Posts tagged ‘fulbright’

Monday, 2 November 2009

Early Sunday morning I got up, showered, and fed myself breakfast. Katy was up soon thereafter and offered me a cup of tea. The kids and Karl were still in bed, so I thanked her and asked her to extend my thanks to the rest of the family for the wonderful hospitality I had been shown over the past two days. With my bags in hand, I descended the stairs and caught a cab. The driver knew the destination when I gave him the street address—a novelty here in Cairo—and since it was early morning and traffic was light, I reached Simon Bolivar Square in no time.

I wasn’t sure exactly where the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) building was, but just as I was about to go looking, a tour bus pulled up and parked on a side street. The driver climbed down and I asked him if he were headed to the Fayyoum today. He said yes and please, would I like to board. Grateful for the chance to get my weighty backpack off my shoulder I went up the steps and dropped said bag onto a seat, taking my place next to it. While I waited for the rest of the group, I cracked open my Blue Guide to Egypt and read up on the Fayyoum.

The Fayyoum is a geographical feature located south and slightly west of Cairo. Sort of an oasis, it is a fertile area created by an offshoot of the Nile, which flows into a low area and creates a lake, called Qarun, which has no outlet. Since ancient times, it has been the site of intensive agricultural activity; evidence of farming dates back 7000 years here. Beginning in the time of the Ptolemies, the Fayyoum was developed for large-scale agricultural production, mainly wheat and olives, using the waters of the Nile to irrigate the land. In the days of the Roman Empire, the Fayyoum provided Rome with much of the wheat it needed to feed its population. Even today, agriculture is the primary activity here, although a huge industrial park is currently under construction on land that is unfit for farming.

I was interested in this area because, according to my research on Arabic block printing, many of the examples of this craft originated in the Fayyoum. Apaprently, in the late nineteenth century, as a consequence of renewed interest in the ancient Middle East generated by Napoleon’s scientific expedition in Egypt, Europeans flocked to this part of the world. Between the end of the French military adventure in Egypt (1801) and the second decade of the twentieth century, many of the major discoveries relating to Pharaonic Egypt took place, including King Tut’s tomb. Europeans were so keen to lay hands on anything bearing even a whiff of antiquity that they created a market for such things among the population. Thus it was, apparently, that some of the block prints ended up in European libraries and museums.

At the time in the Fayyoum, ancient mud brick structures, long collapsed and fallen into disuse, were being harvested for their potential as fertilizer. Sort of Biblical: “from dust to dust,” in a way. Occasionally, mixed in with the rubble, were fragments of manuscripts, which people understood were worth money. There were these nutty Europeans in Cairo who would actually pay money for this junk! Hey, beats farming for a living!

At least that’s my imaginary reconstruction of the scenario. In any case, the sources I read say that something like this did occur in the Fayyoum and I wanted to see the locus first-hand. Karanis, the archaeological site I was visiting, had been the site of mud brick (known in Arabic as “sebakh”) removal on an industrial scale. The archaeologist working on the site was going to be our tour guide and I wanted to hear if she had run across any block printing fragments.

The rest of the group gradually appeared and boarded the bus. At 8 AM sharp, Mary Sadek, the person from ARCE who had organized the trip, announced that all were present and we set off. Our route took us through Giza, past the Pyramids rising majestically from their hilltop abode, and south along the edge of the desert. The road was a four-lane, heavy with commercial traffic, but not congested. There were a couple of traffic control stations where cops were checking for valid licenses and bills of lading, but the eighty kilometer trip took less than two hours in all. Karanis lies at the northeast extreme of the Fayyoum and so is closest to Cairo of all the sites and settlements there.

While we were underway, Mary distributed small battery powered electronic devices containing an ear piece and a receiver that clipped on a belt or backpack strap. The purpose of these units became clear when we arrived at the dig site. Dr. Willeke Wendrich, the archeologist in charge of the Karanis excavation, met us in a shady area at the foot of the tel (the hill created by layers of successive settlements being built atop one another over hundreds (in some cases thousands) of years—Tel Aviv is perhaps the most famous “tel”) and donned a similar unit which had a microphone attached. In a large group, she could thus make herself heard without having to shout. Brilliant.

Dr. Wendrich has been excavating at Karanis for three years and her work follows on work done by a team of archaeologists from the University of Michigan that worked here in the 1930’s. The “dig house” that the University of Michigan team had had built was our first stop on the tour. It was constructed using the same mud brick technology that had been employed here forever and consequently had suffered the same fate as all mud brick. Without yearly maintenance, it had crumbled and dissolved in many places; the roofs had caved in and the walls had buckled. Dr. Wendrich had begun to renovate the building with the intention of turning it into a visitors’ center, complete with an observation deck on one roof. Of course all this takes money and progress is slow.

Dr. Wendrich excused herself at this point and turned the tour over to one of her graduate students, Bethany, who led us northeast to the next point of interest, the “South Temple,” which was built of stone and has therefore withstood the ravages of time better than the mud brick dwellings of the town. She explained the structure and let us clamber around for a bit. We got to see the altar and the niche adjacent to it where, in its heyday, a mummified crocodile reposed. (One of the most important cities in ancient Fayyoum was called Crocodilopolis, and the crocodile was deified in the Fayyoum).

From there we walked to what had been the center of the ancient town. It was from here, Bethany explained, that most of the mud brick rubble had been excavated. What came as a shock was her description of the operation. I had been under the impression that the quarrying had been done by local farmers, using manual labor and donkeys to carry the material to their fields, but our guide explained that here, in Karanis, the Egyptian government had given a license to an Italian company to excavate the rubble and they had used machinery, steam shovels and the like, and had laid two railways—the sort used in mining—onto the tel to carry away the material. The University of Michigan archaeologists had to negotiate with the company to get them to stop, promising to deliver the material that the archaeologists excavated to the company.

The scale of this operation, and the effect on the site was astounding, even eighty years on. We walked to a rise and looked down into a bowl-shaped crater that easily covered several acres of ground. The mud brick and other refuse had been dug out to a depth of at least twenty or thirty feet and the unwanted chunks of masonry and stone rubble had simply been tossed aside in heaps. I asked Bethany at this point whether there were any Islamic ruins on the site and she said no; the site had apparently been abandoned before the arrival of the Arab armies in the seventh century and had not been settled after that. This was a disappointment but I was glad to have had the opportunity to see what sort of effect sebakh removal could have on an archaeological site.

Our tour continued with visits to another smaller temple and several granaries. Granaries were quite numerous in Karanis and excavations of them had revealed an elaborate system of storage and methods of protecting and accounting for what grain belonged to which farmer or landlord. There was a sizable Roman garrison here, at one time, to guard the grain. Part of that building still stood, but like all the other mud brick structures, it was slowly dissolving. Bethany showed us photos taken of the same area by the University of Michigan archaeologists; looking at them, it was clear that many of the structures then extant were simply gone, having decayed due to the effects of wind driven sand and rain. Bethany said that standard practice at Karanis, now, was to re-bury all the excavations performed in a season. Sterile sand is brought in to fill excavation trenches and protect any discoveries from weather damage. If any site is to be excavated further in a subsequent digging season (about four months in length, from August through November), the sterile sand has to be removed first.

Our last stop was a location on the northeast edge of the tel, where the remains of a dwelling and another granary had been uncovered. The archaeologists were very excited because evidence of decoration in the house, consisting of plaster painted with colors not previously seen here, had been found the previous day.

Our bus was waiting for us a short distance away, and we boarded it for our short trip to the new dig house. Once we arrived, we sat down to lunch in the dining room. The house was a single story of concrete, with several work rooms on the ground floor and a rooftop patio and three offices for the archaeologist and her assistants. Dr. Wendrich runs an archaeological field school here and there were several students and supervisors working at various tasks: compiling field notes, conserving artifacts, cataloguing pottery shards, and the like. After lunch, Dr. Wendrich gave a brief slide presentation on the Karanis project and answered questions. We had a brief tour of the building, a chance to speak with the archaeologists about different aspects of their work, and then prepared to depart. I spoke with Dr. Wendrich about the lack of Islamic remains and told her what I was looking for. She confirmed what Bethany had told me about the absence of Islamic evidence at Karanis, but said that there was a French excavation at another site where Islamic remains were found. I will have to find out where that is…

After thanking our hosts, we re-boarded the bus and settled back for the return trip to Cairo. That journey concluded without incident and I headed off for the train station and my return trip to Alexandria. I spent almost the entire ride catching up with my blog posts; so intent was I on that task that I nearly missed my station. However, I managed to cram everything into my backpack and alight before the departure whistle sounded. A quick taxi ride home and into bed. Tomorrow, I begin my collection development workshops and I’m a bit apprehensive about them.

