Cairo and Port Said, Egypt: Week 2 بداية الصفوف

This weekend I took a day trip to Port Said, a nice city on the Mediterranean and Suez Canal. The day was filled with boat watching, a horse carriage tour around the city, markets, cheap delicious food and some tea and sweets with a nice man with four wives. Some Egyptian twenty-something men came up to my friends and I and began to follow us, saying "we want only friendship." At first we just said nothing and kept walking, but they were persistent, so I spoke in French pretending not to understand their Arabic or English "Quoi? No english, desolée!" A proven effective strategy, highly recommended!

Saw boats of all shapes, sizes and colors hanging out around the Suez Canal.

Israeli tank from 56 Suez Crisis Hey Nasser!

My Neighborhood in Zamalek في الزمالك

I live on an island in the middle of the Nile. It is filled with beautiful big trees, embassies and American restaurants (but you can find Egyptian ones too). My sense of direction is horrible, to say the least, and the fact that everything goes in circles and street signs are hard to come by has led to my complete disorientation, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. The neighborhood is very safe and pretty close to downtown and best of all, a very short walk to the Nile from my dormitory.

 

The trees are enormous, generally taking up the sidewalk, and grow at 45 degree angles.

The garden in the middle of the dorm.

American University in Cairo Campus الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة

    The library: 

Campus is in the desert. 


And in downtown....
(Um Kalthoum at the cafe dedicated to her image and music)

Cairo, Egypt: Week 1 ! أهلاً وسهلاً للقاهرة

I arrived here around 2:30 am Egyptian time from Tel Aviv, responding to all questions in Hebrew instead of Arabic (oy vey). The first week was orientation week for Study Abroad students. We toured Old Cairo (where I saw the synagogue built on the exact place Moses was scooped up from the Nile), we went on a falluqa (Egyptian sail boat) ride on the Nile, I saw the pyramids, I went on my own adventures with other students and I filled out a lot of paperwork.

I am touching the Great Pyramid in Giza. You can see the Pyramids in the distance from the city which is very cool. I haven't discovered any secret tombs yet, but I still have the whole year so I didn't want to rush it on my first week.

A reinactment of the hard labor my ancestors performed in the land of Egypt.

My schoolbus.

First Mosque in Egypt.

Souq Khan el Khalili: This is a market where men ask me how many camels I am worth and tell me how beautiful I am. (This is a very good place to go to build your self esteem). I now know I am worth 1 million camels and look like a spice girl.

And apparently my gentlemen friends are very lucky to have 3 beautiful wives.
Hungy anyone?

Me and Ali.
One thing really amazing about being in Egypt during at this time is experiencing a bit of Ramadan. Each day Muslims fast from sunrise to sundown, by the last few hours of the fast a lot of the city shuts down and things for Cairo standards are pretty quiet. All of a sudden the call to prayer is heard from wherever you are (Allahu Akbar!) and everyone breaks their fast at the same time at the iftar meal. While walking through the markets with some AUC friends, strangers invited us to join their meal. It is traditional as part of the spirit of Ramadan to welcome anyone to the iftar meal. We ate with a shopkeeper and his family communicating through broken english, arabic and hand gestures and smiles. It was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life, to be so welcomed by a complete stranger. I soon saw that hospitality was a very strong trait in Egyptian culture. Later that night we bought spices from a man who invited us to his iftar another night, the photo above is of me and the spice man's (Salah) son's friend, Ali who continued to follow us after the meal.
Brianna, myself, Ellen touring a 700 year old mosque in downtown Cairo.
(Mosque etiquette: shoes off, headscarf on)

Lying in Cairo: When I got to the dorm I was asked about my flight: how long was it? where did you fly from? And so the lying began to save me from explaining my trip to Israel. My next lies followed with saying I am a vegetarian (you are currently reading the blog of a kosher steak enthusiast). Many people asked me why I was vegetarian and at first it was hard to stick with one story, but luckily the inquiries have mostly stopped. The biggest lie of course has been the question of religion. When asked by American students I say I find beauty in all religion and I really enjoy studying religions. Only today in fact I was directly asked by two friends on separate occasions who perhaps suspected. I was also asked by an Egyptian man who I briefly met if I was Christian and I said yes. Lying about my Jewish identity is mentally very straining and upsetting and it can be very hard to be myself sometimes. Even in my sociology class I am required to write an essay titled "Who Am I?" and I still have not decided if I will write about who I actually am or simply continue with my alter-ego.

Antisemitism in Cairo: It is interesting to experience anti-semetism when no one knows you're Jewish. My orientation Arabic teacher was talking about the meaning of hijab (headscarf Muslim women wear) and then said Jewish women don't understand modesty because they only cover their hair after marriage, and something about how they believe their hair is sinful. I used a Jewish website on my ipod to explain to this women the Jewish traditions and confronted her without outing myself. I've also seen t-shirts that say "free palestine" with a palestinian flag over the entire map of Israel, students who joke about how Israel probably controls Egypt's internet and can just stop it whenever they want, and of course swastikas all over the city. Most of the antisemetic propaganda is directly from the Holocaust and I can easily pick up an Arabic copy of Mein Kempf from the little stand in front of my grocery store that only sells Hitler's book, the Qur'an and maybe 10 other options.

