Education

Starting back at Georgetown after AUC is at the same time blissful (to be in an environment that actually values teaching and learning) and frustrating (because professors care here).

The Upper Egypt Bus Company, or “White Kids and 700km of Desert”

Sayyid Dafda'^* and Our Wild Ride through Egypt:

(Obviously, this one is a little dated. It should follow directly on the 4 March 2007 entry about Luxor. I refrained from posting it while in Egypt simply because it details some of the less-than-stellar things that take place in Egypt, namely police—that is to say, military—brutality. For those of you curious as to why I wouldn't exercise my free speech rights, the short answer is, "I didn't have any," and the long answer is "While I was in Egypt, they were going through a phase of incarcerating bloggers who were critical of the regime or of Islam. I preferred to remain curious about the Egyptian justice system, not informed.")

We climb aboard the bus a little before 1900, when it's supposed to leave. One of the men "in charge" (all things are relative) wants to put our backpacks, etc, under the bus. With the exception of Nate (who has a gym bag, not a backpack), we convince him we'd rather keep our belongings with us.

The bus is a bit cramped, but will do okay. We can't figure out our seats. The seats are numbered, but it takes us a good 10 minutes and some frustration to find WHERE on our tickets our seat numbers appear. Turns out that the seat numbers are on the back of each pair (so the person sitting in seat 14 looks at the seat back in front of them labeled 10/11). Okay, no big deal. The eight of us occupy two rows on either side of the aisle. At least we're together.

We pull out at 1910. I start my stopwatch. The ride is supposed to be 9-10 hours. The bus is almost full of people. Maybe five seats. There are the eight of us, two other Americans from Pennsylvania who are backpacking around, and about six Japanese. The rest of the passengers are Egyptian. Mostly men, a few women (all but one traveling with a male companion). Most men look to be lower-class. Several wear gelabiyyas and scarves (generally not associated with the business class).

The first two hours, we're not sure where we are, really. The bus makes several stops. It fills quickly. A shouting match begins because one person too many gets on. He says he'll stand all the way to Cairo. He got here a week ago and now it's time to go home. The shouting gets louder and more insistent the longer this argument goes on. Other men jump in, shouting to help calm the situation. Eventually, Ahmed (a man in his mid-50s, no more than 4'10" with a small crocheted cap), who is in charge of tickets and the bus in general, allows him to stay. I think it's mostly out of frustration. The guy isn't going to budge. We try very hard not to turn around and stare at the argument in the back of the bus. It isn't easy. After about two hours, I finally see a road sign that says we're in Qena. It's a very small town a bit north of Luxor on the Nile. We passed through it on our way down, so it's a good sign to be passing it on the way back.

Quickly after this, the city streets give way to desert. The dunes are blue in the moonlight. And beautiful. I'm trying to do homework, but Will, sitting next to me, watches the sand roll by. Eventually I give up on the Arabic language and watch, too. It's absolutely gorgeous, and hypnotic. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, but sand rolling along.

Around 2330, we make our first pit stop. It's a dimly lit gas station/service station/courtyard hemmed in by high rise buildings. Most of us get off the bus to stretch our legs. Who knows when the next stop is. We find the bathroom, which is bar-none the most disgusting I've encountered in Egypt. It's the "porcelain-lined hole in the ground" type (the kind that is "trying…but not"), but the porcelain is barely recognizable under the grime. The pipes are rusted and flaking, the water in the hole (which isn't supposed to be there…it is supposed to drain) is black. I've honestly shat in cleaner woods.

Returning to the bus, we catch a glimpse of the lunar eclipse. We get back on, and after a minute or two come to a very dangerous realization. The Americans are on the bus. The Japanese are on the bus. All the Egyptians are lined up outside in front of another bus, complete with luggage. We missed this memo. So we high-tail it over to the second bus, locate our seats again (with minimal hassle), and settle in as we begin again. This bus is much smaller and less comfortable.

