Articles posted by Karl Schaefer

Tuesday, 13 October 2009 Today marks the end of my first month in Egypt; perhaps a good time for a bit of reflection on what thirty days here has brought—or not. I can understand now why most holders of Fulbright grants spend a year in their posts: it takes a couple of months just to get one’s bearings and to learn to navigate the broad waters of a different culture, language, and modes of living before one can become productive. Those who have teaching positions may have a somewhat easier job of it in that they are just transposing their classroom activities to a different geographic location. There is the language issue, but for faculty teaching at the American University in Cairo, English is the official language of instruction, so that’s one less obstacle to overcome.

I have been making an effort to get out and around more and have achieved a certain comfort level with my surroundings. I’ve started buying my bread (the Egyptian “baladi” (country style) bread, that is) from a sidewalk vendor who charges the equivalent of 20¢ American for a plastic bag containing five pieces of flatbread the size of a salad plate. A little rubbery in consistency, but great with cheese or hummous bi-tahini dip. I practice my Arabic at every opportunity but despair at my glacial rate of progress in that effort. I have contacted an Arabic tutor, whose name was given to me by the library director and I hope that a couple of sessions with him each week will move things along more rapidly. My four-month stay here probably doesn’t provide enough immersion time for my skills to improve substantially, but like most endeavors, it will depend on the effort I put into the project.

Yesterday, I decided it was time to do some exploring of an historical nature and went to visit the ancient Greco-Roman Acropolis, dating to the founding of the city by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. My primary reason for wanting to look at this site was because Sohair, the director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, had told me that there were remains here that gave one an idea of how the scrolls might have been stored in the ancient library of Alexandria. I checked the location of the site on my map of Alexandria and saw that it was located in the southwest section of the city, west of the Bibliotheca and south, in the direction of Lake Maryut, the brackish lake that sits just behind the coastline and pinches the city in the middle. I grabbed a cab and gave the driver the name of the site. He didn’t seem to know the name of the location, but I told him the name of the city district in which it lay and he said okay.

We set off west along the Corniche, the preferred road for most travel if you’re going any more than a few blocks (For this reason the Corniche, which is six lanes wide, is very congested at the beginning and end of the working day and has heavy traffic most of the time.). After we pass the library, we turn off the Corniche and travel to the southwest through heavily used streets. Cars compete with buses and rickety old trams whose tracks are buried in the asphalt of the streets. The asphalt is poorly laid and even more poorly maintained so that the surface often resembles puddles of molten wax. Along the east side of the street leading to our destination, known as the Pillar of the Horseman, there are numerous shops or stalls open to the sidewalk, displaying all sorts of cheap household products, sorry-looking vegetables and fruits, car parts and supplies, and fabrics, among other things. Male pedestrians wear traditional galabiyas and the women are predominantly dressed in hijab. An air of poverty is everywhere.

On the opposite side of the street was a ten-foot masonry wall, broken occasionally by a gate or archway. This was the Bab Sidra cemetery, the main Muslim burial ground for this part of the city. Earlier in this journey, on a nearby street, my cab had passed a red and white ambulance moving slowly along and followed by a group of ten or a dozen men on foot. It was apparent now that this was a funeral procession on its way to the graveyard.

We arrived at the gate of the archaeological site where a couple of tour buses were parked. I entered the gate, purchased my entrance ticket, went though the omnipresent metal detector (which, as usual, beeped, but I was waved on anyway…), and entered the compound. Like the cemetery, the archaeological site was surrounded by a high wall. It encompassed an area of about five acres bounded on the south and west by streets and on the other two sides by apartment blocks that rose one or two stories above the wall. The center of the space is dominated by a limestone hill surmounted by a red granite pillar some seventy feet high. This column was raised in 300 AD to honor the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who saved the city from famine. Apparently, until the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD, the column had a statue of the emperor astride a horse at its top, hence the name of the location.

There is a walkway around the perimeter of the site which leads past various points of interest, some of which are marked by large signs identifying their former functions: the cisterns that held water for the Greco-Roman buildings at the site, a pool, the Roman bath, and so forth. The sun was out and blazing and the wall prevented any air movement from reaching the lower parts of the site. It was near noon and the heat was intense. I made my way up to the pillar’s base, which was reached by a raised wooden walkway. Up here, about twenty or thirty feet higher than the entry point, there was a bit of a breeze and it was possible to wander around what was once the center of the ancient city. Bits and pieces of columns, once supports for the porticos and roofs that covered this area, lay around the perimeter; some were only partially unearthed and stuck out of the ground at angles. The paving stones of the floor had long since been carried away for other building purposes and one walked across the bare limestone and soil of the hill. On one edge of the rise was a pair of statues of sphinxes, facing the west. My guidebook said that there was also a 20-foot statue of Isis here that had been hauled out of the ocean near the harbor forty years ago, but it must have been moved elsewhere since the book was published. At least I didn’t see it.

At the northeast corner of the hill was a staircase leading down into a pit of sorts. At the bottom, there was an opening in the rock that led into a long series of tunnels. Lights mounted in the ground inside showed a series of niches and shelves cut into the walls at intervals. These, I gathered, were the sort of spaces that, in the ancient library, would have held papyrus scrolls. What these spaces were meant to hold, I am not certain, but corpses would have been my guess. In another wall at the base of the pit was a second opening containing more niches. This area was labeled the “Sanctuary,” and lay in what would have been the sub-basement of the Temple of Isis that once stood on this part of the acropolis. At the end of a long gallery, deep under the ground, was a reproduction of a statue of a sacred Apis bull, two skeletons of which had been discovered here during archaeological excavations. The worship and ritual burial of these animals was a feature of certain Egyptian cults.

Back out into the noonday sun, I completed my circuit of the site, pausing at the souvenir shop to see if there were any postcards of the monuments here. Unfortunately, there were only the clichéd shots of the pyramids and the sphinx. How disappointing. I left the enclosure then, intent on getting back to the Corniche and seeing a more modern part of the city. As I left the gate, one of the automatic rifle toting Egyptian cops guarding the site asked me if I were looking for a cab. I said yes and he found one for me. Not that they were especially scarce in that location, but I think he felt that I shouldn’t wander too far in this neighborhood on my own. Or maybe he was just looking for a little supplement to his no doubt meager salary. In any case, he found a cab for me in short order and I was on my way.

My driver was very congenial and we shared a conversation that was a cut above the ordinary. It started with the usual overly generous assessment of my Arabic abilities: “Tahki al-Arabiya Kwaiys.” (“You speak Arabic well.”)

“Shukran, bi-LLahi, mish kwaiyis kteer.” (“Thanks, by God, not very well at all.”)

This is followed, customarily, by protestations and counter-protestations to the contrary nearly ad infinitum, or at least until one person (usually me), surrenders and says, “ Thanks, you’re too kind.”

But this guy understood that my Arabic wasn’t great and took time to speak slowly and to find alternate words when I didn’t understand the first one. He told me about how marvelous Alexandria was fifteen or twenty years ago, when it was still primarily a seaside resort town. Now, he said, the population (I had heard a figure of six million; the driver insisted that it was twice that!) had made living here very difficult. Housing was at a premium and the cost of living had thrown a lot of people into poverty. I told him that such was the case in most cities of the world. He also revealed that he had done some travelling, once to France and once to Israel, of all places. He confessed to having been seduced by the beauty of the country but despaired of ever seeing real peace because of Israeli arrogance and unwillingness to rein in their territorial ambitions. He spoke of the absolutely wretched state of Gaza and marveled at how people there could manage to live. He also expressed admiration for the States; I hear this so often that I suspect—make that KNOW—that it’s a reflexive ploy exercised on Americans to secure a bigger tip. It worked with me or at least I allowed it to work. And he dropped me in front of a hotel with a sidewalk café where I immediately ordered a cold mango juice and a sandwich.

A space at one of the outside table came open and the waiter asked me if I wanted to sit outside. I said yes and moved. The sidewalk was wide and that meant that the traffic noise and fumes were somewhat reduced. The shade was pleasant and I relaxed as I waited for my food. Horse drawn carriages in various states of repair were carrying people from one point to another along the seafront and there was the obligatory parade of sidewalk hawkers selling everything from woven doormats to sunglasses to “Rolex” and “Omega” watches. Uh huh. Guaranteed to function until at least tomorrow…

I did succumb to one panhandler, a guy in his fifties who was missing most of his left leg, a feature he made a point of emphasizing in various ways. I figured, “I’m in a Muslim country and charity is one of the four obligations imposed on the faithful.” Well, I don’t fit either of those categories (Muslim or faithful) so maybe it’s because someone with only one leg has a lot less of a chance here than a person with two, and even those with two are fighting against considerable economic odds. No real social “safety net” in Egypt…

My sandwich was larger and tastier than I expected and rose from the table quite satisfied. I paid my bill and wandered around the square for a while. This was obviously the “high rent” district with a few really nice hotels and a well-watered and maintained park with an impressive statue in the middle. I saw a couple of places I decided I would come back to and then headed for home. I felt that I had done enough of the tourist thing for one day.

Later, after the sun had set, I went back out to eat dinner and do some grocery shopping. I’m still taken with the transformation of the city at night. The lights come on, the storefronts are bright with all sorts of things for sale and people are out walking everywhere. Alexandria’s shabbiness seems to disappear and the city becomes almost livable. I wanted a restaurant nearby so I walked to the Four Seasons Hotel, housed in the same building as the mall I occasionally use. I sat outside on a raised deck overlooking the Corniche and indulged in a little more extravagance with a meal of sushi (prepared by a Japanese chef, who must be wondering how the hell he ended up here!) and a bottle of Egyptian beer. The Corniche isn’t much quieter by night and any romance the location might provide is dissipated by the rush of cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles. This place needs an urban planner in the worst way!