Sunday 1 November 2009

Friday morning, over a breakfast of pancakes with Karl, Katy and the kids, we planned out the day; I wanted to get out of their way because it was their weekend; the kids had things going on and Kate had to prepare a lecture she was to give on Saturday morning at the university. It was now eleven o’clock and Karl and Kate had arranged for me to accompany them to an outdoor Blues concert at the pyramids that evening. It started at four and I had to be back by three in order to meet the car that would take us out there. It was going to make for a tight schedule; if I didn’t get moving, I wouldn’t have time to examine the pieces in the collection at the museum I wanted to visit.

Of the three museums I wanted to visit, one—the Islamic Museum—had been closed for renovation and had not yet re-opened, so that was out. I really wanted to see the Gayer-Anderson Museum which the guide book said was open on Friday, but closed during the noon prayer. I grabbed a cab and headed in that direction, hoping to get there before it closed. Since it was Friday, the traffic was very light and even though I had a rookie cabbie, we found the location in fairly short order. However, when we pulled up outside the Ibn Tulun Mosque, which abuts the museum, a young man came to the driver’s window and said that the museum was closed for an hour. It was apparently time for the noon prayer.

That being the case I asked the driver to take me to the Egyptian Museum, which I KNEW was open and, even though there were no block prints for me to look at there, there was plenty of other stuff to look at for a couple of hours. He dropped me at the corner across from the museum and, as I exited the cab and ran to the median of the street, it began to rain.

Suddenly, a guy appears at my shoulder and asks me where I was going.

“Al-Mat-haf,” I responded, pointing across the street. The museum.

“Oh” he says, “is closed for prayers. Doesn’t open for one hour.” The lawn in front of the building was filled with people sitting on the edges of flower beds and wandering around the grounds. It looked to be true.

I thought, “Great.” And it’s starting to rain harder.

“I’m so happy today,” says the guy still standing next to me. “My daughter is getting married tomorrow. I’m so happy. I have a gift for you. Come to my shop. It is here. Come.”

Well, I’m not keen on getting wet so I follow him, already knowing this is probably not a good idea. He guides me around knots of men praying on the sidewalk, cautioning me not to step on the mats laid down on the pavement as prayer rugs. (Many of the mosques are filled to overflowing at noon on Fridays, so men slap their prayer mats down on the sidewalks outside the mosques, or just near one, and pray “al fresco.”) We enter a darkened shop lined with glass cases containing an assortment of glass vessels, perfume bottles in all shapes and sizes. Upholstered wooden furniture, a wooden desk, a couple of chairs with spindle backs, and a settee along one wall gave the space the look of a library in an eighteenth century English country estate—Bleak House with an unmotivated staff.

“I’m so happy. My daughter is getting married tomorrow. Come, sit.” Flipping on low wattage lights he motions me to sit on the settee. I’m looking around, trying to get my bearings.

“Sit here; please sit.” So I do.

“You would like to drink something.” A question in the form of a declarative sentence. “Tea? Coffee? I have a gift for you!”

“La, shukran,” I finally say. No thanks.

“No. Please, you must drink something. Tea. Yes? Okay? Ya, Waad! Shay`!” (“Hey, boy! Tea!”) The order is placed before I can protest. “I’m so happy! Where are you from?” The tea is already at my elbow.

“Iowa.”

“Aywa?” A puzzled look. “Aywa” is the colloquial Arabic word for “yes.”

“La.” I shake my head. “No. Eye-Oh-Wah.” I enunciate each syllable as clearly as I can. “A state smack dab in the middle of the country.”

“Ah. I never hear of this.” A customer appears from another room and leaves the shop. That’s the signal for a new activity, apparently.

“Come,” says my new best bud. “I want to show you something. I’m so happy. My daughter getting married tomorrow! I have a gift for you!” I’m beginning to get an uncomfortable itchy feeling on the back of my neck. He grabs my tea glass and heads into the room his customer has just vacated.

Through a doorway, we enter a second room decorated much like the first. There behind a desk in a similarly appointed room is my friend’s, uh, accomplice.

“Ah,” says the partner, “come, sit here. Your tea is good?”

“Fine, thanks.” My friend retreats to a bench in the background.

“You know what we do here?” I look around. This room contains more wooden shelves with glass doors on them, but these cabinets are filled with larger bottles containing liquids of various colors. I feel like Harry Potter in Severus Snape’s first potions class, although I realize that this is much more innocuous. At least I hope so…

“We sell essential oils here. All these jars are oils we press from flowers. What kind of flowers do you like? Here, this is lotus.” The second guy takes a large bottle off the shelf next to him. The liquid in it is pale green. “You see the pictures of the lotus flowers on the walls? This flower grows only in Egypt. Very special. Here, you try it.” He pulls out the stopper, and I lean over to sniff it.

“No, no,” he protests. “Like this,” and he smears some on my wrist.

Okay, now I’m recalling the days when customers were assaulted by perfume spritzers as they walked through the cosmetics section of Lord & Taylor or Saks or numerous other department stores that employed young women to ambush them with clouds of mist as they passed by. The fragrance isn’t bad, actually, but what would I do with it? I apparently don’t look enthused.

“What about this one?” He grabs another bottle, uncorks it and smears another dab on my arm. I smell. Whoa! Way too heavy. Funeral home heavy. I tell him so. In Arabic. He looks hurt.

“Here,” he says, grabbing a third bottle and popping the plastic stopper. “This is jasmine. Not heavy, very ‘khafeef’ (light)” A drop smeared on the back of my other wrist and rubbed in vigorously. “You like this? Is very good. Calvin Klein, Gucci, Ralph Lauren, they all use these oil, but they mix with water, alcohol.” He wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. “Is not as good. This much better.” (Karl Lorenz later confirmed that this much was true. He was told as much by an Egyptian he knows well who makes purchases of these oils on a regular basis.)

I figure, it’s a gift so what the hey. “The lotus is nice, I guess.” With three very strong scents on my arm, it’s hard to tell what’s what by now.

”How much you want?” says desk guy. He pulls an assortment of bottles out of the cupboard next to him: a small brown one with gold stripes around it: “Two Hundred grams,” he says; a slightly larger one, clear with no decoration, “Five hundred grams;” another green one, “One thousand grams;” and finally a very large frosted white glass container, “Two thousand grams. Texas size.” A greasy smile.

“No thanks. Way too much.” The itchy feeling at the back of my neck has now spread across my shoulders and down my arms. A rash isn’t far behind. No way I’m being “given” that much stuff. “The small one is fine,” I say. “You did day this was a gift, right?” Desk guy gives no answer. Ahh. The light finally goes on.

“Okay. Small one. Two hundred grams lotus flower. Very nice.” He pops the cork on the lotus, fills the bottle, caps it with a plastic plug and seals it with a piece of cellophane tape. He then points to a sign on the wall behind him. It reads: 2 LE (Egyptian Pounds) per gram. “That will be four hundred Guinea, please.”(“Guinea” is actually the ‘official’ name of Egypt’s currency; it appears on the bills) He looks pleased with himself. Eighty bucks American!

But I’m not biting (finally). “No,” I say in Arabic, just so my meaning isn’t lost on them. “That is more oil than I or any two people could use in a lifetime. I don’t want that much.” Damned if I’m going to spend $80 on something that might go rancid before half of it is used. An awkward moment of silence follows. It’s clear now what the deal is: the accomplice has made no promise of a gift, so he’s quite justified in asking for money. My buddy is just sitting there; it’s no longer his deal.

“I’ll take half that amount and no more.” My tea is gone and it’s left a bad taste in my mouth. A third guy, somewhat younger than the other two, has joined us at some point and, when desk guy hesitates, he takes matters into his own hands, telling desk guy to empty out half the bottle and close the sale. Desk guy is a bit flummoxed and Number Three has to do it for him. The bottle is wrapped in paper and I fork over my 200 pounds. Okay, I’m a tourist and I’m probably being way overcharged but I’m sort of impressed with the scam. It’s actually pretty slick. I rise and pick up my overpriced lubricant, prepared to leave.

But my bud has other ideas. He leaps back into action. “I want to show you something else, very special. Come this way.” Down a short corridor toward the back of the shop, more lights are turned on and we’re in a room whose walls are covered with paintings on what my friend says is papyrus. “Ten pounds only,” he crows. “Which one you like?”

Now, I had been warned about this business. Every tourist who comes to Egypt knows that this is the land of papyrus and assumes that it’s readily available and cheap. But they underestimate the ingenuity of the Egyptians. Some clever ones have discovered, for example, that you can make something that LOOKS LIKE papyrus, but is made from banana palm leaves, not the papyrus plant. That stuff will curl and turn yellow before you get it home. Some of the pieces I’m being shown have a label stating that the item is “genuine,” but the art work is crappy tourist stuff, with paintings (more likely four color prints) of generic ancient Egyptian figures in profile. Definitely no.

