Moving Mountains

On Monday, Labor Day in America, the first day of Ramadan here, and my fifth day in Egypt, the MESP students visited the Coptic Christian enclave in Cairo – a place known as “Garbage City.”

The Coptic Christians are the largest group of Christians in the Middle East. I haven’t learned much about them yet, but they seem to be closer to Catholicisim or the Eastern Orthodox churches than to Protestantism. From what I’ve seen so far, they place a large emphasis on icons and relics, miracles, and mysteries.

Entering Garbage City, the first thing I noticed was the crosses. There were crosses everywhere, along with pictures of Jesus and Mary. Back in the States, such a sight would have made a good Protestant like me feel a little off-kilter. Here, after a week of mosques and salaams and five daily calls to prayer, it was like coming up from underwater for a breath of fresh air. Ah, Christianity! I was back on familiar ground. (Making the Catholic sign of the cross is a very good way to communicate your religion to an Arabic-speaking person, I learned.)

The second thing I noticed was, as you might have guessed, the garbage. Apparently, in the sixties and seventies, the Christians of Cairo took it upon themselves to be the garbage collectors of Cairo. They collect the city’s trash, bring it back to their neighborhoods and houses, and make things out of it. Beautiful things, quality things. We visited a building where young uneducated women use thrown-out paper to make rugs and aprons and bags and blankets – nice ones – and then sell them. The rest of the garbage is reused in a similar fashion.

The first thing we visited in Garbage City was the Sisters of Charity orphanage. The orphanage is divided into sections for orphans, severely handicapped children, and handicapped elderly. My group visited the elderly first. I really wasn’t prepared for that. The first woman I saw was in a wheelchair, and had a severely deformed face. The one detail that sticks out is that she only had one tooth that I could see, and it was freakishly long. What do you say – “Hello?” Another woman was friendly enough, but made animal sounds whenever we approached her. Another lady I could talk to a little bit with my meager Arabic – she helped me figure out that the sign of the cross is a good way to indicate your religious affiliation.

Later, we visited the nursery. It was filled with adorable little babies and toddlers. There was one girl in a green baby swing hanging from the ceiling. She was sleeping, but the swing was tilted forward so far that, instead of resting against the seat back, she had slid to the front and was being held in by the buckle. It couldn’t have been comfortable. Eventually a nun came over, and I thought she was fix the swing or take the baby out, but she kind of yelled at her, wiped off her (admittedly snot-covered) face with a rag, and stormed out. That woke her up, and she started crying, so I set aside my baby insecurity and took her out and held her. We didn’t have a lot of bonding time, but I got to practice my baby skills a little. She had such big eyes, and she was always trying to see around my shoulder.

At the end of Garbage City lies the Moqatta Monastery. The monastery is built into a huge hill, and the cliff alongside the steep road leading to the monastery is decorated with scores of giant carvings of scenes from the Bible.

Our guide to the monastery was an Arabic-speaking monk, who told the story of the monastery through Dr. Dea (not sure if I’m spelling that right), our native Egyptian professor. In the ninth century, the Muslim ruler of Egypt was given a copy of the Christian Bible by his Jewish assistant. The assistant pointed him to the passage where Jesus says a believer with the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains. At the time, the ruler was seeking to expand the size of Cairo. So, setting a trap for the Christians, he ordered them to move a mountain from the area where he wanted to build, or be punished.

Led by a shoemaker named Samaan (who had earlier demonstrated his piety by gouging out his own eye after he accidentally looked underneath a female customer’s dress – but that, I suppose, is another story), the Christians gathered to fast and pray. And with the Jew and all the Muslims watching, the mountain lifted up off the ground, so high that the sun on the horizon could be seen underneath it. The wily Jew was humiliated, the Muslims fled, and the Christians rejoiced. The mountain resettled at its current location, where the monastery was built.

I didn’t quite know what to make of the story, but the monk who told it believed it with all his heart. He claimed that the monastery was a miraculous place, and that he had personally witnessed over two hundred miracles, including the healing a lame Muslim sheikh. According to our guide, the miracles at Moqatta became so famous that the sheikh came to be healed, despite his Islamic faith. The father of the monastery told him, “I cannot heal you. Only Jesus can do that. Do you believe that Jesus is alive?”

The sheikh replied, “I believe that Jesus is alive in heaven.”

The father said, “Do you ask people who have gone to heaven for things, or people who are still alive, here with us?” Then he prayed for Jesus to heal the sheikh. The sheikh fell on the ground convulsing, and was healed.

The monk told this story in a giant amphitheater built into the side of the mountain, where Coptic services are held. We were sitting in pews at the bottom of the amphitheater, near the altar, which was filled with images of Jesus and Mary. As he wrapped it up, a group of pilgrims came down to the altar and started touching the feet of the images, then touching their foreheads.

(Another note about the amphitheater – supposedly, the kind of stone it’s made out of can’t physically support a structure of its size. This is yet another miracle. To demonstrate this, the monk started scraping away some stone from the side of the cave with his bare hands. This did not comfort me very much.)

On the way out of the amphitheater steps, the monk turned to me and some other students and pointed to a wheelchair behind a glass door. “That’s from the miracle!” he said in broken English, referring to a story he had told us about a paralyzed woman who was healed at the mountain. “Hallelujah!” he exclaimed.

