A Model Citizen

A couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to submit my application for an Egyptian student visa. 

The last time I had sat for a passport photo, a frenzied Chinese lady in a tiny shop in New York City had pushed me up against a grimy wall and snapped a shot of me with her polaroid camera. Another woman in the back room had quickly processed the picture with her blow dryer. I was expecting my experience in Cairo to be similar, but I was mistaken.

I entered the store, and the photographer, a short man in glasses, ushered me up the stairs to the studio.

I was suddenly surrounded by giant teddy bears, magnificent armchairs with gilt wooden trimmings, corners of medieval parapets and lush patches of plastic vegetation. 

"Sit down here," the photographer ordered, gesturing to a stool. 

He scurried away. The next thing I knew, the lights had been turned off and two spotlights were illuminating my face. All around, white screens and umbrella-shaped appliances were either reflecting or producing light. (I clearly know nothing about photography). He positioned his tripod and camera at a 45 degree angle from my face and spent the next five minutes explaining to me how to tilt my head. 

The camera flashed, and he dashed to the back of the room to fiddle with the backdrop. He finally picked a dark brown velvet curtain and said, "One more!"

"No," I said, unable to stop laughing. "No thank you. I just need the one."

"One more!" He insisted. "It's free."

He replaced the stool with a strange contraption, which I assumed I was intended to straddle. When I proceeded to do so, he shook his head violently and told me to rest one foot on the bottom bar and rest my crossed arms on the top bar. 

I realized that I was posing for a glamour shot, and could not contain my laughter any longer.

When I was finally done with my photo shoot, he spent another fifteen minutes editing my visa photo with Photoshop, printed out 20 copies (I needed one) and one of my glamour shot, which he proceeded to frame. The brown background blends with my dark hair, so the picture shows nothing but my face, framed by darkness. But at least I'm smiling.

Brief update

Forgive me, dear readers, for having dropped off the face of the earth for a while. What with being forced to move, finding a new apartment, moving all my worldly possessions to our new home in hundreds of plastic supermarket bags and escaping to a beautiful desert oasis for a few days, only to return with horrible food poisoning and cockroaches in our new kitchen, I have been rather busy. Oh, and I also have midterms.

But all in all, I'm quite happy lately. Cairo is finally warming up, and I have discovered that I have been tanning slightly through my clothing. 

The Difference is in the Details

The other morning on my way to the bus, I passed three boys who were probably around twelve years old.
When they caught sight of me, they began laughing and pointing.
"Sabah al-kheir, gamal!" or "Good morning, camel!" they shouted. I realized that they were mocking me for my overstuffed backpack that was causing me to bend forward slightly and must indeed have looked like a hump.



Egyptians don't wear backpacks to school, but carry their books under one arm. Older girls and women usually put them in their purses. I felt more embarrassed than I probably should have, but it is these small cultural differences that can make one stand out as a foreigner and make one horribly self-conscious.

EVICTION NOTICE

"Does a contract mean nothing to you people?" I screamed. "You signed! We signed! We gave you a deposit!" 

"Anna, please. Calm down," Caitlin said. "You're foaming at the mouth."

Ok, so that didn't really happen, but it could have. 

A couple of days ago, a real estate agent brought by a small group of people to see the apartment. I was puzzled when he handed me his business card with a flourish and said, "If you need an apartment anytime soon." 

I really should have known.

Yesterday our landlord called me to ask when he could pop by to "talk about the apartment." He waltzed in just after nine in the evening, wearing a snappy tweed suit. He declined the cup of peppermint tea I offered him. 

"This will only take two minutes," he said, sitting down. He tugged at his pants to lift them just above his ankles.

"Listen, Anna, I need a lot of money for my business soon, so I need to sell the apartment by the end of the month."

He promised to find us a new place and was gone in a flash.

Good bye Nile views. Good bye Metro Market. Good bye Yassin. Good bye big windows. Good bye king sized bed. Good bye friendly neighbors. Good bye internet connection. Good bye embroidered pastoral scenes.

To the Holy Mountain

And now, for something completely different.

St. Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai

Friday morning at 5:30, the minibus we had rented picked us up in Zamalek, and we set off on our trip to Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine's Monastery.

The eight hour trip was broken up by a series of rest stops and short sightseeing excursions, which our two friendly drivers picked out for us. First among them was the sight of the Twelve Wells of Moses, where Moses struck his staff into the ground and twelve wells for the twelve tribes of the Sinai appeared. (Not a story with which I was familiar).

It just so happens that a formation of trees nearby spells out the word الله (Allah). Yeah, I don't see it either...

Next, we saw a cave right by the Red Sea (which is gorgeous, by the way) that emits mysterious steam. I think there might be a demon inside, or perhaps a djinn.

One rest stop was home to a whole flock of adorable goats. A kid had its head stuck in a fence, so I helped it out.

Slowly, the landscape changed from flat desert to dune-shaped hills to craggy rocks to mountains. We had to go through several check points on the Sinai, but we finally got to our hotel, which had spectacular views of the surrounding mountains. 

We hauled our luggage into our warm cabins and napped before and after dinner. At 2 a.m., we got a wake-up call from the reception and began donning every item of clothing we owned. 

Our drivers picked us up and took us to the entrance point, where we had to pay for a guide and go through security (the Egyptians love their metal detectors, as I learned at the New York consulate, where they use one as a doorbell).

We trudged along towards the foot of the mountain on a sandy path, accompanied by several hundred hardened Teutons and Norsemen, many with miners' flashlights strapped to their foreheads. Only one of our party had thought to bring a light, so we stumbled about in the dark for the most part. The icy wind threatened to unravel the many scarves wrapped around our heads, and my sweat was quickly freezing my neoprene suit to my torso.

