This One Time In Egypt...

This will probably be my last post on this blog. I have been back in the United States for over eight months now (which is really, really hard to believe), but I still have a few random stories that I never got around to telling – stories that I think you might all enjoy, but that, more importantly, I don’t want to forget.

So here, without further ado: Random stories from Egypt.

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One of the first things Dr. Dave told us when we got to Egypt was to avoid writing about political or religious issues in our blogs or our e-mails, because the Egyptian authorities might be monitoring them. While I was in Egypt, I scrupulously followed this rule, not wishing to create trouble for MESP. (Yeah, I know, I wrote a ton about Turkish, Syrian and Israeli politics – but not while I was in those countries). Now that I am safely back in the free world, I want to share a few stories. (To be clear, the judgments I make in the paragraphs following do not represent the views of MESP, the CCCU, Dr. Holt, Mr. Koko the shwarma man, or even Dilwati, the diseased cat the Flat 6 girls rescued from the street in the first few weeks of MESP. They are my personal opinions.)

I don’t think I made in clear in the blog before, so let me make it clear now: Egypt is a full-blown dictatorship. President Hosni Mubarak has held power since 1981, when President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamic extremists for making peace with Israel. Mubarak was vice president at the time, and quickly took the reins. Conveniently, Mubarak never got around to appointing his own vice president. Free speech and free press are very limited, elections are rigged, and torture by the police is not uncommon. Religious freedom is officially guaranteed, but Christians are discriminated against in ways large and small. (One large way was when the government idiotically ordered all the pigs in Egypt slaughtered in response to the swine flu outbreak back in May. Muslims don’t eat pork, so guess which religious group the pigs belonged to?) Now that Mubarak’s health is failing (several news editors got imprisoned for reporting that fact), it appears that he’s grooming his son Gamel for the job of dictator-for-life, trying to build a dictatorial dynasty, just like Kim Sung Il, Hafiz Assad and Saddam Hussein.

Despite all this, the Egyptian government is a valued ally of the United States. Ever since Egypt became the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel in 1979, the U.S. has given Egypt over $2 billion in military and economic aid annually. For better or worse, in a region as critical to the world’s oil supply as the Middle East, the U.S. values stability and peace above human rights. I suppose when one looks at Syria, Iran, Libya, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a dictatorship that respects Israel’s right to exist, doesn’t pursue WMD, doesn’t commit genocide and keeps the Islamists at bay seems pretty nice by comparison.

Police are everywhere in Egypt. Some of them wear all white, others wear all black. I don’t know the difference between them exactly, but they all wear stylish berets, and most of them carry automatic weapons. This was a little disconcerting at first, but I got used to it. Someone once told me that the police don’t always keep the machine guns loaded, that they’re more for show than anything else. I hope this is true, because it was not at all uncommon for us to see policemen sleeping at their post.

The only time I can honestly say I was scared in the Middle East was the morning after we got back from Luxor. Austin and I were walking on Shahin street to the fruit stand to buy breakfast for the flat, when we saw three guys wearing jeans and T-shirts walking towards us. They were all carrying machine guns. Machine guns with police uniforms I was used to. But machine guns without police uniforms? Holy crap!

They did not, however, start shouting “Allahu akbar! Al-mot li Amreeka!” gun me and Austin down, force us into an unmarked van, or even spit in our direction. They smiled broadly, said, “Hello, mister!” and kept walking. I may have said “Hi” back – I’m not sure. If I did, it probably sounded very weak and trembly. I now think they were probably off-duty policemen, not Egyptian Islamic Jihad members.

Tourism is an extremely important part of Egypt’s economy. In the 90s, Islamic extremists killed scores of Western tourists in an attempt to hurt the economy and bring down Egypt’s secular government. So while the police may be a corrupt annoyance (or worse, an oppressive force) to ordinary Egyptians, they were very protective of us westerners. (Brian, my roommate the quadrilingual spearfisher, says that this isn’t the case in all Third World countries – a policeman in Mozambique once tried to arrest him for essentially nothing). There was always a white-clad policeman sitting in a plastic chair outside the building where I lived – as often as not, sleeping with his head rested against the muzzle of his machine gun. There was a police hut outside the wall around the MESP villa. We got used to greeting them on our way to and from class. Whenever we went somewhere on a tour bus, we had to wait for a police escort to arrive before leaving. They weren’t always prompt, so this got old pretty quickly. By the time we took our trip to Alexandria, we decided to split up into groups of three or four for the train ride, so as not to attract unwanted police overprotectiveness. Ridiculous.

On the weekend we went to Luxor, Mubarak came to Luxor to give a speech. We didn’t get to see him, because that was the day we went to the Valley of the Kings. But all along the streets of Luxor that day, black-clad policemen stood at attention, and huge banners and posters were hung throughout the city to welcome him.

There’s more, but I don’t want to put it on the internet. Ask me sometime if you’re curious.