Everywhere except Dimona, Israel (Last 2 weeks of August 2009)

My last two weeks in Israel were very busy and I got a taste of most of the country. I was stationed in Jerusalem at my cousin Meli's apartment and together we explored the holyland. My Zionist education was vastly expanded during our travels; everywhere you go in Israel is a piece of Jewish history, modern and/or ancient. Every town and city I went to had its own unique character, but the greater feeling of community was found everywhere. I could list the many reasons that Israel feels like one big extended family or how Israel is the only place in the world that I am so excited to see lots of construction because I love to see the country grow, but instead I'll show some pictures of my journey with a couple captions :).

Acre- עכו
Ramat Hanadiv-רמת חנדיב (Meli and I in beautiful gardens)


Hiking in the Golan with pools to cool off along the way, later that day we went kayaking on the Jordan river.

Oh my gosh! Someone is trapped under this building! (Shopping in the Shuk Carmel in Tel Aviv)

Meeting McGill friends (Robin and Tommy) at a bar in Tel Aviv


Beach day with Sarah Weis in Ashdod (tip: never ask a beach ars to take your photo)

Tomb of the Patriarchs-מערת המכפלה in Hebron (this is where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried.) This was my favorite holy site and I understand why many Israelis are willing to fight so hard to keep it under Israel's control. It was much easier for me to feel a strong connection here opposed to the Kotel. The Kotel is not the Temple, but merely a retaining wall, whereas in Hebron, the site was more accessible and still intact!
View from Mt Carmel, Haifa- חיפה
Ma'or and I in Tel Aviv reminscing the days of USY on Wheels

Picture of Ben Guiron and Albert Einstein (on display at Ben Gurion's house). Way too much hair for one picture, perhaps a secret to their respective success.

Friends from the camp in Dimona celebrating our love for the Negev town at Jerusalem's beer festival. That night we sang the childrens camp songs with other drunk people and celebrated my last beer before I went to Egypt.

....
During my stay in Israel there were many points where I wanted to remain in Israel, many times when I asked myself if going to Egypt was the best idea when I could just study in Israel where I could live freely, safely and happily as a Jew and a woman. People had different reactions to my pending trip to Egypt, I was sometimes called brave and other times naive. I was asked what a nice Jewish girl like myself was doing living in an Arab country, so my next post about Egypt I guess will begin to answer that question.

(בשנה הבאה בירושלים)

Dimona, Israel. (דימונה, ישראל)
Shortly after spending a few days with my cousin Meli in Jerusalem and visiting the kotel on tsha b'av (nothing is more special about mourning the destruction of the temple than doing so at the western wall), I spent two weeks in Dimona volunteering in a day camp for children with broken families and/or too poor to afford summer camp. This experience was extremely rewarding and it was very important for me to see a side of Israel that wasn't through the lens of an American tourist. The other counselors were so welcoming and warm immediately and really made an effort to include this random American girl, and also to translate when I could not understand directions. Even the counselors I spoke to half in hebrew half in english I truly enjoyed getting to know and have made some lasting friendships. For the two weeks I was immersed in Hebrew and at times this could be very frustrating; although I was able to work and play with the campers, I could not form a strong relationship with them because my Hebrew was subpar and at times even the kids made fun of my accent. The kids also helped me out and were for the most part patient with me. I also mastered some key commands in Hebrew including: Sit, Come, Buckle your seatbelt and Listen as well as the most recited question: where is your hat/waterbottle/backpack? I led a song full of nonsense words called "chee ko ko" and for some reason the other counselors and kids thought it was very funny, so I ended up doing it a lot at the camp and soon all the kids knew who I was and would come up to me to sing the song. My campers were starstruck that I flew to Israel because they had never been on airplanes, and liked hearing about America. One of my campers would use the little English he knew with me, saying "you are fish/cookies/chicken." It was very cute.
The "Black Hebrew" campers and I were able to form stronger connections because they all spoke English. The Black Hebrews are African Americans who are vegan, fast on Shabbat and made alliyah because according to wikipedia they consider themselves to be the only authentic Jews. These campers were considerably better behaved than the Jewish Israeli children.

Next time Arsim* tell you to follow them because they are heading to a great bar in Dimona and it ends up being their basement with a dude with a laptop playing bad remixes from 2000, maybe its not a great idea to sit and have a beer. Being accompanied by recently discharged IDF soldiers, I trusted their judgement, but from now on I will go to bars where the "bartender" doesn't have to run upstairs to his fridge to pull out some beers.

*(wiki def: a mildly offensive Hebrew slang term for the Israeli stereotype of a low-class young man who wears flashy jewelry and tight clothing, Dimona is full of them)