I do some homework, joke with Will, and doze for about 15 minutes. Then we pull into a brightly-lit area and the bus stops. The overhead lights snap on, and a man in his 30s in a black sweater gets on the bus. The two men sitting in the front seats offer him what look like driver's licenses or ID cards. He checks them, hands them back. Then he walks back the bus. He looks at each of the eight of us, making eye contact, but doesn't stop. He walks to the back. I don't turn around until a little later, but when I do he is doing the same thing: taking and examining small cards and handing them back. After another minute or two, he leaves. I ask Vivette what it was. It's a military checkpoint, she tells me. They check the Egyptian men for ID cards that say they've served their time in the military. If they haven't, they can extort money from them or simply throw them in jail. This particular stop didn't have any of that.

We continue along the desert, until something changes. We see water. Driving along the road, we look past 50 meters or so of sand, and then the color changes and light starts reflecting differently. That's water. And quite a lot of it. We start passing villas and hotels. This doesn't feel right. Luxor and Cairo are both located in the middle of Egypt (from an East-West perspective), along the Nile. There is a highway that runs right along the Nile. We assumed (unfortunately) that we were on that road. Not so. Eventually one of us sees a sign that suggests we're in the town of Hurghada. Hurghada is a relatively famous town in Egypt. It's known for its awesome diving. Because it's on the Red Sea. Instead of driving north through the desert in the direction of Cairo, we've been driving north-east (but more east than north), and have now reached the Red Sea. Something is not right.

The bus slows to a stop again in another brightly-lit area at the edge of Hurghada. This time, a man in his late 20s in a military uniform gets on the bus. He starts yelling from the beginning. Then, as he passes our group, he starts counting: itneen, arba', sitta, tamania!! (two, four, six, eight!!) He storms past us (by this time two girls in our group are asleep, as is one guy who wakes up rather quickly) toward the back of the bus. He keeps yelling. I'm getting about 30-35% of what he's saying. It's obvious he's angry and it's because of something the bus company did wrong. What do you think you're doing? He asks. What kind of operation are you pulling? The driver and Mr. Ahmed proclaim their innocence loudly, but he takes them off of the bus. They've all been on here since Luxor! shouts Mr. Ahmed. All these seats were booked from Luxor! (This is a blatant lie, but I'm not going to be the one to tell anyone that.) The shouting continues. I turn to Vivette to compile a more complete translation. But before we can do much, he returns. He pulls several Egyptian men off the back of the bus, and the yelling outside grows louder. Mr. Ahmed continues to proclaim his innocence. The soldier is furious with him, and we can all tell. Then, the driver gets back on, and the bus drives off. We've left Mr. Ahmed and about six Egyptian passengers at the checkpoint. The bus drives a bit up the road, then turns around and heads back to the checkpoint again.

We sit there, the lights on in the bus, worrying. The problem this bus is encountering is due to our presence. He counted the eight Americans and was very unhappy we were here. This is quite possibly a worst nightmare scenario coming true. I'm going to get pulled off of this bus at 3 a.m.—I don't know where I am—to be interrogated by the military in a language I only halfway understand. Six of my traveling companions (for each of whom I feel at least some responsibility) are going to get pulled off of this bus at 3 a.m.—not knowing where they are—to be interrogated by the military in a language they don't understand! (Vivette can handle herself in Arabic, obviously, and looks plenty Egyptian. Her only problem is that she's sitting with us.)

An older man with a fresh-looking black eye shuffles onto the bus. He gets off, and a minute later gets back on. He approaches me. "Do you speak English?" "Aiwa" (Yes.) In poor English with a bit of Arabic thrown in he explains to me that the tour bus company (Upper Egypt Bus Co.) has not been following the government's rules regarding tourist safety.

(N.B.: in the mid- to late-1990s, Gamy'a el-Islamiya (The Islamic Group) carried out a series of attacks targeting foreign tourists to Egypt—mostly in Upper Egypt. These included attacks on tour buses, and culminated in the November, 1997 attacks at Hatshepsut's Temple, in which over 60 people were killed by six militants wielding assault rifles and knives to kill and then mutilate. The phenomenon of Gamy'a el-Islamiya dealt a very harsh blow to Egypt's tourist industry (which is Egypt's main industry), so the government put into place steps to increase tourist "safety." Why "safety"? Because the new regulations dealt with having local Egyptians in the presence of (especially using the same transportation as) foreign tourists, demanded that tourist groups travel with armed guards, and—best of all—required tour buses to travel in military convoys along the highways of Upper Egypt. These "military convoys" are a truck with soldiers in the front, a truck with soldiers in the back, and 10-20 tour buses in between. If that doesn't sound like announcing one's presence as a sitting duck, I'm not sure what is.)

