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

Back home. More to follow.

Climbing Mt. Sinai, a how-to guide.

1. Locate Mt. Sinai on a map.(Hint: it’s on the Sinai Peninsula.)(Second Hint: you may have to look for Gebel Musa, Mount Moses.)
2. Locate nearest beach town.(Hint: if it isn’t the nearest, it’s the best—Dahab.)
3. Eat a ridiculously large dinner at Ali Baba restaurant.You’ll need the energy, right?Be sure to include one of Ali Baba’s famous “thick shakes”—a milkshake that occasionally is just a huge glass of ice cream.(For starters, try Mango/Strawberry, Banana/Peanut Butter, Chocolate/Peanut Butter, or Strawberry/Vanilla.)
4. Climb into a 14-passenger van from your Dahab hostel around 2200.There’s eleven in your group, plus three Japanese tourists, and a random Spaniard with a large backpack.There’s also a driver.Stop after 15 minutes to let in a “guard.”This is a fat man in shirtsleeves, carrying a handgun, who provides security for us foreigners.He does this by sitting in the front seat (taking up a seat-and-a-half) and sleeping.
5. Complete the two-hour drive from Dahab to St. Katherine’s Monastery in approximately 80 minutes.Sleep in patches when the vehicle isn’t careening down the highway with no regard for life or limb.(Headlights off, of course.)
6. Everyone piles out of the van to buy tickets.The ticket office is, obviously, some 15 minutes away from where you actually pile out again to start the climb.
7. Re-exit van at St. Katherine’s Monastery.Find the bathroom before beginning the four-hour climb.There are two women seated outside of it collecting money from people exiting.Stand in line for the bathroom, use bathroon with no toilet paper (which is why you brought your own, isn’t it?), and while washing your hands observe the four signs reading “Do Not Pay Any Money to Use this Bathroom” in English and Arabic. Leave the bathroom without paying.Refuse to turn around when the woman collecting baksheesh outside the bathroom begins screeching at you.Keep walking.
8. Meet your guide: Musa.He is a short, wiry man in a white gelabiyya (who climbs a mountain in white cotton?), red kufiyya, and brown shoes.Musa will be taking the eleven of you (plus the three Japanese and the Spaniard) up to the top of Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise.It’s almost 100.
9. Begin the climb by heading through security.This is the most thorough security check you will find anywhere in the Arab Republic of Egypt, I kid you not.This goes far past the airport, the bus terminals, the university, the dorms.Who knows.
10. Start climbing!Musa takes you along the “Camel Trail,” a trail up the mountain that puts switchbacks as we know them to shame.The moon is bright and nearly full, the stars are out as well.The ascent is steady, and not terribly steep.Going is pretty easy for this famous peak.Musa ruins your night vision every three minutes or so by turning on his small flashlight and more often than not shining it back on the group.Generally at eye level.
11. Take a path through several large rocks.Allow the rocks to move and grunt at you.Realize that the rocks are something far worse than rocks: camels.Camels you’ve woken up.Thanks, Musa.
12. Continue the ascent, winding back and forth, back and forth up the trail.Stop at the first rest hut, where Musa and the man greet each other warmly.You’ve brought food and drink, so there’s no need to buy a bottle of water for LE 10 (when it should cost LE 1.5) or a Snickers bar for LE 12 (when it shouldn’t be more than LE 3), but it’s nice to sit and let people catch up.One of the Japanese girls falls behind.Very far behind.She decides to ride a camel to the top.The group must now keep pace with a camel.People walk faster than camels.
13. It gets chillier as you climb, and steeper, but still neither cold nor difficult.Continue in short sleeves and keep the best pace you can.Occasionally allow Musa to yell at you for getting too far ahead.
14. Look down the way you came.The lights of other climbers (seems like everyone except your group is climbing with a light) make a glowing snake from the base of the mountain up until almost where you are.Flashlights waggle back and forth, making the snake writhe its way up the camel trail.Look up the trail: it’s rather dark.
15. Reach the last rest stop, a place called Elijah’s Basin (because apparently here, under a 500-year-old cypress tree, Elijah heard the voice of God), approximately 2.5 hours after you began climbing.The air temperature isn’t that cold, but the wind is intense.Your hair, heretofore secured in a ponytail, is whipped around your face and into your eyes until you can’t see without holding it back with your hands.Everyone piles into one of many available rest huts.Two girls break down and buy hot tea.Decide it’s time to wear more than just a short-sleeve shirt (even if it is performance material), but changing would be awkward in this crowded tent.Hop outside and crouch behind a low stone wall.Slip a few times and pray not to tumble down.Pull off one tshirt, pull on long-sleeve t-shirt, put t-shirt back on.Try not to think of what your father would say to you climbing a mountain in a cotton t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.
16. Begin the “Steps of Repentance.”These steps actually began 3000 ago at the base, back behind the monastery, but you took the camel trail instead.Now all you have left are 750 stone “steps,” supposedly laid by a monk from St. Katherine’s as a penance.Whatever he did, it must have been a doozy.The steps are uneven in the dark.Yes, it’s very dark but easier than trying to manage with a small flashlight.It’s much steeper now.You’re actually climbing and can see progress as opposed to the steady switchbacks of the camel trail.
17. Reach the top.The wind blows so loud in your ears you can hear nothing but its wild whistling.It’s now just after four a.m.Wait a few minutes for everyone else to make it to the top.Musa yells at you again for going ahead.You apologize.He knows you’re not at all sorry and tells you as much.Smile, he’s right.Wander around a bit at the top looking for somewhere to camp out.Find a narrow, rocky ledge.Put down seven people and seven heavy, dirty, smelly, warm, rented blankets.It’s still not very cold, but there’s no protection from the wind.Everyone tries to sleep for a few scant hours in the tearing wind before waking to watch the sunrise.
18. Lay on your back on the top of Mt. Sinai.Watch the stars.Feel free to touch them if you want, they’re that close.See one shooting star.Then a second.Pick out constellations.A third shooting star.
19. Blink.
20. The world is no longer black.It is, in fact, a deep dark blue.The rocks all around you and as far as you can see are a blue-black, the color of a velvet evening gown.The sky is just two shades lighter.But it is lighter.Sit up.Everyone else is still asleep, spooned into each other for protection from the wind.Tie a scarf around your head in an effort to keep your hair out of your face.Good call.
21. Lay back down and watch the stars disappear.Sit back up and look out across the peaks around Mt. Sinai.Right now they’re misty and still covered in shades of blue.As the sky lightens every moment, they become more brown, and then more red.
22. Alarms go off and your companions begin to stir.It’s almost time for sunrise.But looking east, clouds and haze obscure the skyline.
23. Watch the east as the sky lightens.Keep watching.The sun rises behind a wall of haze.That’s pretty disappointing.Note for the first time a group of Japanese tourists on an outcropping just in front of you.Good God, they are loud and obnoxious.
24. Call sunrise a bust.
25. When you finally see the sun for the first time, it’s a few inches above the horizon, and still less-than-impressive.The Japanese, on the other hand, find this highly impressive.Extending their palms to the sun, they sing.Then they turn around and continue posing each other for pictures, in most of which someone is giving the peace sign.
26. Musa comes to collect you for the trip back down.You were thinking of taking the Steps of Repentance all the way down, but a few members of your group have taken a turn for the worse (what is this—Oregon Trail?), so opt for the Camel Trail back down.
27. Begin to descend the Steps of Repentance to Elijah’s Basin.Actually look at what you climbed last night.Feel abject terror.You climbed these narrow, misplaced, uneven, steep steps at three a.m. in the dark.Get an excellent thigh workout on the descent.
28. Make your way back down the camel trail.It is now populated with more camels.And more men and boys trying to get you to ride one down the mountain.As you climb down, the sun rises and burns off all the haze so that within an hour of sunrise, the sky is a brilliant, hurt-your-eyes blue.Mt. Sinai, like the mountains around it, is not brown or black.It is red.A bright, adobe red.It is also a fairly sheer face.The church at the top, next to the ledge where you slept, is barely visible and looks precariously perched on the cliff.
29. Reach the bottom in something like two and a half hours, a little less than what it took you to climb.
30. Enter St. Katherine’s Monastery.Be prepared for the crush of people inside of it.All these people on top of a mountain is one thing, all of them inside a monastery is definitely another.See the Church of the Transfiguration.Be impressed but don’t take pictures.Roll your eyes slightly at the tourists who do.
31. Inside of St. Katherine’s, make sure to see the Burning Bush.Or, rather, a descendant of the Burning Bush that came from the real Burning Bush as a clipping in the 10^th century (if the monks of St. Katherine’s are to be believed).Be not-as-impressed.Weren’t you expecting flames?Maybe embers?Burn marks?Something.
32. Pile back into the van.Doze on the ride back to Dahab, which takes something like 100 minutes this morning.Headlights are still optional.“Guard” is not.
33. Pile out of the van.You are covered in reddish dirt, smelly, and exhausted.You have also climbed Mt. Sinai, watched the stars, and seen the sun rise (after a fashion).Victory!
34. Go get some lunch, it’s almost noon.