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During my homestay week, I was riding around Cairo with my host brothers Shady and Samer and their cousin George. They had stopped the car at their other cousin’s house, gotten something out of the trunk of their car to drop off, and we were about to leave when Shady, in the driver’s seat, said, “Samer! Shanta maftooh.” Samer got back out of the car and slammed the trunk door all the way shut.

Now “maftooh” means “open,” and that much was obvious. But “shanta” means “bag.” A little confused, I asked Samer, “Shanta yanni [means] trunk?” Samer nodded. “Yes, shanta.” After a pause he said, “Shanta also means bag.”

So I wasn’t totally off. The Egyptians call their car trunks “bags?” That’s dumb.

Wait a second…

Don’t we all pack our “trunks” before we go on a trip? And for that matter, don’t we wear trunks to the pool?

Not so dumb after all.

Learning a new language makes you a lot more aware of how weird your own is.

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One of the many music videos I saw in restaurants in Cairo. I think this guy is the Michael W. Smith of the Muslim world. Check it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhwdEtO5fJE&eurl

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The night of the soccer game, Austin and I went to buy a “bebsi” (there’s no “p” sound in Arabic) from the khosh (a drink and snack stand) near our flat. It was past 11 o’clock, but this is Egypt, so the khosh owner and his family were still there, sitting on milk crates and talking. An elderly man in Muslim garb struck up a conversation with us. When we told him that we were American Christians who were studying Arabic and Islam, he tried to convince us of the truth of Islam. It went something like this.

Egyptian Man: What do you think is the biggest difference between Islam and Christianity?

Joel and Austin: Well – Jesus. We believe Jesus is God. Mohammad says he wasn’t.

Egyptian Man: So you don’t think Mohammad was a prophet.

Joel and Austin: Well...no.

Egyptian Man: Let me tell you something. In your Bible – your Bible! – there is a verse that says that if any man says he is a prophet, and is not, God will strike him and his family dead!

Joel and Austin: OK, sure, if you say so.

Egyptian Man: Mohammad said he was a prophet, and God never struck him down. He had a huge family, and many descendants, and today, Mohammad is the most common name in the world. So according to your own Bible, he must have been telling the truth!

Joel: Well, have you ever heard of a man named Joseph Smith?

Egyptian Man: No.

Joel: In America, there was a man named Joseph Smith who claimed to be a prophet. He started the Mormon faith over a hundred years ago, and still has many followers. God never struck him down.

Egyptian Man: Excuse me! This is what the verse says. I am simply using your Bible.

Joel: Well, maybe that verse [I still don’t know which one he’s talking about – theology majors?] was part of the Old Covenant, for the people of Israel only. Because there are plenty of people in the world who claim to be prophets and aren’t struck down. What about the man who claimed to be a prophet and started the Bahai faith [A 19th century Muslim offshoot]?

Egyptian Man: No, he was killed! The president of Iran killed him!

Joel: Oh, really? [Crap!]

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On one of my first days in Agouza, the “low battery” light on my fancy electric razor turned on. I then realized that I had left the charger for my razor at home. So, since I was thousands of miles from anyone I knew personally, and in a Muslim country no less, I decided to grow out my facial hair for the first time in my life. I was never very pleased with the results, and now, when I look at pictures of myself from those months, I’m surprised that I actually looked like that. I grew plenty of hair on my chin and a nice mustache, but nothing but whiskers elsewhere. I had no means of trimming it, so it grew long and unkempt on my chin and upper lip without (as I had hoped) ever thickening in other places. By the time we left for travel component, both my facial hair and my scalp hair was getting out of control. So when I saw a barbershop while walking through Agouza one night, I stopped in and asked for a shave and a haircut. The barber didn’t speak English, but one of the other customers did, so he translated for us. Guys, if you’ve never had a straight-edge shave, I highly recommend it. It felt amazing, and afterwards, my face was so smooth that I couldn’t stop rubbing it.

Between my own limited Arabic skills and the other English-speaking customer, I managed to explain what I was doing in Egypt to the barber, and talk about politics a little bit as well. The barber told me that he didn’t like Bush (no, really!), but he liked President Carter a lot. Carter negotiated the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, so hopefully that’s the reason. I’m not a big fan of Carter myself, but it’s always nice to find people on the “other side,” so to speak, that want peace too.

The next day at the villa, Tara took one look at my face and exclaimed, “Il-hamdulillah!” (Thanks be to God!) That hurt just a little.

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During my time in Cairo, no fewer than four people – my host brothers, a Sudanese refugee in my English class, and another MESPer’s host sister – asked me if I was Asian. The last time, when I answered in the negative, she insisted, “Not even a little?” To which I said, “No, I’m 100% white!” In retrospect, that doesn’t sound very sensitive. It’s not that I was offended by the questions, just a little surprised. My eyes are pretty dark brown, and my aforementioned facial hair did grow out fairly dark. But still. My skin is totally white, my eyes are completely round, and I’m frickin’ six foot two (which is really tall in Egypt). I may not be an Aryan master specimen, but you don’t get much whiter than Joel Veldkamp. Ana mish faahim. I don’t understand.