“No, thanks. Not interested.”

“What about this one? This is very nice.”

“No. We’ve finished our business. Goodbye.”

“Oh, okay. Thank you for coming.”

I turn and head for the door. Someday I’ll learn. Someday.

It turns out that the Egyptian Museum wasn’t even closed for the noon prayer. There are too many tourists wanting to see the collections for the government to inconvenience people who want to give them money. The courtyard was full simply because there were so many people visiting that day. I go through the security gate, where I have to explain the bottle in my pocket. The cop wants to scan it but his partner asks me what it is. “Attar,” I say. “Perfume.”

The cop looks at me and smiles a knowing smile. “Ahh! Perfume. Never mind, please proceed. Have a nice visit.” I’m sure the two cops were nudging each other in the ribs behind my back. “There goes another sucker…” Snicker, snicker.

I spend about three hours in the museum, one of Egypt’s largest and most important. The building was erected between 1897 and 1903, at the height of the period of archaeological activity in Egypt that uncovered Tutakhamen and all those other spectacular finds from ancient Egypt. It is a huge Victorian warehouse, essentially, with stuff, stuff and more stuff. Imagine your crazy aunt’s attic. More sarcophagi than you can shake a stick at, statues of pharaohs all over the place, metal artifacts, wooden artifacts (including a boat meant to carry the soul of one pharaoh on his afterlife journey), pottery and who knows what else. It’s dusty, mostly unlabeled and not well organized at all. But the amount of objects and artifacts is overwhelming. Room after room of things. I didn’t even go through the “Royal Mummies” exhibit; there was an additional charge for that and I had blown my budget on lotus oil.

People wearing id badges would come up every so often and ask if I wanted a guide. I saw lots of tourist groups taking advantage of these services and I overheard a variety of languages—French, German, Italian—being spoken by them so my guess is that the guides were bona fide, probably university students, or maybe even teachers or professors, picking up a few extra bucks on the weekend. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the information they were conveying, however, and I didn’t engage anyone. The museum was packed with tourists and they continued to stream in, the space inside getting more and more crowded, as I wandered through the various rooms. I’ve heard that the Minister of Antiquities, Zahi Hawwas, is planning to build a new multi-million dollar museum out near the Pyramids to replace this pile. Anything would be an improvement over this; the building has obviously outlived its usefulness.

When I had had my fill of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman antiquities, I wandered back outside and got a cab back to Zamalek. I didn’t want to be late for the transport out to the concert that evening. The cab ride was quick since Friday was a weekend and traffic was light. Arriving on Karl and Katy’s street with plenty of time to spare, I stopped in the Beano Café landmark and ordered a light lunch. This was the first time I had treated myself to a restaurant meal in some time and the first real coffee—a cappuccino—that I had had in several weeks. I finished my sandwich and lingered over the coffee. Just before 3 PM, I called Karl and asked if it would be convenient for me to come to the apartment now. He said it would be okay so I made my way there.

Ginger da Costa came up from her apartment shortly after I arrived and together we trooped over to the apartment building of a friend of Ginger’s, another Kathy, who had arranged for the van to carry us to the pyramids. We were joined by Belle Gironda who, like the second Kathy, is teaching at AUC. We all piled into the van and made the forty-five minute drive out to the pyramids in Giza. The area had changed dramatically since I was there thirty years ago. Residential and commercial properties had expanded so that they were really quite close to the pyramids and the Sphinx. The preserved area around the monuments was surrounded by walls and a fence, enclosing a very large area. Thirty years ago, this was the edge of the desert. We walked through the gates and onto a large paved plaza where rows of folding chairs had been set up.

The stage was erected in such a way that the pyramids provided a dramatic backdrop for the musicians. A brief light shower caught us by surprise and I thought we might be forced to retreat to a nearby shelter, but the rain quickly ended and the sun started to slip toward the horizon behind the pyramids. A few scattered clouds in the west glowed peach and pink.

Soon after we took our seats, the band was introduced and began to play. Bluzapalooza, as I later learned the group was called, included Zac Harmon, Deanne Bogart, and Terry ‘Harmonica’ Bean. Steve Simon (a musician and concert promoter from St. John’s, Virgin Islands) had apparently arranged the event in consultation with the American Ambassador to Egypt, who is a blues fan herself. The group played for a little more than an hour, exciting the mostly young Egyptian crowd, many of whom stood in front of the stage or danced to the music in the aisles. There was a sizable group of adolescent women, most in some form of hijab, among the revelers and it was interesting to see that they stood to the side as the boys took to the dance floor. Obviously young women do not boogie in public here. That didn’t stop the American women in the audience.

Ginger and Belle, among others, were in the thick of the arm waving, swaying and stomping. I was struck by the cultural incongruities of African American musicians playing African inspired music in front of ancient Egyptian funerary architecture. I wondered what the pharaohs would have made of this.

The band was good. Tight and practiced. They obviously enjoyed playing together and were inspired by the venue. They performed a lot of blues standards as well as covering some crossover tunes, like Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.” After about an hour, they cranked out one encore, thanked the audience and turned off the amps.

We made our way to the exit, found our van and rode back to the apartment. Karl and Katy ordered food over the internet from a service called “Otlob,” which is a transliteration of the Arabic word for “order.” We enjoyed a nice meal around the table and then crawled off to bed. Tomorrow I’m off to the Fayyoum to see an archaeological dig.

Saturday 31 October 2009 A short but intense week drew to a close with quite a varied collection of activities. Thursday morning I had scheduled a meeting with Mohamed Al-Gohary and Nermin Bahaa to make sure that I had all the tools, connections and so forth I would need to get the first workshop properly launched next week. We had set a time of 10:30 AM and agreed to meet in the large meeting room adjacent to the collection development offices on the “B2” level of the library. Aided by my nifty new electronic key card, I made my way to the designated place only to find the room empty. I checked my cell phone and saw that I had missed two calls, one each from Nermin and Mohamed. Great. I called Nermin back and she whispered that she was in the middle of a meeting called at the last minute. Could I wait until 11? What choice did I have?

“Okay,” I said, “but no later. You know I’m going to Cairo early this afternoon.”

I called Mohamed, just to tell him I had received his call and he told me he was in the same meeting. He said he would call when he got out. I went back to my office and did some computer work. At 11:15, I Had still not heard from either of them and was getting a bit nervous about the time. I had left luggage at the apartment and had to go home to pick it up before heading off to the train station. Before I could work up a good head of steam about this, however, Nermin called and said we could meet, so I headed off to the meeting room. We got things squared away pretty quickly and I even had time when we finished to run down to the periodicals section and pull some journals containing book reviews off the shelves (I will need these for the second session).

I gathered my stuff from my office, got a cab and headed home. My bag was packed and I just needed to close the windows and double check that I had my tickets. I noticed that the cell phone was a little low on juice, so I plugged that in for a few minutes, too. My train was to depart at a bit past 2PM so at about 1:30, I grabbed the cell phone and headed down the elevator. There was a taxi just coming down my street and he was available so I hopped in. Noontime traffic was horrendous and we crept along for a good twenty minutes before we finally broke clear. I made my train with about ten minutes to spare. Closer than I like it, but I was on my way.

I was headed to Cairo for two reasons. First, Bruce Lohof the Egyptian Fulbright Director and his partner Annmarie had invited all the scholars for dinner at their apartment in Zamalek that evening and on Saturday I had arranged to travel with a group from the American Research Center in Cairo to the Fayyum where, reportedly, a great number of Arabic block prints had been unearthed. With a day in between these two events, I hoped to be able to visit at least one of the three museums in Cairo that I know hold examples of block printing. I figured that a trip to Cairo shouldn’t be wasted.

Zamalek is the name of a city district lying on the northern half of an island in the middle of the Nile. The island remained largely undeveloped until late in the nineteenth century. Then Muhammad Ali, Egypt’s ruler of the time decided to build a palace for himself there. Part of that structure exists today as a section of the Marriot Hotel, which is situated on one side of the island. Because of the former royal enclosure, there is still a lot of relatively open space on the island. Most of the buildings rise not more than ten stories and many are only four or five high. There are tree-lined streets and quiet residential areas; many of the capital’s foreign embassies are located here as well. I was looking forward to this event also because Karl Lorenz and his partner Kathleen Hain, a couple who had BOTH gotten Fulbrights, and whose apartment was also in Zamalek, had invited me to stay with them, rather than going to a hotel. Kathy had e-mailed me detailed directions and I had printed them out so I could direct the cab when I got to Cairo.