Only in Egypt...

Only in Egypt would I walk into a final exam on the day I wasn't assigned to go at 4:20 p.m,, and say to my professor "Before we start, I just want to ask can we make this very quick? I have to give a presentation on the other campus at 4:30." The professor smiles, laughs, and says "Of course, you know all of this already."

I'm done my colloquial Arabic final exam in five minutes.

Can you imagine this being written in America?

Egypt to celebrate Mubarak's birthday

Egypt celebtrates Friday President Hosni Mubarak's birthday which marks an all-out march of achievements in the various domains.

Since Mubarak assumed his post as the President of Egypt, he did his utmost to serve the Egyptian people.

He leads his country like a wise skilled captain knowing how to control his ship and save it from dangers besetting it in a world full of changes and challenges.

He has always sought to protect Egypt's security and spare his people the suffering of war.

The president is even keen on not taking risks that would negatively affect his people's lives as Mubarak has lived the bitter experience of the 1967 war when he was serving as an Egyptian air force officer.

At the right moment Mubarak efficiently led the well-prepared airstrike in the 1973 war.

Mubarak has led a march of economic reforms leading to great Egyptian economic acheivements.

He has also pioneered a political reform march, including for the first time in Egypt's history holding multi-presidential elections after amending Article 76 of the constitution.

It was natural for such action to spark debates as the door became open for all political parties, including opposition blocs, and newspapers to express their opinions freely.

(thanks to Kari for this one...)

Is this flattering? Because I don't think so.

Yes, I know I'm far behind. I have to update you on things like the Sinai Peninsula, climbing Mt Sinai at night, and a second set of wonderful long-distance-travel-in-Egypt adventures. Then I have to tell you about horseback riding in the Sahara in the pre-dawn, when the dunes and the stars are silver, and watching the sun blaze up in the smoggy sky and turn them gold, and galloping through the desert whooping like a wild Indian. Then there's that moulid (what, you ask, is a moulid? Guess you'll have to wait and see). And there's STILL spring break! I'll be updating this with Egypt stories for another year. Sorry.

Anyways

Most of you are familiar with my general dislike for the male half of the Egyptian population. The grabbing, the comments, the stares (all exponentially creepier when coming from men my father's age and older) wear on one after a while. But this is a new low.

Somehow, an Egyptian man named "Ali" got my phone number. He began calling yesterday evening while I was watching a tv show on someone's computer downstairs and had my phone tucked away. I looked when we finished watching--12 missed calls, it reads in arabic. God, who died? I think as I pick up the phone to check the numbers. Then it's ringing in my hand. One ring, then hangs up. Again. One ring. One ring. One ring. Four "missed calls" in less than 30 seconds. I hand the phone to Kari, she checks her phone to see if the number matches anything she has. Nope. I walk outside and try to pick up the next call, but can't. So I call him.

