Election Day

Personally, I find maps like this fascinating. The competition to capture seats in Parliament and to win governates really shows the will of the people and Egypt's shining example of democracy to other Middle Eastern countries.

But I guess a slightly more accurate representation of the "will of the people" would look something like this:



The Muslim Brotherhood, the government's main opposition and a banned party, took 20% of the seats in Parliament in the 2005 election. This time they won 0. Ok, Mubarak, you're not going to give them much power. But 0? Asking many Egyptians, none of them honestly believed these numbers. They're not even in the ballpark.

Of course, Mubarak has to be credited with maintaining an astonishing amount of stability in this country of organized chaos. But he's getting old, and another 30 years just doesn't seem all that practical anymore. (I could be wrong, though. Doctors are very good these days.)
Some people think that his son, Gamal Mubarak, is being groomed as his successor. But Gamal is a businessman with not as much experience in politics, and I'm not sure Egyptians want to see the continuation of yet another Pharaonic dynasty.

Right now, the most clear alternative to this scenario is the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and best-organized opposition group that provides key services to poorer parts of Egypt and has an Islamist bent. If they somehow wrested power from Mubarak, we can expect many big changes in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that Egypt should adopt stricter Islamic law and govern according to shari'a, an idea that is becoming widespread throughout the Muslim world but has many differing interpretations. We don't really know how much the Brotherhood would have to moderate their views if they ever gained power, as Egypt has a large Coptic Christian minority that would be totally against living in a country governed by Islamic law. These people claim to be the original Egyptians, before the arrival of Islam in the 700s. These laws, added to their minority status, could make them feel even more like outsiders in their own country. The Brotherhood has also railed vehemently against the State of Israel and Egyptian-Israeli relations since 1979, and it's possible that once in power they could abrogate the peace treaty. (But if they do get power, I assume they'd have larger problems to deal with in Egypt than a rhetorical move against an annoying neighbor.)

Is Egypt really ready for democracy? Mubarak thinks not, according to the results.

Zero seats for the main opposition. Sifr. Ma fish haga. It's really an insult to people's intelligence.

So Egypt has a choice between stability and dictatorship, and religious fundamentalism and democracy. Based on what's just happened, next year's presidential election should be very, very interesting.

Pharaonic Propaganda

Propagandistic pictures of Ramesses fighting his opponents abound throughout his temples in Egypt. They adorn the walls inside the temple of Abu Simbel, and at the far end are statues of the gods Ptah, Khnum, Isis and...yes, Ramesses. You'd think four 50-foot-tall statues would have been enough, but no. Picturing yourself alongside the gods was also supposed to ensure your favor with them in the afterlife, since the Pharaoh was the earthly deputy of the gods, tasked with keeping order ("Ma'at", similar to Rta in the Vedas)on Earth and beating back the forces of chaos.

Chaos takes one of several forms:
1) Famine: the Nile doesn't flood at the right time or there are no rains, so farmers' crops are ruined and everyone starves
2) Sandstorms: generally not good
3) Enemies of Egypt: basically everyone who didn't conform to the Pharaoh's rule outside Egypt or believe in Egyptian gods (Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Libyan invaders, etc), therefore being a force of instability if an invasion took place. It was the Pharaoh's job to restore order in a war by prevailing against this force of chaos. If he didn't do this, he was a bad Pharaoh.

Here are a few examples of Pharaoh pleasing the gods by keeping Ma'at.






(Unfortunate victims)








You'll notice they're all in the same pose. This is an awesome pose.
Whether or not the king actually did this to his enemies rather than sitting around on his throne all day and eating falafel doesn't matter--it showed continuity between kings, and ensured their legitimacy.

Abu Simbel and other sites built by Ramesses generally include the story of the Battle of Kadesh, where Ramesses' expanding empire came into conflict with another expanding empire from Turkey, the Hittites. They met at the Orontes River in what is now Syria. There was a lot at stake in this battle; whoever won would basically win control of the entire east coast of the Mediterranean.
There are a lot of reliefs of the Battle of Kadesh at Abu Simbel, where Ramesses is depicted...


...on his chariot sharply shooting his Hittite enemies full of arrows...


...brilliantly braining them with his mace...


...or triumphantly trampling them underneath his feet, winning a decisive victory for Egypt and mercifully allowing the Hittites (what was left of them) to stay around.

If you're an Egyptian, this is all well and good--until you read any decent history book.