The trip down was pleasant and uneventful; I ran the usual gauntlet of taxi drivers outside the Cairo terminal wanting outrageous sums to go less than two miles and finally agreed to go with one who wanted more than I had been told the trip from the station to Zamalek would cost, but I wasn’t going to quibble over one dollar. Kathy had said that their street would be difficult to locate and indeed the driver overshot the turn he was supposed to make. However, when we pulled over to consult the Cairo street map I had cleverly thought to bring with me, I saw that we were actually stopped at the end of Karl and Katy’s street and I was able to see one of the landmarks they had given me, so I paid the guy and hopped out. They had said that if I got as close as the landmark—Beano’s Café—to call and they would come down and meet me. I got Karl on the phone and he told me to continue walking down the street. After thirty seconds, he said, ”Look up,” and there he was, standing on his third-floor balcony, waving.

I took the old-fashioned elevator—cage at the ground floor landing, metal door with a handle, interior door of folding wooden slats—and rode up the center of the stairwell. Karl, Katy and their triplets (Oy!) Kierin, Nick and Marie greeted me and we sat in their big double living room overlooking the street chatting and drinking a welcome cup of coffee. Kathy is a psychologist working at Ayn Shams University in Cairo, directing an Egyptian PhD dissertation and teaching graduate students and faculty in the medical school, Karl is an archaeologist who specializes in Native North American pottery and he is in Egypt attempting to apply his statistical pottery model to four Egyptian archaeological sites from the pre-dynastic period (i.e. more than 4500 years ago!). The kids, who are ninth graders, did what kids do: they plugged into their computers, put their iPod ear buds in their ears and let the adults talk. Nick, who is very engaging, actually joined in the conversation now and then and was a delight. We were joined, after a short while, by Virginia da Costa, another Fulbrighter, who lives just downstairs.

We decided to walk to the Lohof’s building together and shortly before the designated dinner hour, we set off. A fifteen minute walk brought us to a high-rise on the edge of the island. We rose in the elevator (three at a time only; it was small…) to the tenth floor and rang the doorbell. An Egyptian man in white shirt and black bow tie opened up and admitted us. We greeted Bruce and Annmarie and those other guests who had already arrived. Wine and hors d’oeuvres were served as we stood or sat around and talked. A wall of floor to ceiling windows gave out onto a spectacular view of the Nile, which lay right at our feet, and the Cairo skyline. Excursion boats with lights twinkling moved back and forth on the river; headlights streamed along the Corniche on the opposite bank; the city lights glowed in blue, white and yellow.

People were still talking in glowing terms about the Alexandria trip and asked how I was getting on with the work. I told them things were beginning to move along and I heard how their various projects and classes were proceeding. It was a wonderful way to catch up and speak to people I hadn’t really gotten to know before. In due time, we were informed that dinner was ready and we all filed into the dining room where various dishes were arranged around the table. We picked up plates and began to fill them: fish filets on a bed of steamed vegetables, roast leg of lamb cut into manageable chunks; chicken breast sliced, rolled around fresh herbs, and baked; rice; roasted squash en casserole; a spinach soufflé; a salad of tomatoes and cucumber with vinegar and oil dressing. Got to have a little of each…

I sat with Mir Hussain, who is teaching economics at Cairo University for the year and Virginia, who is working on an art project that involves photography and watercolors. She has produced some rather striking portraits of Egyptians in all their guises already. After dinner came dessert: a rich chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, mille feuille with cream filling. We digested over more conversation; people moved from one group to another and we spent a gloriously relaxing evening. Around ten, our little group of Virginia, Karl; Katy, the triplets and I thanked our hosts and headed out into the night. We walked back to their place and Virginia brought up some of her watercolors to show us. We talked for a while and then decided to hit the hay. I had planned to take a hotel room for the following night but Karl and Kate insisted that I should do no such thing; they had room and I wasn’t in the way. Okay. Free room and board. Thanks!

Thursday, 29 October 2009

I’m off to Cairo today for a Fulbright social affair and a one-day trip to the Fayyum (about which I will write in a future posting), so I wanted to get this installment uploaded while its events are still relatively fresh in my mind. This coming week will be busy with the collection development workshops—three of them over three days, each offered in two separate sections so I get the largest attendance of reference people possible. I have been busy with preparations for that and for the second set of workshops for the information literacy people, which will probably take place the week of November 9th. The collection development people are anxious to get the information I plan to convey before the Cairo Book Fair, which takes place from the 10th to the 20th of December. The selectors are hoping to use some of what they learn in the workshops when they attend the book fair and consider items to add to their collections.

In addition to these activities, I have been trying to make progress with my Arabic study and I have good days and bad days with that effort. My tutor is very patient and engaging and I find my confidence, most days, growing. However, that doesn’t happen every day as two events this past week helped me realize. Fortunately, my long engagement with language study has prepared me, I hope, to deal with these “plateaus” that one reaches every so often where progress suddenly seems to cease for no apparent reason.

Last week Dr. Wostawy had sent me a couple of invitations to cultural events that she thought might be of interest to me. In one instance, I think I was essentially attending in her stead, but not in any official way. As a high profile figure in Alexandria, she gets dozens of these invitations, no doubt, and as a matter of self preservation she has to be selective about which events to attend. There are only so many hours in the day and only so many days in a lifetime, after all. The first event I was invited to was a lecture by Prof. Bengt Knutsson of the University of Lund in Sweden. He was speaking on Monday evening at the Swedish Cultural Center located in Manshiya, the fashionable address on the peninsula. His topic was the relations between the Vikings and the Arabs in the 9th and 10th centuries and he was to deliver his lecture in Arabic. Aside from my interest in the subject of his talk, I was anxious to learn just how much of a lecture in Arabic I might be able to understand. I hoped that my training in classical Arabic (Fus’ha) would help me but I wasn’t very confident about that.

On the appointed hour, I got a cab and made my way to the Swedish Cultural Center, a four- or five-story building on the Corniche facing the harbor. The blue and yellow Swedish flag flying from one of the pillars at the entrance helped me to identify the location. There was a large foyer with a broad flight of stairs at the center of the hall, with columns on either side. I was greeted by the security person, who asked me to sign the guest register and then led me to the elevator, which I rode to the second floor with a young Alexandrian woman in a head scarf. We emerged in front of a room with French doors behind which sat a crowd of perhaps seventy-five or eighty people. Most were already seated and the Swedish director of the center was just about to make his introductory remarks. The front row of chairs on one side of the room was largely vacant and seeing no other accessible seats, I chose one of these.

The director spoke briefly in English about the purpose of the center and its interest in promoting understanding between Egyptians, the Swedes and Europeans in general. He then introduced Prof.Knutsson, a distinguished elderly gentleman, slightly stooped, wearing glasses and bushy white hair. The professor prefaced his remarks with a brief explanation of where Lund was, and the meaning of the university seal, which was embroidered on the pocket of his blue blazer: a sword and a book, one to protect the other. He also explained his name, translating each element into Arabic.

“Bengt,” he said, “is Benedictus in Latin, “mubarak’ in Arabic; meaning ‘blessed.’ Knut is the old Norse word for ‘knot’ and ‘son’ is ‘ibn’ or ‘son of’ in Arabic, so my name in Arabic is Blessed Son of Knot.”
So far I was following almost all of this (I missed the Arabic word for “knot” and had to look it up later…) and was beginning to feel a bit more relaxed. The professor then launched into the meat of his topic, explaining that the evidence for extensive interaction between the Swedish Norse and the Arabs could be found in manuscripts, linguistic clues and archaeological artifacts. The Swedes, whom the Arabs often referred to as “Rus,” that is, people from what is today Russia were named so because their route into the Islamic realms of the tenth and eleventh centuries was down the Volga River, into western Central Asia and thence into the lands of the caliphate. Some Arabic authors of the time, mostly geographers, recorded the appearance of these northern visitors and used their accounts of their voyages to fill out their descriptions of the northern part of the world, most of which was otherwise unknown to them.

One of the more important documents of this interaction is an account left by one Ibn Fadlan, who traveled with the Norse north into their territories. (A heavily romanticized and fictionalized version of his voyage forms the basis for the 1999 Antonio Banderas film “Thirteenth Warrior.” Until 1923, Ibn Fadlan’s record was known only by virtue of the fact that mention of it had been made in a marginal annotation in a geographical work of the time. Then, in 1923, a manuscript copy of Ibn Fadlan’s work was discovered in Iran.

