When I Used to Travel on the 4th of July

 I have nothing profound to say about this picture other than it makes me happy. Since I began my one travel picture a day challenge (a challenge to myself alone, the best kind) it has forced me to try and get fifteen years of travel pictures organized, mainly, in the end, because I want to print and frame more of them. I've posted before about all the odd places I've been on the fourth of July (that post is here on the blog somewhere) and this is a shot from Alexandria on that day.

Sadly, I don't think I have a high pixel copy of this one so it wouldn't print very well. Still, what a fun picture.

Reflections on Cairo

I guess it's not particularly surprising that considering the events of the last few days that my mind would be flooded with memories of Cairo. Even though that is where my passport went missing (and thus launched a massive adventure which is chronicled in one of my longest blog posts ever) I still have incredibly fond memories of my time there. I'm including an odd little picture I took in Coptic Cairo at the Hanging Church, which speaks to the odd jumble of the ancient and the new in Egypt, and especially in Cairo. I'm glad that CNN finally stopped reporting on the events of Jersey Shore long enough to actually cover the event - which naturally kept me glued to the screen for hours. I was stunned that at one point they were talking to a reporter who admitted that since the Internet was down - and since he didn't speak Arabic - he didn't have much to add to the conversation. It was blindingly clear what a faint shadow of its former self - and what a pathetic joke - CNN had become; and that sadly it was still the best American news option. Thank god for the BBC app on my Droid. It was also amazing how CNN was spending so much time championing the role that Mubarak had played in suppressing Islamist parties and actions without recognizing that his tyrannical rule helped inspire that Islamist response. Until we stand on the side of freedom and meaningful reform we'll never recapture that very special place we held in the world's collective imagination. As one of my Arabic friends suggested - there was a time when America always stood up for the little guy in the face of oppression, and now we just play favorites like all the other bullying empires.

Whirling Dervishes

Well, sort of Whirling Dervishes, I suspect. One of the things that you can do in the Khan al-Khalili market is to see a Whirling Dervish show three nights a week. It's free, which I suspect has something to do with getting even more folks downtown to the market. The Whirling Dervishes are traditionally practitioners of the Sufi branch of Islam, which is a mystic approach that I've always appreciated. The Sufis often made the more mainstream Muslims a little nervous because the Sufis cared much less about the rigid rules of the faith and more about a joyous union with Allah. Ironically, considering the slight unease that they engendered with some Muslims, but also logically, this made them great missionaries for spreading the faith. Some of my favorite writers such as Jaladin Rumi or Omar Khayyam are in the Sufi tradition (and I even tortured my sister Beth by reading passages from Rumi at her wedding). When you're looking for the Whirling Dervish performance at the Khan al-Khalili you're better off just saying "Sufi" rather than "Dervish" to a local - they will point you directly there. I'm not really certain if the dancers at the Khan al-Khalili are actually Sufis, and, in fact, I suspect that they probably aren't, mainly because a true Sufi mystic would probably view a tourist-driven performance as a bit much (although they are also known for being very tolerent so who knows). For a true Sufi the spinning is part of giving up attachments to this world and finding a mystical union with god beyond logic or the constraints of this world. In that way I guess they are sort of like the Shakers or maybe some of the more evangelical southern US churches. Whether or not these folks are actual Sufis it was a great performance if nothing else. It went on for an hour and a half. The first half-hour was music, then one Dervish who spun around for a half-hour straight, and then three Dervishes together. The leader of the troup seemed to be an older guy who played small, hand-held cymbals (I'll have to look up the exact name) - he was quite the showman and seemed to be having a great time (his picture should be the one at the top). Highly recommended.