The phone rings once, and then music begins on the line. Cheesy Arabic pop, and I can hear it ringing in the background. Then the music cuts off and the phone picks up. Allo? Hello, who is this? (silence) Who is this? Masa' il-khreer. (Good evening) Masa' il-nur. (response) Who is this? (silence) Who is this? Ismi Ali (My name is Ali.) Ali, do not call this number again. DO NOT call it. I hang up and walk back inside.

The phone starts ringing again. And again. It's just going off constantly. Always one ring and then "missed call." Kari calls him and threatens him. Doesn't do anything. After racking up about 15, I turn off the phone at Max's advice.

When I leave to go upstairs, I turn the phone back on. Nothing so far. Perhaps he got the message? By the time I'm in the second floor stairwell, it's ringing. I can't pick it up, but I call him back. Ali? Aiwa. (yes) Ali do not call this number again. Bihebik. (I love you.) I don't care. Do not call this number again. Stop calling me.

The phone continues to ring. Within five minutes there's 30 missed calls. I realize I have to walk to the store a few blocks away, so I take my phone. It's ringing constantly. Finally, on a darkened Cairo street at 1230 in the morning, I ball up and call him again.

**Please understand that the following paragraphs are not censored. Skip for children or those offended by profanity.**

The now-familiar Arabic pop plays until he picks up the phone. Ali, isma'ni wi isma'ni bizabt. (Ali, you listen and you listen good.) Mish a'arifatk. (I don't know you.) Stop calling me. Stop calling this number. Lam tatasl bi. (Never call me.) I love you. I don't give a fuck. Stop fucking calling me. I swear to God if you do not stop I will come fucking find you and you will be in trouble. We will have a mushkila. (a problem) Lam tatasl bi. Abadan. (Never call me. Ever.) Khalas. (We're finished.)

The phone keeps ringing. Before I make it a block he's called 15 times. I call again. I realize that this is encouraging the behavior, I really do. But I was so angry and upset. Allo? Ali, isma'ni. (You listen to me.) Isma'ni (mocking me). Don't fuck with me. I swear to God if you call this again I will kill you. Don't ever fucking call me again. Lam tatasl bi. Lih? (why?) Lam tatasl bi. Fahim? (Never call me, never call me. Do you understand?)

It keeps going. I get back to the dorms and in the stairwell I crack. I call him again. Ali. This is it. Khalas. (We're finished) If you fucking call me one more fucking time I swear to God I will fucking kill you. H'aqtalak. (I'll kill you.)

I get to my room and before I can turn on my computer I have ten calls. I decide to go downstairs and ask the hulking men at the front desk to call him and explain to him that he needs to stop. Kari suggests the same. Max says to trace the call so we can go beat him up. This is, however, Egypt. I don't think call tracing will make it here in any way, shape, or form for another thirty years. So I head down. By the time I make it to the front desk I have 48 missed calls. He is nothing if not persistent.

By this point I'm almost in tears because I have to be up tomorrow morning at 430 to go horseback riding and I'm exhausted from life in every way and I just want to not deal with this but I need to use my phone as my alarm and I can't well do that if it's ringing off the hook all night. I'm also just frustrated and upset. It feels violating. Inexplicably, even though I'm trapped in the dorms with fat security guards who sit on their expanding posteriors drinking syrupy-sweet tea all day, I don't feel safe. At all.

At the front desk, I explain to the man sitting there what's going on: Someone I do not know has my phone number. He keeps calling me and hanging up. When I call him he tells me his name is Ali and that he loves me. I've told him to stop calling me, to never call this number, that I do not know him, and that I'll kill him. In English and in Arabic. The man looks confused. Why do I not wish to speak with one of my friends? he wants to know. What have I done to make him call this way? I think I actually stare at him with my jaw dropped for a second. Apparently, things like this being a woman's fault are universal. I ask him, can he just call this number and tell him to stop calling me. I just need the calls to stop. That's all. He just looks at me like I'm stupid. (Of course, who wouldn't want this on their phone?) I keep trying to explain to him that I just need him to call and tell the person on the phone to stop calling me. I'm near tears through this. He keeps asking what I have done to make this happen.

Finally, a tall Egyptian guy stops on his way out. Do I need help? he asks, and says he's an RA. I explain the situation and tell him I just need someone male to call and explain to Ali in Arabic that he cannot call me again. His phone is out of credit, so he borrows a friend's phone and calls the number. He politely explains to the other end of the phone that this number has been calling a girl at the American University and he cannot do it again. (As a point of pride, I understand the entire half of the conversation I hear.)

The calls stop until I'm in the second floor stairwell. By the time I'm in my room I have 14. I turn off the phone. When I turn it back on to set my alarm, there's nothing. I sleep my two and a half hours without a call.

In the morning, I get up at 430 to go horseback riding. Nothing on my phone. Alhamdulilah. I leave the phone on vibrate on my bed, thinking that if someone should call or text me before I get back, it won't wake my roommates by vibrating on my desk. Alhamdulilah I did that.

I get back from horses, dunes, and breakfast and walk into my room to grab my towel, etc for a much needed shower. My phone is lit up, showing recent activity. I look down. 40 missed calls. Dear God. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

I head into the shower.

Upon my return, there are 81 missed calls.

My phone is off right now, and has been for about an hour. Plan B is TBD. Because I want to use my phone.

My Life? Complete.

I can come home now. My life is really just complete.

Yesterday I was walking from the dorms to the grocery store (about a 6-10 minute walk) around 1330. I was my usual, unassuming, unobtrusive Cairo self. A man in his late 20s or early 30s passed me on the street. He paused and gave me the generaly visual examination I've come to expect from men here. He then said...