Autumn is on its way in Egypt, too. October’s temperatures here are a far cry from those in Des Moines at this time of year, but the sun has set by 5:30 now and my thermometer read 62 degrees this morning. I’ve been sleeping with the AC off for the past couple of nights and when I open the living room curtains, there’s a haze over the ocean that doesn’t lift some days until 10 AM. Definite signs of a change in season. It will be interesting to see what two more months’ time will bring.

Saturday, 10 October 2009

This weekend featured another Fulbright social/cultural event in Cairo. I had planned to make the trip and attend. This weekend’s focus was to be the new (and newly remodeled) Cairo University Central Library and I thought that I should see how an Egyptian university library runs things. I booked tickets for the 2 PM train to Cairo and took along a book since it was a daytime trip and I would have light to read by. As backup, I bought a copy of Newsweek on the railway platform.

The trip down to Cairo was smooth and uneventful; the countryside slipped past rapidly and, since this was an express train, our next and final stop was the Egyptian capital. I emerged from the train station, ran the usual gauntlet of cabbies wanting to take me anywhere, and took the stairs down to the Metro station. Compared to the chaos of the streets above, the subway is a different world. It’s relatively clean, it runs on time, and is quite orderly, judging from my brief experience with it. It is also much, much cheaper than a cab. One Egyptian pound will get you from one end of Cairo to the other. A real deal. It’s also much faster than a cab.

I emerged in the Dokki district, on Tahrir Street, and asked a cop for directions to the Safir Hotel. He said, “Go right, then left and then right again. The entrance to the hotel will be on your left.”
I thanked him and moved off in the direction indicated. Of course, he hadn’t told me exactly how far it was but I knew from looking at the street map that it wasn’t more than a few minutes’ walk. His directions proved to be a little more difficult to follow than I expected, but I emerged in a park which, after asking again for directions, I recognized as being the opposite end of the park I had seen during my first stay here in September. I found the hotel, checked in, and then went out for a walk, stopping by my bank’s ATM along the way to replenish my dwindling economic resources.

Toward evening, I returned to the hotel where I ate dinner and was waited on by the same young woman who had served my meal the last time I was here. Amal (that’s her name) remembered me and we caught up with some personal news. She told me she had enrolled in an English course and I said that she was clever to do so. I sat on the veranda watching foot traffic as I ate, enjoying the cool evening air.

The next morning, after a terrible night’s sleep (some moron at the front desk made a wake-up call to the room at midnight and I couldn’t get back to sleep for several hours after that), I got up showered, had breakfast and checked out. The Fulbright group was to meet at the University gate closest to the university’s Metro stop at 9:30 and that was only two stations from the Dokki Station. I found the Metro easily enough and boarded the train.

There were obviously classes being held at the university on Saturday because many of the train’s passengers were young and carrying books, notebooks, and backpacks. I disembarked at the Cairo University station and followed the hordes of students up the stairs, across the tracks and down the other side to the university’s entrance (the subway runs above ground here). Only people with university IDs were allowed past the gate; there were Cairo cops in their white uniforms and black berets checking documents at the entrance. The street in front of the gate was filled with cars and mini-buses dropping off and picking up students at a steady clip.

The air was thick with petroleum fumes and I tried to find a place along the narrow sidewalk that was somewhat removed from the worst of the exhaust but which still allowed me a view of the gate so I could spot our leader, Noha, when she arrived. I was apparently the first to arrive but within five minutes I caught sight of Mike McMullen descending the stairs from the subway platform and waved to him. Shortly after that, we were joined by Scott Hibbert, Tessa Farmer, Kathleen Cain, Karl Lorenz, Katherine Goodin, Joelle Petrus, Kristine Potts and several other Fulbright students. Noha was running late and a quick phone call to her by Kathleen revealed that she was already in the library organizing our IDs. She showed up after a few minutes and we received our IDs. The guards at the gate, unfamiliar with the cards, which were in English, at first refused us entry, but eventually allowed us to pass.

The university is unbelievably huge. There are (officially) some 200,000 students enrolled there sand the institution is widely acknowledged to be almost unmanageable because of its size. The admissions process is much like that in many European countries: if a high school student achieves a certain grade point average, he or she is guaranteed a place at the university. A concomitant relaxation of secondary education standards (and the large number of college age young people) has resulted in an astronomical increase in the number of eligible students. Faculty are underpaid and the professoriate is filled with people who hold positions at two or even three universities in order to make a living. Educational standards are said to have fallen dramatically over the past several decades.

From the few conversations I’ve had with Egyptians about this issue, it appears that the government is using the universities as a sort of economic safety valve. Students engaged in study with dreams of improving their standard of living are not as volatile as unemployed, undereducated young people with no prospect for a better future. If the economic situation doesn’t improve soon for countries like Egypt, young people will come to realize that it doesn’t matter how well educated you are. If there are no jobs, there are no jobs. Egypt seems to be at a tipping point, politically and economically. There is great human potential here and a certain dissatisfaction with a government that portrays itself as democratic but in reality is not, or at least is so only superficially. The economic gap between rich and poor is wide and widening with money and political connections more important than the rule of law.

In any case, now that everyone has arrived, we make our way out of the car exhausts and walk to the new central library. The new library is a five-story building that, architecturally, is a rather striking mixture of traditional Mamluk style stone work and modern sensibilities with odd angles and projections. Inside, marble and natural woods predominate. You have a partial view here: http://www.cl.cu.edu.eg/ We assemble in a large group study room on the third floor; there is a large table in the center of the room with canned soft drinks and juices and bottled water at each seat. The interior wall is floor to ceiling glass and a row of smaller windows in the outer wall provides a view of the plaza below. We are joined by Dr. Sharef Shaheen, the director of the library and a professor of library science at the university. He proceeds to give us a presentation (augmented by the ubiquitous PowerPoint) of the history and organization of Egypt’s libraries.

Public community libraries are a rarity in Egypt; many public schools lack them as well. There is a public “library of record,” analogous to the Library of Congress in the States. The Dar al-Kutub requires Egyptian publishers to submit for deposit there ten copies of every book they publish. Given the short publication runs of most books printed here, many publishers see the ten copy requirement as onerous and damaging to their profit margin. Consequently, some of the smaller publishers evade this requirement. What the penalty for such transgressions is, I don’t know.

There is also the National Library of Egypt (NLE) which has some 28 branches around greater Cairo, with two main branches, one for archives and another, located on the Corniche along the Nile, being the main research location with books, journals, electronic resources and the library’s administrative unit. Most of the items in the NLE’s collections (90%) are depository items; gifts account for another six percent with the remainder constituted by purchases and gifts. Holdings run at about 4.5 million monographs, 11,000 journal titles (4,800 Arabic, the rest in other languages), 110,000 manuscripts, nearly 70,000 music recordings and notational items and 10,000 maps. There is also a large agricultural library because that activity is so important to Egypt.

The Egyptian government is making serious efforts to build its electronic information capabilities and e-government is making important inroads. The parliamentary record is now published online, for example and the ministerial cabinet has a web page for its “think tank.” There are a number of major electronic archival projects underway, including several launched by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina: the Nasser Digital Archive, the digitized volumes of the Description d’Egypt—the massive record of French research conducted during Napoleon’s occupation of the country at the beginning of the nineteenth century—and a digital archive of the history of the Suez Canal, among others.

Many Egyptian libraries, library organizations and library services may be found on the web, although many of these are available in Arabic only. Still there are those that have English pages as well. Scientific, technical and mathematical resources are viewed as crucial to Egypt’s future, so there is something called the Egyptian National Scientific and Technological Information Network (ENSTINET) that provides an electronic gateway to those kinds of resources.

All Egyptian public universities are members of a consortium (EULC- the Egyptian Universities’ Libraries Consortium) which pursues savings through economy of scale purchases of electronic information and the elimination of duplication of services. They have also a union catalogue for the holdings of all the universities in Egypt. Theses and dissertations are viewed as very important sources of information for all university students here so there is a major effort to digitize these materials.Given Egypt’s long history, there are a number of projects focusing on culture and national heritage, ranging from history to nature and folklore. Many museums and research centers have web sites through which interested people may obtain useful information.

Dr. Shaheen entertained a few questions at the end of his presentation and the group then set out on a tour of the library. One of our first stops was an amphitheatre where we were treated to a very impressive display of technology, an interactive audio-visual presentation on the centenary celebration of Cairo University (2009). There were nine projection screens arranged in an arc across the front of the room and the presenter was able to use a pointer to activate an image on any of the screens to bring forward more information about that particular item. For example, a timeline was projected onto the screens and the presenter could point to any date along the timeline and major events in that year concerning the university were then displayed. Clips of moving images and music were also accessed in this way. Quite impressive.

We resumed our tour with stops in the periodical collection, the special library for the visually impaired, and the computer commons. The circulation system is not operational yet, so students are unable to check books out, but they will be able to eventually… Everywhere one turns in the library one finds young men in brown polyester Richard Nixon suits observing activity. I assume that they’re there to guard against theft or the defacement of materials, but they obviously are meant to make sure users adhere to a set of behavioral guidelines. While we were getting an orientation to the computer lab, one student was admonished for having his briefcase on the computer table. Personally, I’d find working under those conditions a bit annoying, but then I’m not Egyptian…

We had a quick stop in the library museum, where many items from the university’s archives are on display. A final halt on the front steps for a group picture and an introduction to the architect of the library (who was a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia and Michigan in the early 50’s!), then ten of us took off for a late lunch. We were all famished and so hopped the subway to Dokki, where Kristine knew of a Yemeni restaurant. We found the place and plenty of room for us. We sat down around two tables pushed together; a waiter came and spread large sheets of paper over the table surfaces and Kristine guided us through the menu. We decided to order in pairs and chose an assortment of vegetarian and meat dishes.