Khan al-Khalili

Cairo has a wonderful old market place - well, it's really about three distinctive market places - called Khan al-Khalili. It can be an maddening place - and also a place where you have to watch out for the touts. I've met some nice touts who actually were great to have around - mainly because they could show you obscure little shops, even if you had to pay them. The ones I've met at the Khan al-Khalili would just want a lump sum payment at the end (although getting them to name a specific figure is like pulling teeth - although you'll know it if it is too big or too small). Depending upon how much time they spend with you the equivalent of four or five bucks is probably plenty. In India it was common for these folks, or even taxi drivers who would suggest an interesting shop you might want to visit, would usually get 20% of whatever you bought. I actually asked an Indian taxi driver in Aurangabad if he was going to get the usual 20% and he said yes, and then suddenly seemed shocked, but laughed, that I had caught him. Some of the touts are pretty unpleasant and simply will not say no. I ended up in a pretty unpleasant experience with a guy who, in addition to the fact that he would not go away, threw out the line that I should not be afraid because "he was not a terrorist," which really set me off because it was the worst kind of pandering (sort of like the zinger from the Kenyan tout about racism designed to hit at your liberal guilt). Anyway, these things happen and you just have to ignore them - if you didn't go down to places like Khan al-Khalili because of the chance to running into an annoying character you'd be missing out on so much (and, for that matter, you'd never attend a faculty senate meeting). You will get plenty of opportunity to work on your haggling skills. Now, I'm not a particularly good haggler, and I've known some great one. al-Capone is pretty good. The best I've seen are John Neelankavil and Raj Nambiar, the two folks who run our Mumbai campus - they are scary good (but then if you grow up in India you have to be). John does it by wearing people down. I have this ridiculous floppy hat that has a logo for the Gate of India on it (Michelle has one too). I saw John work on this guy as we were getting ready to get on a boat to go out to Elephanta Island and by the end I was begging John to stop. John had the guy down to 90 cents a hat and was continuing to pound away. I begged him to stop and John wanted to know if we were paying too much - I told him the same hat would go for $17 at Disneyland and he seemed a little more pleased. Raj does it by confusing the merchant through a meandering series of negotiations and stories - he'll throw out a figure that the merchant says no to, and then starts telling a joke, and then says something like, "so, we agreed upon . . ." and say the last thing he said (even though the merchant had already said no). It seems ridiculous but it worked about half the time. My usual approach is to offer 30% of whatever they suggested as a price and never go over a half (although it doesn't always work). That said, sometimes their initial offer is so high (especialy if they know you are from the U.S.) you can't accept that. When I was in Khan al-Khalili I was looking at buying a khafiya and the band that holds it in place. The merchant's initial price quote was 120 Egyptian pounds, which just made me laugh. I told him that I had bought them several times in Amman and had never paid over 3 Jordanian dinars (around four dollars) for the pair, which led to a discussion about the inferiority of Jordanian products yadda yadda yadda. He said, "OK, what is your offer?" I offered him 15 Egyptian pounds, at which he was mortified beyond all measure and discussed his starving children yadda yadda yadda, and offered 30. I said I might go 20, although the material seemed cheap to me. To this he responded with 25. At that point I thanked him and simply walked out of the store. The key is walking out of the store. Suddenly, and not surprisingly, he replied, "OK, 20, for you, a special price." I was still paying too much, but 20 Egyptian pounds is a lot better than 120 Egyptian pounds, and he he was still making a healthy profit. It's a great place to walk around for hours, even considering the touts.

The Relentless Pursuit of Baksheesh

I've really warmed to Egypt (appropriately so, because it is amazingly hot), but the relentless pursuit of baksheesh does wear on you. Baksheesh, as we've discussed, is that cross between a tip and a bribe that gets brought up a lot by cab drivers or officials or guards or the local touts. That said, it made me think of a couple things. One, it really depends upon where you are. I've spent hours and hours walking the streets of Cairo and was completely left alone. It's when you go into major tourist areas, such as the pyramids, that it kicks into high gear. The point being that you're an American who has decided to spend his princely wealth and you sort of have it coming to you - and, let's face it, as the world's leading military, diplomatic and economic power, the US gets into their pockets far more than they will ever get into ours. So, you can walk through suburbs like Zamalek or downtown areas like central Cairo and essentially be invisible - just steel your resources for the tourist centers. The reality is that most of these folks are so astonishly poor - and we're talking about absolute poverty here, not the inability to get the MLB package on cable - that the extra dollar or two they squeeze out of you means profoundly more to them than to you. Relax (which I'm not always good at doing). Secondly, it's hardly Egypt alone that produces this type of behavior. Usually, it's just an annoyance, but every so often you'll have a bit of a clash (which can usually be avoided if you have a temper less volcanic than mine - meaning everyone on earth can avoid it). I've had a tout in downtown Nairobi accuse me of being an racist because I didn't want to hear his story - which is a classic strategy because it plays into our liberal guilt. When I was in India with my father we had a frustrated donkey driver yell at us, "you're poor and a very bad man," because we didn't want to take a ride - for the Indians, who perceive all Americans as fabulously wealthy, this was the ultimate insult. It's like an Indian taxi driver told me one time when he was trying to royally screw me on a fare (meaning, probably, about 17 cents more than I should have paid, but after a while you just fall into the trap of haggling over everything) - "but you're so big and I'm so small," which means that you're so rich and I'm so poor. And, as much as I like to romanticize India, it was probably a lot worse there.