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Multiple times in Egypt, I was chastised for my “hard” handshake. In America, a firm handshake is a sign of confidence and respect, and I have cultivated my handshake. Egyptians have a far more sensible reaction to a firm handshake: “Hey, stop hurting my hand, jerk!” My host dad was the only person to give me the Egyptian double-kiss. It caught me off-guard, but I didn’t dislike it.

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One day towards the end of the semester, I left my wallet in a shop on Shahin street in Agouza. (It was a bad morning all around – I was behind on my papers, I couldn’t make myself understood with Arabic, I couldn’t find what I needed for the flat, etc.) The shopowner chased me down the street to return it to me before I even realized it was gone. I had hundreds of Egyptian pounds in it, money I had planned to spend on last-minute souvenirs at the Khan al Khalili marketplace. I’ve never wished I could speak coherent Arabic as badly as then. “Shokran! Shokran awi!” was all I knew how to say – thank you! thank you very much! Egyptians are awesome.

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Most taxis in Cairo only seat four passengers, and apparently just before we arrived, a law was passed requiring everyone in taxis to wear seat belts. So for the sake of my taxi drivers, I tried to always wear my seat belt, even when the “seat belt” had no buckle, and I had to simply drape it over my shoulders.

Occasionally, though, we felt cheap and tried to squeeze five or more people into a taxi. If the taxi drivers were in a good mood, they’d let us. On the way back from the Pyramids, Jeff, Brian, Danielle, Grace and I were crammed into a taxi, and we got stuck in traffic. A policeman walked up to the cab and started talking to the driver in Arabic. We were like, “This isn’t good.” But the driver handed something to the cop, and he walked away. Assuming he had bribed the cop, we tried to pay him extra when we got to our stop, but he wouldn’t take it. This might have been because the taxi broke down in the middle of the square where we got off, and he was kind of embarrassed.

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The professor who taught our Islamic Thought and Practice course was Dr. Chahinda Kareem, a middle-aged Egyptian Muslim professor from the American University in Cairo. Our group met her for the first time at the Ibn Tulun Mosque, an eleven-hundred-year-old mosque that she gave us a tour of. Dr. Dave introduced her by explaining that, as a rule, the CCCU requires all professors in its study-abroad programs to be Christian, but that he got them to make an exception for Dr. Kareem. Before the tour was over, I (and most of the group, I think) had fallen in love with her. She kept her brown hair uncovered, wore spectacles, and smiled and laughed easily. She spoke with a beautiful British accent, and was such a good lecturer that I always strained to catch her every word.

At the same time, she was a very demanding professor. She gave lectures twice a week, and we had to know everything she talked about. I learned more about Islam from Dr. Kareem than all the other books and articles I had read before her class. Her exams were essay tests of the hardest kind: she listed a topic, and told us to explain it. She gave me a B on my first test because I didn’t explain “enough.” On the next test, I wrote down every single fact I could remember from the lectures. That finally got me an A.

Dr. Kareem was as devout a Muslim as one could hope to find. Her love for God and for her religion was obvious from her lectures. But she did not engage in outward displays of piety demanded by Muslim extremists. She proudly refused to wear the headscarf, and laughed about the teenage Egyptian girls she saw wearing tight clothing and kissing in public, who thought of themselves as “religious” because their hair was covered. And she openly expressed her fears for the Muslim ummah (worldwide community), because of the tide of violent extremism.

One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Kareem was her description of the Muslim feast of Ashura. This feast commemorates the martyrdom of Mohammad’s grandson Hussein, a Shia saint. (We later visited his shrine in Damascus). Contrasting the Egyptian and Iraqi styles of marking the event, she said, “We have a feast, they beat themselves.” I’d say that’s pretty accurate.

There is a verse in the Qur’an that commands Muslims to “enjoin what is right, and forbid what is wrong” (3:104). In Saudi Arabia, this verse has given rise to a special police force that goes around “forbidding the wrong” – hitting people with sticks when they see them behaving immorally. Dr. Kareem once visited her son in Saudi Arabia, and wore a headscarf (but not a veil) out of respect for local laws. While she was waiting for her son at a mall, a man came up to her and hit her with a stick. “Cover your face!” he said.

Not realizing what was going on, but surprised and angry, Dr. Kareem grabbed the stick out of his hand and hit him back. “How dare you hit a woman!” she yelled.

The policeman was shocked, and a small crowd gathered as Dr. Kareem’s son came running up. “Tell your wife to cover her face!” the policeman said to Dr. Kareem’s son.

At this, Dr. Kareem shouted at the policeman, “And you are blind as well!” And the crowd started laughing. Dr. Kareem continued, “Anyway, I’m an Egyptian, not a Saudi Arabian, and I will not cover my face!”

Embarrassed, the policeman left the scene, and Dr. Kareem’s son cracked up. And when we heard the story, so did we.

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Dr. Kareem, talking about anything ridiculous or foolish (e.g., certain Muslims eating with their fingers because that’s the way Mohammad ate): “(sigh) For God’s sake!”