...I'm not kidding....

"Hubba hubba."

Fin.

Desert Shield?

Worst sandstorm I've seen yet is going outside.

The world is yellow. I can't see more than a block. There's grit all over me: blown into my eyes, my nose, my ears, my mouth. My hair has a nice cap of tan-gray.

During a sandstorm, the world goes eerily quiet. People aren't in the streets, cars aren't in the streets. You hear the wind; you hear the branches snapping off of trees. Sounds that you do hear are oddly magnified in the quiet. A lone car horn made me jump, so did a branch crashing.

It's keeping up, so I'm going to hunker down in the library and hope that I don't get hungry before it ends.

Because God knows the open-air shops won't be open.

(There are, of course, a few groups of boys sitting outside on campus during this. Their number has, however, decreased steadily in the 90 minutes it's been storming. Boys are boys everywhere. Sorry, gentlemen.)

Please, come into my shop...

Gentle Reader,

You may notice that I have yet to update about my adventures over Spring Break, where I visited Rome and Sicily in Italy and Northern and Central Tunisia. I assure you I kept a journal of my travels. It totals over 100 handwritten pages. As time becomes available (when I am somewhere in my 80s), I will enter it into typed format. I’ll try and post some of the better vignettes, but please be patient. I’m into the “finals” swing of things, which means I have 50 pages to write in the next five weeks, as well as quite a bit else. In the meantime, you can amuse yourself with the following.

Yours truly,
Bint Ibn Battuta (alias m.)

If Egypt were Facebook, these would be my “Interests”

5.7 pounds to the dollar. Buying 4.5 liters of bottled water for less than a dollar. Walking the streets of Cairo with my game face (also known as the man-killing face, also known as the assassin face). The elementary school outside my window. My roommate’s obnoxious ringtone. My obnoxious ringtone. Having my room cleaned by the maids. Feeling awkward about having someone clean my room and change my sheets. What passes for “cleaning” here. Having it take four hours to do laundry. The cats that live in the dorms. The pregnant cat in the dorms. Watching Egyptian girls tease the cats until they get bitten and then pout for the Egyptian boys. The gym at the dorms where the Egyptian boys enter for ten minutes, do one set of six reps of bicep curls (with atrocious form) and call it a day—looking confusedly at me, dripping sweat with my game face on. Missing the gym at home. Missing running outside. Missing tank tops. The dorm guards who “check” your bags. Sitting in the lobby with boys. Complaining about gender segregation. Observing Egyptian courting methods. Underpaying cab drivers who get me lost three times. Overpaying cab drivers who take me where I actually want to go. Having a cab driver stop at the church to marry me before taking me back to the dorms. Ignoring cab drivers. Knowing the games cab drivers play and not falling victim. Having to give Cairo cab drivers directions to places of serious historical importance. Coptic Cairo. The Catholic cemetery in Coptic Cairo. Lying my way into it. Mar Girgis. Sarah’s apartment. Dan’s apartment. Complaining about Egyptian alcohol (it’s that bad). Khan el-Khalili. “My future wife, I am here!” “For you, I kill all four of my wives!” “How can I take your money today?” “Did you see? My heart—it broke!” “I make you good price.” Real Egyptian Price. The man I buy scarves from. Scarves. Silver jewelry. Looking in souvenir shops and laughing. Deciding what to buy people. “Harry Potter” in Arabic. The AUC Bookstore. The view from the top of Main Campus. Shocking the good folk of Zamalek by occasionally forgetting to put on a jacket and walking down the street in short sleeves. Getting cursed at by the hecklers at the pyramids in Arabic. Bitching them out right back in Arabic. The shock in their eyes. Complaining about the Egyptian museum. Ordering food in Arabic. Otlob.com. Caving and getting a McDonald’s chocolate milkshake. Eavesdropping on the Egyptians on the bus. Laughing at what they say about me. Crying at what they say about me. Ful in baladi bread. Being the only woman in the ful line. The front guy trying to flirt with me. Koshary. The guy at the koshary place who knows my face and exactly what I’ll order. Sahlab. Not being about to find skim milk to save my life. What passes in Egypt for “salad.” Dreaming of actual greens. Atrocious coffee. Nescafe 3-in-1. Being able to buy pretty much anything except tampons and safety pins at Alfa Market. Qur’anic recitation on the shuttle. Making the shuttle. Making the shuttle and getting a seat. Having a tan face and hands. Having a very white everything else. Hating Egyptian internet. Getting depressed about politics. Being haram on purpose. Being haram by accident. Being where I shouldn’t. Baksheesh. Understanding what someone is saying to me. Sandstorms. Being outside during them. The white lines when you come inside from one. Political Science seminars in limited English. Arabic classes in limited Arabic. Being confused when it rains. City Stars Mall. Movies with Arabic subtitles. Laughing at how badly the subtitles don’t match up. Electric kettles. Being frustrated with my Cairo life. Hating my Cairo life. Loving my Cairo life. Living my Cairo life.

Desert Storm?

One of the perks of living in a desert is sand. There's a lot of it. Usually, it stays on the ground. And in your hair and clothes but to a fairly reasonable degree. Occasionally the wind decides to do some rearranging, but it's not too bad.

Until the khamseen.

Khamseen means "fifty" in Arabic. And it denotes the fifty days during the spring season during which sandstorms occur.

They started this week.

Wednesday, the haze was thicker than usual when we drove across the bridge to campus. After my class got out at 1100, I walked out of the Social Sciences building and was crossing the quad at Greek Campus when it started to rain while the sun was shining. I grinned to myself. Shaytan's beating his wife, I guess. And then I got bonked on the head by hail. Reasonably big hail, too. It only hailed for two or three minutes, but the Egyptian students went crazy. You'd think hail had never happened. (I found out later that it hasn't hailed in Egypt since the mid-1990s...)