...Because the Egyptians didn't actually win.

Instead, the Battle of Kadesh ended in a stalemate where both sides signed a peace treaty.

So are Ramesses and all those other kings smashing, slashing and trampling their way to victory propagandistic liars? Yes, but for good reason. If you want to keep control of your population and minimize earthly chaos, you have to portray yourself as a winner all the time.

It's nice to know that in Egypt things haven't changed much since then.

Old and New

Like Egypt, Jerusalem has an ancient history that goes back thousands of years. You can't dig a few meters below the ground without turning up something cool, intensely controversial, and historically significant to at least two religions.

So we took the opportunity to explore.

The view from our hostel:


The Western Wall, holy to Jews as the last remaining part of the ancient Temple:




The Dome of the Rock, holy to Muslims as the place where Muhammad ascended to Heaven:


The Yom Kippur War memorial outside the Old City


Archaeologists dug around the Old City and uncovered an ancient city that dates back to the 1000s BCE, a period of monarchy when kings like David and Solomon ruled. This underground tunnel was used by King Hezekiah to ensure the flow of supplies and water to the city as it was being attacked by invaders, and also might have been an escape route to hide the Ark of the Covenant when the Babylonians sacked the city in 586 BCE.




I think this is when we discovered that the authorities would be closing all borders for the Eid break until an unspecified time, and we could either get stuck in Israel or the West Bank, and possibly have no chance of getting across the border to catch our flight back to Cairo from Amman. Much freaking out ensued as we decided what to do, but eventually we all calmed down and decided to see what actually happened. It turned out not to be a problem at all, as the borders were not closed for the next few days, if at all.

The Exodus, Part Three: Across the River

I won't go into many details about the border crossing between Jordan and Israel, but it was definitely no easy walk across with the Ark. (We should've picked it up at Tanis, I don't know what we were thinking.)



I think we took a total of 3 buses: Amman-King Hussein bridge, Jordan-Israel border, and border-Jerusalem. A combination of Jordanian inefficiency (and power cuts), long Israeli security lines, and passport issues.



A few of my friends were questioned since they had Lebanese or Syrian stamps on their passports, which extended our transit time by at least an hour. Under the disarming gaze of a female Israeli officer, it's clear why people hiding something have issues being even vaguely comprehensible.

In total, the border crossing took us about seven hours--a stretch of land that's even smaller than the Gulf of Aqaba. (And we wonder why people who travel across to visit their families can have tempers.)

On the efficiency spectrum, barring border issues, Israel is definitely at the top of the list, with Jordan a distant second.
Arabs see Israel as an artificial European colonialist construct imposed on their lands, and it's not hard to see how similar Israel is to Europe, both price-wise and in lifestyle. But there is some variation: in Jerusalem and most of the eastern area including the West Bank, the Middle Eastern Arab culture really shows through.

My favorite place was Jerusalem, which has a sort of balance between East and West.
The difference in lifestyle between even East and West Jerusalem is astounding. We got off the bus on a lively Arab street that reminded me a lot of Cairo (but with easier air and slightly less organized chaos). In just a few minutes we were on the Jewish side, with its high-end outdoor shopping centers, green Egged buses flying down every street, and street lights that actually are respected. You have to think twice about walking across the street anywhere you want, because the police can dock you at least 200 shekels (~$40) if they see you deviating from the crosswalk. You can't even double- or triple-park your car, and there are meters on every corner. Where's the fun?

Since my last visit in January, the clear inequality of standards of living between the two areas hasn't changed much, if at all. Seth and I explored West Jerusalem by bus one day and there are advanced housing complexes on every hill. In East Jerusalem, by contrast, trash collection doesn't even seem to happen.

A quick note: for those of you who might think that by talking about all this efficiency I'm implying that Arab culture is undeveloped compared to Israel, I'm not. It has its own individual uniqueness that definitely should not be assimilated into the Israeli or "European" model (Jordan is in the process of this, and it's an interesting balance when you compare Amman to outlying rural areas). There are just some standards that can't be attributed to culture, though, like picking up trash. It's a health and cleanliness issue. I'm not sure quite the reason for this, but I'm guessing that it's a combination of lack of adequate infrastructure, group psychology ("It doesn't matter if I do it, others will anyway") and higher priorities. If you're living on a small amount each day, your priority will not be to the environment, something you can't derive a clear, short-term benefit from.