What did the bus company do wrong? The part where they spent two hours tooling around poorly-lit places picking up passengers. They are supposed to (by law) pick up only from the original station and continue directly along the route. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 or 6 extra fares. For our safety as foreigners, he explains, we will now travel in a military convoy. What isn't clear is whether the bus itself, complete with all passengers, will travel in the convoy, or if one group: foreigners or Egyptians, will be leaving this bus for another mode of transportation. Again, Vivette and I get nervous. Vivette is a dual citizen of the US and Egypt. She booked this ticket as an Egyptian citizen to get the (incredibly) discounted rate.

Mr. Ahmed shuffles forward (complaining to the black eyed man that this has never happened before) and hands the man two pieces of paper and a pen. The man explains to me that each of the foreigners must fill out their name, nationality, hotel in Egypt, and the travel company they're touring with. I begin, but turn to him to explain quickly (in my least threatening and politest Arabic) that I don't have a hotel, I'm a Cairo resident. Can I put down my apartment (apartment and dorm room are interchangeable vocab words here) in Cairo? I know I said it correctly, but the poor man cannot for the life of him figure out why a white girl is a Cairo resident. Since it's 3 a.m., I spare the details. Passing the paper around our group, we quickly fill it out. While I was filling mine out, Vivette explained that she was a dual citizen, and should she fill out the paperwork as well? No, he says. Okay. We won't be separated, correct? We must travel together. We're students in Cairo and need to get back. Yes. It's fine. (Vivette and I are slightly relieved.) As the paper goes around, I look back and realize that two of the girls are STILL asleep. All this yelling and shouting and stress, and Christina and Jen are blissfully asleep, complete with iPod earbuds, slack jaws, and heads tipped back. I know Christina's name and where she lives, but have to wake Jen up to ask how to spell her last name. She mumbles it, I write it down and make up a room number in the dorms (she said she lived on the first floor. Close enough). We give the paper back. (Jen and Christina have absolutely no memory of this stop in Hurghada.)

A few minutes later, the men who got pulled off the bus climb back on. They are subdued. I don't want to think just how fresh that man's black eye is.

A white pickup truck with two soldiers in the bed takes off down the road. Tour buses queue behind it and begin rolling. As the last comers, we bring up the rear. Supposedly there's another white pickup with a few more soldiers in it behind us. I'm no expert, but even at 3 a.m., I feel like a sitting duck for anyone who doesn't like tourists and wants to express said dislike with weaponry. Lonely Planet has a wonderful piece about military convoys. And by wonderful I mean it's 100% true about how bad they are. The soldiers attempt to prove their machismo by driving far too fast, the tour buses, microbuses, and taxis try to keep up and generally endanger each other. The one benefit to the convoy? For the first time that night, we keep up a good clip.

(A funny piece…usually over here I end up speaking for the group a lot, because my Arabic is better than most people's. Thanks, Georgetown. This weekend we had a girl who speaks Egyptian Arabic at home, and is muhaggiba—she wears a hijab—so people automatically use her to communicate with us. When the man with the black eye shuffled up to me, I was confused. Why is he talking to me, and not Vivette? It took a moment or two to realize…oh…because I'm the white kid. She looks Egyptian and I look American. I can be a bit dense.)

Eventually (very eventually) I manage another half hour of sleep, and when I open my eyes it's almost five and the rest of the convoy has disappeared. Will and I begin trying to guess when our nerves will be back to normal. (At this writing, they are, as we say: shwayya (a little bit).) Around six, we pull into Suez. We've spent several hours driving the Red Sea coast up to Suez, and must now drive back west to Cairo. We make a pit stop in Suez. Will gets out of the seat next to me and I curl up across the two seats for four minutes. Being horizontal is blissful. (At this point please recall that in the past three nights I spent Thursday night seated on a train from 2200-730 Friday morning, spent Friday sleeping in a real bed, and Saturday night from 1900-the present seated on a bus. The train was two and a half hours of sleep, Friday was almost seven, and this past night was about 45 minutes.)

On the Cairo approach, we start passing military facilities. A base, a training camp, and then the military nuclear facility. Charming way to start your morning.