Once I got onto the street and start walking towards Main Campus, I could see what this sandstorm thing meant a little more personally. The air during a sandstorm is brownish-yellowish-red. The sky is grey, but looks dirty and a little red, too. It's not like it's cloudy outside. When it's cloudy there's still light. Here, there's an unnatural sort of diffused, weak light that makes its way down. When the wind starts blowing (and not gentle breezes, either. Some real wind.) it's less fun. Wearing contact lenses during a sandstorm is bad.

What a sandstorm is NOT: those desert scenes from movies where the wall of sand comes out of nowhere and is blowing in everybody's faces and they can't keep their eyes open, wrap Bedouin-style scarves around their faces, and have to huddle in caves for hours on end (...and if it's The Far Pavilions, make sweet love). Maybe those happen way out in the desert.

Today, I woke up and walked to the store around 1030 to get some bread. It was absolutely peaceful out. Very quiet (it's a weekend morning and NOBODY in their right Egyptian mind would be up until about 1300), with a few birds and almost no car horns. I could smell flowers, actually, as I walked down the street. It looked cloudy but I didn't look too hard.

While I was in the gym, something changed out there. Upon exiting the gym the air smelled like dirty smoke, felt thick and too hot. Looking up at the sky, it was that brownish cloudy and things were obscured. I got back to my room and looked out the window, and found it hard to see to the normal distance. Buildings looked hazed over, but it was actually blowing sand.

It's calm now, but everything still has that strange color. The sand and dust in the air are really noticeable.

That's a sandstorm.

A Day in the Life...

Wake up. The windows are closed, but the sounds of the street are easy to hear. Car horns. It’s only 730, but they’re going already. Turn on electric kettle to make tea, traipse to the bathroom. Make tea; check BBC and Facebook for news of civilization. Get dressed, put in contacts without using the mirror, return to bathroom to brush teeth and wash face. Try and be quiet because both roommates are still sleeping. Chat with a few stray Georgetown friends online and tell them to go to bed. It’s 200, you know.

Accidentally kick Sara’s turtle while crossing to the closet (it moved!). Sara’s alarms start going off at 800. And keep going indefinitely. Her phone alarm goes off (unheeded), clock alarm that beeps and plays the call to prayer at five daily intervals goes off (unheeded), phone rings (it’s her mother calling to wake her up, unheeded). Usually by 830 she’s answered the phone. Usually. The other roommate says Sara generally makes it out of bed by noon.

At 815, the children at the elementary school across the street start chanting as they do their calisthenics. You don’t think it sounds like “Death to America,” but it may well. They don’t enunciate terribly well. At 820, what sounds like a toy piano breaks into the chords of the Egyptian National Anthem. The entire student body begins to screech...Bilaady, bilaady, bilaaaaaadyyyyy… Next seems to be “Frere Jacques,” but you can never be sure.

Descend from the girl’s side of the dorms, exit dorms and board shuttle. It’s two seats on one side, one seat on the other, and a fold-down seat for each row across the aisle. If this bus needs to be evacuated, you should probably just curl up and pray because you won’t get out. Drive across the bridge from Zamalek to mainland Egypt. Join the collective wince upon seeing just how thick the smog is today. Try not to think that you’re breathing it.

Alight from the shuttle and accompany classmate to the feteer shop one block down. Stand while the feteer guys ogle you and necessary breakfast business is transacted. (Feteer is a tasty, flaky, well-oiled pancake rolled up with jam, sugar, or honey in the mornings and other things later. One costs 50 piasters, a whopping $0.09.) Return, and pass through “Security.” Walk through a metal detector that isn’t plugged in and open the main compartment of your bag (never mind it has at least 4 other compartments) for a cursory glance. Walk across Greek Campus (one of three campuses: Main Campus, Greek Campus, Falaki Campus) to the Social Sciences building for class.

Depart Social Sciences and Greek Campus for Main Campus. Avoid Gucci Corner, where the moneyed of the moneyed at AUC hang out. By this time rush-hours have ebbed somewhat. Cross the street with ease. Wait for two friends who aren’t quite as gutsy and haven’t quite mastered suppressing one’s urge for self-preservation. (It must be completely squashed before walking out in front of a bus five times a day.) Recall that this tactic will have you dead in Washington, DC within three days.

Head to the gym. Change in the bathroom stall because nobody changes by the lockers. Of the two spinning bikes, neither has the straps in the toe cages, and one has the cages completely busted off. Feel a little awkward since only American girls wear shorts and short sleeves, but there’s usually only one other Egyptian girl. Finish workout and head back to locker room. Grab clothing and jump into shower stall. Try to control that post-workout glow (and scent) with the hand-held shower that doesn’t actually have a working drain. Get your clothes a little wet. Oops. Change in the shower stall.

Exit shower stall and return to locker. Remember that you got the lucky locker: it faces Mecca. Everyone on campus uses the locker rooms to pray, so now there are five girls lined up praying right in front of your locker. You can’t exactly walk in front of them to put your stuff in. Wait fifteen minutes until you can dodge in and trade gym bag for textbooks.

Walk two blocks down to the ful and ta’amiyya place. Run the gauntlet of male stares from the hookah place attached. “The ful and ta’amiyya place” is a hole in the wall that serves pita halves filled with ful, ta’amiyya, baba ghanoush, potato chips, etc. Stand among hulking Egyptian men as the sole female or Caucasian and look so out of place that the guy inside the shop can’t help but grin. (An actual friendly grin, not a leer!) Usually be waited on before the men, and occasionally be permitted to step in front of men to place your order. Depart LE 1 poorer, with two pita halves filled with ful—mashed fava beans that taste mostly like refried beans. Rerun gauntlet. Remain thankful that nobody’s grabbed you yet today. Pass ambiguous picture of Sadat or MLK and return to cafeteria to consume ful and a cup of quasi-American coffee.

