The Gospel According to Vincent J Donovan: Not to destroy their culture, but to fulfill it.
The Gospel According to John: Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
Lyric (The Gospel According to Billy Corgan): A lyric, a time, a crusade, a line, one minute, a friend, a road without end.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
famous last words
Party Line: 'Israeli military officials have been quoted as saying Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had backed a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure".' -bbcnews.com.
Yes. Of course, the terrorist infrastructure is at least nearly all of the population of Palestine, if not the Arab world. I mean, the people feeding the terrorists, housing the terrorists, voting for the terrorists, cheering on the terrorists, the people giving the terrorists every confidence in the world that they are freedom fighters. And if we're to talk of brainwashing, then the entire population is brainwashed. So, very well, we have a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure" in Gaza--but the Palestinians already knew that. What is limited, Mr. Olmert?
Edit: '"We still hope to return safely our kidnapped soldier," Daniel Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States, told CNN Tuesday night from Washington. Israel will call its operation off if Shalit is released safely, he added.' Yes, that's right, an innocent, I mean, almost unarmed, not-at-the-time-intending-to-engage-in-combat Israeli soldier has been brutally kidnapped by fanatical barbaric scum! How could we not take out a power plant essential to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? (I always thought we captured soldiers, who were then regularly exchanged with the enemy for one's own prisoners, and it was civilians who were held hostage, usually by criminals for money, but I guess the good old days are over. Ah, the elusive perks of nationhood...)
Famous Last Words (Small Gifts): I went to Egypt without a camera, which I think puzzled some of my friends who saw how zealous I got with one in my hand. I had some fuzzy romantic ideas about writing everything down instead of taking pictures, developing my memory or something. I don't think that worked out, I didn't write much most of the year.
When my parents visited, though, they left the camera with me and I tried to make up for a year's worth of not taking any pictures in a few weeks. I never took my camera to my friend Omar's house, though. I'd remembered from refugee studies class tales of rich boys who went places and did things for the sake of their own sparkling moral resume. For fear of becoming one of those, I never brought my camera to Omar's house or asked for pictures of his friends or apartment.
About a week before I left, though, Omar took a one-week course at AUC on woman-related refugee issues. A couple days into the course, he asked if I could borrow my camera for the last day to take pictures of his friends and teachers there. I gladly obliged and showed him how to work the camera. He snuck out of the room and stole a couple shots of his roommates. Any unplanned picture he took was invariably hilarious to everyone. I was stunned and warmed when I realized I had gotten what I had wanted, and didn't even have to ask.
We sat down for a little dinner, and then started talking about money. I told him how the amount of money I had made me nervous in Egypt; I didn't quite say that I felt guilty as I saw myself spending half a month's rent on a phone bill or dinner and a sheesha. He told me about an American he'd known before me, who sounded a lot like the gregarious and carefree Christian who I'd seen championed at my new communities in San Diego. I didn't know if he was a Christian or not; I'd always assumed he wasn't, but I thought I could see the way he talked, and the way his luxury extended deep into the lives of those he was around. i was touched and regretted not being bolder with my offering.
Omar seemed to think money was for spending, and it was as simple as that. It was odd to have Egypt-raised Sudanese telling the individualist American, "What you do with your money is your business, why should I care?" And to think I'd imagined him jealous. I'd even created a divide in my social world, in what business I could do with Omar and what I'd better do alone. I lived in his neighborhood, and that was where we always hung out. I would have never invited him to the internet cafe with me. Was that my hood?
I think we both felt the warmth of the conversation, and he suggested we go to the ahwa (coffeshop) where I would meet him when I didn't go to his apartment. We sat down for sheesha and tea and found a couple of his roommates there, and the attendent began to give me the enthusiastic foreigner's ribbing he always gave me, every time like it was my first time there. Omar must have still had the camera, because he took it out and started showing his roommates. They began running around, taking pictures of the attendent, themselves, the street, giddy at 4 AM. I was stunned. A remote ecstasy slipped its finger in my pocket and whispered in my ear, this is the way things work.