So a lot remains to be done. We stayed in the Old City, where trash collection happens late every night with huge truck-like behemoths that glide through the tight streets. We discovered this on a late-night stroll of Jerusalem, which is a great thing to do if you're ever there. Weather was perfect.





Some of you may get this:

The Exodus, Part Two: The Land of Jordan

I'll go out on a limb and venture that, dare I say it, Jordan is more efficient than Egypt. After arriving in Aqaba at 8pm, exhausted but having made it across the sea, it only took us a half hour to find the customs office where we got our passports stamped. By chance we found Michelle's luggage lying with some other bags from the ferry, forgotten and derelict by the back wheel of a bus. (But it was no Luxor-Cairo train horror, alhamdulillah.)

One consequence of Jordan's higher standard of living is that its currency exchange rate is virtually identical to the Euro. At the exchange kiosk, I felt like all my money was disappearing into an empty void of nihilism and black holes, as I exchanged my Egyptian pounds (5 to a dollar) for Jordanian dinars (0.7 to a dollar) and my wallet became oddly light.

Getting a cab to Petra was probably one of the best things we could've done. I say this not because it helped us further hone our haggling skills and pouty faces when the drivers attempted to overcharge us (which it did), but because talking with cab drivers is really the absolute best way to pick up a dialect. Jordanians speak much slower and closer to Modern Standard Arabic than Egyptians. They say "Biddi" instead of "3ayiz" to say "I want," and they actually pronounce their j's instead of g's. I have to say I was relieved to finally be able to say "jayyid jiddan" (very good) instead of "kuwayyis awi" or "gayyid giddan."

Eating a late dinner at the delicious Arabiyya restaurant in the town of Petra, we crashed at our hostel.




PETRA













While definitely not as fascinating as the ancient ruins of the Pharaohs, Petra has its own unique character. The great poet John William Burgon once called it "a rose-red city half as old as time," and it really is.

Petra was once a thriving trade center of the Nabatean civilization, during the reign of the Roman Empire, and lasted until the 500s. Since they didn't leave a plethora of written inscriptions behind, we don't know much about the Nabateans, except that, as my friend Michelle pointed out, they must have been salad-lovers ("Nabati" in Arabic means vegetarian).

Aside from being vegetarians, the Nabateans seemed to value superficiality above all.
This is quite evident from their tombs.



Lavish and beautiful on the outside...



...Empty on the inside. (Maybe this explains their ultimate downfall.)





Jordan's efficiency isn't just what makes the country a bit easier to get around in as a tourist. Jordanian hasslers are of a weaker variety than their Egyptian counterparts in that they'll leave you alone if you say no once or twice.

That said, we opted to take a donkey ride up the mountain to the Monastery and save ourselves a great deal of time and energy. So we asked one of the guys in Arabic how much he wanted to charge us to go up. "6 JD each," he replied. This is the equivalent of about $8...stupid Euro conversion. We wanted 3, so we went to another guy. This guy reassured us about the climb up, telling us he'd get us to the top with the donkeys. But when he went to get them, a 7-year-old kid came up to us and told us not to trust this guy, he will cheat us. Just then the guy came back, saw this kid, and became furious. He tried beating the kid up but a few other donkey-people came up and intervened. During all the rumpus the kid picked up a rather large and sharp rock and raised up above his head. We quickly stopped him. "La, la, la! Mesh munasib," we said. Not appropriate! Fortunately he put it down. We walked away quickly, ashamed that we'd caused yet another fight in the hapless tourist business. (The other one, if you remember, was between two cab drivers in Dahab. And they actually resorted to blows.)

Tired of all this, we just took the next donkey-guy who offered us a ride.



Even though they looked relatively healthy, these poor donkeys must have been worn out. Every time mine went up a flight of steps it would either lurch to the side or stop for a second to catch a breath.

Up at the top was a great view of the mountains. Two of my friends decided to climb on the Monastery, which was not allowed, but if you only speak "Italian," who knows how far you can get?



This ended up being a poor decision, as they were yelled at quite sternly by a worker and forced down. I'll put what happened next in a game theory format.

Guy asks for our tickets.

We can't understand him since we speak Italian. He can't understand Italian. (Us +3)

We search for our tickets. (Guy +3)

My two friends pull out theirs. (Us +2)

I can't find mine. (Guy +50)

We look through Michelle's bag.