Once we reach the outskirts of Cairo, it's already 8:00 so the traffic is awful. One of the passengers suggests that the driver hurry up. He doesn't take that well. The argument swells to a deafening crescendo for those of us seated in the front half of the bus. By this time I'm so tired, my legs hurt so badly, and I am still a little jumpy from the Hurghada checkpoint, that the argument seems funny and I start to giggle. Thankfully they are too deeply engaged in the argument to notice the white girl cracking up.

After a little over two hours, the bus pulls into Ramses Square and stops. We shuffle off, stretching stiff backs and legs. That bus was far from comfortable, and 15 hours as opposed to 10 made it even worse. We take cabs back to the dorms, and congratulate each other on quite a wild ride.

To map out our travels:

1. Luxor
   
2. Hurghada (Al Gharda'a)
   
3. Suez
   
4. Cairo

Egypt: By the Numbers (and Letters)*

• Days not in the United States: 133
  
• Days in Egypt: 125
  
• Countries Visited: 3 (5) (Egypt, Sinai Peninsula—formerly Israel, Italy, Sicily—Sicilians think they're special, Tunisia)
  
• Countries Visited (Airport Only): 1 (Deutschland)
  
• Time Spent in the First World: Four blissful days (Viva Italia!)
  
• Best Church in Italy: the Vatican / Chiesa de Jesu (tie)
  
• Floor Mosaics to Pope John Paul II in St Peter's: 2.
  
• View from the Dome of St. Peter's: priceless.
  
• Pope Benedict: XVI.**
  
• Flights Taken: 6
  
• Best Airline: Lufthansa/EgyptAir (tie)
  
• Worst Airline: United Airlines
  
• Ferries Taken: 1 (one too many, from Sicily to Tunis)
  
• Countries Entered Armed: 1 (sorry, Tunisia)
  
• Times Attempted to Download "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:" 1 (failure)
  
• Most Thorough Security Check in Egypt: Beginning the Mt Sinai climb.
  
• Least Thorough: every other one.
  
• Best Newspaper Article: Anything Al-Ahram published about Mubarak.
  
• Times Grabbed on the Street: stopped counting.
  
• Times Verbally Harassed on the Street: generally 4-8/day.
  
• Days Spent Wearing Hijab: 4.
  
• Hours Spent in AUC's "gyms:" 10-12/week.
  
• Favorite Lunch: LE 1.25 for ful two blocks down.
  
• Second Favorite Lunch: LE 5 for koshary and Coke Light.
  
• McDonald's Milkshakes Consumed: 3.
  
• High-Speed Egyptian Internet: oxymoronic.
  
• Attractive Egyptian men: 0.
  
• Favorite Colloquial Vocabulary Word: mafeesh (there isn't), mumkin (perhaps. Means "no," or, alternately "give me money and we'll see.")
  
• Favorite Curse: *?#$@*/ (it's a good one)
  
• Favorite Study Abroad Pun: having a MISRable time.
  
• Favorite Proverb: "If you love, love deeply and passionately. If you steal, steal something worth it." (Lit.: "If you love madly, love the moon madly. If you steal, steal a camel.")
  
• Times Showing More than Six Inches of Shin in Mainland Egypt: 1.
  
• Times Showing Above in Cairo: 0.
  
• "T.I.E." (This Is Egypt) Moments: countless.
  
• "Masr Um al-Dunya" (Egypt: Mother of Civilization) Moments: see "T.I.E.".
  
• Days Violently Ill with Food Poisoning: better measured in months.
  
• Favorite Cat Living in the Dorms: Mango
  
• Best Place in Egypt: Dahab (located on the quasi-mythical Sinai Peninsula)
  
• Days Spent in Dahab: 6.
  
• Best Restaurant in Egypt: Ali Baba, Dahab.
  
• Best Beer Outside of America: Celtia (Tunisia)
  
• Best America Moment: Drinking Bud Light.
  
• Number of Military Checkpoints Successfully Cleared: 30-50 (I slept through a few in Sinai.)
  