There was a clear chicken broth to start and then our meals were brought straight from the oven in deep bowls like soup plates. Stacks of pizza-size, freshly baked Arabic pita bread were tossed on the table and we fell to. The manner of eating was to simply tear off a chunk of bread and use it as a scoop to lift out the food from whatever bowl one decided to attack first. There was a spicy bean dish, baked chicken with rice, a shredded beef dish (the Yemeni national dish, we were told), a dish of stewed vegetables and salad. There is no better way to build group cohesion and bonhomie than competition among one’s lunch companions with pieces of bread for a bite of tasty food from a common dish. We ate and talked our way through a good hour and when we finished, walked to the rear of the restaurant where sinks and soap were available for washing one’s hands.

I had to head back to the railway station and a few others were headed in that direction, so we jumped back on the subway. I bid farewell to my companions a couple of stops before mine and said that I hoped to see them in a couple of weeks in Alexandria, when there is a tour of that city planned. I got to the train station in plenty of time and then waited two hours longer because there was a major delay on the line to Alexandria. The station announcements over the loudspeaker were incomprehensible and the clerk at the information booth was not very forthcoming with information. However, there were several Egyptians about who realized that the “Agnabie” (foreigner) was a little slow on the uptake and offered explanations and reassurance that we’d get home. The train did finally show up (a really nice car by the way) and we were off. Home late, but home and into bed.

Thursday, 8 October 2009

On Wednesday, after a week of silence from my new colleagues at BibAlex, I e-mailed those with whom I thought I should be dealing primarily and asked them when they wanted to take the “next step” and what they thought that step should be. The response was not long in coming. Omnia Fathallah replied in short order and suggested that we meet Thursday (today) at 2 PM. The heads of reference, electronic resources, collection development for the library, continuing education, and art and multimedia were expected to attend. I also received an explanation—in a roundabout way—for the lack of communication from the staff over the past week. It seems that there is a major “corporate communications” workshop being conducted by Prof. Caroline Stern of Ferris State University which extends over this week and next. Thus, my project is on hold until this activity has concluded. This week, a group of librarians from Bahrain is also participating in some of the training, so the professional staff is up to its metaphorical nostrils in work.

A group of us did meet this afternoon; there were five in attendance in addition to your reporter and, with a smaller group, we actually managed to agree on an outline of how we would like to proceed and the approach we agreed upon is an odd one, perhaps, but it gives us an entreé to the process of getting off square one. One of the topics that keeps emerging from the talks I’ve had with the librarians here is the library’s collection development policy. The first professional task I undertook when I arrived was to read the document carefully and completely. It is very much a “work in progress,” but my first impression was that it is a very thorough, well thought out, and well designed document. It is rudimentary in the sense that many of the units have not yet submitted their finalized contributions, but the overall structure is there.

This matter is weighing most heavily on their minds; they see the completion of the document as having a vital impact on both their collection development efforts and their information literacy program. Such being the case, we decided that we should begin work on fleshing out the document. A more complete collection development policy will hopefully provide the BibAlex librarians with a road map for addressing the many collection development issues they face and provide a way of directing the future of the information literacy program. How this latter component actually fits into the scheme is not really clear yet, but the idea had strong support from Mohamed el-Gohary, the continuing ed person. I can see ways of employing that effort in ongoing review and revision work on the document and in providing direction for the continuing education program, at least in part.

The overall outcome of the meeting was that we have a starting point and an outline of how to accomplish some of the work the BibAlex librarians think is important for advancing their mission or, more correctly put, their missions (plural), since the several specialized units have particular needs and requirements that are not always congruent with the aims of the main library. Finding ways to address that problem may be an added benefit to the exercise we are about to undertake.

The one glitch in the affair is that they would like to cram all of my work into a thirty-day period between the 20th of October (which marks the end of their corporate communications/Bahraini librarian training program) and the 20th of November, which apparently marks the beginning of yet another period during which many Egyptians (I’m imagining mostly Copts, but who knows?) take yet another “holiday.” I had not anticipated a period of such intense work on my part.

I understand from what some of my interlocutors said during our meeting that one reason they thought this would work best was that the director had led them to believe that the “research” part of my project was to receive highest priority. I have to disabuse them of that notion in a hurry so that I can work with them over a longer period of time. Whether this will work out or not remains to be seen.

Wednesday, 5 October 2009

The last few days have been slow and uneventful, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide some more social observations on life in Egypt or at least in Alexandria. All the Fulbrighters were told that things move at a more leisurely pace here in Egypt and I suppose that’s what I’m seeing just now. I was scheduled for a last round of meetings Sunday and Monday with those departments I had not yet met, but no one materialized at the appointed times. These meetings were to be the final ones before the various directors and unit leaders met with me to discuss where we go from here.

Since I’m without an office phone and because I haven’t been issued a pass card to get into the area of the library where the librarians’ offices are, I’m sort of at their mercy when it comes to arranging face-to-face meetings. I have the sense that they are ruminating over the possibilities that my presence offers and discussing the implications among themselves first, before they present a program to me for discussion. That’s the most generous explanation for the sudden decline in interaction; the nightmare scenario is that they have concluded I’m useless and not worth any more of their time. The reality no doubt lies somewhere between those two extremes.

This being the case, I’ve had a bit of time to observe Alexandrian life (or at least the little slice of it that is accessible to me) more closely and hopefully my observations will gain in nuance as I do this more. The first thing one notices here is that the tolerance for cleanliness and hygiene is considerably more lax here than it is in the States—outside of the average slum or college dorm room let’s say. Dust, of course is everywhere; the desert is never far away and the climate is dry, so dust is to be expected. Aside from that, however, is the general impression of a place that’s a bit run down, ramshackle, unkempt, crowded, poverty-stricken, and faded.

Garbage collection, for example, doesn’t seem to be done on any sort of regular schedule, as far as I can tell. One sees dumpsters parked everywhere, and they are almost invariably overflowing with trash, food waste, and the usual assortment of nastiness. Plastic garbage bags are fairly common but they don’t stand up to being backed over by who knows how many cars, or pawed through by the very poor looking for usable scraps of food, or simply are not strong enough to hold the mass of stuff packed into them. The result is that dumpster stations are foul and one regularly (at least in my neighborhood) has to navigate around them as one goes about one’s business in town. I do see garbage trucks, but the collection of trash was recently privatized in Egypt and, as with most instances where saving money is the object, the low bidder gets the contract and that means workers who don’t care (because they’re paid a pittance) and vehicles and equipment that are second-hand and poorly maintained.

Traffic I have addressed before but a word about the nature of transport might fit in to this particular rant, too. Yes, lots of cars, from the Lada taxis (the Yugo of the Middle East), Daihatsus, Fiats, Toyotas, Suzukis, and the like, to Peugeots, Volvos, and Chevy Tahoes (these being rather rare). They all compete for space in streets not engineered for automobiles (except the main thoroughfares and inter-urban highways) and burn fuel that wouldn’t pass EPA muster anywhere in the States. The result is air laden with petroleum by-products, diesel soot and every sort of chemical nastiness one might think of. But such is life in a “developing” country. On the other hand, I have run across one natural gas re-fueling station and there was a queue of taxis waiting to tank up there. This suggests that someone, somewhere is looking at alternate fuels in Egypt.

Trains—the urban trams, at least—have the advantage of running on electricity and have an efficiency of scale, carrying many more people on less energy than any other mode of transport. Maintenance and repair are another matter, however. The tourist trains, those that ply the routes along the Nile between Cairo and Upper Egypt (Aswan and Luxor, where the monuments of ancient Egypt are the major attractions), are the equal of any European rail line: modern, clean and quiet. The train I rode between Alexandria and Cairo last week was roughly the equivalent of a heavily used commuter line in the States: shopworn, a little dingy and in need of serious cleaning, but the air conditioning worked and the seats were comfortable.

The facilities for working Egyptians, however, are decidedly several rungs below this. While I was waiting for the Cairo train in Alexandria, an early morning train pulled in carrying farmers and their produce, the farmers anxious to get to the markets before the grocery stands opened (or so they could get space on the busiest pedestrian corners before other people looking to sell). That train had few windows, doors that didn’t close and was completely caked in mud. Okay, so it was a “working train,” if you will, but what was striking was the vast difference in standards for the working poor and those for everyone else. Tourists in Egypt often encounter resentment from certain Egyptians; when one sees the money the government spends on catering to non-Egyptians, it’s not hard to understand why such resentment exists.

Schools and universities opened this week, the start of the school year having been delayed one week because of the fear of an outbreak of H1N1 (swine flu). One campus of the University of Alexandria (there are at least two, if not more, scattered through the city; one, the College of Agriculture, is just down the street from my apartment building) is situated right behind the library and the number of young people—students—has increased markedly since Sunday. The reason I mention this is that I gave an estimate in an earlier blog about the percentage of women who dress in “hijab” in Egypt. I have to say that the number of young women I now see on the plaza outside the library (a favorite gathering place for the university students before, between, or after classes) wearing some degree of veiling is much larger than I originally saw.

In a period of an hour and a half, perhaps a bit more, spent in the café observing the pedestrian traffic during lunch hour, I would say that easily more than half of all the women I saw were wearing at least a head scarf; many of those were also wearing what I think of as the next grade of concealing attire, the knee-length blouse. These garments come in all colors and patterns and there are obviously fashion statements being made in each case. It’s also relatively easy to distinguish between the “K-Mart” togs and the ones that come from hijab “boutiques,” so there is a class distinction apparent in these garments as well. The number of women in complete hijab, the black floor-length dresses with long sleeves and veil that covers everything but the eyes (and frequently gloves that cover the hands, as well!) do not predominate, but I saw several groups of three or four women all wearing such apparel in that period of time. Groups of women wearing varying degrees of concealment are also common. One group member will have only a head scarf, the next head scarf and long dress, another the whole nine yards.