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One of our last homework assignments before we left for Turkey was to write a paper about a specific passage in the Qur’an (for Dr. Kareem’s class). For this paper, we had to interview three Muslims about their beliefs. My flatmate Jeff and I kinda-sorta put this off until the last minute, and the Saturday before our papers were due, we set out into the streets of Cairo to find some Muslims to talk to. (I was extremely blessed to have been assigned the host family that I was, but if I had been assigned to a Muslim family, this task would have been a lot easier.)

I am not good at walking up to strangers and initiating conversation. In Egypt, the task was both more daunting, because of language and culture barriers, and much easier, because Egyptians are so much friendlier and so much less individualistic than Americans. But once the conversation was initiated, we consistently ran into two problems: the Egyptians we spoke with either 1) could not or would not talk about the Qur’an with us unless they could look at an Arabic copy of it (I had only my English translation), or 2) insisted that we go to Al Azhar University and ask our questions to the clerics there. We tried to explain that no, we want to know what it means to you (that was an explicit part of the assignment), but often to no avail. As it turned out, we approached close to thirty people who could not help us, before finding three in a row who were willing (although the last two also advised us to go to Al Azhar).

The ironic thing is, we had already been to Al Azhar – and it was a pretty frustrating experience.

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Al Azhar University is one of the oldest universities in the world, and was once the center of Islamic learning in the world. Lately, it’s lost some of its credibility over (fairly justified) accusations that it is a puppet of Egypt’s secular government, but it’s still a pretty big deal. Muslims from all over the world come to Al Azhar to study.

If I hadn’t been told that Al Azhar was one of the leading universities in the Islamic world, I wouldn’t have guessed it by walking around its campus. I long ago got used to the fact that Egyptian nice was American middle class, and Egyptian middle class was American ghetto, but you’d think the premiere Islamic institution in the world would have nicer facilities.

Anyway, the first item on the Al Azhar agenda was a Q&A session with one of the university’s leading sheikhs, who spoke through a translator. We quickly discovered that this was not so much a “Q&A” session as a “reassure the Americans” session. In the sheikh’s Weltanschauung, the world is virtually free of problems. Christians and Muslims get along terrifically in Egypt. There’s no problems between America and Islam. Women are totally equal in Islam. Al Azhar is not controlled by the government – where did you ever get that idea? Christians and Muslims don’t need to dialogue. We’ll do our thing, you can do your thing. All the problems come from a few people who misinterpret Islam, who apparently phase in and out of the universe without cause, like quantum particles. Who knows where they came from? Weird. Anyway, no need to worry about them.

At one point, he did this denial-of-reality number on a question about the killing of “apostates” (Muslims who leave the Islamic faith – usually for Christianity), and Dr. Holt interrupted him outright. “This is not believable,” he said. Go Dr. Holt, I said silently. On another question about relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, the sheikh went into the standard Egyptian-Muslim “The Christians are our brothers – end of story!” rant. We later found out that during this rant, the sheikh said, “Christians and Muslims fought against Israel together in the October War!” but that the translator left that sentence out. Apparently it was too much for our delicate American ears.

After the whitewashing session, we got to eat lunch with some students from Al Azhar. I landed at a table with my flatmate Jeff, my debating partner Scott, Barrett the intern, and three Al Azhar students: one from Bangladesh, one from Zambia, and one from Waziristan, the region of Pakistan that is essentially ruled by the Taliban, is probably where Osama bin Laden is hiding, and that is nearly-constantly being bombed by American Predator drones. The man from Waziristan was studying to be an Islamic judge back there. Scott and I spent most of our time talking to the student from Zambia. He was a very nice man, and spoke English very well. (I think Zambia used to be an English colony?) He asked us if there was religious liberty for Muslims in the United States. We said that yes, for the most part, Muslims in the U.S. were very free, although there were some anti-Muslim prejudices in America. He then started talking about struggles for Muslims in the UK. One of the things that bothered him was that Muslims weren’t allowed to broadcast the call to prayer in the UK, even though Christian churches were allowed to ring their bells. Internally, I began to revise my earlier answers about religious liberty in America. Well, if you meant “free to bellow in Arabic over loudspeakers thirty-five times a week,” then I guess American Muslims aren’t that free after all.

Austin and Danielle had a less pleasant experience talking with an Al Azhar student who demanded to know why Americans thought bin Laden was behind 9/11, when it was “obvious” that the Jews were responsible. Austin tried to reason with him: “But bin Laden has said that he was behind the attacks.”

“Well,” the student said, “if you accuse somebody of something long enough, eventually they’ll give in.” Remember folks, Islam is the light.

(OK, maybe that last jab was uncalled for on my part. But I can feel the frustration in my gut even now, eight months later. Is it willful ignorance, cultural malaise, or plain paranoia? I have no idea, but it makes me sick.)