Finally, there is the archaeological evidence, which is quite overwhelming. There are, in Swedish museums and research institutions, some 80,000 Islamic coins from that period, showing quite convincingly that routine commercial contact between the two peoples was being carried out. In addition, there is a rune stone which bears a memorial inscription in ancient Norse, part of which states that the deceased died in “Sarkland,” that is the “Sharq,” East, in Arabic. There were some accompanying slides of maps and artifacts, which the professor used to elaborate certain points and these also helped get me through some sticky linguistic moments. He spoke, of course, in classical Arabic, that being the form of Arabic generally understood by most educated Arabs. Those in the audience who were not Arabic speakers could avail themselves of headsets through which a simultaneous translation into English (maybe Swedish?) was offered.

The lecture ended with some questions from the audience and then we all adjourned to the rooftop terrace where drinks (delightfully, wine in addition to fruit juice for the Muslim guests!) and hors d’oeuvre were served. There was a most pleasant breeze and an engaging view over the harbor. I chatted for a while with a young Egyptian lawyer who works for a corporation in Alexandria and then took my leave. A very nice way to spend an evening and a heartening boost to my Arabic ability. Of course, Professor Knutsson spoke very deliberately and clearly, and used a microphone so most people could understand him. A couple of the questions put to him at the end of his talk were pretty much unintelligible to me but I attributed that to the fact that the questioners were speaking colloquial in an ambience with a lot of background noise. Well, that was my excuse anyway.

My comprehension of spoken Arabic was given quite a comeuppance the very next day, however. On Wednesday morning, Dr. al-Wostawy had invited me to attend an award ceremony in the conference center adjacent to the library. I had not yet visited that building and was interested to see what it contained. Just before the award ceremony was to begin, I made my way across the plaza to the entrance and walked in, one of a throng of attendees. Inside, we were directed upstairs to a large auditorium, which was filling rapidly as I entered. There was a large dais at the front of the hall and banks of red upholstered seat swept upward from it. A huge projection screen displayed text indicating the occasion: the 2009 Hasan Fathy Award for Architecture, and an image of the award’s namesake. I had picked up a program from a table on my way in and in reading it (it was in English). I hadn’t realized until that point that the event was a day-long conference on architecture in Egypt, and I was unprepared to spend the entire day here. I had work to do and my Arabic instructor was due at 1:30. Fortunately, there was a coffee break scheduled for about 11:30 and I planned to make my escape at that point.

The proceedings were called to order by Dr. Ismail Serag al-Din, the director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina organization (Dr. al-Wostawy’s boss). He spoke briefly in English and then continued in Arabic. Before two minutes had passed, I realized I was seriously out of my depth. With luck, I was getting every tenth word; sometimes less. My pulse rate jumped. This was a whole different kettle of fish from yesterday. Last night I was getting between 60%-80% (sometimes much more) of what Professor Knutsson had said; today my comprehension rate at times plummeted to dismal single digits. Since the first part of the program was dedicated to the award ceremony, much of the rhetoric involved description of the various candidate projects which had been considered for the award. Slides of three different projects, a private residence, the “al-Alayli House” in a ritzy suburb of Alexandria, an administrative center for a wildlife preserve on the Red Sea coast, and a planned community for workers and staff at a three-hotel resort called al-Gouna. The explanation of the selection of these three projects went totally over my head; the pictures didn’t help at all.

The members of the award committee, four men, were introduced by Dr. Serag al-Din and, aside from their titles—“muhandis” or engineer—I didn’t get their qualifications AT ALL. This was unnerving. As the winners of the award were introduced (only at this point did I understand that all three of the projects displayed were winners, each in a different category), did I grasp why there were so many presentation boxes on the table on the dais. There was, of course, the winner of the “architect of the year” award, who was given a golden medallion suspended from a silk ribbon, and then the winners in each of the categories, which I gathered were private residence, public building and urban planning, or maybe something like “large project.”
Each of the recipients—or a representative of the design team in two cases where an architectural firm was the winner—were asked to say a few words after their awards were presented. Although I still wasn’t comprehending too much of what was being said, I found these short addresses by professionals interesting for the way in which they spoke. (Parenthetically, I was pleased that one of the co-winners was a woman architect and it was she who spoke in accepting the award on behalf of her firm.)

Someone posted to an earlier entry here asking whether there was an Arabic-English equivalent to “Spanglish” or “Newyorican” as it’s called in the Big Apple—“Arabish” or maybe “Engabic”—in other words (or neologisms if you prefer). In answer, I can now say more authoritatively, perhaps, that there is something like that spoken among certain professions. The architects who spoke that morning often interjected English words into their speeches. “Landscape,” for example, I heard a couple of times; “project,” “design,” “team,” even “environment” (although there’s a perfectly good Arabic word for that!). Of course other English words are already in common use, as I mentioned in my response to the earlier posting: “radio,” “telephone,” of course, “television,” “gossip” (as in celebrity talk show chatter), “computer,” “MP3,” and, last but not least, “internet.” Yet the degree of English penetration of Arabic is relatively limited at this time; there is plenty of English vocabulary, but no use (as far as I can tell) of English grammatical elements or syntax that would make it possible for one to argue that it has achieved the status of a sort of language or dialect on its own. (One exception, I learned later in the week, is the student body at AUC—the American University in Cairo, as reported to me by a fellow Fulbrighter who is fluent on both languages and is in a position to know.) As the short speeches I heard seem to indicate, certain professions make use of technical terms in English that they hold in common and which they know (or can safely assume) that their audiences will understand.

However, to return to my theme, it was the Arabic that I had failed to comprehend adequately that morning and the previous evening’s elation popped like a cheap carnival balloon. How appropriate that I should fall victim to hubris, that most Greek of sins, in Alexandria. Almost poetic in a way. I wonder how one says “hubris’ in Arabic?

Sunday, 25 October 2009

Last week drew to a pleasant close with the arrival on Friday of twenty-two or so Fulbrighters from Cairo who were on a two-day tour of Alexandria. I had been looking forward to seeing my colleagues and was waiting for their bus outside the Fish Market Restaurant, on the waterfront in the district of Alexandria known as al-Anfushy. I had not been to this part of town before and was struck by the differences between this area and others I had seen. Al-Anfushy is one of three or four districts that occupy Alexandria’s most prominent geographical feature, a peninsula that reaches straight out into the Mediterranean. The peninsula roughly resembles a capital “T,” the arms of which on either side of the vertical line bow slightly upward in the middle. This is feature divides the harbor at Alexandria into two separate harbors. The harbor to the West is the commercial port; the one to the East, where I was standing, was for small fishing boats and pleasure craft. There are also beaches here.

Just to my left, not a half mile to the North, was the location of the famous Greek lighthouse known as the Pharos, whose site was now occupied by the fortress built by Mamluk Sultan Qayt Bey in the 1480’s. Across the water to the west lies a much narrower peninsula which embraces the waters of the harbor from that side. That peninsula was originally a causeway built by the founders of the city in the 4th century BC. Over time, it has silted up and now forms an unbroken link with the mainland. The city, with the spectacular slanted disc of the Bibliotheca in the middle foreground, stretches away to the West along the coast. This is the high rent district and it shows distinct influences of the various European communities who have lived here over the past two centuries. Buildings of four to six stories with classical architectural features look out over the water, fronting on the broad Corniche. There are also several large mosques here, surrounded by gardens, masonry walls and ornate iron gates. The street level space in virtually every one of these buildings is a coffee shop, with wicker or wrought iron chairs and tables lining the sidewalks.

The parking lot of the restaurant where we were to eat lunch had a row of red plastic traffic cones lined up along one side and I assumed that the guarded space was for the Fulbright bus. I knew that their arrival time was only approximate and thought that perhaps they had already arrived so I wandered toward the restaurant, which was one of several shoehorned into a space between the Corniche and the sea. To my right, a building of two stories blocked my view of the harbor. The structure seemed to hold at least two eateries. After passing through a couple of archways, I emerged on a plaza where a large group of men was just dispersing after their noon prayers. I thought, “What a lovely place for a service.” I wandered down the length of the esplanade, looking in restaurant windows on both the first and second floors for familiar faces. Seeing none, I returned to the street and stood beneath one of the palms lining that stretch of the road.

After about five minutes, a big sleek tour bus pulled up and disgorged the Cairo Fulbright contingent. Hearty greetings were exchanged and Noha, one of the Fulbright staff handed me my passport (I had surrendered it to her when I was last in Cairo so my residency visa could be processed by the Egyptian government). I was glad to have it back. Noha and the other members of the Cairo office then led us up a set of stairs in the building I had passed by earlier where a large open room holding numerous tables lay before us. We were guided to two long tables and seated ourselves according to individual whim and a degree of chance. Mezze (Middle Eastern antipasto) in its various guises appeared, together with baskets of fresh pita bread. Between bites of food, conversations blossomed; I caught up on what people were doing in Cairo and how their teaching and research projects were progressing. Many people expressed excitement about touring the Bibliotheca on Saturday. Once the remnants of the mezze were cleared, the main course was served: shrimp and baked fish with a side of spiced rice. Just the sort of meal one needed for a busy afternoon of sightseeing.