At the same time, I saw many pairs, women and men, in which the woman was wearing some sort of hijab and they would be holding hands. It was clear that in public at any rate, such behavior is not seen to violate any social prohibition. The matter of male-female relations is obviously much more complex and nuanced than the veil would suggest, at least in Egypt. A posting, earlier this week, on a moderated list for scholars in Egypt talked about an instance when two young women in head scarves were denied entrance to a popular night club. They were told they could enter if they pulled their scarves back behind their necks so that only their hair was covered. The exchanges that followed this report ranged from outrage that the women would be forced to make such a compromise, to calls for scrapping the idea of hijab altogether.

During the tour of “Old Cairo” last week, I learned from one of my Fulbright colleagues that one of the biggest influences on Egyptian sensibilities about the proper public behavior and appearance of women comes from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis apparently are seeking to export their Wahhabism to other countries in the region and have the resources to publicize their message in an effective way. This was something I had not understood before and it goes a long way toward explaining some of what is happening in the social life of Egypt. One has the sense that Egypt is very much at a tipping point in terms of its social and economic life. The tensions between the “haves” and the “have nots” are subtle but strong. The difference in terms of income alone (many Egyptians earn as little as 300 Egyptian pounds a month (ca. $60) while a fortunate minority earns 5000 pounds (ca. $1000) or more. Where such pronounced disparities in income exist, economic strains are bound to exist. In such a situation, the appeal of a religion-based solution to perceived social inequities is very tempting.

I took an extended walking tour (self-directed) of part of Alexandria yesterday; I headed west in the general direction of the library, but took Abu Kir Street, a road that runs parallel to the shore, more or less, but a few blocks distant from the coastline. This is a wider street with nice wide sidewalks, for the most part, and lots of shops. There are malls along the way, too, but they are generally smaller than those in the States, confined to one building in one block. Small shops still dominate the commercial landscape here, although some groceries are chains.

What I noticed on that walk was that a considerable number of buildings from the 1920’s and 1930’s are still standing. Most, if not all, of these were built as single family residences back when the population of Alexandria was much smaller and decidedly under more European influence. These buildings are (or were) mansions. All are at least two and most are three stories high, with balconies, porticos and tall shuttered windows. One near my apartment bears a cornerstone engraved with the name of its European architect. They are invariably set back from the street, surrounded by masonry walls containing gardens, palm trees and paved walkways. They are often crowded by twelve to fifteen story buildings on either side, but these are obviously later structures and it is frequently easy to envision what the cityscape might have looked like seventy or even fifty years ago.

Many of these buildings are in rough shape, with the masonry falling off and shutters hanging askew; derelict, in other words. Others have been converted to commercial spaces, government offices, or broken up into apartments with a story or two added on top of the original structure. Some no doubt belonged to wealthy Egyptians; the Egyptian King Farouk had a seaside summer residence in Alexandria which has since been turned into a tourist attraction. Some other mansions have become museums of pre-WWII high life or of art. The museum of fine art is housed in one such place.

Together with the Islamic monuments and buildings, the Greek and Roman remains and the even rarer Egyptian antiquities, one gets an idea of the length of time there has been human settlement here, and how modes of living have changed over that time.

Thursday 1 October 2009

There were supposed to be more meetings for me this morning with the directors and unit leaders to discuss my work program for the next four months, but as I was leaving the apartment, Hend, Sohair’s assistant, called and said that they would have to postpone those meetings. I wasn’t given a reason and it wasn’t really necessary to have one, I suppose. I headed off to the library anyway and settled into my cubicle to do some computer work. I caught up on some blog entries and checked my e-mail.

Around noon I set off for the café next to the library for some lunch. Unfortunately, there was some special event there involving USAID, so the main part of the café was closed off. All the tables on the veranda were also occupied; guy at the door said sorry, no more room. So, another day without lunch. For a big city there are remarkably few restaurants around—other than the ubiquitous fast food joints that one finds everywhere these days—and surprisingly none anywhere near this huge institution. I will either have to lower my standards or go a little farther afield when I go looking for an eatery.

Back to my office, then, and tried to keep busy for twenty minutes or so, until the main event of the day, a lecture and presentation by some people from the US Embassy in Cairo. According to my schedule, they were supposed to be talking about a new program, the “ALA Sister Libraries Program” and giving a presentation entitled “Libraries and the New Media Technologies.” I had run into Mohamed El-Gohary earlier in the day and had asked him where the auditorium was. I hadn’t seen any signs for it, nor had its location been revealed to me in any of my tours. He told me where to find it and at the appointed time, I went and found a seat.

Mohamed and Bassma El-Shazly had apparently organized this event and Bassma introduced the three embassy people: Henry Mendelsohn and Barbara Conaty from the Information Resource Office at the embassy in Cairo and Matt Whatley, an information technology consultant who helped set up twitter feeds for President Obama’s Cairo speech earlier this year. A fourth guy, who was introduced as a former librarian, tiptoed around taking pictures of the audience and speakers.

Mr. Mendelsohn opened the session with a presentation about a new program launched by ALA that seeks to establish formal relationships between libraries in the US and libraries abroad. Partner libraries may then share resources—lending or borrowing materials in foreign languages for example—or arranging exchanges of personnel. There were some questions at the end about the exact nature of the program: how to identify a suitable partner library, how to apply for the program, and so forth. There seemed to be a fair amount of interest in the program from the fifty or so librarians in attendance.

The next part of the program focused on electronic information sharing, specifically social networking sites and how librarians might exploit those kinds of tools in their work. “Second Life” was also introduced to the group as a potential way of drawing attention to one’s library, conducting virtual conferences and such things. There were some questions posed about these web sites and software, but the most substantive query came from the librarian for the Taha Hussein Library; she wanted to know what resources were available for the visually impaired. Well, the embassy folks didn’t have a direct answer for her but talked more generally about resources for “disabled” people in general. I felt that this was an unsatisfactory response. Although well-intentioned, it was not the appropriate reply.

The presentation concluded after about ninety minutes and people dispersed to their workplaces again. I went back to my little corner, collected my things and headed for home. Not having eaten since breakfast, I was in need of tucking into some groceries, which is what I proceeded to do.

30 September 2009

Okay. So I’m up at 5 AM, before the alarm and long before the sun. I step out on the balcony and realize that it has rained overnight. Not a lot, but the balustrade is wet and I can see the streets shining and slick under the streetlight on the corner below. There are still clouds in the sky and I wonder if maybe I should take a rain jacket. I decide no, Cairo is a couple hundred miles south and I seriously doubt that they will have had the same weather.

I eat breakfast and about half an hour before train time I head downstairs and look for a cab. At this time of day, there aren’t many of them, but yesterday I asked the cabbie who drove me home what time the cabs start rolling in the morning and he said they’re always around. I took him at his word, hoping I wouldn’t have to walk (or run) to the train station. It’s a bit too far to do that. I had a short wait and a yellow and black came into view. Most cabs in Alexandria, and in Egypt in general, are painted black with yellow doors, hoods and trunk lids. Virtually all of them are Ladas, Russian POS’s that have the advantage of being cheap, maneuverable, and able to take a serious beating and keep on rolling. They’re also dirty, loud, cramped and often smelly. But we don’t sweat the small stuff. They get you from A to B.

I get dropped at the station in good time and am directed by friendly early risers to the right platform. The train rolls up right on time and I head for my second class coach. I find my seat, surprised to learn that the car is air conditioned, and settle down. It’s not crowded and it’s fairly comfortable. The air conditioning has the car a bit too cool for my taste, but not too bad.

We set off, rumbling through the outskirts of Alexandria and then farm land. I’m seated next to a guy of about fifty-five or so, who reads the Koran for the whole journey. His recitation is barely audible over the sound of the wheels on the tracks and it’s easy to ignore after a while. I take out my Blue Guide to Egypt and start reading about the Islamic city, which is the main focus of the Fulbright tour today. The guide book has easily fifty pages on Islamic Cairo and I wonder how much of that we’re actually going to see in a six-hour walking tour.

The two and a half hour trip is over before I know it. We pull into Cairo on time and I try to find a cab. I intend to avoid the customary vultures who lurk near the station’s exit. They prey on the ignorant: “Taxi, Mister? Where you go?”

“Mat’haf al-Qibti (the Coptic Museum). How much?”

“How about fifty pounds?” In a pig’s eye.

"La, Shukran (No thanks)." I paid only 85 pounds for a 200 mile train ride. Get real. I walk away.

Outside the price drops to 30 pounds and I wonder if that’s the best I’ll be able to do. I don’t know Cairo and I don’t know the distance between the train station and the Coptic Museum. The train station is on Ramses (yeah, the ancient Pharaoh) Square. The square is actually a roundabout with a viaduct running overhead for part of its circumference. With the arrival of the train from Alexandria, the competition for cabs has gotten fierce and I wait for ten minutes or so before an empty one comes along. I hop in and tell the driver where I want to go. He doesn’t understand my Arabic the first time around and when I repeat myself, adding a few details, like “Old Cairo (al-Qahira al-‘adeema),” he nods hesitantly. Fortunately, Hend Rasmy, the Fulbright person who is leading the tour, had told me to expect this sort of thing and has instructed me to call her cell phone if the driver were uncertain. I do this and hand the phone to the driver. He and Hend converse for a minute and then we're on the right track.

It’s quite a long ride and during the time the driver and I are together, I learn that the he is an Orthodox Christian. He shows me a small tattoo of a cross on the inside of his right wrist. He wants to know if America is a Catholic country. No, I reply; mostly Protestant.

“Oh, Protestants,” he nods. “My wife is a Protestant.” Religion is a testy subject in Egypt. The country considers itself Muslim, but there is a sizable Egyptian Christian (Coptic) community, some Catholics, and some Eastern Orthodox Christians, as well as a miniscule and dwindling Jewish presence. The Copts have long been discriminated against, not officially, but as a matter of practice in certain segments of the population. They are true second-class citizens, although one brave Coptic soul is currently running for president. His pitch is (I saw his statement in a Cairo newspaper before I left for Alexandria), “I’m an Egyptian, so why shouldn’t I be a candidate?” Lots of luck. A snowball would have a better chance of surviving Summer here.