Here’s a great picture that I think sums up Austin and Danielle’s experience:

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The Al Azhar experience was part of a twofer of frustrating encounters with Muslims. The second half of that twofer came when some writers from IslamOnline.com came to talk to us for a day at the MESP villa. We split into groups to discuss various topics. The organizers announced that the first group would be discussing democracy, the 2008 election, and the Holy Land. CJ (I think) said, “Oh, is that all?” and the whole group bust out laughing.

But then, since they hadn’t come to discuss interfaith issues so much as present a united front against any “misunderstandings” we might have about Islam, too much material wouldn’t be a problem. I was in a group with one of the IslamOnline writers discussing women’s issues. He started off by explaining that, in Islam, a Muslim man could marry a Christian or a Jew, but a Muslim woman could not marry a Christian or a Jew. The reasoning behind this was that the Muslim man could protect his wife’s religious choice, but the Muslim woman might be forced to convert by her husband. We asked why a man could be trusted to stay a Muslim, but a woman couldn’t. He didn’t seem to understand the question. So it went. Eventually, in the course of the discussion, he pretty much told us that Saudi Arabia’s government was not theocratic enough for his tastes. That, I think, is when I tuned out.

We then gathered as a mass group again so all the “discussion” groups could share what they had “learned.” Our Muslim friends were only too happy to share what we had “learned”: no problems here!

In fairness, my experience was probably tainted, because by this point in the semester my tolerance for unproductive interfaith discussions was running dangerously low. I was sick and tired of bashing my head against the wall of Islam. So I didn’t put very much into the meeting that day. Hopefully it was beneficial for some of the other MESPers. I just wanted to eat, go back to my flat and listen to decadent American music on my computer. Which I did – but not without giving my eternally patient roommate Brian an earful. He was good about it.

Sura 109:

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

Say: O you that reject Faith!

I do not worship that which you worship,

Nor will you worship that which I worship.

And I will not worship that which you have been wont to worship,

Nor will you worship that which I worship.

To you be your Way and to me mine.

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For our weekly service project, my flatmate Jason and I taught a class in conversational English to a group of about ten Christian Egyptian adults, at a place called the Episcopal Training Center. I feel bad about never blogging about it, because it was one of the best experiences I had in Egypt.

When Jason and I arrived at the Center for our first class, we knew about as much about our job as you do now. We headed to the “teacher’s lounge,” an annex about the size of a freshmen dorm room, and met a British man who was also teaching English there. We asked him if he, well, knew what we were supposed to do, and he suggested we look through a stack of books for ideas. Hoo-kay. Class is in an hour.

To our pleasant surprise, most of our class already knew English fairly well. They just needed help with the finer points: conversation flow, idioms, expressions, etc. Let me tell you, nothing is better for your self-esteem than teaching your first language to other people. You’re automatically an expert. E.g.: “How do you pronounce ‘congratulations,’ teacher?” “Well, let me explain...”

Every Tuesday night, we gathered in the stuffy third-story classroom to talk about conversational English. I was really grateful to have Jason with me. As he always does, he kept the class entertaining. He also kept us both on track with the task of making up the curriculum as we went along.

Sometimes, they taught us a little Arabic as well. They took special pleasure in teaching us the word “ishta,” a slang word that literally means “sweet,” or “creamy,” and is used the same way as the English slang use of “sweet.” “Da ishta, ya ragel” – “That’s sweet, man.” For some reason, it always cracked them up when I used it. Micah Schuurman has confirmed the definition of ishta for me, so they weren’t pulling a fast one on me, unless it’s a fast one they pull on all foreigners. Maybe it’s just funny to hear people who know almost none of your first language to use your language’s slang.

As the weeks went on, we came to know our students really well. Usama, the man whose family lived in hours away in the town of Beni Suef, who worked in Cairo, but went home every weekend to be with his family. (He’s nothing at all like his most infamous namesake). Fayqa, the woman who followed her brother’s lead in converting from Coptic Christianity to evangelicalism, and was working translating Arthur C. Clarke potboilers into Arabic. Suzie, the woman considering a marriage to an Egyptian-Australian man. All our students were very gracious to their totally inexperienced teachers, and we probably learned more from them about Egypt than they learned from us about English. They always made a point of accompanying us home from class on the train, usually even buying our (20 cent) tickets for us. We tried to stop Usama from doing this multiple times, to no avail.

As the 2008 election drew nearer, Usama asked me on one such train ride who I was voting for. I told him I was voting for McCain. Unsurprisingly, like nearly all Egyptians, Christian or Muslim, that I broached the subject with, Usama was for Obama. He asked me why McCain. Thinking that, talking to an Egyptian, I would have to give extra good reasons to vote Republican, I automatically went into defense mode. I talked about social issues, defense, the economy, healthcare, etc. Finally, Usama just said, “Ok, ok, those are enough reasons,” and smiled. Every now and again, it’s good to talk to people who don’t take politics as seriously as I do.

Towards the end of Ramadan, we asked Usama if he was looking forward to spending the next few days with his family. The end of Ramadan is followed by three days of feasting, which this year was followed by a three-day weekend commemorating Egypt’s Totally Glorious Victory over Israel in the October 1973 war. Us MESPers were looking forward to the vacation, and I assumed Usama was too.