Coptic Cairo

One of the interesting things about Egypt is the Coptic Church, and though it is centered in Alexandria - the leader of the Coptic faith is the Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy See of Saint Mark (it a mouthful of a title) Shenouda III - but there is an entire area of Cairo simply called Coptic Cairo, which I finally made it out to for a visit. The Coptic church has been separated from the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox varieties of the Christian world for over fifteen-hundred years. Essentially, they split over differing perceptions of the nature of Jesus, which was a very common bone of contention in the early days of Christianity anyway (the duality of Christ, both human and divine, has caused a lot of argument over the centuries). The Coptic church is usually seen as being monophysite, that is, only focusing on one nature of Jesus, but they claim that it's far more complex (or simple, depending upon which side of the argument you are on) than that and that, in fact, they are not monophysitic at all. Anyway, there are about fifteen million adherents of Coptic Christianity in the world today and a healthy majority of them live in Egypt. They are very important religiously and most of the early practictioners of monasticism were Egyptian - including my all-time favorite Christian saint, St. Simon Stylites - he's the one who went out into the desert and piled up pillars of stone and then he would stand on top of it - and, amazingly (or maybe not so) attracted followers, who sat on their own, albeit smaller, pillars. I know the church was cleaning house a few years ago and there was some talk of stripping St. Simon Stylites of his sainthood, but, I think, cooler heads prevailed and he hung around. Anyway, there is a very long history of Christianity in Egypt. One of the oldest parts of the city of Cairo is Coptic, and there is an amazing museum there. The part of it that really impressed me were artistic representations of Mary suckling the baby Jesus (there were several of them). Obviously, the representation of Mary and Jesus is a very common one in western art, but it is very rare to actually show Mary holding her naked breast to Jesus to suckle. What I found interesting about it is that it clearly is a distant reflection of a common Egyptian artistic motif of Isis holding her breasts for the young Horus to suckle. So much of early Christian thought and iconography is influenced by the Egyptians, most notably the ankh and its similarity to the cross. A lot of the art work dealt with the story of the passage of the holy family through Egypt, not surprisingly. There was a great later painting of the killing of the early church father St. Zachirias, but in the art work the soldier who killed him clearly is portrayed as being Turkish (the story is much older, but the painting was prepared during the 17th century when Egypt was under Ottoman Turkish control) - can't believe the Turks let that one slide by. Less than fifty yards down the road from the museum is the Hanging Church, which is really quite beautiful. One of the advantages of spending the extra time in Cairo is getting to visit more areas and I would definitely have to recommend Coptic Cairo (even if you're not a complete history dweeb).

Beautiful Zamalek

It's amazing how much is packed into the little island suburb of Zamalek. Granted, it's not central Cairo, but there are all sorts of embassies and museums and shops and also the Cairo Tower. It is surrounded by a lovely garden. You can go up in the tower, which doubtless would have provided a lovely view of Cairo, but it was during the Great Unpleasantness so I didn't have the funds. This really is a lovely, shady little respite from the chaos of Cairo.