Reverse Culture Notice: I'd been surprised to here rumblings of the reality of 'reverse culture shock' from some of my friends that had been home for a few weeks. I'd expected that reverse culture shock was another entitling Western invention. Perhaps 'shock' is just a bit to strong of a term, but you certainly notice a thing or two.
My dad was at the airport to pick me up, and when we got to the car, I asked to drive the new car. He was surprised I was in a state to drive but allowed it. As soon as I started backing out I began to chuckle. After taking trains and cabs the whole year, the idea that I was driving a car, for two people, and then parking it was amazingly absurd. I kept pushing away that I was feeling any sort of 'reverse culture' systems only to begin chuckling again.
As I rolled the car over the hills on the way to my house, I noticed the green splashing out of the medians and sidewalks of Pleasanton's wide, manicured roads--it was like Reagan said, how Pleasanton is beautiful. I remembered the brown piles of buildings and people I had inhabited just a day before, and I began wondering how these two places existed on the same planet. I futzed around with a couple Communist thoughts-- you know, about world systems and how my Nikes are destroying the world--but those weren't really enough anymore. Oh, sure, there's money behind every picture in the place, but it couldn't be just that. The extraterrestriality of Cairo wasn't just a matter of class, but style, of culture and religion and expectations. Is that why we call them aliens? Is it that we just don't know how other people live, or what?
Yes. Of course, the terrorist infrastructure is at least nearly all of the population of Palestine, if not the Arab world. I mean, the people feeding the terrorists, housing the terrorists, voting for the terrorists, cheering on the terrorists, the people giving the terrorists every confidence in the world that they are freedom fighters. And if we're to talk of brainwashing, then the entire population is brainwashed. So, very well, we have a "limited operation" targeting the "terrorist infrastructure" in Gaza--but the Palestinians already knew that. What is limited, Mr. Olmert?
Edit: '"We still hope to return safely our kidnapped soldier," Daniel Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States, told CNN Tuesday night from Washington. Israel will call its operation off if Shalit is released safely, he added.' Yes, that's right, an innocent, I mean, almost unarmed, not-at-the-time-intending-to-engage-in-combat Israeli soldier has been brutally kidnapped by fanatical barbaric scum! How could we not take out a power plant essential to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? (I always thought we captured soldiers, who were then regularly exchanged with the enemy for one's own prisoners, and it was civilians who were held hostage, usually by criminals for money, but I guess the good old days are over. Ah, the elusive perks of nationhood...)
Famous Last Words (Small Gifts): I went to Egypt without a camera, which I think puzzled some of my friends who saw how zealous I got with one in my hand. I had some fuzzy romantic ideas about writing everything down instead of taking pictures, developing my memory or something. I don't think that worked out, I didn't write much most of the year.
When my parents visited, though, they left the camera with me and I tried to make up for a year's worth of not taking any pictures in a few weeks. I never took my camera to my friend Omar's house, though. I'd remembered from refugee studies class tales of rich boys who went places and did things for the sake of their own sparkling moral resume. For fear of becoming one of those, I never brought my camera to Omar's house or asked for pictures of his friends or apartment.
About a week before I left, though, Omar took a one-week course at AUC on woman-related refugee issues. A couple days into the course, he asked if I could borrow my camera for the last day to take pictures of his friends and teachers there. I gladly obliged and showed him how to work the camera. He snuck out of the room and stole a couple shots of his roommates. Any unplanned picture he took was invariably hilarious to everyone. I was stunned and warmed when I realized I had gotten what I had wanted, and didn't even have to ask.
We sat down for a little dinner, and then started talking about money. I told him how the amount of money I had made me nervous in Egypt; I didn't quite say that I felt guilty as I saw myself spending half a month's rent on a phone bill or dinner and a sheesha. He told me about an American he'd known before me, who sounded a lot like the gregarious and carefree Christian who I'd seen championed at my new communities in San Diego. I didn't know if he was a Christian or not; I'd always assumed he wasn't, but I thought I could see the way he talked, and the way his luxury extended deep into the lives of those he was around. i was touched and regretted not being bolder with my offering.