• Number of Military Checkpoints at which my Presence was a Serious Issue: 1 (Hurghada)
  
• Scarves Bought: 25
  
• Belly Dancing Scarves Bought: 1
  
• Best Souvenir: Dahab paintings / Mobaco shirts (Camel Polos) (tie)
  
• Best View in Egypt: Dahab / Luxor Temple / Feluccas at Sunset
  
• Most Peaceful Place: The Catholic Cemetery in Coptic Cairo
  
• Favorite Egypt Quote: "You are in Egypt, now" –Tomader Rifaat
  
• Least Favorite Egypt Quote: "Welcome to Alaska" – Every man at every tourist location.
  
• Most Common Conversation: "Do you have a husband?" No. "Do you want an Egyptian husband?" No. "Then why are you here?" Good question.
  

*credit to Dan B-P for the idea

**again credit to Dan B-P for the joke.

Suzanne Mubarak: AUC Graduate

Egypt forbids female circumcision

By Magdi Abdelhadi BBC Arab Affairs Analyst

Suzanne Mubarak campaigned to ban the practice

Egypt has announced that it is imposing a complete ban on female circumcision, also known as genital mutilation.

The announcement follows a public outcry after a young girl died during the operation.

A ban was introduced nearly 10 years ago but the practice continued to be allowed in exceptional circumstances.

A health ministry spokesman said no member of the medical profession would be allowed to perform the operation in public or private establishments.

Those who broke the law would be punished, the spokesman said.

Psychological violence

The new ban cancels out a provision that allowed the operation to be performed by qualified doctors in exceptional cases only.

But the death of a 12-year-old girl in Upper Egypt a few days ago triggered an angry barrage of appeals from human rights groups to both the government and the medical profession to act swiftly and stamp out the practice.

The doctor who carried out the operation has been arrested.

Egypt's first lady, Susanne Mubarak, has spoken out strongly against female circumcision, saying that it is a flagrant example of continued physical and psychological violence against children which must stop.

The country's top religious authorities also expressed unequivocal support for the ban.

The Grand Mufti and the head of the Coptic Church said female circumcision had no basis either in the Koran or in the Bible.

Recent studies have shown that some 90% of Egyptian women have been circumcised.

The practice is common among Muslim as well as Christian families in Egypt and other African countries, but is rare in the Arab world.

It is believed to be part of an ancient Egyptian rite of passage and is more common in rural areas.

Conservative families believe that circumcision is a way of protecting the girls' chastity.

---------------------------------------------
A 2000 poll found that 97% of women in Egypt have had some form of female genital mutilation. Numbers in the Nile delta region (Alexandria down to Cairo) are between 75%-95%, while the rest of Egypt rides in the 95%-100% category.

Just thought I'd remind you that this is the year 2007.

What about that twelve-year-old girl? Her mother paid LE 50 for the operation. That's not $9.00.

Her name was Bedur Ahmed Shaker.

From the Airport

Loyal Readers: this is NOT the end of my Cairo blog. I still have more stories that need posting, and more "final" thoughts. Stay tuned.

(excerpted and adapted from a letter to Ken)

0430 EET, Cairo International Airport, in possession of a valid exit stamp from the Arab Republic of Egypt

So I guess this is the end of my semester abroad. It ends like it began—sitting in an airport with people going to the same place as me. And I guess I should start figuring out what I learned from this adventure.

• I learned I can do a whole lot on my own. On my own physically and emotionally. The knowledge that AUC really honestly didn’t give a darn what happened to me or any of the other study abroad kids and that I had to figure out things for myself was simultaneously terrifying and liberating. (But if it was a test, I think I passed.)

• I learned that when it really (I mean really) hits the fan and the floor falls out from under you, you have your friends to fall back on and really you can’t count on anything or anyone else. We became a family here, not in the mushy sense (although emotionally we became close in the veritable relationship pressure-cooker that is study abroad), but in the sense that we have to take care of each other. And so we did. We had nobody else and we relied on each other. And we did okay. We took each other to the hospital, we sat by each other’s beds, we administered IVs (or at least threatened to), we held each other as we cried, we celebrated birthdays and triumphs and we mourned losses. Together.
  

• I learned that Egypt is a beautiful, beautiful country. It really is. It’s dirty, crass, poor, corrupt, twisted, inefficient, crazy, polluted, loud and unmanageable (at times), but it can also be stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful. It really truly can be. Watching sunsets in Luxor, just about everything associated with Dahab and Mt Sinai, looking over Cairo from the Citadel, Muhammed Ali mosque, the bright, loud, kitschy absurdity that is Khan el-Khalili—parts of this country are spectacular.