Guy says if I don't have a ticket I must have gotten in illegally and I'll either have to come back with him to the entrance and buy another 60 JD ticket or go to a Jordanian jail. (Guy +500)

I still can't find my ticket.

Michelle finds a random ticket lying on the ground nearby and shows it to the guy. (Michelle +1000)

Guy says ok, fine and leaves us alone. I walk away, humbled and grateful. (Us +600)

As you can see, it's really all about the power struggle. I don't know if he could've actually done all that, but you never know. This is why it's generally not a good idea to mess around at an archaeological site.

The irony: After we got back to our hotel, I found my ticket at the bottom of the bag.

Anyway, after Petra we gathered our things and took a bus to Amman, Jordan's capital. Amman's actually a pretty cool place that's relatively clean. In my opinion, being approximately the same distance from the Jordan River that Jerusalem is, the two are sort of mirror images of each other.






We spent most of the next morning trying to rent a car. After our hotel gave up trying to arrange us one, we finally found a place ourselves. Our first target: The Dead Sea.




There may not be a lot to do in Amman, but it does have some great bars (if you can find them amidst all the 1st, 2nd, 5th Circle roundabouts). Here having a car really helps, and it's even more fun with so many hills (Seven, to be exact).

The Exodus, Part One: 40 hours in the wilderness

Another 8-hour bus ride across the Sinai. We ended up at Nuweiba, by the shores of the sea, hopeful that we would make it across soon. Moses had made it seem so easy.
Alas, we were not as blessed. Instead of God parting the waters, we sat in a warehouse from 9am to 4pm waiting for the ferry to come. When did it arrive? "3pm, In sha'allah," said one of the guards.






I used to love this word, in sha'allah. It means "God willing" or "if God wills it." To me, it represented a sense of hope and optimism for the future, like after saying that there will be world peace in our lifetimes.

That idea of hope has been dashed after coming to Egypt.

Don't know how to use it in a sentence? I'll give some examples:

You make a plan with your Egyptian friends to meet at a restaurant for dinner. "Let's meet at 9pm," you say.
"In sha'allah."
Your friends meet you there at 9:30, which is exactly the time you expected and quite reasonable for a meeting with Egyptians.

You take a cab from your apartment to a hotel right across the river. You ask the driver, "Do you know how to get there?"
"In sha'allah."
You drive around Cairo for half an hour over three different bridges before reaching the hotel.

You wait in line to get your student ID card at AUC. You take a number and sit back down, waiting for your number to be called so you can submit the required documents. Your number is 1019, and they're still on the 500s. You get fed up. You ask the man at the desk, "Are you open until 5?"
"Yes In sha'allah."
"No, are you open until 5? I have to go turn in some other forms and don't want to just wait here for another hour. Can I come back at 4:45?"
"Fine, In sha'allah."
You return at exactly 4:45 to find the place closed.

For Egyptians, this phrase evolved out of a tradition of not being overconfident in one's future, lest you be found by the evil eye. So saying it after anything theoretically signifies your humility and deference to God's will, which may not match up with your own. I understand this custom and respect it, but with time, it's become hugely overused for things I don't think it was ever meant for. Many people use it to convey Yes, No, I don't know, Maybe, Probably Not, or Definitely. (I guess this is why it's so popular.)

As an American used to at least a modicum of efficiency in the States, the "in sha'allah" mentality here seems to have make inefficient bureaucratic systems even worse.
The amount that this word is used in so many contexts has just made it into something that at worst is noncommital. Maybe it makes more sense to Egyptians, but when foreigners come here trying to make plans of what they'd like to do with no surprises, in sha'allah can just confuse the hell out of them.

Where was I? Yes, so this man at the warehouse has just told us 3pm, in sha'allah. The ferry didn't get there until 4 and we finally boarded at 5. All this for a 45-minute ferry ride across the tiny Gulf of Aqaba.

A day and a half of traveling just to get across the Red Sea...

I knew I should've brought my staff.

AUC: A culture of diversity

It's just so hard to fit in here if you're an international student in a sea of Egyptians. The biggest thing is different priorities. They stay up most of the night, while you sleep at 11pm and have to wake up at 6 to catch the bus to your 8:30 class. They skip class routinely, while you only miss it when you and your friends plan a trip to exotic locales. They have stable relationships with each other that they've cultivated over the past few years, while you're thrown in at first not knowing anyone.

