Cigarettes

I parked my car today and stepped out, only to step in a huge bunch of cigarettes.

I wonder who was parked in the same location before I was? What was he* doing? What has his mind so tangled up he just sat in a car for hours smoking a couple of dozen cigarettes?

I do this a lot. People watch and wonder what they’re thinking. Have you ever realized that, in reality, you only know a couple of dozen people intimately? Your family, perhaps some of your extended family members, and some friends. Everyone else, if they don’t impact your life, rarely register on your radar. But everyone you see in the street has their own families, their own problems, and their own concerns.

We’re always the most important person in our lives. But really, we’re only one person on this earth, a speck.

* Yes, I know, I’m gender profiling.

Amr Khaled and Money

Al-Mujaddidun

Yesterday, Amr Khaled, the celebrated Egyptian televangelist and–according to the Times–one of the 100 most influential people in the world, came to the American university in Cairo (AUC) to talk to AUCians about developing their communities, and being mujaddidun, renewers. Since I’m an alumni, I drove over to listen to what he has to say. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying he’s done a lot of great work and is always inspiring.

But poor Amr Khaled. He has so much hope, so much drive, and so much (misplaced?) faith in the audience–the youth of Egyptian society who have the means, the opportunity and the ability to change the country if they wanted. Too bad that it’s because they have the means and the ability–the money and the education–they just. don’t. want to.

Egypt, as I’ve mentioned before, is a very polarized country, in every which way, and money-wise is the first thing. You have the very, very rich, and the very, very poor. The middle class is almost non-existent.

The unfortunate fact of life is that people with a lot of money are usually less community-minded and more about me, me, me. Cairo is no exception. We may not have a lot of Paris Hiltons, but the Gossip Girl wannabes are more common than you might think. With a very few exceptions, I can safely say that a lot of rich Egyptian youth–those that are found in AUC–live in a shiny pink bubble, and most will stay there. When they graduate, the majority will work with their families, in a multinational, or simply up and leave the country. The brightest and best go abroad and flourish there. Many never come back.

Ok, so I’m rich, elhamduelala.

But, I’m not an empty airhead like so many of my fellow AUCians, and that’s mainly because of two reasons:

1) My family is very ‘new’ money: My dad is very unsophisticated and comes from a village in Upper Egypt. As such, he raised us in a very different way than most rich kids are raised, and for that I am supremely grateful. We grew up to appreciate money, understand it doesn’t come from the sky, and to not spend money like there’s no tomorrow. It means I am as comfortable eating kebda (liver) sandwiches from a cart in Imbaba as I am in Cairo’s trendiest restaurants. It means I understand where I came from and how lucky I am to be where I am today.

2) We have religion, which tells us ostentastiousness is bad, and that we will be asked not only where we got our money, but how we spent it and our time. We don’t party, drink, etc which have become the fashionable activities for Cairo’s elite. Islam also tells us that we live in this world as part of a family, community, and ummah. We aren’t living for ourselves, but for the world. It means we have to actually do stuff in the world, and not just exist. It means we have to change things and improve them, and not just pray and fast and live in isolation.

But it’s just so hard. I’ll be honest, it’s hard sometimes not to fall into a life of leisure. I think to myself sometimes when I don’t want to get up for work: “I don’t really need to work, why not bum around and spend my days being a social butterfly?”

The people Amr Khaled was talking about yesterday, Mujaddidun, people who will effect real change, are just so hard to find. He says his new show will feature 16 of them–16 young men and women who really want to change the world.

I wonder what they’re like? I wonder how do you get that drive to get up every day with the intention that you are going to do great things?

And I wonder how many of the people who turned up to see Amr Khaled will really go on to do great things, and not just work, marry, have kids, and die.

Bombings

There was a bombing yesterday at Al-Hussein, one of Cairo’s most crowded tourist areas. At least one person, a 17 year old French girl, has died. May God give her peace.

The Fuckers.

As if Egypt isn’t screwed up already. New bombing = tourism goes down the drain, less money for this crazily poor country, and a soon-to-be-ingrained terrorism law.

Assholes.

Zits and Tuna

So I wake up today and find a humongous, and I mean humongous, zit on my nose. My skin is (elhamdulela) really clear so when I get a zit it’s like a glowing shiny beacon. Great. And it’s one of those under-the-skin-lurkers, so I can’t even pop it. And I’m being interviewed on TV in a couple of days. What if it’s not gone by then??!!!!!!!!

Ok, breathe deeply, I told myself.

I then thought: It’s probably because of my diet, right? Perhaps I should forgo my usual cornflakes-and-skimmed milk breakfast and try something new.

But I only had 10 minutes before I had to leave for work so I couldn’t really ‘cook’ anything. So I began to maniacally open and close the kitchen cupboards searching for anything that was quick to eat, and eventually settled on diet tuna in water.

I was late so I ate it right out of the can, and that gave me ample time to actually look at the can and search (in vain) for the nutritional information. But why oh why is the tuna named ‘Rose Tuna?’ And why does the can have a picture of Ariel from The Little Mermaid on it standing next to a tuna fish? Are they trying to tell you a mermaid likes it? But why would she be eating tuna? Isn’t that a little cannibalistic? Or are we eating her, since she’s a fish? Ughh, I feel sick now thinking about it.

I’ll play with Mr. Potato Head for a bit. He’ll make me feel better.

Some of my favorite things

Brown paper packages wrapped up with string, of course. I will never forget my joy as a child when I made my first order online and came home one day to find the brown paper package sitting on my bed.