We spent a pleasant hour or so eating and enjoying the view across the bay. Then, we boarded the bus and made the short drive to Sa`d Zaghloul Square, where accommodations in the Sofitel Cecil had been arranged for the group. One of the Fulbright staff had already secured room keys and these were distributed as we rode along. (I had my own place, of course) After everyone checked in and had a bit of a rest, the group reassembled in a second floor conference room where Ms. Nadia Fanous, an Alexandrian personage of some standing whose family has a long history here, was introduced as our guide for the rest of the day. She gave us a brief overview of the history of the part of Alexandria we were going to see and then led us downstairs.Out on the street, we crossed the busy thoroughfare of the “downtown” section, playing tag with waves of vehicles. Ms. Fanous pointed out the European style architecture, the (now much diminished) financial district and one or two famous landmark buildings.

Passing along to a narrower street, we turned right and entered an enclosed garden in the middle of which stood Alexandria’s synagogue, a structure erected in the late nineteenth century when the Jewish community numbered in the tens of thousands. A magnificent building with Victorian influences apparent, Italian pink granite columns, Corinthian style capitals, stone balustrades along the upper gallery. The man who spoke to us about the building is the synagogue’s custodian and one of four Jewish males still living in Alexandria. At sixty-two, he is the youngest. The remaining twenty are all elderly women. To be able to convene a minyan (requiring ten adult Jewish males), the community relies on the sons and grandsons of the community’s women, even though those men may profess another religion. When the community disappears, the building will become a museum. When this prospect was brought to the attention of the caretaker, he pursed his lips and shrugged. “It’s God’s will,” he said.

After looking around the interior, we went out a side door into a courtyard on the east side of which stood the Jewish School, a four-story building with an inscription on the side in Arabic identifying it as such. The garden was filled with various trees and shrubs planted in brick lined beds. Canals for watering were laid out between some of them.

We exited the precinct, thanking our guide and boarded our bus, which stood waiting for us.

Our next stop was the Coptic Cathedral of Saint Mark. This had been the seat of the Coptic Popes for centuries and all of their remains are interred in a crypt beneath the building. Removing our shoes, we descended and viewed the final resting place of the church’s highest ranking servants, a low chamber with a plexiglass front through which one saw mostly dust. A couple of the faithful were writing prayers on scraps of paper which they then pushed into the crypt through a small hole in the plastic window. Our next stop was the newly renovated Alexandrian Opera House. We were greeted by Hoda Abboud, the institution’s public relations manager. She gave us a tour of the performance space, extolling its acoustics and the clear sight lines of almost all of its 700 seats. She also showed us a ballet practice space and the loge and balcony levels. Quite a nice theater and more evidence of the effort to re-mold Alexandria as a cultural, educational and commercial showcase.

Another stop was the city’s cultural center where citizens were exposed to various art forms through exhibitions, children’s and adult art classes, concerts and the like. There was a quite spectacular exhibition of modern Japanese ceramics in place when we visited, with some astonishingly breathtaking work by masters from different geographic locations in that country. A guitar master class had just taken place in the performance space that afternoon. The building was once called the Muhammad Ali Club and was an exclusive retreat for the city’s nineteenth and early twentieth century elite.

From here, back on the bus for a quick tour of the `Attareen (perfume makers) district which today is home to scores of furniture shops that turn out ready-made antiques. French Empire furniture still holds a sizable market share in Egypt and there were tons of it here. Street after street of small, one- or two-room shops with half finished chairs, breakfronts, wardrobes, and sofas standing on the narrow sidewalks. Even now, with daylight quickly fading, the work continued unabated. We drove past the Roman theatre ruins, but were unable to see very much of it in the twilight.

This was undoubtedly the least pleasant part of the tour, for me, at least, riding through a working class district in a huge, flashy tour bus. It was uncomfortable not in a physical sense, but rather because it emphasized our position of privilege in relation to the inhabitants. We gawked through the windows; the residents gawked back. And gestured. I realize that we would be perceived as privileged by the locals even if we were touring on foot, but the distance created by the bus’s walls and windows only enhanced the sense of removal from the reality of these people’s everyday lives—on which we were intruding in a very high profile manner. We were now hurrying to dinner, reservations for which had been made at Santa Lucia, an upscale restaurant behind the hotel where the group was staying. Dinner was veal scallopine, served with a green salad and rice and broccoli as sides. Chocolate mousse topped off the meal.

After dinner, most people chose to walk back to the hotel so smaller groups broke off from the main one and wandered up over a slight rise toward the ocean. The street along which we walked was filled with people, mostly young men but many women as well. For the first time since I arrived, I was witness to the sort of harassment that women (particularly, but not exclusively, young western women) have to endure here. My presence among a number such women seemed to aggravate the situation. Testosterone fueled adolescent fantasies were no doubt being exchanged among these guys. Although I was unable to actually comprehend any of the comments being tossed our way, the tenor of the words was easily understood. That gauntlet was run without incident, however, and we emerged on Sa`d Zaghloul Square and entered the hotel.

In the foyer, we were greeted by a band of men playing drums and a trumpet and singing in a celebratory fashion. The reason for this was quickly apparent for at the foot of the staircase surrounded by the drummers and singers, was a newly wedded pair. Women in the wedding party suddenly let fly with their characteristic sound of joy, the ululation, which I can’t describe in words and can only very poorly imitate. You will thank me for not ever trying to imitate it, trust me.

The party processed past the front door and moved off in the direction of the reception room; our presence was apparently not viewed as an intrusion; we simply joined in as another group of celebrants. Once the procession passed by, some of the Fulbrighters decided to retire to “Monty’s Bar” a watering hole on the hotel’s second floor. Monty’s is named in honor of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the British World War Two general who fought against Germany’s famous “Desert Fox,” General Erwin Rommel. Monty apparently ran his North Africa campaign from this hotel. I did not check the veracity of this story, but Monty’s photo was prominently displayed on one wall. In any case, we rounded out the evening with a glass of whatever and then made our separate ways off to bed. My road lay along the Corniche, so I hailed a cab and went home.

Saturday morning, I met the group at the Bibliotheca, where we were treated to an extensive and quite whirlwind tour not only of the library (which everyone judged to be a magnificent building), but of most of its ancillary units as well. We saw the museum devoted to Shadi Abdel Salam, a famous Egyptian film director, philosopher, and designer. It was he who designed Cleopatra’s ship for Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1962 film “Cleopatra” which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Next stop was a space called the Culturama, which featured another interactive display on nine projection screens, the same system we had experienced at the University of Cairo’s Central Library last week. This program gave an overview of Egypt’s history in visual form, complete with virtual tours of some of the more famous historical sites, such as the temple at Luxor. Next we visited a small museum devoted to the life of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The exhibit even included the bloody, bullet torn military tunic he was wearing when he was assassinated. Our final stop was the antiquities museum, which contains numerous artifacts relating to Egypt’s—and particularly Alexandria’s—history. Many of the items on display were uncovered during the excavation of the library’s construction site.

Again, we were pressed for time, so we hurried to the bus for our final stop, lunch at the Greek Club, which is located near the end of the peninsula that forms part of the harbor. We sat on a second floor terrace and ate lunch with a group of Egyptian Fulbright alumni.

I sat at a table with several students, Bruce Lohof, the director of the Cairo Fulbright office, and two faculty/administrators from the University of Alexandria. Ismail Gomaa is a professor of environmental geology and Muhammad Ibrahim is Vice Dean for Community Development and Environmental Affairs. He is also a professor in the business school. Both men had held Fulbright teaching fellowships in the United States. We enjoyed our meal and lively conversation about Egypt’s development, the Egyptians’ Fulbright experiences and the state of the world in general.

All too soon, the time for departure arrived and we strolled out onto the sea wall for a group photo before taking or leave. The group boarded the bus and I hailed a cab for the ride back to my apartment. Tomorrow, it’s back to work.