Omar seemed to think money was for spending, and it was as simple as that. It was odd to have Egypt-raised Sudanese telling the individualist American, "What you do with your money is your business, why should I care?" And to think I'd imagined him jealous. I'd even created a divide in my social world, in what business I could do with Omar and what I'd better do alone. I lived in his neighborhood, and that was where we always hung out. I would have never invited him to the internet cafe with me. Was that my hood?
I think we both felt the warmth of the conversation, and he suggested we go to the ahwa (coffeshop) where I would meet him when I didn't go to his apartment. We sat down for sheesha and tea and found a couple of his roommates there, and the attendent began to give me the enthusiastic foreigner's ribbing he always gave me, every time like it was my first time there. Omar must have still had the camera, because he took it out and started showing his roommates. They began running around, taking pictures of the attendent, themselves, the street, giddy at 4 AM. I was stunned. A remote ecstasy slipped its finger in my pocket and whispered in my ear, this is the way things work.
Reverse Culture Notice: I'd been surprised to here rumblings of the reality of 'reverse culture shock' from some of my friends that had been home for a few weeks. I'd expected that reverse culture shock was another entitling Western invention. Perhaps 'shock' is just a bit to strong of a term, but you certainly notice a thing or two.
My dad was at the airport to pick me up, and when we got to the car, I asked to drive the new car. He was surprised I was in a state to drive but allowed it. As soon as I started backing out I began to chuckle. After taking trains and cabs the whole year, the idea that I was driving a car, for two people, and then parking it was amazingly absurd. I kept pushing away that I was feeling any sort of 'reverse culture' systems only to begin chuckling again.
As I rolled the car over the hills on the way to my house, I noticed the green splashing out of the medians and sidewalks of Pleasanton's wide, manicured roads--it was like Reagan said, how Pleasanton is beautiful. I remembered the brown piles of buildings and people I had inhabited just a day before, and I began wondering how these two places existed on the same planet. I futzed around with a couple Communist thoughts-- you know, about world systems and how my Nikes are destroying the world--but those weren't really enough anymore. Oh, sure, there's money behind every picture in the place, but it couldn't be just that. The extraterrestriality of Cairo wasn't just a matter of class, but style, of culture and religion and expectations. Is that why we call them aliens? Is it that we just don't know how other people live, or what?
Saturday, June 17, 2006
we all struggle for each breath that we take, or, why i am the talisman of american football
Pretentiousness Alert: Very High, apologies to Biran
Hair Length: The neighbors have threatened to make me start wearing the hijab
World Cup: Although the the US' 3-0 thumping at the hands of the Czech Republic has deflated my world cup enthusiasm*, I should mention a few of the stellar headlines brought to us by this event: 'Training to begin for S&M' and 'The Netherlands prepares for S&M.' Sadly, the proud Montenegrin nation has recently voted for independence from Serbia, and thus, the nation of 'Serbia and Montenegro' will no longer exist, depriving future generations of such blissfully snigger-worthy headlines. If only S&M had a chance to make it to the BBC politics pages...
*: Or am I just lonely? I had been looking forward to and expecting to watch the US-CR game. A friend of mine called me; her parents are visiting and she invited me to join them for the day. She said it'd be from one to sunset, right over the game, and I agreed, just said I might have to leave early, to catch the match at 7. I thought about it for another second, and made sure to add, "To meet with my friend Omar." You know, because what kind of punk doesn't have time for people because of some stupid game. I had my eye on Important Things.
We went to a Nile-side cafe at around 4, and after a while I flipped off my give-a-shit switch and scrapped the game and agreed to go to Al-Azhar Park to watch the sunset over Cairo, which seems to have become the last hurrah of choice for departees. Of course, and my friend had figured the sun to set at precisely 7. I've been there at least half a dozen times in such circumstances, but the pollution that can make the sunset sublime more often buries it. On Saturday, at least, it set.