Faith

I guess as I get older - and, well, I'm really old - I become more and more interested in questions of faith, which is one of the biggest reasons why the junior level Core class that I'm designing based on this Faculty Internationalization Initiative experience will center around Islam (that and the fact that I just think that Americans need to know a lot more about Islam and the Islamic world). While I've travelled to Jordan and the United Arab Emirates several times, as well as Morocco once (and India, for that matter), this was my first visit to Egypt. The differences between the role of Islam here in Egypt and in Jordan and the UAE is amazing. It's not as if those other countries are not devout because they are, but an American visiting Amman or Dubai would not find the experience nearly as jarring as visiting Cairo or Alexandria. That said, there's also a difference between Cairo and Alexandria, just as there would be between those huge cities and a village in the Egyptian countryside. The point is that we in the US tend to view the Islamic world as one huge monolithic entity without any sense of how dramatically different it is around the different corners of that world. When I teach Islam in my Legacy of World Civilization II class I always start off by asking my students which countries in the world have the largest Islamic populations. They usually say Iraq or Saudi Arabia and occasionally one of them will get Egypt, which comes in around number five - following Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The lesson the students learn is that how can they understand the faith when they don't even know where most of the Muslims live - that is, not in the Middle East, but rather in Southeast Asia. Instead, when someone says Islam the obvious visual image is of Arabia, when it's much more complex than that. What amazes me about Egypt is how prevalent Islam is on a daily basis. You are just much more likely to see men kneeling in the street during public prayer in Egypt than you are in Jordan or the UAE. For that matter, I walked into several shops in the Zamalek neighborhood, which is pretty upper middle class and full of embassies, and almost stumbled across a merchant kneeling on the floor during the daily five prayers. On one of the occasions I had one of those moments of clarity that justify this type of travel - the father and owner of the shop was dressed in traditional garb and was kneeling on the floor praying, while his teenage son was dressed in western style clothes and he was the one who took the money and carried out the sale without seeming to pay any attention to his father.

The Arab Street

When you're watching the news it's very common to hear talking heads talk about what is going on in the "Arab street," that is, what folks are thinking about the world, and especially the U.S., in the Arab world. I would never pretend to be an expert on the Arabic world (I mean, come on, I'm essentially a defrocked Tudor historian), but I've been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, and have made trips to Egypt, and even far-flung corners of the "Arab" or at least Islamic world such as Morocco or India (largely Hindu, obviously, but there are over 120 million Muslims in India, and I've spent time in Hyderabad, which is mainly Islamic). Beyond the theft in Cairo, and, realistically, that obviously had nothing to do with the fact that I was an American, I've never had a bad experience. People in the Middle East do a much better job than we do in separating American foreign policy from average everyday Americans. Sadly, we tend to lump all Muslims together into this monolithic, and in our minds, lunatic and virulently anti-American core. Yes, there is a lot of anger towards Bush's idiotic and militaristic foreign policy here in the Middle East, but, geez, there is back home in the U.S. as well. Folks in the Middle East tend to like Americans, and not simply because they view us as walking ATMs - I think they still see a shred of the dream that used to be America - of what we always represented in the word (and, hopefully, will again someday). I'm including a picture of a poster I saw in downtown Cairo.

Cairo Opera House

OK, despite my trials and tribulations here in Cairo, Egypt is starting to grow on me. I'm going to post a picture of the Cairo Opera House as soon as I can. It's actually in Zamalek (which I'm starting to get a much better sense of). When I went to the Opera House the actual front door was locked (it was middle of the day), but I just went down a hallway and stumbled right into the Opera House itself. It was very unique with a beautiful fabric ceiling which is essentially open to the heavens. On the same grounds there is also the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, as well as the Ministry of Culture as well as a couple schools. Artistically you can certainly see the European/American and Arabic and African influences but with a definite Egyptian flair. When I first arrived there everything was essentially closed because it was the middle of the day, and, well, it is only mad dogs and Englishmen (or folks of English-descent) who are out in the noon-day sun. I went to a little shop on the grounds of the museum to grab some water (I think I've had more bottled water on this trip than my entire life leading up to this moment) but the guy behind the counter was washing and didn't hear me come up. We were coming up to the next round of daily prayers and he was preparing for prayer. This also includes thorough washing the ears so that you can hear Allah. One of the security guards noticed me and walked over and sold me the water.

19991

In both Cairo and Alexandria the phone number for McDonalds delivery is 19991. The food is delivered by little motor scooters (painted in McDonalds colors) with lined boxes on the back to keep the food warm. It also includes the alluring words "24 hours", although factoring in Cairo traffic I don't know whether that means they deliver 24 hours a day or they might be able to get the food to you within 24 hours.

Killing Time in Cairo

Rough paraphrase from memory - "There is nothing good or bad that thinking does not make it so" - Hamlet.