In response, Usama told us that he didn’t know if he could go home yet, because the end of Ramadan was determined by a certain lunar observance Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia had to make. He might have work on Wednesday; he might not. At 10 PM Tuesday night, he still didn’t know. I momentarily forgot my cultural sensitivities, and exclaimed, “That’s ridiculous!” Thankfully, Usama is a Christian. He exclaimed in return, “I know!”

Our students took us out socially twice during the semester. The first time, Usama and Fayqa took us to the famous Khan al Khalili market, where we had been once before. There, they treated us to the drink of paradise, tea with mint leaves, for the first time. Usama smoked a shisha at the cafe where we had tea, but we didn’t partake because of the MESP covenant. I now regret that, since I later broke the MESP covenant multiple times. (Shh). We also had Egyptian dessert pancakes (I forget exactly what they’re called, but they were awesome.) Usama helped Jason get an “Egyptian price” for a galabaya (Arab man-dress) from one of the shopkeepers, which was wildly entertaining to witness. If you don’t know Jason personally, it’s hard to describe the sight of him exasperatedly yelling at the shopkeeper and pretending to walk away while Usama smiles impishly and pretends not to be paying attention. If you do know Jason personally, you are now jealous of me for getting to witness it. Ba ha ha.

A few weeks later, Fayqa and Alverra took me to the Coptic Church of the Holy Virgin in Maadi, a region in southern Cairo. The Church marks a place where Joseph, Mary and Jesus are supposed to have stayed during their flight into Egypt. The church is right on the Nile, and contains a huge Bible that was found miraculously floating in the Nile in the 1970s, open to Isaiah 19:25: “Blessed be Egypt my people.” The Church also has a well that Mary supposedly drank from. (Apparently, Joseph and Jesus didn’t get thirsty during their stay.)

Fayqa is an evangelical, but Alverra is a Coptic. As we walked through the shrines in the church, Alverra would kiss the icons while Fayqa and I watched politely from a few steps away. As a foreign Christian in a Muslim land, I usually found any Christian presence comforting. When I was in a church or a monastery, or interacting with Middle Eastern Christians, I felt at home. I counted Coptic and Evangelical Christians alike as compatriots, for lack of a better word. But I have a feeling – actually more than a feeling – that there’s more tension between Middle Eastern evangelicals and Middle Eastern Orthodox than meets the eye. Some of my Egyptian Evangelical friends complained to me on occasion that the Copts treated them like apostates. And if I were a Copt, I might resent evangelicalism a little bit. If you ask the Copts, they haven’t changed their church at all since it was founded by St. Mark himself. And then these Westerners come here with their version of Christianity and tell us it’s superior? (My host brothers’ church was awesome, but aside from the language, it could have been any church in America.)

While we were at the church, the sanctuary was being decorated for a wedding. As we were leaving, we saw the bridal party approaching. The groom and his bride were holding hands, leading a parade of friends and relatives through the night up to the church. It seemed like a fun way to get married.

One of my goals in the Middle East was to buy a Bible in Arabic. At the Church of the Holy Virgin, I found a pocket-size one for seventeen pounds (three bucks or so). The Arabic text in it has tashkeel (markings indicating short vowel sounds that most Arabic writing doesn’t have), which is nice for a newbie like me, but it will still be a long time before I can make heads or tails of it. On the train ride home that night, I tried to sound out Genesis 1 with Fayqa’s help. She was patient. I was pathetic. Arabic is hard.

One of the hardest parts of the class was when students asked for extra help. One woman in class was near-desperate. She said she had to learn English better for her job, so she could start going to conferences with English-speakers, and offered to pay us to give her private lessons. It was out of the question; not only were Jason and I busy with our own schoolwork, and preparing for a month-long trip through the Middle East, but the woman already spoke decent English, and there was no way I could help her improve noticeably in such a short time. I know English, but teaching English is still new to me.

After our last class, Fayqa, Suzi and Usama accompanied us on the train back to Tahrir Square, as usual. At our stop, Jason and I embraced Usama. Then, forgetting myself again, I went and gave Suzi and Fayqa hugs too. I heard a few snickers from the other men on the train. (The Egyptian subway has cars set aside for women. Women are allowed on the other cars, but most of them ride in the women’s cars.) Oh, embarrassment. Fayqa got off at the same stop, and reassured me that “We don’t care what they [the Muslims] think.” Good?

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This one time in Turkey (changing gears here a little), we were eating a continental breakfast in a hotel in Ankara. The TV was on, but there were no subtitles and I don’t speak Turkish, so I was mostly ignoring it. (Though I’m pretty sure it was a news channel.) Then a music video came on. The music was dour and dark, and the video showed pictures of the carnage in Iraq, intercut with pictures of President Bush.

I saw at least two more of these videos in Ankara. Turkey may be secular, democratic and westernized compared to its neighbors, but we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking the Turks are all psyched about Israel or the Iraq War. The gulf is wide, and the wounds are deep.