I began to wonder I went. I'd seen the same thing so many times, after the first, always remembering to point out what stunning patch of green Al-Azhar Park was in Cairo--as it is--to perhaps underappreciating guests. I wonder at myself, after having made such an uncharcteristic commotion about the World Cup, after having actually expressed a desire to do something, do anything. I began to consider that I had abandoned my team at its time of greatest need, in the place where I'd agreed to make among the biggest of sacrifices in my demure center-of-left-of-center-but-we-should-always-be-open-to-new-ideas circles: to give a shit, a sporting shit, for my country, no less. Some waste.
The line of thought--my usual line of thought, that is--runs something like, "Oh, yea heartless, mindless cretins, in thou insouciant hurry to get to the D section of thine newspaper, thou hath forgotten the blood, tears, and sin of the front page! Hath you no perspective? See ye not the Important Things in life? Hath you only balls but not brains? Cojones but not caring?"
After the sun set, we ambled around the park, waiting for the Marine van to come pick us up (one of our friends is a US marine at the embassy). Opportunity allowed, and I turned on my give-a-shitter up, just flickered it, really. We walked by a cafe and I peeked over to the TV to check the score. Two - nothing. Embarassing. I hoped they wouldn't embarass themselves too bad. I felt mildly responsible. Those boys are probably missing my caring, I allowed.
Those silly boys. I've heard people say that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, that the body decays with age, and all that you worked so hard for will age away. Maybe so. But I can't help but think that weight training builds more than muscles and practice more than quickness and skill, that the obsessive determination of the world's greatest football players is no less beautiful and fraught than that of the world's greatest artists. If anything, it seems that vaunted mind that some put so much stock in just saddles with arrogance for life, instead of just youth. As for heart? Sadness and joy should come just as well from football than the results of some social justice project.
In a godless world, I cannot see the difference between a singular obsession with social justice or football. It's overcoming naysayers and telling the man to shove it, toughness and resilience and singular determination, buidling a team, deep sadness, and radiant joy. And if one man rises and falls with the fortunes of his team, and another with that of his politics, I should say that the first man is simply a bit more to the point. When it seems giving a shit for anything is so costly, I should say both have taken an admirable first step.
The marine van took us to my apartment, where my friend had been stashing her stuff while she and her parents toured Upper Egypt. We got the bags and rushed back to the van because I didn't want to keep the Marine's newish-looking Ford 15-seater waiting on my narrow, easily-piqued, 1970 Fiat street. Her father put her bags in the car, and perhaps my impending doom slipped her mind, because she held the door open expecting me to get in. But that was my stop, it was the end of the night, the end of the journey.
My goodbye's never go as I want them to, awkward and what-the-fuck?ish, and this one was no exception, quick hugs and handshakes and mutterings about safe travels. I pulled out and quickly slammed the door to let an impatient cab past, and like that it was over. The last of my travel buddies had left.
A bit dejected and unsure of what to do with myself, I rushed to check the score. Three - zero. An utter embarassment. More embarassing than playing football with udders. Udders with little cleats on them. I felt justified that I hadn't wasted time or face watching the match, but I went to bed utterly sad, unsure if it was the players on the field or the playa inside of me I was dissapointed with. The next day, it got worse, as I didn't want to watch the World Cup and my friend flew out. I grabbed the yoke from the pilot, ready to crash the whole mess into the sea. At the last minute, I allowed that I might have been truly, acutely, [heroically?!], lonely.
After a few days I was able to watch again, and, with my return count in single digits, I set out again to give a shit. For tonight, I planned for myself to watch the USA-Italy match at a snooty cafe next to the student dorms on Zamalek, because in that hopelessly hopeful human way, I thought we could win. And besides, I had learned my lesson last time.
I spent most of the day at AUC, where it was World Refugee Day. Mostly, I avoided the festivities. One step at a time.
I went to another cafe (Fortress America travels with your dollars) where I called my sister and wrote a long, crumbly entry in my journal, the first in awhile. I dropped by the campus to visit Omar and his mother, who was selling East African food (think Ethiopian). We chatted for an hour or so, and I scarfed down his mother's food, but when he asked if I was going to go, I didn't hesitate. I was going to watch the match. I didn't tell him, but my team needed me.