• I’ve learned that I love being an American. I love our values: hard work, cleanliness, honesty, honest hard work and a hard day’s labor, being self-made, not being complacent. It makes me proud—more proud than six months ago by far—to have these instilled in me and to live by them. The more I lived in a country so different from those, the more I became convinced that those values are RIGHT. Patriotism—not mindless flag-waving and thumping of a red, white, and blue chest but real love of your country and what it stands for—means a lot more than it used to. I love our society. No, that’s not true. Parts of it I still detest. (Although for all their anti-American = anti-Westernism = anti-consumerism and anti-materialistic culture bluster, Egypt is just as consumer-oriented as the US.) But I can’t wait to walk down the street without getting ogled or yelled at or hissed at or offered things or grabbed. America has women’s rights A LOT better figured out than Egypt. Politically, as well, I watched Egyptians lose political and social freedoms we take for granted—without caring. American political apathy is a favorite target of critics both foreign and domestic, but it can’t hold a candle to the apathy I saw in Egypt. (Look for more on that later.) I love American people. We are good people, we are. The Godfather starts out with the line “I believe in America.” And after my Cairo adventure, I believe in America more than I ever have. I also do rather enjoy the power that comes from holding an American passport. THAT one saved my tail a few times. But for better or for worse, yes: I’m an American, I like it, and I like America.
  

1032 EDT, an airplane south of Greenland and east of Canada, a good 32000 feet off of the ground.

The computer map says something like 3.25 hours until I land again in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I can’t wait. The plane is freezing cold and my mouth has that nasty “dead possum” taste from trying to nap a little bit. My shirt is wrinkled, annd my legs ache like crazy from the sunburn and the sitting.

A final Cairo story, not quite in Cairo but equally informative:
At Frankfurt Airport, one girl bought some Bacardi Superior at the duty-free and proceded to freak out about how she was going to get it back to the States after it was opened (you can’t take opened duty-free alcohol on the plane), since we were sitting in McDonald’s in the terminal sketchily sipping and making covert rum and cokes (since we didn’t want to corrupt any children, although there were very few). I had the solution: the tiny complimentary Lufthansa water bottles are no longer filled with water and are stowed in the ziplock liquids bag. Made it through the security checkpoint (which was frighteningly thorough after months of Egyptian “bag checks” and “security”). I’m bringing it back unopened as a point of pride: .2L of Bacardi Superior rum, even though the limit for any fluid in the bag is technically .1L. Got one over on the man. That’s something about me that’s different: I look for ways to get past the man. Constantly.

How else am I different after this adventure? Well, I may not be the best judge of that. Perhaps you should tell me. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that I am much more confident and independent that I was in December. I can get lost in very sketchy places alone late at night and successfully get home after three cab rides. I can handle men who can’t handle guns toting AK-47s every fifty meters and pointing them at me as a joke. I can handle terrifying military checkpoints where people are being beaten BECAUSE of my presence.

I speak Arabic better, too. That’s for sure.

Am I more “Egyptian?” Probably not. I still shower daily and love it. I'm still Catholic. A glass of tea does not require any sugar at all, and anything more than two spoonfuls is overkill. I still work ridiculously hard at life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But maybe I’m a little better at recognizing what I can and can’t control. Maybe I know a little better what’s worth fighting for and what’s not. Samuel Huntington (from whom I read a good bit this semester) sums it up well: Faith and family, blood and belief, are what people identify with and what they will fight and die for. (Huntington, "If Not Civilizations, Then What?" Foreign Affairs, 72:5.)

There’s a phrase I learned this semester; it’s not Egyptian but Muslim (and honestly it’s very much anti-the Egyptian mindset):) توكّلتُ على الله tawakeltu 3la-Allah). It means “I trust in God,” but with the connotation of “I have done my part, I have done everything I can, it’s in God’s hands now and I trust Him.” And it works.

Horses under the Stars

Desert sand at Giza, by day, is much like beach sand in the Mid-Atlantic. It’s finer, blows much more easily, and is approximately one part dirt to two parts sand, but is generally a similar color. Minus the waves.

But I’ve never seen the desert at five a.m.