Run over to the copy shop to pick up reading for next week and order the following week’s. Laugh at how absolutely and unabashedly it violates any copyright laws. Cringe slightly since double-sided copying is unheard of, you’ve got 500 sheets of paper bound together for the next class.

Head to Falaki for class. Depart with 10 minutes until the next class and remember that it’s now 1430. School’s out for the three local elementary schools, so the streets are crammed with kids in uniforms. Get harassed by elementary-age boys (HELLO HELLO! SEXY? SEXY? as they poke at your arms and sides and occasionally stick out a leg to trip you to prove just how cool they are), get trapped behind the three slowest-walking girls in the entire universe.

Next class on Main Campus. Depart with 10 minutes until the next class. Streets are noticeably more crowded with cars at 1630. (i.e., more jammed than usual, making it even easier to cross) Make it to class on Greek Campus with enough time to run to the bathroom. It’s crowded with girls applying makeup and fixing scarves around the mirror. They give you a dirty look when you ask to please get by to make it to one of the bathroom stalls. One elbows you oh-so-accidentally as you pass and then laughs to the girl next to her. Since you’re white there’s no way you could understand what she says.

Finish class and book to catch the shuttle back. If the shuttle filled up, it left early and you’re screwed. If the professor talked a little too much, you’re also screwed. If the guy driving the 1900 shuttle got bored and decided to leave, you’re screwed. Taking a cab’s not a problem, but it’s LE 5 that you wouldn’t have to spend otherwise. Make the shuttle by knocking on the door and jumping on as it pulls away. No seats, so you stand in the door well. One block from the dorms (one and only destination of the shuttle), you hear the dreaded “Lo samaht?” (If you please?) A girl wants the bus to stop so she can climb out from the back and walk down her street—one block from where the bus is going to stop. Try and climb out of the door well so she can get out. Get hit by the door. Get off the shuttle at the dorms. Drop bag in room and try to decide what to do for dinner.

Head to the dorm’s cafeteria to view the evening’s selections. Long for Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall with entire being. Brainstorm with five other indecisive individuals about dinner. Know that you can go to a restaurant for about the same as the cafeteria, but the cafeteria is here and the food is also here, and at the restaurant food may not show up for another 30 minutes. Settle for cafeteria food. Try and remember what salad tastes like. Resolve to never again complain about Leo’s on Sunday nights. Feel more human after decompressing with people over dinner for forty minutes.

Return to room. Open window to air out room a bit. Plug in headphones to block out car horns as much as possible. Begin homework. Try to use Skype and call America. Fail miserably. Miss real high-speed internet. Finish homework to a reasonable degree around 200. Shower, climb into bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Luxor

I.
It’s a bit like the MARC train, but shakes more, vibrates harder, and moves slower. We ride second-class. It’s not recommended, but we’re college kids. We can tough it out.
Tickets for the sleeper train are USD $60, first-class tickets are LE 60 (USD $11). Ours are a mere LE 40 (USD $7), for 699 km. Ten years ago, this was probably a nice car. Two seats on each side of the aisle, plush, a footrest, reclining back. But ten years is a while. Now the plush is dirty and stained, and the seat backs recline with the slightest touch. Every half-hour or so, a man with a tray barrels through, chanting “Shay, shay, Nescafe, shay ya rayyis—shay?” (Tea, tea, Nescafe, tea, oh Sir—tea?) Visiting between cars is common, as is loud conversation. Outside is dark. We’ve left Cairo’s glow behind.
In the car behind us, a man begins yelling. It seems he doesn’t want to pay LE 40 to ride the train. Soon other men join in—yelling at him to calm him down. We look at each other and shrug. If that’s the worst, we’ll be find. We’re the only foreigners in the car, and the only other woman wears a brown abaya, niqab, and gloves, and occupies the window seat while her male companion sits on the aisle.
For an unknown reason, this feels like the real world. Perhaps because it is.

II.
The hustlers are bad. Worse than at Giza. Much worse.
We finally make it to Happy Land Hotel. It brings to mind creepy things, like Michael Jackson. But then we realize we left him at Giza along with Mickey Mouse.
Mahmoud at the front desk welcomes us with karkade—a hibiscus tea. He holds our collective hand through checking-in (a process that—with typical Egyptian efficiency—takes about 45 minutes). In that time, Mahmous checks our passports, books us a felucca ride for the evening at sunset, and a tour for tomorrow. We pay, realize that we overpaid, and he gives us the change.
Two rooms for four people each, with three boys and five girls. I end up in the boys room. The cleaning lady keeps walking past and I silently apologize for scandalizing her. The rooms are small, but clean, two sets of bunkbeds with sheets, a blanket, pillow, and a towel. Our room has a bathroom with a shower/tub, toilet, and sink. The only thing missing seems to be a shower curtain. (But the towel on my bed was rolled in the shape of a heart.)

III.
We walked past Luxor Temple in the early morning, now we walk back. LE 20 gets us in as students, and we walk into a courtyard of half-remaining men. Columns everywhere—big, fat stone columns reaching up to the sky like so many giant tree trunks. We pass column after column, wall after wall, covered in carvings and heiroglyphs.
But so much has been destroyed. One way of taking revenge on someone is to chisel their face out of their monuments. By doing so you obliterate their identity—and their soul. Something like 2/3 of the images have faces hackes away, arms in adoration and offering chipped off. Someone, as Evy says in The Mummy, “must have done something very naughty.” We walk from chamber to chamber, grand area to grander. In some places you can still see the pigments from almost 4000 years ago. There’s more to see than we can take in, but we do our best, consulting Lonely Planet upon occasion.
There’s grandeur here, bordering on ostentation, but there’s true piety, too. Someone did this—all of it—because it meant something huge.