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One of the last cab rides I took in Cairo was from Cilantro’s back to my flat. Cilantro’s is a two-story, extremely overpriced coffee shop that caters to Westerners, complete with metal detectors, uniformed waiters, and free wireless internet. Austin and I had gone there to upload some photos and relax after handing in all of our papers for Dr. Dave.

I’ve written before about taxi drivers trying to rip us off, assuming (correctly, at first) that we were naive Americans who didn’t know the standard fare. Don’t get me wrong - most of the taxi drivers I encountered were great, friendly men, and some were just competitive. But a select few were definitely trying to cheat us. (I should mention something I learned but never wrote about here: the government has refused to raise the standard cab fare to keep pace with inflation, so all the meters in the cabs are set to unlivable fares. All Egyptians understand this, so the drivers just turn off their meters, and Egyptians willingly barter with their drivers for just fares.)

Anyway, Cilantro’s is not that far from our flat (in fact, it’s within walking distance if you’re in the mood and have an afternoon to kill). We usually paid our drivers five pounds for the ride. The driver on this trip asked for thirty pounds (about $5). At the beginning of the semester, I would have gotten all flustered and floundered about for a slightly less absurd settlement. This time, I surprised myself: I laughed in the driver’s face, said “La’, hamza kwayyis” (No, five is good) and handed him a five-pound note. To my pleasant surprise, the driver laughed too, took the money, and drove off. Ah, now we understand each other.

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When we returned from travel component, Jason and I tried to arrange a get-together with our students. A few of them corresponded with us via e-mail, and we agreed to meet on a certain night at the entrance to a mall called CityStars. Little did we know that CityStars is a gigantic mall with at least eight entrances. So the whole get-together part of the adventure didn’t pan out. But an adventure it was!

Actually, it was a pretty typical big mall experience, with an Egyptian flavor (an Eye of Horus above the entrance we used, Egyptian restaurants in the food court next to the McDonald’s, Egyptian obelisks stretching up through the mall’s eight stories, etc.) The real shock was finding a place like that in dirty, crowded Cairo. The prices were outrageous by Egyptian standards, and maybe even by American standards in some stores. We saw of lot of well-off people there; it was definitely inaccessible to most Egyptians. Aside from a novel in Arabic I bought to motivate myself to keep studying at home, we didn’t buy much.

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For our last weekend in Egypt, we headed to a Coptic monastery south of Cairo called Anafora. I know I say this a lot, but it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and it will always have a special place in my heart. It’s in the middle of the desert, not quite as isolated as the Desert Rose Hotel in Siwa, but still far away from the lights and bustle of Cairo. In the center of the monastery is a white three story structure that we used for meals and other gatherings. The rest of the compound is filled with tiny white huts that are connected, so you can run to your friend’s house by rooftop. Pools, palm trees and gardens fill the sandy land inside the compound. Maybe the best part was the lack of electricity. Only candlelight and desert air to fill the nights.

In every sense, Anafora is a refuge from the rest of the world. The peace and restfulness of the place made it a perfect place to get ready to say goodbye to each other and reenter Western civilization. To do this, we were assigned the simple task of making up skits about our reentry, and ended up laughing ourselves to tears with the results. (A fat Austin throwing away a giant stuffed snake representing a sub sandwich will always stick in my mind, as will Jason squawking, “I’m a Christian-Muslim hybrid now!”).

For over three months, the thirty-four of us had been each other’s world, for all intents and purposes, and we were perfectly comfortable with each other. It’s difficult to explain, but I feel as close to some of the MESPers as any of my friends back home. We spent our copious free time that weekend playing games, singing songs, and horsing around on the roof of the main building.

After our final candlelight meal of chicken, we gathered in one of the huts to hold “encouragement circle.” We sat in a circle, and for each person, three other MESPers spoke up to say what made that person great. It was a wonderful experience, one that I will remember for a very long time.

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One of my favorite Egyptian foods is “fatah.” I have no idea how to spell it, but it sounds like “fatah,” so just take it for granted that from here on when I write “fatah,” I’m talking about a wonderful food, not the Palestinian guerrilla group. And it is so wonderful. Barrett the intern showed us the best place to get it: a sidewalk restaurant in Mohandiseen. (Mohandiseen is a slightly-more-upscale neighborhood close to Agouza – the name means “the engineers.” And when I say “sidewalk restaurant,” I mean, they put out a bunch of card tables and plastic chairs on the sidewalk and called it a restaurant.) Fatah is, essentially, juicy chicken, rice, and spices in on a bowl with flakes of bread at the bottom, served with garlic sauce and a Coke. Ya Allah! God is so good to have made food as amazing as this, and given us taste buds to match. I never did manage to finish a whole bowl, and I’m sure it gave me diarrhea once or twice, but hey, what didn’t? Barrett used to live in an apartment close to the fatah place (as we called it), and became close with the restaurant workers. He told us that he learned most of his Arabic at the fatah place, just talking to Egyptians there. Sometimes, I am slightly jealous of Barrett.

