Catching up: The Nakba and Egypt

Ok. I don't want to make any promises, but inshaallah this'll be the first of a set of posts every day until I catch up to where I am.

I just moved out of my home stay (we'll get there when we get there) onto a street on Jebal Amman that is beside Rainbow St., which has all the coffeeshops and expats on it. Our street is lined with pet stores... so we now have 4 fish, 3 chicks (though we think 2 are dying), and 2 bunnies. It's a noisy house, but full of cute. I'm living with a bunch of SIT students. Kind of taking away from my immersion experience, but definitely easier on my mind, AND I can eat whatever I want.

Anyway, I have to start from where I need to catch up, which is... a month or more ago? The only really notable thing that happened in the 2 weeks before I left for Egypt was a conversation I got in with a kid. He took me by surprise when he told me that Israel was the cause of every single problem in the Arab world.

Well, I pretty quickly got him to take it back (this conversation was not one of my more graceful moments). We talked about the problems of Israel, and he told me about his family. He said that his grandfather had been shot down in cold blood in his bakery by, specifically, the Jews and the British, in whatever Palestinian town they'd lived in, and all his land was stolen. He had the details of the story worked out, from where his grandfather entered the bakery, to what he said, to the climactic 'And no one ever saw him again...'

At the same time, his grandmother was fleeing for Lebanon with her 8 young kids. I think they finally made their way into Jordan. I can't tell the story with all the color and passion he did. It was the first impassioned Nakba (disaster - what Israelis call independence day) narrative I'd heard in person from a friend. There was just no place in him for sympathy with Israelis: they stole his land, murdered his father, expelled his society.

I tried to explain the Holocaust to him, but I don't think I got very far. The whole thing reminded me of a brief clip I saw on CNN about a Jewish and Palestinian girl arguing in America about '48. The Palestinian says 'My family was thrown out. We had to run because we were told we'd be killed.' The Jewish girl responds 'They bought that land! They paid for it and the Arabs wouldn't leave!'

So, try connecting those two narratives.

Anyway, after that was my birthday, and then we took off for Egypt. Photos are on my brand-new Flickr account! http://www.flickr.com/photos/almustashriqa/sets/72157616547881352/

Holy moly, I'd forgotten how much Egyptians pissed me off.

There's definitely a well-documented desire to help out in Egypt. The problem is that it is matched with incredible incompetence. I don't want to speak too long about it because I start to get flustered and angry, but seriously... just make a f****** latte if you say you can. (Yes, I have captured modern colonialism in one sentence). Egyptian shisha is out of this world, and I sorely miss it, but Egyptians themselves excel at taking you to the wrong places in their taxis, taking a half hour to bring you the wrong kind of coffee, and making you feel deeply uncomfortable in the street whether or not you're showing a bit of calf.

That said, Egypt itself is WAY more entertaining than Jordan. The city has much more of a heartbeat. Amman is classy and clean, and God knows I love the politics, but you're looked at funny if you're on the street past 10. In Egypt, you'd better be out til 2. Or at least 12:30.

I don't have as many exciting stories from Egypt. I swore I would never see the Pyramids twice, and by (convenient) chance got "food poisoning" on the day the group went (I was better off than the kids who got alcohol poisoning - they were exploiting their freedom). The next day we went to the Citadel, which I hadn't seen, it was very pretty. We also spent an afternoon at the Arab League speaking with one of their leaders.

The other thing I did in Egypt I hadn't done before was visit the City of the Dead. It's a part of Cairo I've heard horrors about - it's a giant cemetery with 10K-500K (no one really knows) people living in the mausoleums. It's supposed to be really poor. We met some great little kids who took us around and practiced their English on us, surprised a lot of women chilling in their mausoleum backyards, and generally it was one of the most hospitable places I've been in Egypt or Jordan. Also, considering that people live in slums that literally collapse on them, it was pretty nice.

Honestly, though, the best part of Egypt was seeing most of my AUC friends. Apparently the campus is not the trainwreck it was last semester, and everyone is taking AWESOME classes. I'm a little sad I left, but Jordan has been very good for me and I am stoked for the independent study project I'm starting soon.

So, take a look at my pictures. I am doing my best to upload more, from the past few trips, but it is really difficult to find a place that can handle uploading large amounts of data in this country. I'll post tomorrow!