IV.
After an unmemorable lunch (memorable only in how greasy it was), we catch a cab to Karnak. We walk in (shrugging off hecklers all the way), and come face to face with what’s left of a road flanked by rams—the sacred animal of Amun-Re, to whom the main Karnak Temple complex is dedicated. It used to connect Karnak to the Nile, but has since been pared down to about 50 yards.
Karnak is huge. A multitude of pharoahs built and planned it. Each one added his own temple, obelisk, stele, courtyard, chapel—you name it. You can’t really take it in—it’s so big, so detailed, there’s just so much. Room after room, wall after wall of relief, of carving, of heiroglyphs. You know from the start that every picture you take will fall short of what you see. But the camera comes out. You can’t really help it. We make our way to the Great Hypostyle Hall. Purposely, I don’t look up, but keep my nose buried in Lonely Planet until I’m in the middle. Then, I look up. The 134 columns tower over me. Truly, tower. The floor space of this one hall—this one room of one temple—is larger than St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London—together (6000m2). Each column is thick stone with carvings over every inch. I stand on the base of it and wrap my arms around. They go maybe 1/6 of the circumference. Between the columns are stone tops—the entire area was once roofed in stone. On those “in between” stones, the heiroglyphs have kept their color. 4000 years old, and the suns are red and the ducks yellow.
The temple Ramses III built is a hit with me. There’s a rather famous relief of him “smiting” his enemies (who seem mostly child-size, extending their hands in supplication that goes unheeded). His temple is full of much larger-than-life statues of himself…I’m not sure how amazing or how entirely narcissistic you must be to build a temple of statues of yourself.
We find more and more. The roofless temples seem to go on. Some places have color, some have extraordinary relief. There are some places that faces have been chipped away, not nearly as much as at Luxor Temple. I find one room, near the back, that has gorgeous carvings, most still with the paint. It’s dark and cool, and looks like not many people visit. But the pharoah depicted has been chipped away in every image. Not just his face—his whole body until all that is left is an outline of a pharoah, looking like a flaked arrowhead.
Trekking one, we pass a guy (American) we’d met with two other Americans over at the Ramses III temple. He tells us about a secret staircase in the corner of the Great Hypostyle Hall. Will and Adam realize that it’s the same place where the “Golden Gun” is in the N64 version of GoldenEye. So if you were curious, that staircase exists. And it’s pretty sweet. Scratch that—really sweet. (Even though it ends, blocked with debris, just feet from the sky.)
Wandering the “open-air museum,” I’m looking for the Temple of Ptah, because Lonely Planet says there’s a beautiful statue of Sekhmet—the lion-headed goddess of war, pestilence, destruction, and medicine (odd, I know). Near the outer wall, a man hisses to me and Will. (We’re quite alone out here—anywhere other than Egypt it would be crazy and I would be frightened. Here I just know he wants to show me something special and get me to give him a few guineas.) “Sakhmet?” he hisses, and I nod. He leads us back to the Temple of Ptah, then opens a gate to show me Sakhmet. She’s life-size and beautifully preserved, absolutely beautiful. He points to a hole in the ceiling, then closes the door to the temple. Light from a small square opening falls in a single shaft over Sakhmet. Beautiful. I give him some baksheesh and leave, satisfied.

V.
We ride a felucca—a single-sail Egyptian sailboat—that afternoon. When we leave, it’s 1500 and the sun is high. Our guide and his two sons sail the boat, and he chats with us a bit. He’s funny, and pokes fun at us girls in a kind, harmless way. We take “glamour shots” in the bow, chat, and goof off. It’s great fun.
We sail to Banana Island. Not like we’ve heard of it, but one guy says everyone told him to go. So we pony up the LE 5 per person, and our guide’s son takes us through the banana groves—pointing out the various sizes of the tiny, unripe, bananas. Muhammad, maybe ten, then shows us the wheel of clay jars used to take water from a deep well and put it in the channels that irrigate the fields. He takes us back to the start of the banana grove, where we sit on long benches and they bring us tons of tiny Egyptian bananas. They’re smaller and tougher than the bananas we get at home, and have seeds. But they’re tasty, as is the sugar cane they bring us, which we gnaw at in a manner hardly civilized.

VI.
It’s refreshing to be back on the felucca. Even for March, it’s warm down here and the breeze feels good. The sun begins to set, turning things golden. It’s not a colorful sunset, but the gold color is so strong, it makes it beautiful on its own.
The guide tells us riddles, while his older son makes tea. We drink sweet, sweet tea as the sun sets on our little boat. We laugh and talk, our voices carrying around us.
Dinner is overpriced and lousy.

VII.
We return to Happy Land around 2100. It sounds early, but nobody slept much on the train, and we’ve been in Luxor since 700.
We sit on the rooftop terrace, eating their much cheaper and tastier food. Everyone is tired, but content. We write in journals, listen to iPods, do a little homework.
Our intrepid gang of eight is at peace. At least for now, we are quiet, each in our own “Happy Land.”