I guess it's a good thing that we effectively stay separate. One semester for most of us is not enough time to establish any kind of meaningful relationship or spend all our time with people from a completely different culture, who live hours away from most of us. With all the diverse goals international students have for their valuable time abroad, of course we don't need to put such a high priority on friendships with AUCians when there are so many other things out there that will help us gain more in the long term.

But it would be nice to not feel like such an outsider. At UVA people will at least come up and say hello to you if they see you're alone. As I write this right now I'm sitting in a packed McDonald's cafeteria on campus, and it's just a bit awkward being the only American here. (I know, the irony.) I'm actually waiting to see an awards ceremony put on by the Filmmakers' club, including some notable Egyptian comedians and actors. I guess it's not anyone else's fault I know who Samir Ghanem is. (He's a famous actor from Egyptian films of the 1960s and 70s).

This environment of isolation has made me think more about being an American around here. Coming back to some of the reasons why I decided to come to Egypt, it's clear that living here has given me a more realistic picture of Egyptian-American relations. That said, there are so many different sides to everything. For every instance where I feel constantly profiled as a rich white American who can be ignored or easily exploited, within a few hours something will be sure to contradict any stereotype I could make about Egyptians as a whole.

Like anything, what you get out of an experience is equal to what you put into it. If you don't leave your dorm, isolating yourself in a compound full of Americans, speak only English, and only leave your home when you have to, of course you'll develop certain ideas about others and just expect them to be confirmed when you talk to them.

So my advice is: Always go into a new situation with an open mind, positive expectations and a smile. Even if things don't go your way, deal with it and move on. Everyone makes mistakes and part of life is learning from them, but in a country like Egypt, it's probably not all your fault, so don't worry. (Unless you and your 10 friends joined hands and crossed the street together, which is an extremely stupid thing to do. Then it's definitely your fault.)

The Fayyum and the Fail Pyramids

AUC Downtown Campus, 8:00am. Final field trip of the semester!

We're on our way to visit several sites in the Fayyum, an oasis that is fed by an offshoot of the Nile River which ends in a salty lake, Lake Moeris (Birket Qarun in Arabic).

The first is Karanis (Kom Aushim), where the crocodile god Sobek was worshiped. The ancient Egyptians mummified crocodiles and stuck them in these slots.







Next we saw Amenemhet III's Pyramid at Hawara.

The pyramids we'll see today all have one thing in common--they're ugly. Originally they looked quite nice, but unlike the more famous Giza Pyramids, they're not in such good condition. Lots of these pyramids were made in experimental styles during the Middle Kingdom, where the pharaohs decided to improve on the existing pyramid design and made a mudbrick core containing the burial chamber. They then surrounded this core with a shell of limestone. What they didn't expect was the lack of cohesion that the mudbrick would have, though, and over time, the outer parts of the pyramids collapsed, leaving only a sad-looking mudbrick center (occasional earthquakes and building too close to the river's unstable water table didn't help).







And a closeup of the blockwork:



After this guy we visited the pyramid of Amenemhet III at Lahun, east of the Fayyum, another epic fail.



Depressed by all these disappointing mounds? We saved the best for last!
As I might have said in a previous post, the bored, boat-riding Old Kingdom pharaoh Snefru had an astonishing four pyramids dedicated to him--at Saqqara, Seila and Meidum. He constructed his pyramids entirely from limestone, but unfortunately the Meidum pyramid suffered a similar fate to the Middle Kingdom pyramids around it. As you can see, the outer layers have collapsed quite spectacularly.



Inside




In my infinite stupidity, I brought along a wool scarf to protect myself from the sun (the only scarf I had). After berating me for several minutes, Dr. Ikram, in her infinite wisdom and South Asian skill, tied it Punjabi-style.





Don't mess, Diljit.

Finally, we moved to the immense Mastaba 17 to the south of the pyramid. Mastabas were large flat mounds that were used as burial chambers for early Pharoahs. The brilliant architect Imhotep, of "The Mummy" fame, realized that by stacking mastabas of decreasing size on top of each other, you could create a pyramid. And he did just that with Djoser's pyramid at Saqqara (see previous post).

Anyway, Mastaba 17 was awesome. Below, Dr. Ikram holds a council to warn us of the impending claustrophobia that may prove too much for some.




...and zombies?





Apologies if this film is slow in places. Keep watching though, it gets better.



All in all, a great finish!