunafa Pocket. (Like a Hot Pocket but actually delicious and fresh.) I stopped at the car and looked at the challenge that lay before me—would cramming just one more person into this container force five people out? Immediately, before the doors closed, three people inside the car pulled me in. They had no idea who I was, or where I was going. In this situation, which happens every day, you would expect someone to do the same for you. That is what community means.

I was writing this in the airport (8:13am EST) and talking about how the flight was much less eventful than the one coming here. Of course, right after I typed that sentence they delayed my flight 4 times and then canceled it altogether, meaning I had to get a shuttle to Laguardia and get a flight 6 hours later than my original one. Still, I made it home.

It doesn’t feel like a real goodbye. Granted, I’m not really one to draw out goodbyes in the first place…but part of it is because I know I’ll be back in the future--maybe not this year or next, but definitely in this lifetime. And I’ll have more insights, stronger friendships, and no more Train of Death experiences.

ISA. (Inshallah.)