One of the advantages of my situation is that it dramatically reduced the stress of making sight-seeing decisions. For example, the quandry over whether or not I want to take a taxi to see the Citadel or the Mohamed Ali Palace is replaced by the much simpler decision of what size bottled water to buy for brushing my teeth (grin). Still, I'm not going to be defeated so I took the opportunity to take very long walks to see what I could reach, which is really a better way to get a feel of a place anyway. Of course, doing it on foot in Cairo in July meant essentially spending a lot of time chasing shade because the head was dreadful. I gained a pretty good sense of Zamalek, which is the suburb where the Hotel Longchamps is located. Zamalek is an island so the Nile flows on both sides of it - and I don't know how many times I crossed over it on various bridges (which was both beautiful because of the view and short-lived because the glaring sun made stopping to enjoy the scenery from the bridge a tad wilting). I was also able to make it into central Cairo and was astonished how easily I was able to reach the Egyptian Museum again (and I think back with a little chagrin at the day that I was "trapped" in downtown Cairo and couldn't get home - if I had had a better sense of Cairo's geography I could have walked home. The Nile was much more beautiful than I guess I thought it would be. It flows peacefully through downtown Cairo and doesn't seem to notice the chaos around it.

I'm alright, I'm alright . . .

. . . to quote Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life. Sorry if I've fallen behind in my blogging. There have been too many chores to get caught up with my life on the other side of the Great Unpleasantness (which is what I've decided to call the theft in Cairo). I'm going to spend a portion of today getting caught up for my two readers (grin). I'll be borrowing from my soon to be finished school blog, and adding some pictures (which makes this a great improvement over the school blog - which, oddly, we paid a lot of money to establish). Still waiting for credit cards, but Worldwide Assistance, a company that we use at Champlain, was able to forward me $1000 (which is 700 Jordanian Dinars) so at least I can grab a schwarma on the street.

The Time of Troubles

Nobody enjoys international travel more than me, obviously, but there are things about it that are both good and bad, and I guess I've read enough Marcus Aurelius to know that I have to let the fleeting things (in this case bad) go. I just wish I had been able to display such a balanced, rational view yesterday during a day that will not go down as one of my best. As most people know I have a pretty volcanic temper and it was right on the edge all day, and there were a couple small eruptions. My travel wallet, which I normally cling to like grim death, and which contained my passport and all my credit cards, was stolen here in Cairo. It actually happened the night before when I left my hotel to go for a short walk and left my wallet not actually hidden in my room, but certainly not sitting out for a public viewing. It disappeared and I didn't realize it until the next morning when I was packing to catch a plane for Amman. Whoops would not be the appropriate word to explain my reaction - and I'm sure there is an angry cloud of curse words still floating above the Nile. Other valuables were completely ignored, which makes me think they were mainly concerned with the passport, which they can get a lot of money on for the black market. A very nice lady at the American Embassy (the only one there I met there who was competent) told me that passports are stolen all the time in Cairo, including from the nicest hotels. It drives me crazy because I am so meticulous in watching over my passport, figuring that if everything else falls apart as long as I have my passport life will take care of itself.

So, that left me stranded in Cairo - I couldn't fly out because I didn't have a passport so I had to cancel my flight to Amman, and also the meeting I had set up for that afternoon with new University of Jordan faculty members. This also meant trading a million emails and a few phone calls, all heading off to Vermont in the wee small hours of the morning because of the time difference. Luckily, my wife is a freakishly early riser so she was up cancelling credit cards by 5:00 a.m. Then there were calls to Rochelle at Child Travel and Christen at the Vermont Federal Credit Union about changing travel plans and getting a replacement bank card (I keep my travel funds at the Credit Union to always keep things separate from my personal account), respectively. Rochelle, per usual, was fantastic about arranging my flight schedule. The credit union apparently can't get a replacement bank card to me "over-nighted" until next Tuesday, although that certainly doesn't seem to be Christen's fault - she jumped right on the situation and pursued it with the higher-ups. So, it will eventually show up, although I don't think this qualifies as cracker-jack service (if it shows up on Tuesday at all) in regards to a company policy so it looks like I'll be changing banks when I get back.