Friday, 23 October 2009

The past few days have been a whirl of activity, finally. Among other things, I have arranged a schedule for the first set of collection development training workshops. We begin next Monday and I will offer six sessions over three days. Each of the workshops will be offered twice so that all reference shifts will be able to attend. So that’s three preparations for six classes and it will no doubt be intense. I’m looking forward to getting the party started. Look for reports about how it goes…

Second, I have engaged an Arabic tutor who has agreed to work with me on my colloquial Egyptian. We have arranged to meet for two two-hour sessions each week. From now until the middle of January (with some exceptions), Sayed Abd al-Kader and I will be speaking colloquial Arabic with each other. That should jump start the linguistic engine. Dr. Abd al-Kader is one of those professors I mentioned in an earlier blog as holding two posts; for him, one here at the University of Alexandria and another at the University of Cairo. He lives in Alexandria most of the time and commutes to Cairo on the days he teaches there. Our first week has gone well, I think and it is encouraging to me that I can understand 90% of what he says the first time. Now, if only I could get to that level of comprehension when dealing with Alexandrine taxi drivers and shop clerks!

Suddenly, there has been a spate of social events on the calendar, as well. This weekend about twenty Fulbrighters are coming to Alexandria for a visit and tour and I’ll be joining them for most of that; I’ve intentionally held back from visiting a lot of the tourist attractions in the city precisely because I knew that my fellow Fulbrighters would be coming and I thought that once I have seen the sites on that itinerary, I can then go out on my own and see what we don’t see together. In addition, there is a lecture at the Swedish Cultural Center next week, an Egyptian Architectural award ceremony at the library, and a Fulbright dinner in Cairo. The first two of these events Dr.al-Wostawy invited me to attend (In her stead, in one case, I think…). So the social calendar begins to fill as well.

Having been here some five weeks now, there are certain personal matters that it becomes important to attend to. I refer to those cyclical events that one doesn’t necessarily think about at home, but which, when you’re abroad, suddenly take on increased import. Buying (or trying to find) your favorite soap or toothpaste (realistically, how much of that stuff do you want to schlepp along in your already overweight luggage?) sits at the lower end of that list. Finding a good dentist, pharmacy or clothing store, depending on the length of your stay, assume much greater importance. The Cairo Scholar Google group postings are FULL of queries about these concerns as well as finding a good plumber, carpenter, yoga class, contact lens solution supplier, computer repair person, and barber or hairdresser. It is this last category which has been of particular interest to me of late.

Now, this category doesn’t apply to everyone—mostly to those of us fortunate enough to still have something up there to cut. For us the issue is: what is the result going to be? Will one emerge from the chosen establishment looking like a military draftee on induction day, or will the barber/hair stylist’s handiwork require you to wear a wool cap for the next four weeks? Not a happy prospect in this country, I can tell you. So, the issue, then, is to find a decent barber shop and how does one do that in a foreign country? Well, you could camp out in front of a different shop each evening (barbers, like most other businesses are open primarily in the late afternoons and evenings in Egypt) and observe how exiting customers appear, or you could ask around among fellow European or American sojourners—or Egyptians—who might be sporting a cut you admire for a recommendation. Or you could simply scout out a clean, well-lighted, heavily visited shop and walk in. Not having too many American or European acquaintances close at hand, my option was the latter.

On the designated evening (Wednesday last), I screwed up my courage and walked out into a very pleasant, cool and breezy evening toward my destination. On one of my many walks along Abu Kir Street, a major commercial thoroughfare not far from my apartment, I had passed a very nice-looking shop with two or three chairs advertising itself as a “men’s hair stylist.” I saw this as a positive sign thinking that anyone who aspired (at least) to actually style hair, rather than simply cut it, might be a cut above the generic barber shop. The door of the shop stood open but a rather tattered bead curtain hung from the interior of the frame. I pushed my way through, with a rattle of beads, and was immediately greeted by the barber (okay, stylist) who invited me to sit in a chair in the waiting area. He was engaged in a conversation with two twenty-something Egyptian males so I picked up an Alexandrian newspaper from the stack on a nearby table and began to work my way through the headlines.

After some minutes, one of the young customers apparently reached a decision and proceeded to have his hair washed while his companion waited. The barber took over as soon as the shampoo had been completed and started to work on his customer’s head. The teenager who had performed the shampoo on the first customer then appeared at my shoulder and motioned me to take a seat in front of the sink. A towel is draped around my shoulders and I recline into the notch in the sink. The water is shockingly cold and raises a doubt or two about my choice of barbers. But I decide to suck it up and withhold judgment a while longer. It’s only water and soap, after all. The shampoo is too heavily scented for my taste. The boy’s hands are gentle and he’s obviously been taught some sort washing technique because he’s thorough. More cold water to wash the lather out and another brief scalp massage using a fresh towel.

I’m then led to the second of two barber chairs in front of a large mirror. I take my seat and a second barber suddenly emerges from an interior room somewhere. A paper strip is wrapped around my neck and the customary cloth drape is tied on top of it. The second barber, like the first, is in his thirties, clean shaven and casually dressed. His hair, tight dark brown ringlets, is tidy and cropped pretty close. I wonder who did his do. He asks me what I want done. I reply that I want a trim, nothing severe, not more than a centimeter or a centimeter and a half taken off. He looks a little taken aback but then nods his head okay.

My initial fear is that he is going to whip out the clippers and in a few short minutes undo what it has taken my regular barber ten years to work into shape. To my relief, he picks up his scissors and begins to snip away. He’s being cautious and seems intent on his work as I watch his progress in the mirror. He makes his first pass around my head, getting the general outline of the finished product. When he gets to the sides of my head, he asks whether I want my hair to cover the tops of my ears (my customary fashion) or shorter. I tell him to uncover the ears. I figure that way I may be able to postpone my next visit for a week or two longer. Just in case I don’t like what he does. A second pass brings us closer to the desired result. The teenager shows up again and slips a single edge razor blade into a holder lying on the shelf beneath the mirror. The stylist uses this to even up my sideburns and to scrape away the gray hairs marching down the back of my neck.

So far, this has all been relatively conventional and I’m starting to feel a bit more at ease when things start getting interesting. I’m asked to recline against the headrest. As I lean back the stylist dips his fingers into a jar of some sort of lotion which he proceeds to apply to my face: a stripe across my forehead, each cheek, upper lip, and nose. The lotion is heavily scented; as I said, I’m not a fan of scented grooming products. Okay, now this is unexpected and a little unnerving, but I decide to see what this is all about. The next five minutes or so are devoted to a facial massage which I experience as a kind of heavy petting. It is sensual and shockingly intimate, a reaction that surprises me and brings unbidden images from the Thousand and One Arabian Nights to mind. I’ve never had anyone massage my face before, and certainly never a stranger! Not on the first date anyway. Not even dinner and a movie. Just at the point where I think this is getting a bit kinky–having your eyelids and nose (your nose!) massaged is a weird experience– a hot steamy towel is produced and placed over my face. After a few seconds, it is used to gently remove the excess lotion. A second towel follows the first and the process is repeated. The steam from the towel heats the lotion and its fragrance colors the air.

I am directed to sit up again and the stylist returns to his scissors to make a few final adjustments to his work. Those pesky geezer-ish ear and nose hairs are clipped away and the eyebrows pruned. Next the hair dryer is unholstered and, with the assistance of a rat tail brush, a final styling is wrought. Then, the aerosol hair spray appears and is liberally applied. A cloud of mist surrounds my head and a totally new odor intrudes on my senses. Again, I’m not a fan of scented personal hygiene products. Finally, the cloth drape is untied and the paper collar unwound. The teenager is called and he brings a hand mirror with which I can assess the result from various angles. Well, it’s only hair and I’m not unhappy. There’s way too much artifice in the result but it’s not terrible so I ask the cost (25 Egyptian pounds= $5) and pay. The teenager gets a tip for his shampoo work; I thank the barber and exit the shop.

The cloud of fragrance follows me and I find myself wondering what sort of insects or feral animals might be attracted to the multitude of odors I’m wafting into the night air. My only hope is that the cacaphony of odors will prevent any potentially threatening species programmed to respond to a single fragrance will be confused and not immediately identified me as a potential source of food–or an object of affection. My first task when I get home is to shower this stuff out. I also need to give myself a couple of days to make a dispassionate assessment of my new haircut and to consider whether or not to find a different place next time. All in all, no permanent harm done; the hair–or at least some of it–will grow back and I haven’t seen any shocked expressions on the faces of people I encounter in the street, so maybe it’s okay.

Monday, 19 October 2009

The past week has dragged. There. Said it. With the librarians engaged in a marathon two-week training program—both for themselves as well as for a cohort of Bahraini (I think) librarians—I have been at loose ends for much of the time. I made a point of getting out and walking around my part of the city at least once a day, a new direction or distance each time, just to see what’s there. I’ve found that the evening is the best time to emerge since that’s when the streets come to life, as I’ve indicated before. That has been helpful both psychologically as well as physically and now that things are beginning to roll again at the library, I think I’m going to find myself short of time all too often.