We reach the Coptic Museum and I pay the fare. Thirty pounds. Probably way too much but what the hey; I’m here. Now I have to find Hend and the group. I call her again and she tells me they’re in the Hanging Church (no one was hanged there; it’s built in a manner that makes it appear to be hanging from a wall, I think. I’m too late for the guide’s explanation). I don’t see her so I walk back toward the museum entrance. Not there either. I call again and she says “Turn around.” There she is, waving. Okay. I’m connected.

I enter the church and meet the other folks. There are seventeen of us, about half students and half “scholars.” Our guide is Dr. Chahinda Karim, an art historian. We’re just finishing the “Coptic” part of the tour and walk out of the Hanging Church to a small structure known as the Church of the Holy Family. Copts believe that Joseph, Mary and Jesus were buried here in a crypt beneath the church. This part of Cairo existed before the city of Cairo itself. The Arabs founded a settlement in this area when they invaded Egypt in 641 AD. Fustat, as it was called, was almost completely destroyed by two separate fires, the second one about the time of the Crusades (1168 actually), and it was never rebuilt. Modern Cairo recovered the area over time so that now it’s part of the city.

The historic sites we are visiting are at least ten feet below the present ground level so we have to go down stairways to reach the ancient street level. There has been some reconstruction here which is intended to give one a sense of what the city was like 1500 years ago. The one restored street is narrow and rather winding with the usual tourist shops on either side. At the far end of this street we enter a very old building. It is a synagogue which is reputed to have been built on the site where Moses was retrieved from the bull rushes along the Nile. The person who supposedly recognized this site was a Rabbi who came from Palestine in the time before the Muslims. His name was Ben Ezra and the synagogue bears his name.

The importance of this building, aside from its historical value, lies in the fact that in the late 1800’s a Cambridge Hebrew scholar named Solomon Schechter came to this building and was shown a depository where centuries of discarded paper had been stored. Jews of that day believed that anything bearing Hebrew text (the sacred Jewish language) could not simply be discarded. It had to be ritually buried, just in case any of the writings included the name of God. Schechter retrieved crates and crates of documents from the room and spent the rest of his life researching them. They form the basis for our understanding of life in Fustat-Cairo for the medieval period. It was such a treat to stand in that building knowing that Schechter had been there as well.

Our final stop in this part of town is the Church of St. George, he of dragon-slaying fame. He was martyred and his relics are located here. There is a small shrine to which one gains access via yet another flight of stairs. Coptic nuns still live in the cloister attached to this church.

From the church we returned to the parking area outside the Coptic Museum and boarded a bus waiting there for us. Our guide pointed out the first mosque to be built in Cairo as we pulled away and then we were headed to the old city of Cairo proper. Fifteen minutes later we were outside the Mosque of Husayn in classical Islamic Cairo. The Fatimids (a Tunisian Shi`ite dynasty of the tenth century) founded Cairo and built the first city wall and other structures. The Mosque of Husayn is one of the earliest of their buildings. We don’t go in here, though; it’s already nearly lunch time and we have reservations at the Naguib Mahfouz Coffee Shop. A short walk into the Khan al-Khalili, Cairo’s famous (and now tarted up) traditional market area, brings us to the eatery where Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt’s most famous novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, used to take his daily coffee break. We go in and are led to a long table in the back where we sit down to eat.

Lunch includes all the foods I have been wanting to eat since I arrived in Egypt, but have been unable to find in Alexandria. We are served by fez-wearing waiters, who bring puffy freshly baked pita bread, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, Baba Ghanoush, puff pastries filled with spinach, and kibbe (ground lamb and spices formed into little cones and deep fried. Mmm!). I order a glass of mango juice; when it comes, it is thick with pulp and tastes very healthy indeed. Lunch itself is a carnivore’s delight: lamb chop, kebabs, roasted pigeon, skewered chicken and rice with pine nuts. We eat and talk for most of an hour.

Up from the table (some people moan about taking a nap) and back outside. We turn right and walk to one of the main thoroughfares of Islamic Cairo. It has been restored and cleaned up considerably. The intent is to give an impression of what Cairo looked like in the 13th and 14th centuries. There is a small mosque called the Mosque of al-Salih Ayyub, which we enter and, in the shade of one of its arcades, our guide gives us an explanation of this simple style of mosque: a square building with arcades around the walls and an open space in the center. We spend a delightful half hour or so talking about the place, and members of the group begin to ask Dr. Karim about being a Muslim woman. She expresses unreserved dislike for the whole veil thing; she considers herself a “good Muslim woman,” but she’ll be darned if she’ll were a hot old head covering.

She says that she wears what she considers modest attire: a long blouse over trousers that are not tight fitting (“I’m a grandmother,” she says, by way of explanation.). Her hair is uncovered. She tells of being confronted, on a trip to Saudi Arabia, by one of the religious enforcers who make sure Muslim women (and men) are obeying the dress code. He's carrying a stick with which he punishes transgressors on the spot. She had her head and hair covered, since that’s the law, but the guy with the beard and the stick wanted her to cover her face. In short she told him to buzz off or she would put his stick where the sun don’t shine. He left. In a hurry.

We got up after a while and wandered back out to the street. Waiting there for us was our unofficial body guard. A guy in his twenties, wearing a brown polyester suit, complete with tie. One unusual accessory was the machine pistol he carried under his jacket. Not very unobtrusive but rather business-like. He wasn’t attached to our little group, but he was just keeping an eye on us, making sure the riff-raff didn’t give us any trouble.

Dr. Karim pointed out several more of the Mamluke buildings along the street (the Mamlukes ruled Egypt from the beginning of the 14th century until the Ottoman Turks came along in 1516). They left an incredible architectural legacy and their buildings are more numerous than those of any other Egyptian Muslim dynasty. At the end of the street, we passed through one of the gates in the ancient city wall and found our bus waiting for us. We didn’t see our security detail after that.

A bus ride of about twenty minutes brought us to another part of Cairo that was more familiar. We were now in the shadow of the citadel where we had enjoyed dinner after our orientation session two weeks ago. We descended the bus steps and found ourselves in between two massive buildings. One was yet another Mamluke structure, the Mosque and Madrasa of Sultan Hasan, built in 1356, the second an Ottoman Turkish building dating to 1906.

The Sultan Hasan mosque was the first structure of its kind. Instead of being simply a place of prayer, this mosque had a school (madrasa) attached to it. The madrasa had room for about 400 students, two or three to a room, who would study under sheikhs at the mosque and pray their daily prayers without having to go outside. The foundation document for the building states that, in addition to the Koran and Muslim law, astronomy and mathematics were to be taught here as well. In addition, there was a small medical clinic appended to the building so that students could study medicine. We had a look around this massive place and then walked across the plaza to the second building. This is called the Rifa`i Mosque and was built at the beginning of the 20th century by the Ottoman Turks. The Turks didn’t build many large mosques in Cairo because it was only a provincial city to them; their capital was Istanbul. However, this building is interesting because it resembles a Christian church in its form. The first Turkish mosque in Istanbul was a converted church (St. Sophia) and Turkish architects used that as their architectural model when they built mosques elsewhere. There are also tombs in this building. Two Egyptian kings, Fuad and his son Farouq (the last king of Egypt) are buried here as is the Shah of Iran. I had always wondered where he had been planted, and here he was. Apparently, the decision to bury him here was made because his first wife was Farouq’s sister, so he was sort of family.

So, enough of mosques and minarets and all that. We re-boarded the bus and were dropped in the Dokki District just next to the Fulbright office. I thought the area looked familiar. I asked a couple of people what they thought was the best way for me to get back to the train station: cab or subway. I opted for subway just for the experience and four of us bought tickets and jumped on. My companions were heading in a slightly different direction so they got off after a couple of stops to make their connection. I stayed on until the Mubarak Station and then got off. The station was huge and the passageways maze-like, but by asking for directions a couple of times, I found myself back above ground and standing in front of the Cairo train station. Inside, I went to the information kiosk and asked for the platform for the Alexandria train. “Thamani,” the man said. Number eight. I found it and the train was waiting.

First class for the ride home in the evening light. Air conditioning up too high again, and no decent light to read by. I napped briefly and watched night slide past the windows. We flew down the tracks until we were just outside of Alexandria and then we came to a halt. For the next half hour we crept along and pulled in about a half an hour late. Everyone needed cabs so there was a bit of a wait again, but I managed to snag one after about five minutes. In another ten I was home and crawling into bed.

Tuesday, 29 September 2009

One learns to be flexible in Egypt. Very flexible. I awoke at about 6 AM and went about the usual morning chores: shower, breakfast, coffee and the like. I sat down on the couch and studied some Arabic for a while and was thinking about setting off for the railway station for my tickets when the cell phone rang. It was Bassma El-Shazly calling to ask if I were in the library. “No,” I said. “There was no schedule left for me so I assumed that I wasn’t needed today.”

“No schedule?”

“None.”

“Well, but we set up meetings for you today with the instructional services people and our continuing education person.”

“Fine,” I said. “I have an errand to run and I’ll be there in an hour.”

That was agreeable to her so I dressed, got a cab to the train station, bought my tickets, and then got another cab to the library. Shortly after I arrived, Amira Hegazy, the head of instructional services, knocked on my door and led me to her office where I was introduced to her colleague Halaa. We sat down and Amira launched into her description of the instructional operation of the library. She and her department are responsible for planning, designing and offering all the information literacy courses for library users EXCEPT the users of the Taha Hussein Library for the Visually Impaired, which has its own instructional effort run by its librarians. Amira draws on various other units and departments for instructors for her programs. People from collection development, reference and other areas serve as instructors. She is responsible for training her own instructors, but the unit has also taken advantage of a UNESCO “training the trainers” workshop to develop librarians into effective teachers of information literacy.