Some of my favorite things:

Dove Cream Wash

Bateel dates

The most divine bread ever from Cafe Mo (Heliopolis)

Ok so wordpress turned out to be really annoying with the photos and won’t let me resize/ put them in a table (or I’m just too technologically inept to do it) so I’ll just list the list of my favorite things, though I really hate how bullet points look in this template:

• Chocolate fountains (duh)
• Labello lip balm. I’ve been using it since I was 9 and I think I’m their best customer ever
• Leggings (at home, of course)
• Books by Meg Cabot (I realize how stupid and girly that sounds)
• My ‘eye’ necklace I bought in Turkey
• The bass in my car (and my car!)
• Highlighters
• Ballerina flats
• My sebha, rosary, from Mecca
• My pet

Hmm, turns out this is a lot harder than I thought. Almost as hard and annoying as listing 25 things about myself. Kefaya keda.

Random middle-of-the-night thought

Life is so strange subhan Allah.

Sometimes, events that are so diametrically opposed are juxtaposed in such a short space of time, that I find it impossible to understand how some people don’t believe in a cosmic intelligenece (Allah).

I’ve just had a humongous opportunity drop into my lap like a ton of bricks. But a couple of days ago, something happened that makes me hesitate to take advantage of that opportunity, though I would have jumped at the chance a week ago.

Fate is such a tricky concept. I’ve always believed wholeheartedly that I make my own choices in life. True, I believe God/ Allah already knows what I’m going to choose, but that’s only because He knows me so well. It’s like me knowing my little sister will always forgo KFC for McDonalds, even though I never make the decision for her.

But let’s not get sidetracked.

Question is: how do I decide what to do? On the one hand, my friends are telling me that this is an amazing good thing. But I’ve never believed that just because something is ‘good,’ it’s actually good for you. That’s actually one of the biggest traps to fall into: thinking that just because you’re blessed, God must love you and vice versa.

I’m getting all deep and philosophical here. Kefaya.*

Something funny:

A woman in my gym is pregnant, with TWINS, and still manages to run faster than I do on the treadmill. And she has a clearly visible bump too! Can I just say that I never feel more like a blundering hippopotomus than I do when she’s around?

Oh, and in case you didn’t guess, of course she’s not Egyptian! More like a lithe Russian. If she was Egyptian, she’d be lying on her bed at home eating macaroni and drinking gallons of (full cream) milk. Fat chance of her running anywhere, mesh 3ayzenhom yo2a3oo ya habibti!**

* That’s enough.
** We don’t want [the babies] to fall out, love!

Harrasment aka Flirting

So today I realized that my weight loss has started to become more evident, in the fact that I heard this epithet for the first time: Gesm yewady el esm*

Basically, I’m getting curvier.

But back to the post title, which stems from an article I read in a “Western” paper when Egypt (finally) arrested some guys for sexual harrasment. The title? “400 men arrested for flirting.”

Um, flirting? Let’s look up the definition in a dictionary:

Flirting: To make playfully romantic or sexual overtures.
Sexual harrasment: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that tends to create a hostile or offensive [...] environment.

I wonder which category random guys in the street looking at you as if you were prancing around naked/ touching you/ calling out vulgar (and I do mean vulgar!) things they want to do to you falls into?

Sigh.

Sexual harrasment is a crazy crazy issue in Egypt. If you have ovaries, you’re harassed. If you’re 15 or 60, veiled or unveiled, ugly or beautiful, you’ll get harrassed. According to a recently published and often quoted study by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, 83% of Egyptian women surveyed said they had been harassed.

What’s sadder is realizing that 60% of the respondents (both male and female) said that unveiled or “scantily clad” women were more at risk, when in reality 72% of the women who said they’d been harassed were veiled. Clearly, the problem has nothing to do with veiling.

The point of this post though, is this: how much is too much, and how much is just right?

My mother used to tell me that in her day, they didn’t call it harasment, they called it mo’aksa, teasing/ flirting, because that’s what it was: simple compliments that ‘boosted’ a woman’s ego. Now, however, the comments are degrading.

But is there any truth to the idea that women ‘like it?’ I’ll be honest: My hackles aren’t really raised when a guy gives me a second look and goes “mash’Allah.” But then has the man ‘infringed’ on my right to walk in the streets?

* Literally: “A body that would send one to jail.” Make of that what you will.

Classic!

From the ever hilarious Tarek Shahin.

Valentine crap…

El falantine

As a bitter old spinster, this post should be full of rants about the consumerism of today, how Egyptians have gone crazy, how I hate the traffic on this day, how I really don’t care that I’m alone as usual etc etc.

But honestly, I couldn’t care less. The weather today was gorgeous so I ’seized’ the opportunity to go swimming, and then went for lunch at Kebabgy, one of my favorite Nile locations in Cairo.

Only sour point of the day: going to the gym and having the guy behind the counter give me a flower. Obviously the gym feels sorry for the lonely people who come to the gym on Valentine’s day.

Or falantine, as the case may be.

Egybitian breakfast

Ah, the weekend. The only time I can chill and hang out with my family.

The first thing we do? Have a humongous, Egybitian breakfast.

Egybitian breakfast usually consists of pita looking like bread we call ‘aish baladi, which you then mop up with a variety of food. My family’s breakfast includes this:

• Sausages from the butcher swimming in ghee (sogo‘)
• Sour cheese
• Roomy cheese (no idea with that is in English, sorry!)
• Tomatoes with cheese
• Feteer with molasses and honey
• La vache qi rit/ kiri
• Omlet
• Eggs with basterma.
• Tuna with mayonnaise
• Beans (Fuul) and Falafel

Just to name a few. Then we bakhar* the house so it doesn’t stink so early in the morning.

The men then go to pray zuhr (noon) prayer while the women bum around (me, I curl back in bed with a book) for a couple of hours. Typically, we then go watch a movie in the afternoon and then have dinner somewhere.

Vairy vairy fun.

* That’s burn incense.