Given the dearth of eateries in my immediate neighborhood, I had been looking for one that was at least within walking distance—for me, a mile and a half or so—and although I found a couple, neither served Egyptian food. Determined to rectify this absence, I set out to see if I could identify any likely possibilities. In one of my tidying up fits, I happened to run across an e-mail I had printed out from a friend of a friend whose family lives in Alexandria. He mentioned a place called Muhammad Ahmad’s and I check my Alexandria map, which has a key listing restaurants, to see if it is mentioned. There it is, in the city center and not far from the Corniche. I got a cab and had the driver drop me off close to the spot marked on the map. The streets were filled with people taking the evening air or shopping in one of the innumerable electronics shops, clothing stores, parfumeries, and the like. But I didn’t see the restaurant, so I finally stopped in one of the shops and asked.

“Where’s Muhammad Ahmad’s restaurant?” Big smile.

“Ah. Muhammad Ahmad! Come my friend.” Hand on my shoulder guiding me to the shop’s entrance.

“Three streets down, turn to the right. Can’t miss it.”

So, it was true. I had been told that it was a famous location and that anyone in the vicinity would be able to direct me. Great.

“Okay. Thanks.”

I head off in the direction indicated and make the turn indicated. I walk down one and then two blocks without seeing anything. Of course, what AM I looking for? I don’t really know what a popular Egyptian restaurant should look like. I know the word for restaurant, but I’m not seeing it. So, I ask again. The person I query points over my shoulder. I turn around and there it is. Big sign, lots of lights. The entire front of the place is open to the street and most of the tables are full. Just as I step up, the table nearest the doorway becomes free and the waiter quickly seats me. All around people are busy eating and talking. I’m handed a menu and see that the full name of the restaurant is Muhammad Ahmad’s Fool Restaurant.

Now, “fool” in Arabic is the word for broad beans. Fool is the Egyptian equivalent of American comfort food. It’s eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and is prepared in a variety of ways depending on which city you happen to be in and what time of day it is. “Fool mudammas” is the most common form, broad beans cooked in a sauce and served with such condiments as chopped onions, sesame sauce, tomatoes and the like. That’s ALL they serve here.

I’m reminded of the Belushi-Ackroyd “Saturday Night Live” skit sending up the archetypal New York City Greek diner: “Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!” “No Coke; Pepsi!”

“BLT?”

“No BLT. Cheeseburger.”

Well, this is the real deal. I peruse the menu and choose the “Fool Alexandrina” figuring that is what I should have in Alexandria, at least for a Fool virgin. I order a hummus salad, French fries, and a bottle of water. The first thing to show up is a basket with three pieces of pita bread in it. The salad follows almost immediately and I start in on it. The place bustles; empty tables are cleared in a flash and quickly filled by a steady stream of newcomers. My meal arrives on a small aluminum plate: a dish of beans garnished with tahini sesame dressing, some chopped green onions and diced tomato. Not spicy, but tasty and filling, which is the fool’s essential virtue.

As I eat, a gang of men shows up carrying huge aluminum cooking pots. They carry them past me into the restaurant, followed in short order by another group of men carrying stacks of yellow plastic milk crates filled with pita bread. A portly guy with a fringe of short grey hair around his head strolls to the entry and observes the work. I gather that this must be Muhammad Ahmad. He’s wearing a short sleeve polo shirt which is straining to contain his ample girth. His herniated navel perches like a dinner roll on his belly.

This guy is a remarkable mixture of anger and gentleness. One minute he’s patiently instructing a young worker on how to sweep the trash from in front of the establishment, the next he’s chewing a new sphincter for one of the bread delivery people. Apparently, the guy had set a bread crate down on the street instead of on the truck bed and the owner doesn’t want dirty bread in his place. I appreciate his concern but note that the bread gets delivered anyway. Waste not, want not…

I finish my meal and ask for the check. Ten pounds! You are joking. Two bucks? Another satisfied customer. I leave a nice tip for the waiter and saunter out into the evening. I find the coffee house I had visited earlier in the week when I toured the acropolis and order a Turkish coffee and a slice of gateau with cream. I spend twice as much on dessert as I spent on dinner, but it puts a nice touch on the end of the evening.

Toward the end of the week, I become aware of stirrings at the library. The head of collection development, Nermin, contacts me and asks to meet so we can move forward with the program. On Sunday, I meet with Nermin in my office and we try to hash out what she would like me to do and balance that against what I think I can provide. Something has obviously been lost in translation somewhere along the line because I have to tell her at the end of our time that I will have to re-think my plan of action before I can do what she would like. I agree to send her an outline of a three-session workshop in the next couple of days. I take my notes home and spend the next day working on an outline for the sessions.

Monday dawns through overcast and heavy humidity. The sea is obscured completely at 7 AM and the temperature already stands above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Radio Cairo tells me to expect temperatures as high as 30 (Centigrade=about 85 Fahrenheit). The wet air makes the atmosphere even more oppressive so I put the AC on, the first time I’ve turned it on in the morning since I’ve been here. Today will be busy; I have scheduled a brief appointment with Dr. al-Wostawy so I can formally present the library with a copy of my book, and then I’m meeting a man who I am interested in engaging as my Arabic tutor.

I get to the library about a half an hour before my appointment with Dr. al-Wostawy and settle into my office. Just before 10:30, I call Sohair and tell her I’m here and need someone to escort me to her office (I still don’t have a pass card and don’t yet have access to the staff areas…). Amr, the very personable young factotum shows up about 10: 40 and we go up to Sohair’s office. As usual, she’s got three things going at once. She motions me to a chair and I wait until she’s finished with her other business. We talk briefly about her trip to Qatar and how I’m getting along. I present her with a copy of my book, which she is pleased to accept and asks me to autograph it. I tell her that I don’t want to take her time, but we end up spending twenty minutes or more talking about her plans for the “one millionth volume” celebration, which will mark that collection development milestone for the library.

By the time I leave, I have two additional assignments; first, Sohair wants my recommendation for the one millionth title: what should it be? Oy! I promise to give it a shot. I gather from what she says about a couple of ideas I throw off the cuff that it should somehow exemplify what the Bibliotheca is all about. Additionally, she has been given the task of writing up an abstract that is to be used by the director of the Bibliotheca, Ismail Serageldin (Sohair’s boss), as he fashions his address for this occasion. She asks if I might put something together about the role of the Fulbright program in the evolution of scholarship that she can pass along to him. Big oy!

I take my leave promising, on my way out, to get something to her as soon as I can. Amr is waiting for me with a telephone in hand and (oh, joy!) a pass card that will allow me greater freedom of movement in the library. We go back to my office, Amr installs the phone and gets me my extension number. The pass card needs to be validated so we will meet tomorrow morning at eleven to get that processed. I go to work for a while on the collection development project while waiting for my appointment with the Arabic tutor to roll around. Shortly before I’m about to close up shop and head out for the meeting, two young women from technical support show up and get the computer in my office set up so I have an account on the library’s system. Now we’re cookin’! I’ve almost got everything I need now.

I leave the building and wait in the place the tutor and I agreed upon. Ten past the hour and still no sign of him. I go up the stairs to the restaurant and see no one looking remotely like an Arabic teacher. As I’m descending the stairs, though, I’m passed by a man who says hello in English. Aha. Uncertain, though, that it is he, I continue to the foot of the stairs. The man I passed is at the top of the stairs and I watch as he takes out two cell phones. He’s obviously looking for a number and two seconds later my phone is ringing. We signal each other and introduce ourselves.

The library coffee shop is closed for some special gathering so we stroll across the plaza and grab a cab that takes us to the Mahatet al-Raml district close to the city center, where we enter a coffee house and order mango juice. We have been chatting in Arabic since we met and I’m struggling to keep up, but Sayid Abd al-Kader’s enunciation is clear and his speech moderated so that I’m getting nearly everything he says. And I’m making myself understood (will wonders never cease!).
We talk for a while—he’s a Professor of Arabic and English at both Cairo University and the University of Alexandria—and agree to meet twice a week for two hours at a time.

I tell him that I’m interested in working on my colloquial rather than classical Arabic and he agrees. He asks me how I want to approach the project and I tell him I’m interested in improving my ability to communicate verbally. We talk about possible topics for discussion and what sort of instructional materials I might want to use. We agree upon that matter and then set up a schedule. I’ll be meeting Sayid Mondays and Wednesdays at 1:30 for about an hour and three quarters each day. I’m hoping that four hours a week will be enough. I can’t afford more than that anyway.

I grab another cab back to Saba Pasha and spend the rest of the day digesting everything I now have to do. Have to get up to speed in a hurry now!

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.