80 birds with one stone

i started writing this a couple weeks ago and didn't finish it. that's what happens with most everything that isn't my regular work here at the American Research Center - or "arsee" as we refer to it in our daily laments and litanies.

i've gotten a lot of emails and been generally overwhelmed with my inability to respond. As I told my friend Bryan:

"Everytime I try to write an email I get derailed because I can't send it until its a complete thought and I never get around to making a complete thought. So now i'm like half a dozen thoughts backed up. I don't know if i can finish this thought because its late and i never get enough sleep. But i have a blog that I never have time to post to and only my mom reads apparently and at some point i'm going to just have to give up on responding to emails and respond to them in my blog. Then I can kill like 80 birds with one stone." So here goes. I will try to make this blog a place where I answer questions and capture what it’s really like.

4am my dreams are intermingled with the sound of Arabic prayers droning out of a loudspeaker. it's Friday morning before the Eid holiday, I've gone to bed just hours ago, and my dreams are drowned now in this muffled shouting. I am jolted from the mostly sensical world of my dreams into the sometimes nonsensical always magical place that is Egypt, this place that I live in and love. Allah Akhbar.

The prayers today are especially aggressive. It's "Friday's sermon" or "Friday's rant" as my housemate says. It sounds kind of like the 3rd Reich, a political rant, or a Pink Floyd song from The Wall. The megaphone definitely takes prayer to a different place. Pam, my housemate, is convinced he's screaming at the top of the lungs about how to slaughter goats. They are lined up now at the butcher's in the market, I saw 50 of them or so, driving by in our balidy bus last night, penned up and necks soon to be slit.

"Eid al-Adha" or just Eid for short celebrates Ibrahim's (or Abraham depending on which side of the fence you stand) near sacrifice of his son to Allah (or God). According to the Koran and not far off from the Biblical version, "the devil tempted Ibrahim by saying he should disobey Allah and spare his son. As Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son, Allah intervened and instead provided a ram as the sacrifice. This is why today all over the world Muslims who have the means to, sacrifice an animal (usually a goat or a sheep), as a reminder of Ibrahim's obedience to Allah. The meat is then shared out with family, friends (Muslims or non-Muslims), as well as the poor members of the community. (Islam names Ishmael as the son who was to be sacrificed, whereas the Judeo-Christian name Isaac)." Thank you wikipedia.

Nicholas: On a scale of 1 to 10 you ask - how do you rate it in terms of magic?

At least a 9 or a 10. There is magic everywhere. Today it was giant hot air balloons being lit in great numbers outside of Karnak Temple where we work. Leaving the temple complex in the company van, I was so overcome by the spontaneity and the flame and color of it all that I had to get out of the van and tell my co-workers I'd walk home because I couldn't not take pictures. Owen, my friend in photographic jaunts, jumped out to join me. Children swarmed around to watch the torches inflate the mammoth rainbow billows as a dozen men struggled to brace the basket down to the earth, children circling in pairs and threes on bicycles and tugging on my arm to have their picture taken. If you have time to do things other than work, then you can participate in such magic everyday and that is more than enough.

Anxiety?

Maybe a 7 or 8 but it diminishes quickly, after a week or two its not so bad, and after two months its all but gone. I should point out that this is specifically Luxorian anxiety, as Cairo has its own version. Being home to some of the world's most amazing Egyptian antiquities, you can't escape the tourist culture here. The collective inertia of thousands of years of tourism has left a permanent stain on this town, and the initial weeks in Luxor can be crushing. You cannot leave the flat without being haggled by at least a dozen people.

The techniques of approaching foreigners, over thousands of years have evolved becoming increasingly more abrupt, short, and aggressive. The questions employed to hook a tourist into your service no longer require full sentences or even a verb, but instead consist of one word - they are more like demands then questions, from "BUKSHISH" with the gesture of an open hand (give me money) to "KALESH?" (want a ride in my carriage) and they are always repeated half a dozen times despite your negative or non-response. They come from children or from carriage riders, taxi drivers, shop owners, shoe shiners, in short, from everyone. At first, such behavior can be maddening. You have no way of waving off these hagglers, no way to communicate that you have been through this routine every day for the past two months and no you don't want to ride in their carriage/taxi/shoeshine chair, no way of regaining your invisible nature – something you took for granted back home.

Last week, determined to get out of Luxor for the Eid holiday, Owen and I planned a trip out to the Red Sea. We chose the more remote of the Red Sea venues, setting our sights on Dahab - which sells itself as the ideal backpacker/diving locale. Cairo confirmed my belief despite it's movie theaters & bowling allies on ships, i still prefer Luxor. One does however quickly tire of the haggling culture that seems to dart at you from every alley, cornerstore, horse carriage, cafe, and felucca dock in Luxor and so its really necessary to get away periodically. Once a month, I’d say, to keep it together.