Amira’s group has designed five different courses which address the needs of users at all levels. There is a basic introduction to information, an introduction to the internet and databases, a library science workshop directed at technical services librarians and students, a course on citations, an advanced course on the internet, and one on writing a paper. The courses are offered on a monthly basis and run over a two-week period. They meet for between three and seven two-hour sessions each.

One of Amira’s biggest problems is motivating students in the courses her department offers. Those who complete a course are given a certificate indicating that they are now proficient in whatever skill is being addressed in that course. A certain percentage of those in attendance show up but do not bother to pay attention or otherwise fail to participate. Even when quizzes are given as a way of judging competence, such students fail to develop the targeted skills. I suggested a couple of ways that she might address this problem but I told her that I would want to see how the courses are taught before making any substantive recommendations. In addition, I told her that my Fulbright project had information literacy as one of its foci and that I expected to spend a considerable amount of time working with her and her instructors. We agreed to follow up and she escorted me to my next meeting.

Amira introduced me to Mohamed El-Gohary whose responsibility is to develop and provide “continuing education” courses to all employees of the library sector. He gave me a brief history of his time at the library and how he arrived at his current position. His original job was as an electronic resources specialist; he has been in his current job for a year. He is still without a budget, so everything he does or tries to do must be done with resources begged borrowed or stolen (probably not…) from other areas. A shoestring operation in other words.

In addition to training for employees of the BibAlex library operation, he is being asked to develop training programs for librarians and library employees of libraries in other Arabic speaking countries. Such training has already taken place on a small scale, but given BibAlex’s aspiration to be a supra-national library resource for Africa and the Arab world, he expects to be doing much more of that kind of work in the future. To this end, he produces many of his own educational and training manuals, borrowing heavily from previously published materials (these are for internal use only and are often composites of several works). Formal publications for certain topics are being planned as well. The library has a robust publications program and this will likely be expanded to include training materials in addition to the edited scholarly works, exhibition catalogues and the like that the library already publishes.

Mohamed is in desperate need of guidance, he says, because he hasn’t found anyone who has a job like his anywhere in the library world. He recounted his experience at the recent IFLA conference in Italy, his first time at a major librarian conference, telling me that he was unable to find anyone with analogous responsibilities there. His conclusion was that there is no model for what he is being asked to do. I concurred that, because of BibAlex’s unique position in the library universe, he probably would not find such a person.

Mohamed is very bright and capable and I have no doubt that he will develop a creditable program. He explained to me his approach to solving his problem and showed me some of the courses and lectures he was planning to offer. His starting point is knowledge management with an emphasis on knowledge sharing. The overall aim of his program is to engage library employees in the execution of the library’s purpose by offering ongoing training so that employees might address any shortcomings they have regarding their current jobs or their future career ambitions.

Parenthetically, I find BibALex to be a singular institution in terms of the opportunities it offers dedicated employees. Many of the department and section heads I have spoken with started their BibAlex careers as technical professional employees and moved up the organizational ladder as they developed more sophisticated skills and a more solid grounding in librarianship. I find the level of professionalism and commitment to library ideals truly remarkable in this institution, where the great majority of librarian-level employees have no MLS’s or MLIS’s on their resumes. They are, in a sense, throwbacks to the apprenticeship model once found in the medical and, until quite recently, legal fields, where people were trained by practitioners. It is easy to forget when speaking to these folks that they have, at best a BA level formal education in library science. Their mastery of and dedication to librarianship is very impressive.

Among Mohamed’s programs is a course in advanced English and a course in speed reading which is aimed at improving the skills of reference and catalogue librarians in rapid foreign language comprehension. As I have mentioned elsewhere, turnover is a major problem here so ongoing training is crucial for those who must often pick up the slack caused by sudden departures. Management skills are lacking in many librarians who are frequently asked to become administrators, so courses in that area are important as well.

In a way, what Mohamed is doing is redundant; many of the sections—reference and information technology in particular—have their own training programs and many of those courses are available to all BibAlex employees as well. The institution is thus very rich in training and educational opportunities. However, Mohamed’s work seeks to address a perceived need for training and education that not only produces better trained employees, but seeks to enhance their potential I confessed that I was not certain that I would be able to help him very much; my “expertise,” such as it is, lies elsewhere, but Mohamed insisted that I could be of use to him and his program. I agreed to review his materials and to follow up with him on possible points of collaboration. With that we concluded our meeting.

I went back to my office and had just gotten settled when there was a knock on the door and Lamia Abd al-Fattah introduced herself. Lamia is responsible for the special collections unit. This includes art history and criticism, mixed media and film, the UN depository library and music. We walk and take the elevator down to her office on the lowest level of the library and are joined by Lamia’s colleague, Silvia Stavridi, who does selection for these areas. We talk about the organization of the unit and what problems they face. The issue of gaps in the collections comes up again, so this is obviously something that I will have to spend time with everyone on. Selection tools—or their lack—seems to weigh on everyone’s mind and where should one go to find reliable information about non-print materials most specifically. Lamia stresses that this is especially true for the core titles in the multi-media collection.

We talk for a while and then Silvia excuses herself and Lamia and I take a quick tour through her departments. We spend a few minutes in each one, looking at the collection, observing activity at the reference desks, going into work areas where we can see what is happening “behind the scenes.” Everywhere we go, there are workmen doing something, either installing wiring, building walls, running cables, or making noise for some unknown reason.

One of the most heavily used and important special libraries in BibAlex is the Taha Hussein Library for the Visually Impaired. Taha Hussein (1889-1973) is the Egyptian Helen Keller, in a way. Although blind since the age of three, he managed to enter Cairo University and eventually earn a PhD in Arabic Literature. He was also the founding Rector of the University of Alexandria. Along the way, he earned a second PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris. The Taha Hussein Library not only provides reading materials for the visually impaired, it also trains the blind in the use of software so that they can learn to use computers. The head librarian is herself blind; she gave me a very interesting demonstration of the computers and software available for the use of visually impaired Alexandrians. Her English is excellent; she holds a degree in English literature from the University of Alexandria. She pointed out one elderly man who had come to the library unable to read or use a computer. He is now completely keyboard fluent and extremely adept at using the various tools the library has. Soon to come is a text-to-speech machine that will be able to read both English and Arabic. Another dedicated and competent librarian working beyond her resources.

Our last stop is the UN depository library which also includes documents from other supra-national organizations, the Arab League in particular. One of the foci of the collection is development issues, but the library collects most of what these organizations publish.

Time to head for home and prepare for a tour of Cairo on Wednesday. I’m a bit apprehensive about the reliability of train service here and am anxious not to hold up the rest of the group on the tour since I’ll be joining while the tour is underway in Cairo.

Monday, 28 September 2009

Up and out the door at 8:15 or so in order to be at the library in time for my 9 AM meeting with the collection development people. According to the schedule slipped under my office door the previous day, we were supposed to talk about how the Bibliotheca Alexandrina might deal with the issue of electronic resources, particularly electronic periodicals, and whether they should go digital or continue to carry print subscriptions to journals.

In addition to Nermin Bahaa, who heads this section, those in attendance included Eiman El-Noshokaty, the Electronic Resources Coordinator, Shirine Kader, the Serials Manager, and Shirine Eid, who does collection development for reference. Eiman began the meeting by giving me an overview of what her role in the collection development enterprise was. She, like each of the heads of section or units I had met with so far, had a PowerPoint presentation on her desktop. Using the graphics and text in her presentation, Eiman proceeded to tell me about her work and how it fit into the collection development process. More to the point, she, as the person responsible for providing electronic information services to users of the library, wanted to talk about the place of electronic materials in a library that aspires to be a cultural institution as well as a provider of current research. The question in brief: should the library continue to subscribe to print journals or should they purchase access only via electronic aggregators.

BibAlex already provides access to a few dozen periodical databases, to electronic books through ebrary, and a number of specialized databases for statistical and scientific information. They have EBSCO, JSTOR, IPA, and several other well-known resources in addition to some very specialized resources for disciplines taught in the University of Alexandria, such as medicine and agriculture. At the same time, the main library (as opposed to the specialized libraries—the Taha Hussein library for the blind, the children’s and young people’s libraries and special collections) collects exhaustively (or would like to) in certain areas: Egyptology, the ancient library at Alexandria, the history of the city of Alexandria, ethical issues relating to biotechnology, development issues, the history of science and technology, artistic expression and criticism, and the history of writing and scripts. The library is a very complex organization (being itself only part of a larger cultural institution…) with overlapping areas of responsibility.

I responded to Eiman’s question about whether or not to continue collecting print periodicals by saying that that was a decision the library would have to reach on its own after weighing all the issues: do you have room? Can you afford to purchase print and access to electronic periodical databases? What purpose would be served by keeping periodicals? Which form best serves your users? I did offer the observation that the library might want to keep print journals for those areas of interest for which there was a “special collections” unit or archival function, such as the history of science and technology, printing history and so forth. The main concern seemed to be the matter of purchasing access only (and therefore no guarantee of continuity should the electronic source disappear one day) over maintaining complete runs of print journals. A related issue for them was the purchase of access to journal collections many of which are not used by the library’s users and therefore are considered a waste of resources.

The reference selector, Shirine Abdel Kader wanted to know about electronic reference works and their suitability as opposed to print materials and was looking for a selection tool that might help the library fill in gaps in its reference collections. I told her that there were such tools in addition to those they were already using (OCLC especially) and said I would provide her with information on those. She also wanted to know how to analyze the use of the collection so that they might make better selection decisions. This initial meeting concluded with my commitment to helping them begin to address their concerns and I promised to come back to them with some ideas for them to consider. I also said that I would provide some ideas for tools that might make their selection work more effective and easier.

When the meeting concluded, I took myself off to lunch at the café and watched the parade of people on the plaza as I ate. There is an anesthesiology conference being held at the library over the next couple of days, so there were a lot of suits around (the University of Alexandria has a medical college…) but the most interesting thing to see just now is how women deal with the whole “veil” thing. One sees the “traditional” outfit—the black two-piece covering consisting of an ankle length black dress over which is worn a second piece of black cloth which covers the head, face, and torso—relatively rarely, but at the same time regularly. By that I mean that I see such outfits on a daily basis, several times a day. But they are not common; most women don’t wear such garments.