That left me with the immediate chore of trying to get a replacement passport, which turned into a full day of madness. First if was off to the US Embassy, which was relatively pleasant although hardly designed to inspire confidence in your government (who saw that coming). I did meet one hyper-competent woman who turned everything around very quickly - including calling up the picture of my old passport on the computer to verify that it was, in fact, me. The other officials told me that I needed more personal ID, even though I tried to explain to them that all my personal ID was stolen. Normally I do a much better job of separating cards and ID into different bags so that I have a fall-back, but I've been so busy lately (or maybe I've grown complacent, in which some of this is clearly my fault, from travelling a bit and just didn't take my normal precautions). I also had a picture of my old passport, which allowed me some leverage - it also allowed me to enter the US Embassy - although I had to go outside to make a couple extra copies of the copy so that I could leave one at the front gate. It also cost a $100 to get a replacement, and I was lucky to have just enough to cover it in Egyptian pounds that I had not converted or was stupid enough to leave in my wallet. I also had to go get a couple new pictures, which was supposed to be in the wooden kiosk across the street - it was actually in a little hole in the wall about a block away hidden away down an alley (it wasn't a kiosk, although there was wood used in its construction). Overall I went in and out of the Embassy about four or five times, but did end up with a new passport, although this one is only good for a year (I can trade this one in for a regular passport for no charge as soon as I get home).

That was only the first part of the adventure. Then I had to go get an entry stamp in my passport. Egypt gives lovely entry stamps that take up about half a page in a passport, which is still much smaller than the entire page that an Indian visa occupies. Without the stamp I could not leave the country, and this meant going over to the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior and and the Immigration office. If it had not been so coincidently comical, it would have been pretty hellish. I can't begin to fill you in on all the trials and tribulations because it is a bit confusing to me now and it only happened yesterday. Suffice it to say I went up and down repeatedly over three floors - bounced back and forth between four different windows - pushed and shoved an astonishing mass of humanity - offered bribes - had the advantage of being an American - and it still took hours. The main staging area for this theatre of the bizarre was on the second floor (the copy machine was on the first floor and "the General" was on the third floor), where there was a long narrow hallway with windows (like an old bank) on each side. I went to window 43 and was sent to 12 and then was sent to 2 and then was directed to 42, which is sort of where I thought I should have been initially. It had the simple words "Lost Passports" stencilled onto the class. In front of it were dozens of people, from every imaginable nationality (including a bunch of American high school or university students) all piling up, pushing, cursing, and trying to push their passport through the opening and into the hands of an official - all in a hundred degree heat. I've spent enough time in India to know that queueing up patiently in lines at banks or offices or even movie theaters is such a quaint American custom, so I dove right in. I was angry and did my fair share of shoving, including women and children - and just about turned around and physically confronted a guy behind me, but luckily (probably for me, because I'm really a wimp) my absolutely murderous glare bought me a couple inches. Pushing for around an hour just got me close enough to get a form to fill out and a directive to get my new passport copied, and then a return back upstairs to the same window to start pushing again, only to be told that I also needed a copy of the letter from the US Embassy explaining that my passport had been stolen, and then back downstairs to get a copy of that, although when I went back to the window again they didn't want the form. I thought it was also interesting that the last line on the form was a request for me to sign a personal declaration that my passport had not been stolen, which I did. I wonder if this allows the Egyptian government to declare that while not many passports are actually stolen, a lot of clumsy Americans do manage to lose them. Then I was directed upstairs to meet "the General", where I had to sit for a while (but at least his office was air-conditioned) for him to give his approval - next to his office was another office full of computers so old that they weren't running Windows. At a certain point the General asked where I was from and I said American, and he immediately yelled over to one of the functionaries to hurry up. This is what always amazes me - it was a bad experience for me and it took hours, but I'd hate to think how bad it was for those poor souls from sub-Saharan Africa who are probably still sitting in line a day later. So, eventually my passport was hand-carried downtown by a diminutive guy in a uniform who delivered it back to window 42. So, I was back where I started with my passport in a pile of passports, but at least it had been processed up to a certain point and the General had OK'd it. At this point I looked into the cubicle and made eye contact with the little official who had carried it down from the General's office. He gave the universal sign for baksheeh (it's the same signal in India) - that is, miming putting food in his mouth (he did this on the sly). I nodded in response, and he reached over and moved my passport to the top of the pile. From there it was only about another twenty minutes. At a certain point another official took it in a back room, and I had this look of exasperation on my face - and the Egyptian guy next to me smiled and said, "Welcome to Egypt," as in, "yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, but there you go," which made me crack up. Finaly the form was stamped (sort of) and I could leave. Everything else is up in the air, but, hey, I have a passport. Oh, and I looked for the little official later and I spotted him walking down the hallway towards me, and I turned to walk towards him with my hands in my pocket for the exchange of baksheesh but he gave me this very theatrical rolling of his eyes to show that someone was watching so the deal was off, and he just smiled at me and said good-bye.