Outside of its Starbucks and ex-pat McDonalds complete with kiddie slides, Cairo offers the rare opportunity to disappear into the crowd. It’s a strange sensation getting off the train from Luxor - you are no longer a walking neon wallet, fair game for any Egyptian in their favorite sport – which is intricate and employs jokes, lies, and the use of “brother” “friend” and other such things to suggest friendliness.
Each nationality triggers different lines, puns. Traveling with Owen, as soon as people find out he’s from Canada, they always use the “Canada Dry” line – they don’t seem to have much material here. America is a little more of a watershed – they almost ubiquitously mention Obama or Bush, and this is a fun game.

The opportunity to disappear into the crowd in Cairo is an immense relief – getting of the train it’s as if your humanity has been restored. But the smog, the game of frogger required to cross the street & the lack of nature will drive you out quickly.
Our company helped us organize a private microbus to Dahab. Although it ended up costing twice as much as we expected and broke my bank completely, I’d say it was still a good call – the public bus from Cairo to Dahab is known to make excessive stops along the way, turning a 7-8 hour drive into a 17 hour drive. Sounds kind of horrific to me.

So it was a bourgeoisie commute to a backpacker mecca I suppose – somewhat of a contradiction – we dropped over $200 to get from Cairo to the Red Sea – where our room ran us only $20 a night. The ride was bumpy enough to send you leaping out of your sleep every couple miles when the back of the bus jolted over a bump. We started with the AC blasting in our sterile luxurious micro-bus, a strange contrast to regular Egyptian life which is infiltrated with dust – the strong aroma of cologne wafting from our 3 escorts – hair slicked back with gel, forever sporting sunglasses and the same balady cassette tape playing over and over for the first four hours. All of this didn’t faze me in the slightest. The highlight was when we stopped for the restroom and I came out into the convenient store looking for TP and one of our guys was trying to ask me what I wanted, and seemed to communicate that no, they didn’t sell any TP. So I bought some cologne-scented wet wipes & left with a wonderful smelling rear. Then when I stepped outside to get back into the micro-bus the guy came up to me holding a rolling paper, assuming I had asked to buy papers to smoke hash in; I smiled & said no thanks, explaining that I had only wanted papers for the toilet. They then purchased another balady cassette tape, some mango juice, and cookies and we were on our way.

As the sun was setting the mountains moved in – everything dappled in red light and cyan shadows. By the time we got to Sharma Al Sheik – the huge resort town 100km from Dahab – a real life Las Vegas times Disney World plopped right down in the middle of the Egptian desert – it was pitch black. Egyptian drivers, by the way, turn off their headlights while driving at night, a practice which baffles foreigners, the running explanation being that they see it as a way of conserving battery power – and rely on laying on the horns and/or flashing their lights whenever approaching an oncoming vehicle/person/obstacle.

We fly along with the speedometer beeping – the sound only going away when we dropped below 120km up against the balady music it sounded like a hospital heart monitor, communicating that indeed we were alive, but at any moment a family on a motorcycle could appear on the road at the same time as an oncoming truck and the whole thing would just go down ugly.

Bryan: What are things like out there? Still enjoying it? Can you find beer? Are there any stories or series you're working on in addition to the blocks?
I am ecstatic to be here. Honest. The magic hasn’t worn out yet. My previous blog entry spoke of itches yet to be scratched, but I must admit, that at present, I think they are scratched. I really wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that way, so I’m just kind of waiting for the curtain to fall and wake up from the dream. I know that these things don’t last forever, but I’ve really got all my chips in on getting hired for a second year. Some of my co-workers say its wishful thinking to suppose they’ll extend the project and our contracts another year, but this is my deep and sincere hope.

Beer. Yes, Luxor is infamous for two beers: Luxor and Sakara. Both are mediocre but do-able. I’ve discovered a third beer called Nuba which really takes the cake. It’s a smooth dark beer that tastes strikingly like Newcastle. We’ve been trying to get our hands on the case of the stuff so that we have it back at the flat. Right now we’re finishing up the whiskey that we purchased at the airport on the way in. After that, it might get a little desperate. But you should know that there are bars here. Ex-pat bars.

Genesis – for example - this bar is the thing of legends – it’s run by a Ukrainian woman with typical Slavic temperament and a deadpan expression. Her two kids run about the bar – McKenzie is a two year old girl with curly locks who makes meowing sounds and tugs at her mothers skirt and the boy, a 6 or 7 year old, frequently beats everyone at pool, almost beating me the last time I was there. and she has a huge great dame which takes the couch beside the pool table as its bed. There is also a set of furniture upside down glued to the ceiling, sometimes birds can be seen flying around inside. also the tables are aquariums and they actually have a pool inside the bar which should soon be made available to the public. On top of all this they have karaoke, when the Ukrainian woman isn’t in a PMS mood, you can sing anything from Aretha to Amy Winehouse to Justin Timberlake. All in all, I am a big fan, but I still haven’t worked up the nerve to speak to her in Russian.

Alright. That’s it for now. I have a million more things to talk about, adventures in Dahab, adventures in work and in play, but I’m averaging 4 hours a sleep a night this week, so things gotta change.

PS - some dude that works in the kitchen who is our buddy gave me this gallabeya as a present which is bright orange and has a hoodie and says 7 ELEVEN across it with a buttload of sequence. America, just you wait.