We get up early, meeting in the lobby at four thirty. We’re all a bit dazed and move slowly. We hail one of the lone cabs still out on the streets (his comrades will be out en force in an hour or so), and ride to a stable at the edge of the desert.

Giza (real Giza, not the urban area to the north) exists solely for tourist purposes. As Matt guides the cab driver to M.G. Stable (they all use two letters for their stables…never sure whether they were initials or just random alphabet soup), men in the street jump in front of our cab. The driver squeals to a halt each time (the Cleopatra cigarette in his mouth never wavers) as the men open the doors on our cab, assuring us that they have horses. We ride horses? Oh yes they have good horses, best price. No, no, we say. We are going to another stable. We begin driving with them still running after our cab. One chases us for almost two blocks. The driver seems amused by the whole deal.

M.G. Stable is at the end of one of many unpaved roads. Across the street is a concrete wall eight feet high topped by a fence another twelve feet high. On the other side is sand. Tethered to the graffitied wall are camels. Lots of camels. I hate camels. A one-eyed man in a dirty gelabiyya and turban is seated outside smoking a hookah with a young boy, maybe four, sitting next to him. A young man in western dress greets us, and shows us one of the stables. The horses do not seem to appreciate the sudden awakening that comes when he flicks on the overhead lights, but they soon calm and seem both friendly and relatively well-cared for. Relatively is, of course, the key phrase. The horses’ condition was something unseen in America (not like I’m an equestrian or anything, but the number of sores on these horses was a good indicator. As was the fact that the last time I saw hip bones that jutted out that much I was looking at a BBC article on Milan’s Fashion Week.), but better than some of the animals I’ve seen reluctantly toting fat American men in shorts and calf-high socks around the Pyramids. We say we’re all four qwayyis, which means okay, riders. Please recall that I’ve never actually ridden a horse. But it’s better than getting stuck with the donkey lying on its side in the dirt courtyard.

We mount our trusty steeds (mine is gray and named Loof) and ride south along dark, silent streets towards the desert. It’s about ten minutes of some of the poorest homes I’ve seen in Cairo. As the one street ends, we make a right at the mosque (similar to turning right at the Crown station for Baltimore natives), ride past a home with two camels tethered in the tiny front courtyard (the camels don’t quite fit in the courtyard), and a cemetery. After another few minutes, everything disappears from our left side. We’ve hit desert.

Desert sand at five in the morning is silver. Pure silver. The navy blue sky above is lavishly full of stars, which rain more silver down on the dunes which roll out in front of us. “Lavishly full,” of course, is another relative statement. On any given night, I don’t see stars in Cairo. One if I’m lucky, but the light pollution, air pollution, and general smog/dust/sand combination make celestial observation something reserved for trips far from the city lights. But this early morning we are far enough from the city lights and surprisingly without haze (for the moment), letting us drink in silver overhead and silver below the hooves that move with grace and a solid certainty across the sand.

We start to ride up a wide, steep path between dunes. It’s not easy. If you’ve never ridden before (really ridden), there are four horse phases: walk, trot, canter, and gallop. Walk is easy. Trotting is a quicker walking with the feet picked up higher, while cantering is like a jog. Trot and canter are ridiculously hard to seat without looking like a complete idiot. You can grip the horse with your thighs and pray to stay seated. You can “post,” which is pretty much anticipating the horse’s up-and-down and overcompensating by standing and sitting ahead of the game. Alternately, you can just bounce like an idiot. I’ll give you three guesses which one I did. (Although in my defense I got much better at the first two in the course of two hours.)

Then, there’s galloping. We have a general handle on my equestrian skills, so there’s little surprise that I managed to look like a fool on Loof’s back. But I did manage to hang on. You can tell when a horse moves from a canter to a gallop because cantering is rough. The horse does it because it’s an easy pace, but the style is unnatural. When a horse moves out of a canter into a gallop there’s a lot less bone-jarring going on (for you and the animal). The strides become fluid and natural, the legs stretch out and the jarring becomes more of a rocking. Horses have no feeling in the hair in their mane and tail. So I hold the reins with one hand and weave the fingers of the other through Loof’s mane, twisting my hand into the thick hair, more to reassure myself than to truly prevent being thrown.