However, many women, perhaps half of those I see on the streets every day, wear some version of what I would call “Muslim modest” dress. But the variations are almost endless: loose blouse and hair-covering scarf over jeans or pants; scarf alone; floor-length dress with t-shirt top and scarf, or without scarf; pants suits, usually in a single color, worn with a hair-covering scarf. There is also an age distinction. Married women (married I assume because they have kids in tow) are more likely to wear “hijab” than teenagers; teenagers rarely wear the “traditional” garb in my experience here. Women in hijab will often be leading their girl children who are wearing sun dresses or other less concealing attire, so there are ranges of dress even within families it appears. What happens to these young girls’ mode of dress once they reach puberty, however, I can’t say.

And then there is the matter of color, fabric and design. Believe it or not, there is “designer” hijab. Walk down any commercial street or enter any mall where there are women’s clothing shops and you will see the most elaborate “hijabs” you ever saw. Contrary to the avowed purpose of the hijab—not only to conceal the female body but to deflect any sort of attention to the woman at all, to make her invisible, in other words—these outfits are attention-getting! Bright colors, patterns, expensive fabrics, adornments such as sequins or pearls (fake or real, I suppose, depending on your income level…), and so forth. Many appear to be form-fitting, or at least tailored so as not to be formless, or even form-hiding. Some I would characterize as stunning. The range of adaptation is truly amazing.

Anyway, after lunch, it’s more meetings. I meet up again with Manar Badr, the head of reference for the main library and we spend a couple of hours talking about reference services in the library and the problems her department faces. A major issue is staff turnover. Reference positions are often entry level positions for new librarians and there is a lot of training work that goes on to bring new hires up to speed, Training sessions are almost ongoing in that there is usually a new cohort of hires going through some sort of training at any given time. Sometimes, out of a group of four prospective employees, the library ends up hiring only one, or in some cases none, of the candidates. The work schedule is a big issue. Reference librarians work on an eight-day rotation, so they work two weekends out of a month (BibAlex is closed only six days out of the year!). Many people find this sort of demand on their time unacceptable or untenable, especially young recent university graduates who want their weekends free.

Since the reference staff is also integral to the collection development process, it is imperative that new hires develop an expertise in one or two areas so that they can assist in this work. Egyptian culture, I’m told, is not a reading culture. That being the case, reference administration has to work hard to get reference librarians to learn the field(s) of their responsibility and to develop the skills necessary to enable them to make intelligent selection decisions. University graduates with degrees in specific areas can acquire such knowledge readily, if they are motivated to do so. Of course, reference librarians only make recommendations to collection development, but the quality of those recommendations is important to the efficient management of the collection development operation.

We visit several reference stations, beginning with the main information desk, where general directional questions are handled and where a variety of other tasks are performed. Users may sign up for any of the instructional courses offered and inquire about any of the cultural events hosted by the library (of which there are many). The main desk, I was told, is extremely busy once the university goes into session. (That happens this coming week.) In any case, the desk is busy most times.

We then go to observe reference activities at a few other locations throughout the library. As I think I mentioned earlier, each level of the library (there are seven in all) has its own reference desk. Given the wide range of familiarity with libraries possessed by its users, the reference people have to be ready to give a very broad spectrum of assistance. At one desk we visited, the reference librarian had to provide an explanation of the library’s organization of materials to a family of Egyptian tourists who had obviously never been in a library before. The librarian handled the query thoroughly and effectively. The group moved off in the proper direction and seemed to have understood the information conveyed.

Our last stop was the B4 level where theses and dissertations are shelved. This is the one section of the main library that has closed shelves. The reason for this is that the theses and dissertations are heavily used and controlled access assures that the materials are always available to users. This area was quite busy when we visited on a weekday mid-afternoon. Stacks of returned items lined one side of the reference desk and I watched the librarian deal with three or four people, one after the other, within the space of five minutes or less. Manar, who was my guide for this little tour even had to jump in at one point to prevent people from waiting too long.

With this final stop, my day at the library drew to a close. I made one final stop at my office to see what was in store for tomorrow and found nothing waiting for me. I concluded that I wasn’t going to be needed on Tuesday and set off for home thinking about how I might use a free day. I wanted to pick up train tickets for my trip to Cairo on Wednesday and I thought I might do some grocery shopping and catch up on writing the blog.

Sunday, 27 September 2009

The last few days have spun by in a hurry. Last Friday (Yawm al-Jum`a in Arabic) is the Muslim Sabbath and in Egypt that means what Sunday meant in the US until about fifty years ago or so: everything closes down and the big mosques are where people go to hear the weekly “khutba” or sermon from the imam. A lot of people treat the day as a Saturday, of course, and just hang out at home. The stores are generally closed and traffic is very light. I stayed in and puttered.

Certain aspects of life seem to go one, however, because one of the student Fulbrighters, a recent graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, called to tell me he had arrived in Alexandria where he’ll be studying Arabic for the next few months. We had met up in Cairo during the orientation in Cairo two weeks ago, and we had agreed that we would get in touch once he got to Alexandria. Friday evening Wendell called and suggested going out to dinner. I accepted his invitation and occupied myself until our appointed meeting time. Wendell was busy negotiating the lease of an apartment when be called, so at least real estate business continues on Fridays. Unfortunately, his dealings took longer than expected, so he had to cancel at the last minute. We decided to try again on Saturday evening.

At the time we had agreed upon, we met in Wendell’s part of Alexandria, a section called Shatby, which is south of the Alexandrian Library. My taxi driver had the devil’s time finding the restaurant Wendell had chosen and when he finally found it and I found Wendell, we discovered that the restaurant was closed. Not to be deterred, we hailed another cab and set about trying to find our back up eatery, a place called the Portuguese Club. By this time (7 PM), it was beginning to get dark and I was totally disoriented. We were in a part of the city I hadn’t seen before and the cab driver knew only generally where the restaurant might be. Cabbies seem to know only the main thoroughfares; there are so many little side streets and so few street signs that even the locals get lost when they find themselves outside of their neighborhoods. Or so it seems.

We drove to the general area and asked someone on the street where this place was. The young woman the cabbie spoke to knew it and gave the driver directions. We found ourselves on a particularly dimly lit street and were unable to see anything that looked like a restaurant, but we got out, paid the driver, and started looking on foot. We ended up asking another pedestrian who said, “The Portuguese Club? Sure! It’s one street over, half a block down on the left.” Off we went and saw nothing but dark. Undaunted, I asked still another person who pointed to a big wooden gate with a 20 watt bulb hanging over it. “Right there,” he said. Okay. We went up and rang the bell next to the gate, which was opened by the watchman. He asked for identification and we showed our passports. Wendell was asked to give his name verbally.

We paid a ten pound per person cover charge and walked into a very pleasant garden setting with an outdoor bar and lots of upholstered wicker chairs and curved benches. People were drinking, kids were running about and a few guys at the bar were watching a soccer match. There were water pipes being smoked by both men (and women!) and the person in charge of those was busy keeping the embers glowing for them. We sat down and ordered drinks—we had to buy a bar card that entitled us to a certain number of credits with which we could purchase alcoholic beverages: another hidden charge… We ordered food and enjoyed a very pleasant meal and conversation. It was interesting to listen to Wendell’s account of his college years and I had a better understanding, when he finished, of what it takes to be selected as a Fulbright student.

We paid our bill and strolled out into the evening. At the first main street, we said goodnight and went to find cabs to take us back home. The street was busy and there were a lot of people waiting for transport so I had to wait a bit. After about ten minutes, I managed to snag a vacant cab, gave the driver my address and we set off. I was intrigued to see that this part of Alexandria was much more commercial and apparently much more upscale than my area. The streets and the sidewalks were wider and cleaner than those in my area and there were numerous international stores to be seen: Guess; Starbucks and the like. Lots of car showrooms, too. The ride back home was much shorter than the ride out and I was pleased to realize that I recognized my street and could tell the driver where to drop me. I obviously have to start exploring the city more…

The next day, Sunday, was my first day of actual “work” at the library. I was scheduled to show up for an eleven AM meeting with the librarians so that I could be introduced to them and so they could begin the process of deciding what they wanted to do with me and when. Dr. al-Wastawy, the library director introduced me and explained why I was there. I was asked to say a few words (all the librarians are required to know English so that was the language I used) and after apologizing for the fact that my Arabic was insufficient to address them in their language, I thanked them for their invitation and told them that I hoped that we could work together to find solutions to some of the problems they faced in their work. Once I had done this, Dr. al-Wastawy’s assistant, Hend, began to read a handful of e-mail replies she had received from various librarians asking me to work on specific problems or to undertake specific tasks. This was a bit more than I had expected and I felt like I was watching an avalanche bearing down on me. I said that I would try to find ways to help them find solutions, but also said that my skills were not without limitations. The meeting adjourned and I met several librarians who came up to introduce themselves to me, hand me their business cards, and ask if I might have some time for their particular area of responsibility. Oh boy.

Somehow, the collection development people got first dibs on me so I spent the rest of the morning being introduced to the procedures and work flow of that division by Nermin Dahaa, the head of collection development. Nermin is an extremely capable young woman who has been working at BibAlex for ten years. By the time I left her office, I had a pretty clear idea of how things work, who does what when, and how the selection process is carried out. From Nermin’s office, I went to the cubicle of one of the selectors, another young woman, Ahadeer, who showed me how brief records are created in MARC format for selected titles. (Librarianship is a highly feminized profession in Egypt, too, just as it has been historically in the US; nevertheless, I was overwhelmed by the number of women on the staff)

By this time, I was faint with hunger. It was after 2 PM and I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast at 7. When Nermin came to collect me, I asked if we could go somewhere so I could get a bite to eat. She said “of course,” and took me to the café which is adjacent to the library and overlooks the plaza that lies between the library and the Corniche. We spent a very pleasant hour talking about the library, the issues she and her department were facing, and how she came to librarianship. At the end of the break, I went back to my office and found that my schedule for Monday had been slipped under my door. It will be a less demanding day but more focused since I’ll be meeting with the collection development people exclusively and talking about the print versus electronic materials problem. Not a simple topic by any means, but manageable in terms of discussion. In the afternoon, I’ll be speaking with the reference folks, who work closely with collection development in selecting materials. Should be an interesting day.

