yowm mu'ataad

I know. I know. Believe me, I know. You go exotic places, you tell me, and then you never update!

In my own defense, there has been precious little to update about here once I got settled in. I get up. I study Arabic. I go to bed. The routine would bore you, but for the fact it is Cairo, and therefore at least something is catching my eye. But more often than not they are just fleeting thoughts I have in between diagramming sentences. Thoughts such as, I wonder if the boys who carry trays of tea to and fro on the streets to waiting groups of men are paid for their effort, or if they are just gofers serving their fathers/uncles/brothers/family friends. Or, where does the muezzin live? In the mosque? One wonders these things. One could try to find them out, but that would take the mystery out of life.

So I thought I would describe my neighborhood here in Zamalek. What it is like to wander around here, on my walks to the store, or church, or down to the bank in the Marriot to cash a travelers check.

Zamalek has always been the cosmopolitan part of the city. It is an island in the middle of the Nile. Khedive Ismail named it the Jardin des Plantes, and proceeded to build an enormous palace on the east bank of the island and make the place a giant greenhouse for exotic plants from all over the world. The Khedive's opinions on those pesky issues of East-West and modernity can probably best be summed up in this quote: "My country is no longer in Africa; we are now part of Europe. It is therefore natural for us to abandon our former ways and to adopt a new system adapted to our social conditions." He said this in 1879, the same year the British kicked him out when he refused to listen to the European bankers who effectively owned his country, so when he said "we are now part of Europe" it was not just in a metaphysical sense.

The Europeaness of Zamalek has stayed, despite the number of transformations the place has undergone. From being the hangout for pashas and European dilettantes and colonial elite to a lower middle class neighborhood post-1945, to once again becoming one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the city, the area has seen a lot of social change, and it doesn't bother to cover the scars from those changes. Imagine St Germain, the Parisian neighborhood, if you dipped it sand and let it bake in the desert for one hundred years or so. There are houses here that one is tempted to describe as once having been palatial--certainly their enormous size suggests a sumptuous past--but now lie in ruins. Their windows are boarded over or broken, various debris lie in their yards, the wrought iron gates ineffectual against decay and disuse. Miss Havisham could be living in some of these places.

Not all of the old colonial hangouts are wasting away. Many have been converted into apartments or schools, or, as is common here in Zamalek, art or music academies. There is an art academy on Mohammed Thakeb, the street my old AUC dorm is on, that has a lovely garden filled with all sorts of odd sculptural odds and ends for the students to draw or paint or whathaveyou. I think this is also the reason for the seemingly large number of art supply stores that are here on the island. There is also a very large music academy a block or so up from the church that I go to here. I'm never there during school hours, or I suppose I could hear people playing.

Zamalek also feels European in both its planned street grid (it has far fewer rabbit warren-esque patches than other areas of Cairo) and in the trees. Paris is again a good comparison--there are trees everywhere. Go to Google Earth and type in Cairo Egypt. Zoom down a little so you can distinguish Zamalek in the middle of the river. Compare your birds eye view of it to the right bank of the city. The island is green, the right bank beige. The trees are lovely, and make it very nice to walk around here, and are also a sign of the wealth of the place--who else but the wealthy would have the means to ensure that this many trees could grow in the desert? We are, I suppose, in the river, but nevertheless. The trees were a 19th century status symbol for the Khedive. Now it seems that sod has become the new status symbol for the well-to-do here. I passed by a house the other day, on Mohamed Mazhar, the street I live on, that had the most vividly green lawn I have ever seen. I only caught a glimpse of it behind the very tall ivy-covered iron fence surrounding the house, but it was so green it looked like it was in Technicolor. There were flowerbeds, and a little brick pathway leading up to a white house, all set off by this electrically green lawn. There were a few people seated around a wrought-iron patio table in the shade on this lawn, talking, and no doubt drinking something cool. Not four feet of actual space separated the dusty, baking sidewalk where I stood from this deep green cool carpet. Just a giant fence.

White is also a symbol. Who would try to build a white house in a country so perpetually covered in dust? I suppose there might be a heating/cooling reason behind it, but the mansions in Islamic Cairo, the places where the uber-wealthy medieval traders dwelt, are not white, they're brown and tan, and those were houses built to stay cool with no air conditioning (and having been in one in the middle of July I can attest to the fact they do indeed stay cool with no air conditioning). The white to me smacks of pretension. Much like the deep green lawns. They are building this big complex down the road from the grocery store I go to. I have no idea what it is. It is fairly large, and has these odd brown canvas tents stretching from its roof to the ground, but has a very modern look to it. And it is blindingly white. It is so white it almost hurts to look at it when the sun is shining on it. To me, when I pass it, it seems to gloat. How pristine I am, it says to my dirty dusty self. Again, to stay that clean in this climate is a sign of status, and of money.

Zamalek is also a place of embassies. Hundreds of them. I live across from the Jordanian embassy. When I walk to the 26th of July St, the island's main thoroughfare, I pass the embassies for Saudi Arabia, the Vatican, Iraq, Armenia (which looks like it was built by a group of nostalgic Bavarians...a more German looking building I could not imagine), Latvia... The list really goes on. I can't even recall them all. Bahrain is building a new embassy on Brazil St. The presence of all these embassies means that there are guards everywhere. This seems like it might be intimidating, but honestly, these are some of the most bored young men I have ever come across in my life. They have these tiny little wooden huts they sit in, really no more than a phone booth-sized ply wood creation with a shelf low enough to sit on, or sometimes a chair. And there they must sit, or stand in front of, all through the long hot day. Some of them make cat calls at you as you pass, but most look as if they were busy counting the grains of sand blowing by their feet. It must be an awfully tedious job. They have these ostentatious guns, guns that look like modified AK-47s, but if you look closely many don't have a trigger mechanism. Toy guns for toy soldiers.