What else do you say? “Hallelujah!” I responded, pumping my fist in the air. (Later, the monk would tell us that there are three words that work fine in any language: “Hallelujah,” “Amen,” and “Coca-Cola.”)

Moqatta might be my favorite place so far. It didn’t hurt that, after we ate lunch and I was walking towards one of the shops there, I got swarmed by a bunch of little kids who thought I was the bee’s knees.

It started when one of them shouted, “What’s your name?” in pretty good English. “Joel,” I said, pointing to myself. The fact that I could understand them got them really excited. Their older brother, Mishon, who’s 19, knew some more English, and I told them all about myself. “Where are you from?” one said. “Amreeka,” I said – Arabic for America. “Oh, America!” said one. “You are a good man.” Well, all right. “America is Christ-ee-an?” said another. “Yes, Christian!” I said, making the sign of the cross again. Take that, Barack Obama. Another said, “America is so beautiful. Egypt, no.” “No, la’!” I said. “Egypt is so beautiful, so gamel!” That made her happy. By the end, I knew most of their names (one was named Micah) had introduced them to all my friends, taken their picture, and signed a few autographs. (“You’re famous now, Joel!” Mishon told me.) By that point they were literally trapping us by the bookstore entrance, so I had to say goodbye and push through. They followed us to the bus, and I waved goodbye and got on. They ran towards the back of the bus so they could wave goodbye at me through the window. I’ve never felt so undeservedly loved.

In addition to my autograph, the kids also got Mishon to get my e-mail address. If they e-mail me, I’m going to tell them to meet me at one of the church services there – I’m planning to go on Thursday night.

Also, Micah Schuurman visited today. I was taking a nap, and someone started shaking me, and I looked up, and couldn’t quite see who it was. Then my eyes adjusted and I shouted, “Micah!” It was a nice surprise. He’s living in Cairo for the month. We talked for a bit, and I introduced him to my flatmates. Hopefully he’ll be around some more.

Tonight, we had our “commitment service.” We met on the roof of the villa, sat in a circle, and tossed around a ball of yarn. Each person in turn caught the yarn, expressed one thing they wanted the group to rejoice with them about, and one thing to weep with them about (following the biblical injunction to “rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep”) and passed the yarn on. I asked everybody to rejoice with me in experiencing God’s love through simple things, like sunrises and Egyptian fruit, and to weep with me when I become really stubborn in the political/religious debates ahead. (You all know what I’m talking about. J) Afterwards, we had communion, and after Dr. Holt left, we stayed on our own and sang worship song after worship song. It was a great way to officially kick off the semester. (Tomorrow is the first service project day; Wednesday we start classes.)

The two days before today were mostly devoted to exploring. Saturday, we were divided into pairs, given a set of objectives (find an internet café, buy envelopes, exchange money, find a pharmacy, etc.), and sent out into the neighborhood to find our way around. My partner and I didn’t win the race, but I know Agouza a lot better now. The last objective involved taking a taxi to a well-known restaurant in Agouza. Another objective was finding a nearby Metro Supermarket. After searching for a while, we were really lost, so my partner and I decided to kill two birds with one stone and ask a cab driver to take us to the Metro Supermarket. He did – but he crossed the Nile and took us to one miles away from Agouza. He waited for us at the supermarket, then took us back to the restaurant in Agouza. I asked him, “Bikem?” – how much? Forty pounds, he said.

Now the objectives sheet we had said that the ride should be no more than five pounds. Since he took us an extra distance, I could consider ten, or maybe even fifteen, but not forty. (One dollar = five pounds, about.) But the driver was very insistent, and all I could get him down to was thirty. (All while my partner, who, being a girl, isn’t socially supposed to barter, kept yelling at me, “No, that’s way too much!”) But he got his thirty pounds, I lost a little dignity, and resolved to stand my ground in the future.

Sunday was subway day. This time, we were divided into groups of four, and sent off to explore Cairo’s subway system on our own. The subway system is actually pretty nice (although perhaps my standards are already being lowered after living here a week.) One interesting feature is that about half the subway cars are set aside for women. And since men here go out on their own more than women, the women’s cars are usually pretty empty, while the men are crammed in like sardines. The girls in our group got in just fine; my roommate Thomas and I just barely made it on (he had to pull me in after the doors closed on me.)

We had a great time. We randomly picked a stop (near Giza – as in, the pyramids), and wandered until we found a market. There we bought a full-length Arab dress shirt for our roommate Adam, who turned 22 that day. Eventually, we took a street that led away from the market into an unremarkable neighborhood. We were running low on the all-important bottled water (izezat maya), so we asked a man near a shisha bar if he knew where we could buy some. He insisted we sit down at his bar, while his partner ran down a convenience store and bought us some bottled water and, for some reason, 7Up. So we drank 7Up at an obscure shisha bar in the depths of Cairo and talked with the local men for a while (as much as we could understand each other). It was a very memorable detour.

Well, that’s pretty much it. Sorry I can’t make these things shorter, but I’m writing this as much for myself as for you guys, so I don’t forget this week. Happy Labor Day, Merry Ramadan, and God bless all of you.