Luckily Betsy and her friend Lee have arrived from Luxor so there's some financial support. Plus, I've brought Betsy's operations manager Darlene into the fray and she'll probably have the Egyptian government organized by this afternoon.

The Time of Ignorance

. . . and I'm not talking about my own undergraduate experience. Rather, that is the term that Muslims use when discussing the time before the prophet. I guess it came back to me as I spent my last day in Cairo bumming around the older parts of Cairo and sliding into the Islamic quarter, which is an amazing place in it's own right. If I have time I'll expand on this with more detail, although, truthfully, I didn't go to as many souvenir locations as much as I just walked the streets (surviving the heat and traffic - I'm beginning to feel a bit "gritty" like I did in Mumbai) and just stopped for tea and a shwarma and just experienced it. I've talked to a few of my new Islamic friends about their relationship with Egypt's own glorious history. I was thinking that it might be sort of an uneasy relationship because as extraordinary as Egypt as, it was still, by definition, the time of ignorance. Instead they are fairly comfortable with the earlier period and even think that since the Egyptians were the first people in history to come up with the concept of an afterworld they were already beginning a spiritual quest that continues today. They also think that maybe they will achieve the overall cultural and political and economic brilliance of the pharonic Egyptians, albeit in a different form. Rather, their more tortured relationship, their own love-hate relationship, although felt less clearly or intensively as India, is with the British.

The Egyptian Museum

On Tuesday 8 July I made my way back into central Cairo, this time to the Egyptian Museum, which is actually just around the corner from the American University in Cairo (at least from their present campus, they're moving to a new campus even as we speak). It really was an extraordinary experience, as you might imagine. There were some peculiarities, but I think they just added to the experience. For one thing, it was not air-conditioned and it is just oppressively hot in Cairo right now. There were times when I wanted to stop and read something or take a closer look at an exhibit, but almost immediately I'd start walking again just to generate a self-induced breeze. Most of the exhibits were not labelled - or the writing looked like it was typed a hundred year ago - or was just in Arabic - so it helps if you know something about Egyptian history or if you hire a guide. Certainly the grounds was swimming with them. However, like I said, I think this added to the experience in an odd way - it certainly wasn't one of those touristy places which hardly qualify as museums anymore. Luckily, I'm a historian and have teaching world civilization for a long time so I knew enough to keep from being completely lost. There were more amazing things than I can recount, obviously. The mummies are very cool (especially Sety I, who looks like he could open up his eyes and say hello - it reminds me of visiting Memphis one time to see an exhibit of Pre-Columbian material and there was a room with three Inca mummies and my friend David Kelley came up and whispered that that was the room where all nightmares were born - this was sort of like that). You have to pay extra to see the mummies - it's another 100 Egyptian pounds (about $20) - as compared to the 50 EL (about $10) to get in the door - but it's well worth the extra expense. As is always the case when I go to museums, however, it's always the odd, little things which really got to me. For example, they had a special room just for animal mummies, including some huge crocodiles. They had this really amazing (and huge) statue that has created a lot of controversy - scholars can't decide whether it is a very feminine representation of the Akhenaten (the Egyptian pharaoh who was arguably the first person in history to promote a monotheistic religion, the worship of the sun god Aten) that expressed the male/female duality of Aten or whether it was a representation of his wife as a key goddess. There were also the shawabtis, which were little statues that were placed in tombs beginning in the Middle Kingdom. Initially there was only one, but eventually the number grew to 401 - they look like little blue soap-on-a-rope (without the rope) pharaohs. They were designed to do things for the deceased in the next world based on the 6th spell of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. There were 401 because you had one for each of the days of the solar calendar and then another 36, one, complete with whips to keep the others in line, for each of the ten day cycles of the year. I'm not much for souvenirs, but I may have to track one of these down.