VIII.
Our morning “on tour” begins with breakfast on the roof of the hotel. We clamber onto an air-conditioned van and drive across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. Our guide today, Nasser, has 50/50 English skills, and has about 60% of his script down.
We ride a tuf-tuf—a tram that looks about like the ones in Disney World—to the Valley itself. We exit into a large, steep valley, with almost sheer sides. And full of people. Full of people speaking tons of languages. German seems popular.
Our first tomb—Pharoah Merenptah—is beautiful until I try and take a covert phtot and get my camera taken away. I was terrified that the gelabiyya-ed guard wouldn’t give it back—and he almost didn’t—but I stared him down, almost started to cry, and he gave it back. Egyptian men can’t handle women crying. Waterworks are an excellent accessory in a tight spot. The inside was really pretty though. (Upon further inspection, the covert picture of the tomb’s inside turns out to be of the guard—looking right at me. Brilliant.)
The next tomb, Thutmoses III, requires climbing up high. It’s the furthest open tomb, and the interior is impressive in the amount of paint still on the walls. It’s beautiful. The Litany off Ra and the Litany of the Hours—both of which we talked about in my Egyptology class—are on the walls. Christine gets her camera taken away, too, but gets it back.
The final tomb, Ramses III, is my favorite. The painted images of deities and the pharoah are gorgeous—and well-preserved. As we walk, I start naming gods and scenes, so I end up de facto tour guide for us (our guide didn’t go in). It’s awesome to see the scenes and the gods from class in person.
After leaving the Valley of the Kings, our guide makes an unannounced stop at Mona Liza Alabaster Fectory. There, his friends (who somehow knew we were coming…) named Mr. Bond (Mr. James Bond) and Mr. Rambo give us a two-minute demonstration on how they make alabaster jars, and then—surprise!—take us into their shop. They give us mint tea or karkade, and invite us to look around. Nothing has prices on it, inviting bargaining. They show us their favorite pieces, and most of us buy something. I bargain with one man in Arabic. He tells me he is determined to make a sale with me, but keeps telling me I am Sa’aba—hard. I drive a hard bargain, and do pretty well for myself. He started at LE 35, I got it for LE 12.

IX.
One of the things I really wanted to see was Hatshepsut’s Temple—el-Deir el-Bahri. (That means The Northern Monastery, from when Christians fleeing persecution came to Egypt and made many of the ancient temples into churches and monasteries.)
It’s huge and beautiful. The stone makes clean, sharp lines against the reddish cliffs that roll gently behind it. Hatshepsut built it while she reigned as queen, but she didn’t take to looking like a queen. In all the reliefs, she appears dressed as a male pharoah—ceremonial strap-on beard and all. The problem is that when you usurp the throne from your stepson when he’s a child, he grows us, takes the throne back, and tries to obliterate your memory. Thutmoses III vandalized much of el-Deir el-Bahri in an attempt to rid Egypt’s most famous stepmother from the common memory.
The temple itself—even minus the reliefs and paintings—is worth it. The architecture is beautiful, and truly amazing. A fitting memory of a very powerful woman.
(I guess that’s what happens when you start sleeping with your architect.)

X.
Medinat Habu is next. It’s the mortuary temple of Ramses III, built on top of temples to Amun that Hatshepsut and Thutmoses III had already constructed. Ramses III was a warrior—like most of the pharoahs—but his track records was impressive. 19 campaigns, 19 victories. Hence, he liked to commemorate his victories and what appears to be his singlehanded slaughter of every enemy. Quite the guy.
The temple is really big—mean to enshrine his warrior glory for all eternity. Several “sunken” reliefs (this temple is unique for using “sunken reliefs” as opposed to plain old reliefs and straight up carving) are huge and rather famous. All involve people or animals being killed by none other than Ramses III. There’s a really nice big one—much like the one at Karnak—of Ramses III “smiting” his enemies. “Smiting” becomes a catchphrase.
Much of the original color is preserved on walls, columns, ceilings—Ramses III making offerings to several deities (all of them blessings and confirming his great deeds, of course). The color is beautiful, making the images jump from the flat walls. Several reliefs show Ramses III going to war, hunting and fishing in his chariot, slaughtering captives (like at Karnak, miraculously only half his size), and in a truly memorable scene, cutting off the hands and penises of his captives. This guy didn’t mess around.
We take pictures in a back chamber of the temple, hiding from the “guards” (lazy men who will point out something you’ve already found and then block the exit until you give them some money) and generally desecrating the dignity of these sacred memorials. It’s a blast.

XI.
Our last stop is the Colossi of Memnon. We’re so tired and hungry that we take a few pictures and decide to climb back on the bus.
It’s relatively impressive, or a pair of statues that completely crumbled and were put back together. But it’s still not the best thing we’ve seen today. (Although you feel bad saying anything around here isn’t impressive—the sheer fact that it’s still around is quite a feat.)

XII.
Our first move upon arrival in Luxor was to get train tickets back to Cairo (since the people in Cairo told us we had to buy them in Luxor). We couldn’t, they said. Have to buy them the day of, they said.
A few went back this morning. Computer’s broken, they said. Plus, there’s nothing left today. Nothing until Tuesday, actually. If you want, he says, you can just get on and try to buy them.
After returning from our bus trip, four of us take a cab to the train station, including the one girl who is a dual American-Egyptian citizen and speaks better than any of us, to fight for some tickets. It doesn’t work. They’re pretty rude to us—especially to Vivette, the Egyptian girl (really, they just ignored the American kids), telling her there’s nothing they can do in not-necessarily-polite terms. We try to book a sleeper train (again, no spots), and then seem to get resigned to our fate: trying to climb aboard third-class cars in groups of two and buying the tickets once aboard. It’s actually illegal for foreigners to ride third-class, but if it’s our only way back, we’ll do what we can.
A bit heavy-hearted on top of exhausted, we return to Happy Land. Vivette decides to talk to Mahmoud, to see if he knows and way to help us. She returns to us with good news: for LE 95 each (and he needs it right now), he can get us on a bus leaving in three hours for Cairo. That looks a hell of a lot better than a third-class train for ten hours. We jump at it, and within half an hour we have tickets to go back to Cairo, plus a van arranged to take us to the bus station. This is, plain and simple, living in Egypt. Just when you’re lost and out of your MIND with confusion and worry, someone manages to arrange something that saves the day.

XIII.
1900, we board the bus that will take us back to Cairo. It’s a coach bus from about fifteen years back, so some of the seats, lights, and air vents don’t work. But we’re headed back.
When we reached the bus station, the sun was setting over bright green fields of sugar cane. The sunset was subdued—graying pastels into blue—with the cliffs of the West Bank fuzzy in the distance. Fog rolled gently across the sugar cane, sneaking between the palm trees that dot the fields. My last view of Luxor—where everything famous is surrounded by hot, hard, bright stone—is of sunset and fog over fields of sugar cane.
And it feels right.