We were supposed to get throttled, Italy being such a strong footballing nation, and the US putting in such a fantastically anemic performance against the Czechs. It had been a long time since I cared so much about any sports match, a good while I'd been so tense about anything really, but the US came out with guns blazing (as we are wont to do), and it looked as if we might stand a chance against the Italians. They scored first, and I was ready to flip the switch off and go home, but we scored four minutes later. The match went back and forth, and to make a long story short, we finished the game playing nine against ten and tied anyway against one of the best teams in the world.
It was terrible, I don't know why people do that, I mean, sit through ninety minutes of gut-wrenching meaninglessness, well meaningless in so far as there is no one with a gun to their head saying, "Watch the match or die." But I mean, I was nervous, I was angry, I was dissapointed, incredulous. All these things that happen when you care, all of a sudden, all these things in the match that I had skipped for a drink and a sandwich for my apartment were huge, mid-field free throws and goal kicks and unremarkable touches. All these people, they just choose to care, to get up for it, to get down, to imitate the very first and maybe the only step of love.
For all its supposed meaninglessness and jockery, I walked out of the cafe a little stirred, a little angry, a little proud, and happy. I passed walked passed a man sleeping on a bridge on the way home, and then a dirty, shoeless kid, with these invariable eyes. No, Team Social Justice still has a match on its hands. But the lovers and heroes on the US soccer team had been so obsessed with a result, so obsessed all their lives, with their meaningless little game, that any fan who should chose to flick the switch could trace the face of love on the pitch with his own heart and mind.
So I felt a little proud, a little vindicated, a little angry? Oh, Solomon, everything is meaningless. What a great, good God.
Hair Length: The neighbors have threatened to make me start wearing the hijab
World Cup: Although the the US' 3-0 thumping at the hands of the Czech Republic has deflated my world cup enthusiasm*, I should mention a few of the stellar headlines brought to us by this event: 'Training to begin for S&M' and 'The Netherlands prepares for S&M.' Sadly, the proud Montenegrin nation has recently voted for independence from Serbia, and thus, the nation of 'Serbia and Montenegro' will no longer exist, depriving future generations of such blissfully snigger-worthy headlines. If only S&M had a chance to make it to the BBC politics pages...
*: Or am I just lonely? I had been looking forward to and expecting to watch the US-CR game. A friend of mine called me; her parents are visiting and she invited me to join them for the day. She said it'd be from one to sunset, right over the game, and I agreed, just said I might have to leave early, to catch the match at 7. I thought about it for another second, and made sure to add, "To meet with my friend Omar." You know, because what kind of punk doesn't have time for people because of some stupid game. I had my eye on Important Things.
We went to a Nile-side cafe at around 4, and after a while I flipped off my give-a-shit switch and scrapped the game and agreed to go to Al-Azhar Park to watch the sunset over Cairo, which seems to have become the last hurrah of choice for departees. Of course, and my friend had figured the sun to set at precisely 7. I've been there at least half a dozen times in such circumstances, but the pollution that can make the sunset sublime more often buries it. On Saturday, at least, it set.
I began to wonder I went. I'd seen the same thing so many times, after the first, always remembering to point out what stunning patch of green Al-Azhar Park was in Cairo--as it is--to perhaps underappreciating guests. I wonder at myself, after having made such an uncharcteristic commotion about the World Cup, after having actually expressed a desire to do something, do anything. I began to consider that I had abandoned my team at its time of greatest need, in the place where I'd agreed to make among the biggest of sacrifices in my demure center-of-left-of-center-but-we-should-always-be-open-to-new-ideas circles: to give a shit, a sporting shit, for my country, no less. Some waste.
The line of thought--my usual line of thought, that is--runs something like, "Oh, yea heartless, mindless cretins, in thou insouciant hurry to get to the D section of thine newspaper, thou hath forgotten the blood, tears, and sin of the front page! Hath you no perspective? See ye not the Important Things in life? Hath you only balls but not brains? Cojones but not caring?"