American University in Cairo

I spent the entire day today in central Cairo at the American University in Cairo, which is easily one of the finest, if not the finest, university in the Middle East. I received a really nice campus tour, and the campus is beautiful - and wonderfully quiet and shady in the midst of the heat and bustle of downtown Cairo. The university has a little over five-thousand students, which makes it an easier fit for our Global Modules network than some of the huge schools like Alexandria University, the University of Jordan or Goteborg University (Sweden). I met with Mohamed Abul Seoud, the Director of Study Abroad, Rana El-Harty, Assistant to the Associate Provost for International Programs, Dr. Helen Rizzo from Sociology (who hails from Canton, Ohio and who received who doctorate from Ohio State - but who not explain why the Buckeyes fail so miserably in college football national championship games), lunch with Dr. David Blanks who is the Chair of the History Department, Dr. Hoda Grant who is the Associate Director of the Core Curriculum and the FYE, and Emma (didn't catch her last name, and I am waiting for an email from her) who is an American student working on her masters and who is in charge of the university's innovative Dialogue program. Besides showing a lot of enthusiasm for the Global Modules program - Dr. Blanks and Dr. Grant are very enthusiastic in their support - they also asked us if Champlain would be interested in participating in their Dialogue program where students in their Cross-Cultural Representations rotate weeky video-conferencing classes with universities such as Georgetown and the University of Washington in Seattle. On the spot I signed us up and we'll set something up with one of our Seminar in Contemporary World Issues courses for this fall - I suppose I should have waited for official clearance - and to see if our video-conferencing equipment still works - and, well, you know - but patience is not one of my virtues. AUC is really a top-notch school and it says something great about Champlain that we are starting to get noticed by universities like this.

And that was the nice part of the day. By the time I was finally finished at AUC it was rush hour and the traffic was amazing - think of Boston on steroids. Although it was still not as bad as Mumbai, mainly because there were no cattle or elephants or monkeys or holy men in the streets. The traffic was so bad that no taxi driver, even for extra money, would take me across the Nile to Zamalek. So, I just had to hang around in the streets until the traffic finally began to clear around 7:30. It was also so hot I was actually beginning to get a little light-headed. I kept buying big cold containers of bottled water and just drinking them almost straight down. Finally, the traffic logjam broke and I was able to make my way back to the Longchamps.

Perceptions

One of the lasting perceptions that folks overseas have of us is that we're really insanely pampered - and, well, I guess we are. Everywhere I go people are amazed that I might want to actually walk someplace or take the stairs. Granted, sometimes it's folks trying to make a dime by trying to get us to take the donkey or camel or elephant or taxi or auto-rickshaw rides, but you see it in other ways as well. When I was at the American University of Cairo today it was all I could do to convince my contacts there that I wouldn't wilt walking down one flight of stairs. Some of it relates that that amazing Middle Eastern sense of hospitality, but there's something deeper that relates to a perception that we're pretty soft (or that we have some sort of left-over colonial need to be taken care of).

Hamdil'allah!

Clean clothes! Thank god for the laundry service at the Hotel Longchamps. It's amazing how the smallest thing can make your day when you're away from home for a long trip.

Lost in Zamalek

After my big pyramids adventure I took it pretty easy tonight (plus I have a a series of meetings tomorrow at the American University in Cairo and I have a little prep work to do). So, I went for a long walk around the neighborhood, Zamalek, where the Hotel Longchamps is located. Well, it wasn't supposed to be a long walk but it turned into one when I got lost. As usual, I was pretty certain that I knew was I was headed - and Zamalek is a very safe, unscale neighborhood - so I didn't have much to worry about. It reminds me of Bandra, the neighborhood where my apartment was when I taught at our campus in Mumbai. I took one wrong turn, however, and immediately got lost - and then, instead of simply turning around with my tail between my legs and retracing my steps - I "figured out" where to go and got much more lost . . . until I turned around with my tail between my legs, retraced my steps, and found my way back to the hotel. It was actually a very nice walk and I know a lot more about the neighborhood. Along the way I passed the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Cafe (I've seen them in Dubai - in fact, they have one on the campus at our GM partner Zayed University) and went in to check out their frappocino prices - they were 19 Egyptian shillings, which is about 4-5 US dollars. The place was packed, which certainly speaks to greater overall prosperity but also the rise of an increasingly consumer society. I took a flyer on the frappocino and instead dropped by the local McDonald's for a chocolate milkshake (tasted exactly the same). So, if you're staying at the Longchamps and get a craving for American fast food, just walk out the front and take a left on Ismail Mohamed and follow it to the river - along the way you'll pass a Hardee's - and there you will find a Pizza Hut right next to the McDonald's.