Anyway, our last night in Egypt, the MESP guys celebrated the only appropriate way: going out for fatah, playing Age of Empires II long into the night, and putting off our one and only flat-cleaning session of the semester until the morning.

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OK everybody, what’s the worst part of flying? You know the answer: staying up all night the night before desperately trying to assemble your belongings into two suitcases so that they both total 50 pounds. I thought I succeeded the night before we left. I thought wrong.

After our “Ma’a salaama” (goodbye, lit. “Go with peace”) party at the villa, we got on the bus for a final time and headed to the Cairo airport for our midnight flight back to Washington, D.C. We hugged Dr. Dave, Barrett and Andrea goodbye and walked into the terminal to check out our bags. Both of my suitcases were a few pounds overweight. The English-speaking Egyptian man working the Lufthansa counter told me there would be some extra charges, and, resigned to my fate, I followed him into a back room filled with desks and cubicles.

The man gave me a seat across from his desk and left to attend to other business while I contemplated my doom. At the cubicle to my left, a Mexican man was desperately trying to get the stone-faced Lufthansa employees to accept his credit card. To say the environment was uncomfortable is an understatement.

The man came back and told me that my passport was “weird.” (To avoid complications crossing into Arab countries in the future, we asked all the officers at Israel’s borders – Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli – to stamp a piece of paper instead of our passports, a request they are used to. So there are no Israeli stamps in my passport, which is nice for travel purposes, but my passport appears to show that I teleported from Jordan to Egypt in the fall of 2008.) But I was in luck, he told me. He would overlook that, and also overlook one of my overweight bags, and only charge me for the other one. Sounds good, right?

“The extra charges will be 900 pounds,” he said. I was floored. Then I remembered that Egyptian pounds are worth far less than dollars. I was relieved for a second, then did some mental math, and was floored again. $150? For three extra pounds of weight?

A breath away from reentering the world of American straight-forwardness, I had hit a final snag. I was in no mood to argue. I just wanted to get home, and I had hundreds of American dollars in my backpack. I gave in.

To this day, I have no idea if I was treated fairly, or if I was victimized by Egypt’s culture of corruption one final time. I was too tired to check into Lufthansa’s policies when I got home. The fact that the man tried to put me on the defensive about my passport, and then pretended to be my friend by overlooking the other overweight bag, makes me extremely suspicious. All I know is that when Austin was told his bags were overweight, he put on his cutest face, told his bag-checker, “I have no money, I’m a student,” and the man winked at him and let him go. Needless to say, I was in a sour mood for the first leg of our journey.

Our flight arrived in D.C. several hours late, and I missed my connecting flight to Detroit – a fact I didn’t realize until I had said my goodbyes to all the MESPers and gone to the Northwestern counter. Thankfully, I ran into Andrew, who knew that Austin, Cassi and Emily had booked a hotel room, and had gotten their number. So us five MESPers got to spend one final night together. We all passed out at 7 PM Eastern time watching TV. At 2 AM, I woke up, not sleepy at all. As I stared at the dark hotel room ceiling, I heard Austin stirring next to me. “Are you awake, Austin?” I asked. As it turns out, we had all woken up at the same time. All of us started laughing. We turned the TV back on, and the first commercial I saw was for Subway’s five-dollar footlongs. “30 pounds for a sandwich?” I exclaimed out loud. “Who would pay that?”

My journey the next day is a blur. I remember I was completely exhausted, and that all three of my flights were messed up some way or another – mechanical failures, delays, etc. After my last flight was delayed, I left a message on my parents’ answering machine to let them know. When I got home, my mom played it for me. She couldn’t understand half of what I said, and I couldn’t make it out either. Apparently I was so tired I was talking gibberish.

I also remember that every time I heard someone speaking English in the various airport terminals, I turned my head to see which of my friends was talking. I hadn’t heard anybody but the MESPers speak American English for four months, so who else could it be?

Coming down the escalator in the Des Moines airport to see Dad, Mom and Stella waiting for me there is a memory that will last for a long, long time.

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It’s now been over eight months since I got back, but mentally, I don’t think I ever really left the Middle East. For months, I would have daily flashbacks to my favorite Middle Eastern locales. I missed those places and the friends I had made there so much that it ached. I spent hours organizing and looking at my pictures, making videos out of the recordings I had taken, writing this blog, trying to make falafel, and reading all I could find about the Middle East. I did two independent studies on the Middle East – and speaking of that, taking 20 credits that semester was a bad call. (I finished with seven As and my first C in college or high school. I pulled it together in every class but one.)

I still don’t know if my homesickness for the Middle East is a sign of a permanent calling involving the region, or just young-20s wanderlust, but I intend to find out. I’m keeping up with my Arabic studies, and I’m praying about returning to the region for a while after I graduate in May. Trusting in Allah’s plan is very hard sometimes, but if I learned anything in the Middle East, it’s how important trusting in him is, because making sense of it on our own is hopeless.

“I am the LORD, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right.

“Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me, ‘In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.’”

- Isaiah 45:18-19, 22-24