I pass untold numbers of these guards on my way to any given place. Any walk is also likely to take me pass old men in white turbans and galabiyyas, long dress-like garment that covers you from your neck to your wrists and ankles. It has a slightly Islamic connotation, I suppose, but here it is mostly signifies lower class status. Many younger men wear these too, but it is almost exclusively wizened old men who wear the turbans with them. Even during the day the vast majority of people on the streets are men. When you see a women, she is almost always wearing hijab, although there are more uncovered women in Zamalek than other places, because it has such a high proportion of Europeans living there, as well as a sizeable Christian community (Coptic Christian and otherwise). Often times these men are sitting together, in groups of two or three or more, chatting in front of stores or apartment entrances. Or they are gathered around a car in the middle of the road with its hood popped, discussing the finer points (I assume, I don't speak much 'Ammiyya) of how it could be fixed. But men, groups of them, all over the places. And often groups of young boys (shebab) playing soccer, or riding bikes around. Men, everywhere. And many of them stare. The catcall is fairly rare (although I got one the other day). Much more common is this weird "hiss" that Egyptians do. It has lots of meanings. Sometimes it just means, I am approaching you from behind, usually with a large cart or on a bike or I am carrying something, so be aware. Sometimes it just to get the attention of someone. And sometimes it is done at women, as an attempt to get their attention and like a lesser version of a wolf whistle. Zamalek is not very bad for this, especially compared to places like Downtown around AUC where the men would just STARE at you, but it is still noticeable at times.

I wish I could adequately convey the dirt in this country. A fine layer of dust is over all outside things, which is to be expected. But there is also a decay that it is a bit hard to convey. I mentioned the decrepit buildings intermixed with the still vibrant stores and shops and galleries and restaurants of this neighborhood. But the sidewalk will often be cracked and broken, which large chunks missing in places, filled in with piles of dust. Glass is often on the sidewalks. Piles of garbage are here and there. It is just the way it is when you live in a country where the state has so thoroughly failed to take care of its citizens the way it should. Egypt's economy choked on its bureaucracy years ago, and everything has stayed in this state of disrepair. I read a wonderful book last year, The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa al-Aswany, an Egyptian author. In it, the author uses a few characters to voice his own sadness and anger at how Egypt has decayed. It used to be gorgeous, the downtown rivaled Paris, says a character. And now everything stands on the edge of ruin.

And amidst all this dirt and decay and ruin are people, masses of people, vibrant and loud and living. Cars are everywhere. Even on quiet streets there is a line of cars on either side of the road, sometimes two deep. One is just as likely to see a Mercedes or a Toyota parked next to a Volkswagen circa 1960. Cars so old and thin and seemingly rusted through you wonder how they still run wedged in next to newly bought Peugeots and older little Fiats. A melange of machinery. And the cars are not shy here. They don't stop for you. They don't swerve around you. You simply must walk, sometimes trot, and they will miss hitting you, in sha allah. Crossing the 26th of July is like going through a gauntlet, but I am getting pretty good at it again. If they are honking at you you know you are doing it correctly. The big streets are always a little amazing. Lanes are non existent. People weave between oncoming traffic as if death were not hurtling at them at 40 miles an hour with no intent to break. The lights at some intersections are more like suggestions. White and green city buses whizz along stuffed to the gills with people, mostly young men, all of whom seem to stare at you as they go past. And the honking. Always the honking. And the occasional screech of tires. And the smell, of gasoline, and exhaust, all vaguely heated by the sunshine.

The 26th of July is not like the quieter backstreets in the residential area. This is an artery, in every sense of the word. It carries people going from one side of the river to the other for work or home or pleasure, men on motorbikes delivering everything from groceries to fast food orders to important documents, yet other men, carrying boards on their heads piled high with flat bread while riding their bicycles down this riotous thoroughfare in a seemingly impossible feat of balance and skill, the occasional horse cart, and, as always, the black and white taxis, as mobile and as ever present as gnats. On either side of this road are all sorts of shops--shisha places, kushari places, many clothing shops and toy shops (I passed a place that had Hannah Montana and HSM3 posters in the window), upscale antiques shops, electronic shops, fruit and vegetable stands, cell phone stores, butchers' shops, gas stations. Like any big city, but unmistakeably Egyptian. If for no other reason that the little children who wander around selling packs of tissue, or the little cart selling roast nuts, or the newspaper sellers who, unlike any other city I have been in, line their papers up in a swath on the ground so that you have to look down to see the headlines.

There are mosques about, although fewer than in other areas of town perhaps. I live across the street from a pretty mosque, of a fair size, with a dome and minaret that look old although I have a sneaking suspicion they are more recently built impostors. There is also a very tiny little mosque that I pass on my way to the store. If you wander around here on Friday before jumu'ah (Friday prayer) you will see the men rolling out carpets and setting up canvas tents for people to come and pray outside. The streets become mosques. It is quite a cool thing, actually.

And with that I will end with the ahdan from my apartment window. The zooming that occurs during this video was me attempting to get the camera to pick up on the river that I can see just through the trees, but I am not sure how well it came out. I live a block off the river here. There is a line of apartment buildings, and then a big road, and then the river. I can look on to Cairo's real skyscrapers through the gap in the buildings.