Thursday 24 September 2009

My first task today was to get to an HSBC branch here in Alexandria and pick up my ATM card. Attentive readers may recall that, when I opened my account, there was an issue regarding which bank branch would be most convenient to my place of residence here. An educated guess was made by the Cairo branch employees in consultation with the Fulbright folks and the card was sent up to an office in the Saraya section of Alexandria. The other day, when scouting the San Stefano Mall, I found a bookshop and purchased a city map. Using that in conjunction with my scouting trip with Sharif, my Egyptian acquaintance, I decided that the distance was a walkable one, so I set out.

The weather, again today, was typically late-summer Mediterranean: sunny and clear. The map showed that the Saraya district was about the same distance beyond San Stefano as my apartment is from that shopping center, so about twice as long a walk. I took my time, walking along the shady side of the street for as long as that was possible and then in the sun. Once I reached San Stefano, I took a left and walked north, down to the Corniche, thinking that a sea breeze would make the excursion more pleasant.

An advantage to this plan was also that the sidewalks along the Corniche are actually useable. Along most streets in Alexandria (and Cairo, for that matter), the sidewalks are very narrow—three feet or less, generally—and most people simply walk in the streets alongside the parked cars, which seem to be everywhere. There is invariably some sort of construction or maintenance going on somewhere, which requires you to move into the street, or a lamp post stuck smack dab in the middle of the walkway with an overflowing garbage dumpster on one side, so you either attempt to slither past without getting crud all over yourself, or you go out into the street. Drivers are generally courteous in that they honk if they come up behind you, but if you encounter anyone walking in the opposite direction, it’s always a crap shoot as to who endangers him or herself by stepping out into the traffic. I haven’t figured out the etiquette of that yet… The sidewalks are not well maintained in any case since cars are obviously the privileged mode of transport here, too. Traffic lights are few and far between and, from what I’ve observed, they are generally regarded as serving in an advisory capacity only. If they work at all, they tend to be ignored, at least by the locals. Police are another matter. There are intersections where traffic flow is controlled by the police, at least at certain times during the day. Traffic direction from the police, unlike the traffic lights, tend to be heeded much more strictly.

I had been walking for some time and had not recognized any of the landmarks I thought I had committed to memory during my ride with Sharif, and I was beginning to think that I should either a) turn around and re-trace my steps or, b) hail a cab and give the driver the address and let him (hopefully) find the bank. I was also beginning to heat up. I didn’t know what the temperature was exactly, but it was getting warmer. Just at that point, I looked ahead around a curve in the road and there were the big (and for the moment very friendly) letters HSBC. My oasis. I entered the bank and took care of my business. The ATM card was indeed there and I signed for it, received the little sealed envelope containing my PIN, offered my thanks to the clerk who helped me and left the bank. As I did so, I asked the guard at the entrance if there were a decent coffee shop or café in the vicinity. He led me outside and pointed down a street leading away from the sea and told me that at the next corner I would find what I wanted. “Shukran,” I said, and set off in that direction.

I had been wondering about the social and economic organization of Alexandria during my brief outings but didn’t feel that I could draw any conclusions about those issues until I had seen a bit more of the city. To this point, all of my forays had been taken fairly close to the seaside, the high-rent district in any city. Along the street on which I now found myself, I saw evidence of abject poverty. In a rubbish-strewn vacant lot was what I took to be a sort of squatters lodgings: a small decrepit masonry building with a derelict sofa parked outside the doorway, which was itself covered with a dingy hunk of discarded carpet. The buildings on either side, multi-story apartment blocks, were not in the best of repair and I saw more people in galabiyahs and traditional dress than I had seen in my area of the city.

I looked in at the café the bank guard had recommended, which was empty and dark. There were a couple of cold water pipes (hookahs or shishas) standing about but I didn’t like the look of it so I turned right at the corner and decided to explore a bit. The tram line ran down the center of the street, so I knew that all I had to do was to follow it and it would lead me back to my neighborhood. Or at least I hoped it would. From the map, it seemed clear that there was only one tram line running from east to west and I figured I had made a safe assumption.

The street, while not actually bustling, was busy. The shops were open; owners either standing outside waiting for customers, or talking to their neighbors. Coffee houses were frequent and, in late morning, there were lots of men, singly and in twos or threes enjoying their “elevenses” a small cup of Arabic coffee and a pipeful of flavored tobacco. Charcoal braziers mounted on the outside walls of the cafes glowed with the coals used to light the tobacco for the pipes. These are tended by men whose job it is to keep the charcoal going and light the pipes as needed. We’ve been advised to steer clear of the hookah pipes, even though most cafes have started cleaning the mouthpieces. Hepatitis C is rampant in Egypt and we were told that even if the mouthpieces are cleaned, the tubes connecting to the pipes are not and therefore are a potential source of infection.

The area I am walking through is obviously a working class area, although drawing such a conclusion is fraught with danger. My neighborhood is considered a “good” one but you wouldn’t necessarily know that from the street. Public standards of cleanliness are, in my estimation, rather more lax than we are accustomed to in the States, at least outside urban ghettos and depressed rural areas, Mosques are generally very clean on the inside, but shops and even larger stores (the mall was a major exception…) have sticky floors, flies buzzing about and dust. If you’re a clean freak or anal compulsive, Egypt ain’t for you.

Inside, it’s a different story. My building is not terribly impressive from outside; better maintained or newer than others, perhaps, but not flashy or fly by any means. The apartment interior, on the other hand, is generally clean, freshly painted and tidy. The care given to cleaning the insides of homes is evident when you walk down the street and are either hit by droplets of water falling from balconies, or see puddles of water which result from cleaning activities being carried out in living spaces above you. (Another reason many people avoid sidewalks by the way…) Since the social focus in Egypt is on family and relations, and since those relationships are cultivated in private, the interiors of homes often belie their exteriors. All this is to say that it’s hard to judge the socio-economic level of an area from its outward appearance alone. Other clues lie in the types of businesses and styles of dress one sees.

Along my way, I saw the first donkey drawn farm cart I had seen in the city. The two passengers were hawking their load of onions to the residents. Open air stalls, many of which are obviously temporary, are set up on street corners where fruits and vegetables are offered for sale. These sorts of businesses, as well as plumbing and electrical shops, are interspersed among more upscale shops selling jewelry, home furnishings, electronics, and even cars.

It strikes me that there is a major economic and social shift underway in Egypt, a transition similar to the one the US underwent in the 50’s and early 60’s when larger corporations of all kinds began to displace smaller specialty shops. The entire fabric of life is changing. Older men sit in the coffee houses; the younger ones (and increasing numbers of young women) head to the mall. Even if they can’t afford to buy what is sold there, they go there because that’s where their peers are. The San Stefano Mall, which looms ahead of me now and tells me I’m going in the right direction, will no doubt displace many of the small businesses I have been passing by and the owners will be forced out of business or will move somewhere farther away from the mall. A small number will adapt to the change in circumstances and find ways to survive.

Outside the mall entrance is a traditional café. I go in and order a cup of Arabic coffee. While I wait, I pick up an Egyptian newspaper (“al-Masri al-Yawm” roughly “Today’s Egyptian”) and see what I can make of the news. My coffee comes, a small cup containing coffee with a foamy surface. I wait for it to cool a bit and then sip. It’s not well done; some of the coffee grounds sit on top of the drink, making for a gritty taste. When Arabic (or Turkish, depending on where you are) coffee is done properly, brought to a boil three times and allowed to settle, you don’t get the grit until you hit bottom. This isn’t good. Inside the mall, there are at least two Starbuck’s knockoffs where, for a little more money I could have had a latte with no grit. So much for going native.

I enter the mall with the primary aim of orienting myself—not that I plan to spend a great deal of time here, but because when I need something, I want to be able to locate it quickly, buy it and get out. It’s cool inside, though, so I take my time, marking specific stores so I can find my way out again. I go down to the lower level to check out the “Metro” supermarket. I  now have a better idea of what I need to do my cooking and what I would like to eat, so I want to know what I can buy where.

While I’m checking out the cheeses, a woman approaches me and asks, in English, for assistance. (She just heard me ask Cheese Guy, in Arabic,  if he had Parmesan, but my appearance screams “American”). I offer my help: she’s trying to find out what kind of coffee would be best for her coffee machine. The Egyptian store clerk doesn’t understand what she wants so I try to explain in Arabic what the problem is. There’s good old Maxwell House in a can and also shelf after shelf of Arabic coffee and she doesn’t know what to buy.  We finally reach a point where we all get the general idea and come to the conclusion it’s either Maxwell House or nothing. I tell her that she might want to go to the Costa Coffee place (Starbuck’s knockoff mentioned above) and ask if they sell coffee in bulk; that’s the only other option I can think of. I’ve been looking for a cone and filters myself, with no luck.

She thanks me and walks off. I find an ATM, try my card (it works!), and head out. The day is wearing on and I would like to get home. I stop in my local grocery/household store and buy a couple of things, a thermometer and a can opener, and go home. The air conditioning feels good. There’s a phone call from Hend al-Shennawy, Sohair’s assistant, who tells me that on Sunday, there will be a library staff meeting at which I will be introduced and then a subsequent meeting set up for me with the Head of Collection Development and following that another with Hend herself. Work to be done! I’m looking forward to this.