The first time a horse breaks into a gallop, you stop breathing. Terror grips your chest so tight you forget everything but the certainty that you are looking at the last things you will ever see. Moving so fast on something to which you are only tenuously attached directly contradicts several self-preservation instincts. After a few seconds, you become aware of your knees around the horse’s middle, your hands (which are freezing. The desert at night is very cold, even in May.) holding ancient, cracking leather reins and woven through coarse hair, and you manage to breathe a little. Then, due to the combined effects of speed and the dust/dirt/sand kicked up by Loof and the horse no more than six feet in front of him, your eyes stream tears as the wind whips hair all around your face. And slowly, you realize that you are smiling. Not only that, you are grinning like an idiot. Galloping through the desert before the sun even hints that it will rise, you smile up at the stars and laugh.

After an hour of riding around the dunes, exploring down and across a wide, unpaved access road and power lines that stretch endlessly through the desert, you ride up a hill to Medinat al-Sahara, Desert City. It’s quite a city, really. A three-sided structure of concrete blocks about four feet tall is the size of a full bed. Two blankets are across the top, and two men lay on a pile off quilts inside, slightly curled. Just outside this little “tent” are a fire pit and a man with no upper teeth, who asks how many teas we will have. We each have a cup of tea. He grabs four glasses, about the size and shape of juice glasses, and puts two scoops of loose ground tea and five scoops of white sugar into each glass, then pours hot water over it.

The desert is still cold, even though the sky is turning orange, and the too-hot glass feels good on stiff fingers. The horses, too, appreciate standing still. Young Egyptian men break the silence by tearing up this dune and zooming around on ATVs that were once shiny silver but have been dulled to a flat gray. One almost runs me over. Three times. Of all the dunes in the Sahara…. The cloyingly sweet tea tastes good as the sky turns even more orange, and the east turns rosy red. The haze is too thick to see the actual sunrise (this happens a lot in Egypt), so we watch the sky light up as if on fire for a few minutes.

We ride back around the desert for a while, before the two hours we negotiated with our guide (the man in western clothes) are up. We turn north, back towards Cairo, and find ourselves in what can only be described as a narrow, shallow canyon between dunes. The horses take a hint and flick through the trot and canter, wasting little time in getting to a gallop. We race, the horses enjoying the pace just as much as we are. The four horses weave in and out of each other, refusing to back off the pace. And we begin to yell, out of the sheer fact that moving that fast on an animal that powerful is something so beautiful that you can’t use words. Luke, who owns horses of his own, yee-haws. I ululate (although badly), which is a tribal sound women make to express extreme emotion—sorrow or joy. Matt “ya”s to his horse, which is going the fastest of any. Even Mary whoops.

The horses take the roads—now moving with early risers (it’s seven a.m. on a Sunday)—slowly, and we get a little separated. I greet an old, old woman, all in black with deeply creased skin, who returns my greeting and blesses my beauty. I’m flattered in a way that I never am when men on the street whisper unsolicited comments about my beauty.

As we get closer to M.G. Stable, more camels appear. A car (a new-looking Audi, who knows how it got to Egypt, let alone Giza) has bottomed out on an unpaved road. A crowd of about fifteen stands gawking. Including a man in a suit I can only assume is the owner and his well-dressed wife. Why they were driving like this at the edge of the desert in a dirt-poor neighborhood I don’t know. Another woman, all in black, walks along the road alone, carrying on her head a huge metal bin of food ends and other waste. She sees an empty spot on the road, takes the bin off of her head, dumps it in the road, and turns around to walk home.

We return the horses. Loof seems ready to eat. Or sleep. Or do something that doesn’t involve a girl bouncing around on his back while he’s trying to run.

As we walk to get a cab, a boy of about six, his sister who looks eleven, and their mother walk alongside us. I start talking to the boy. His name is Abdelrahman and his mother is taking them both to school this morning. The sister, she whispers to me that her name is Salma, is lucky. In poverty a girl’s education is often low-priority, but she is still going to school. I wish them luck as they walk towards another small mosque that doubles as a primary school.

We fight rush hours traffic taking the cab back, and celebrate a morning among the dunes with a ridiculously large breakfast at Café Tabasco—real American pancakes (you can taste the Bisquik).

Ride in the desert under the stars. Gallop. Yell. I promise you’ll feel alive.

The Land of the Free

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