We soon passed by a group of men in the dark, who offered, "Camel?" 

"Pah," I scoffed, as I tripped over a rock. "We will climb this mountain!" 

"Camel?" they suggested again.

We got to the first rest stop, our toes and fingers frozen, with the prospect of seven more kilometers of steep, rocky, freezing (!) hike ahead. So, after much deliberation, Jess and I left Farrell, Sarah and Simone and paid for camels to take us the rest of the way up. (Embarrassing, I know.)

Even so, a starry sky worthy of the biblical setting was the only distraction from the cold, and I spent the undulating ride picking out constellations I had never seen before.

Finally near the top, we were let off our beasts of burden, and proceeded to the nearest shelter, where we waited for the sun to rise. Bundled up in camel hair blankets, we drank tea and chatted with one of the Egyptian guides, who questioned us at great length about Christian doctrine.

Allow me to paraphrase some of his queries.

"Where do you get the face of Jesus?"

"The Orthodox love the Virgin Mary. The Catholics do not, I think. Yes?"

"Is it true that the Virgin Mary never married Joseph? Who then was her husband?"

We were so engaged in conversation that we almost missed the sunrise. But we clambered up onto a nearby crag and gazed out over the mountain tops in time to see Eos emerge. Meanwhile, the frostbite claimed our last toes.

On the way down, the sun was a welcome companion after the coldest night of our lives. We breakfasted back at the hotel and then made our way to the monastery, which is home to both Jethro's Well--where Moses first met his wife--and the Burning Bush, which, according to my guidebook, is a kind of bramble.

The Burning Bush

It also houses a collection of remarkable icons, including some from the time of the iconoclast controversy, which survived because the prohibition in Byzantium did not reach Egypt. I addressed the monk at the door in Greek and was consequently let in for FREE, which was extremely exciting. I was also able to get my "xeni" friends a discount price.

The monk then asked me for my camera. I handed it over, thinking he wanted to make sure I wouldn't break the ban on photography. It later turned out, however, that he had taken a picture of the famous icon of Christ the Pantokrator for me. He also invited me to stay for the liturgy at twelve, which was when the monastery closed to non-Orthodox visitors. Genuinely regretful, I had to decline, as I couldn't bring my friends along. But I wistfully pictured myself amidst a flock of robed and bearded Greek men, who crossed themselves continuously and swung silver incense burners in a collective frenzy. 

Christos Pantokrator

We embarked on the return journey, this time accompanied by a greasy government official, whose substantial private arsenal was revealed whenever the wind lifted the corners of his tan pin-stripe suit. The recent attacks on tourists have unnerved the authorities, it seems.

Our drivers had one more surprise in store for us: We stopped at Israeli barracks from the occupation in 1967, which had been converted into a "museum." The Egyptian soldier who showed us around asked our drivers to walk ahead of us with him, "just in case there are any land mines."

Former Israeli barracks. Please note the sign.

Our drivers and the government lackey excitedly examined dusty machine guns, tubes of toothpaste with Hebrew lettering and embroidered Yarmulkas. We nervously tiptoed about, expecting to be blown up at any moment. 

Finally, the soldier asked if there were any Jews among us. It wouldn't matter, he told us. He just wanted to show off Egypt's strength.

But there was really no need. The holy mountain had done so already.

Revenge is cheap

"Ooh, also, I figured out a way to get the toilet paper out of the holders in the stalls," proclaimed Jess, wagging a triumphant finger. "They have keys, but they don't actually lock them!"

But perhaps a clarification of the above is necessary. To vent our rage at the "university" for its numerous shortcomings and to save a good bit of money, my roommates and I have taken to pocketing toilet paper rolls at school.

Anna, a more interesting post next time, if you would?

If I must.

Mummified Molars

I require only two things of my toothpaste: 

1. That it be cheap.

2. That it at least claim to whiten my teeth, so I can delude myself into believing my pearly-whites will bedazzle any potential mates and employers.

Two weeks ago, I bought toothpaste at our local Metromarket. The only kind that fulfilled both my demands was "Pepsodent," a brand discontinued in the United States in the 1960s and in South Africa in the 1970s, but still popular throughout the southeast Asian realm today. (According to Wikipedia).

I began questioning my "Pasta Gigi" (as the Indonesian label reads) a few days after I started using it. A squeeze of the tube produced a series of large bubbles before the extremely viscose paste itself emerged, and I detected a slightly soapy flavor. I related these phenomena to my flatmates.

Jess snatched the tube from my hands and muttered to herself as she scanned the list of ingredients. 

"Formaldehyde!" she finally cried out. 

"Well, doesn't your toothpaste have it too?" I asked.

"No," she said, exasperated. "No it doesn't." 

"What about Caitlin's?"

Jess groaned and shuffled out of the bathroom to get her own tube of Crest and Caitlin's Colgate.

"Listen, this toothpaste doesn't have any of the ingredients in either of our toothpastes."

"Hm," I said. "Hm."

We googled all of the other ingredients later, only to find that two-thirds of them are considered carcinogens. It also turns out that the EU recently banned all use of formaldehyde.

Jess tried to convince me to buy a nice old tube of Arm & Hammer, but I resisted. More than money was at stake here.

"Just think," I said, brandishing my Pepsodent. "In 2000 years, I'll be the only human specimen in North America with a fully preserved set of teeth and gums. I'll be an archaeological marvel!"

She wasn't convinced, however, and in the end I had to admit that the short-term disadvantages outweighed the long-term benefits. As Jake might say, the toothpaste was out of the tube.