Pretty Pictures from the Tops of Hills

This cute little boy harrassed us atop Muqattam. When we refused to give him money, he punched me in the stomach and kicked Peter in the leg. What a darling.

It's amazing how quickly the very things you most enjoy about a place can become those which cause you the greatest annoyance and distress. During orientation, one of the students in charge told us that the majority of foreigners in Cairo are giddy and excited during their first few weeks, but after a month or so, the city begins to wear on them. "Not me," I thought. However, over the last week in particular, some of the more unfortunate realities of this town have grown a little tedious. Of course, the obvious one is the traffic. In fact, ninety percent of the issues I have with this city are related to automobiles. There is the terrible congestion, the constant beeping, the lack of apparent rules,

Sunset on the Muqattam Hills.

the dodging between speeding cars to cross nearly every street, the terrible pollution they cause (appar- ently living in downtown is equivalent to smoking thirty cigarettes a day!). It's quite astounding. When I first arrived, the pollution didn't seem too bad, the beeping quickly faded into ambience, and crossing streets just seemed fun. I think part of my change in attitude is due to my health in the last week. Last Tuesday, I woke up feeling phlegmy and overtired, and I had a bit of a headache. As the days progressed, my symptoms never got much worse, but having that as an unfortunate distraction reduced my ability to tolerate other issues. Part of the issue was my concern that my sickness might have been brought on by something I had eaten. Consequently, I began avoiding a lot of my favorite haunts and eating a lot of American fast food to be on the safe side.

Peter's new cave. He was only in there for about thirty seconds and look at the mess he already made!

I'm glad to say that I'm feeling myself again now, but some- how a few of those food issues have remained. We went to get koshari (pic- tured in a previous ent- ry) a few nights ago, and I couldn't eat more than a third of my bowl. It just seemed gross. I hope that doesn't last, since for the first few weeks, I adored the stuff and had it literally once every day or two. Part of the issue may be the perceived lack of variety. One can choose basically between koshari, falafel, shawerma, and fatir (Egyptian pizza) before turning to American fast food. Good choices though those may be, they can get a little tiresome. Of course, the lack of variety is largely perceived. That is to say, this city is huge; there's plenty of food. It's just a matter of budget and proximity. The other stuff isn't even expensive, especially by American standards. It's just not as cheap as the staples I mentioned, and it does feel amazing to get a full, fantastic dinner for one or two American dollars.

Anyway, there's my little whiny caveat. Don't take it to mean I'm not enjoying myself. I still am having a freaking blast; the novelty of the city has just finally started to wear away and I'm starting to understand it more genuinely... I think.

Peter Lord of Cairo. Get it? 'Cause Peter's last name is also a title.

Now that all the scheduling shiznits have worked them- selves out and classes have been going on for a few weeks, I can discuss them less con- fusingly. In the end, I wound up in an accelerated introductory Arabic course, one on modern Arabic Lit in translation, another Arabic Lit course that is a senior seminar examining the place of women, and an introductory linguistics course. I like them all a lot. Unfortunately, my Arabic language course meets four days a week at 8 AM, which is way too early for me, but I'm managing. Also, it's reviewing everything I learned last semester at Oberlin before progressing way past it, which isn't ideal, but I guess the review can't hurt. The teacher is hilarious, too! She's a little Egyptian woman who speaks English well enough, but with lots of amusing errors. My favorite thing she has said so far came after discussing the overwhelming lack of Egyptian women in the celebrations following Egypt's Africa Cup win. We started talking about how women can't do a lot of the things men do in this country, or even back in America. She then said, "That's feminism! When you say 'Only guys do this,' that's like feminism." Maybe you had to be there.

The lit courses are both taught by the same woman, Mona Mikhail. She is from Egypt but has been teaching at NYU for the last thirty years. This is her first semester

A picture... OF A PICTURE! Once again, that's the Cairene sunset through Peter's lense.

at AUC, and she's a little shocked by the compar- ative laziness of the students and academics. It's amusing to hear her call all the Egyptians spoiled brats. We have to read about nine or ten books over the course of the semester in the first course I'm in with her, and the students were so upset by that proposition. The first day they all bitched and moaned about it and tried to get her to lessen the load, but she stood firm. Needless to say, I like her. My lingusitics professor is also a character. She's Egyptian as well, and she gets ridiculously into the subject matter. She too makes fun of the Egyptian students for being lazy and spoiled, but her relationship with them is much more playful. I just enjoy being able to take a course in something that is hugely interesting to me and is not really offered back at Oberlin, especially with someone so enthusiastic about it.

Other than that, we've been hanging out a lot with some other kids from AUC. There are several girls who live near us who've become the female contingency of our gang. They're all pretty nice and laid back and fun, and they're over at our apartment fairly regularly. One of them is even from Bard, though she doesn't know Becky. There are also a few guys from the dormitory in Zamalek who hang out with us sometimes. There's a lot more freedom in the apartments than at the dorm, so ours has become a great spot to chill.

Other than that, we haven't done a whole lot. We've been going to the symphony here and there, which has been awesome. I won't say much more. I think Peter is planning to write an entry about it in more detail soon. This last weekend, we went to the Citadel, which is one of Cairo's biggest draws. It sits on top of a hill in the southeast side of town, and it's incredibly beautiful. It was originally built as a fortification by the legendary Saladin in the 12th century, and it served as the center of government until the 1800s.

The Mohammed Ali Mosque appeared and disappeared as we climbed the winding road to Muqattam.

An incredibly impressive mosque, the Mohammed Ali Mosque, was built there around that time as well to commemorate Mohammed Ali, the man who modern- ized Cairo. Anyway, it's beautiful, but we got there after it closed, so Peter and I decided to keep walking another couple miles to the Muqattam Hills, a plateau beyond the citadel that my survival Arabic teacher recommended as his favorite spot in Cairo. He told us it has the best views of the city, especially at sunset. It was a long and winding road that took us there, but we finally made it to a good spot in the city on top just in time to watch the sunset. Here is a fantastic time-lapse video we took of the sun going down. If the smog hadn't been so bad that day, you'd be able to see the Pyramids just left of center. I could barely make them out with my naked eye, but they looked strabgely cool in the smog like that. as it grew darker they totally disappeared.

Finally, Peter and I have recently been consumed with trying to figure out what we'll be doing with our two breaks here. We've got a short one for Easter in March, which we're thinking about using to go to Paris or Amsterdam, or maybe, if we're feeling a little more exotic, Khartoum. Then there's a long one in April that we'd like to use to travel the Middle East. Ideally, we'd fly to Istanbul and then take trains back to Cairo, hitting Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel along the way. There's still a lot of planning necessary between now and then though. Let us know what you think (via the poll at the bottom of the page)!

Here's a time-lapse video Peter and I took from Muqattam. Unfortunately, we got it started just after the sun disappeared, but it's still pretty amazing. Sorry about the smog.