After the sun set, we ambled around the park, waiting for the Marine van to come pick us up (one of our friends is a US marine at the embassy). Opportunity allowed, and I turned on my give-a-shitter up, just flickered it, really. We walked by a cafe and I peeked over to the TV to check the score. Two - nothing. Embarassing. I hoped they wouldn't embarass themselves too bad. I felt mildly responsible. Those boys are probably missing my caring, I allowed.
Those silly boys. I've heard people say that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, that the body decays with age, and all that you worked so hard for will age away. Maybe so. But I can't help but think that weight training builds more than muscles and practice more than quickness and skill, that the obsessive determination of the world's greatest football players is no less beautiful and fraught than that of the world's greatest artists. If anything, it seems that vaunted mind that some put so much stock in just saddles with arrogance for life, instead of just youth. As for heart? Sadness and joy should come just as well from football than the results of some social justice project.
In a godless world, I cannot see the difference between a singular obsession with social justice or football. It's overcoming naysayers and telling the man to shove it, toughness and resilience and singular determination, buidling a team, deep sadness, and radiant joy. And if one man rises and falls with the fortunes of his team, and another with that of his politics, I should say that the first man is simply a bit more to the point. When it seems giving a shit for anything is so costly, I should say both have taken an admirable first step.
The marine van took us to my apartment, where my friend had been stashing her stuff while she and her parents toured Upper Egypt. We got the bags and rushed back to the van because I didn't want to keep the Marine's newish-looking Ford 15-seater waiting on my narrow, easily-piqued, 1970 Fiat street. Her father put her bags in the car, and perhaps my impending doom slipped her mind, because she held the door open expecting me to get in. But that was my stop, it was the end of the night, the end of the journey.
My goodbye's never go as I want them to, awkward and what-the-fuck?ish, and this one was no exception, quick hugs and handshakes and mutterings about safe travels. I pulled out and quickly slammed the door to let an impatient cab past, and like that it was over. The last of my travel buddies had left.
A bit dejected and unsure of what to do with myself, I rushed to check the score. Three - zero. An utter embarassment. More embarassing than playing football with udders. Udders with little cleats on them. I felt justified that I hadn't wasted time or face watching the match, but I went to bed utterly sad, unsure if it was the players on the field or the playa inside of me I was dissapointed with. The next day, it got worse, as I didn't want to watch the World Cup and my friend flew out. I grabbed the yoke from the pilot, ready to crash the whole mess into the sea. At the last minute, I allowed that I might have been truly, acutely, [heroically?!], lonely.
After a few days I was able to watch again, and, with my return count in single digits, I set out again to give a shit. For tonight, I planned for myself to watch the USA-Italy match at a snooty cafe next to the student dorms on Zamalek, because in that hopelessly hopeful human way, I thought we could win. And besides, I had learned my lesson last time.
I spent most of the day at AUC, where it was World Refugee Day. Mostly, I avoided the festivities. One step at a time.
I went to another cafe (Fortress America travels with your dollars) where I called my sister and wrote a long, crumbly entry in my journal, the first in awhile. I dropped by the campus to visit Omar and his mother, who was selling East African food (think Ethiopian). We chatted for an hour or so, and I scarfed down his mother's food, but when he asked if I was going to go, I didn't hesitate. I was going to watch the match. I didn't tell him, but my team needed me.
We were supposed to get throttled, Italy being such a strong footballing nation, and the US putting in such a fantastically anemic performance against the Czechs. It had been a long time since I cared so much about any sports match, a good while I'd been so tense about anything really, but the US came out with guns blazing (as we are wont to do), and it looked as if we might stand a chance against the Italians. They scored first, and I was ready to flip the switch off and go home, but we scored four minutes later. The match went back and forth, and to make a long story short, we finished the game playing nine against ten and tied anyway against one of the best teams in the world.
It was terrible, I don't know why people do that, I mean, sit through ninety minutes of gut-wrenching meaninglessness, well meaningless in so far as there is no one with a gun to their head saying, "Watch the match or die." But I mean, I was nervous, I was angry, I was dissapointed, incredulous. All these things that happen when you care, all of a sudden, all these things in the match that I had skipped for a drink and a sandwich for my apartment were huge, mid-field free throws and goal kicks and unremarkable touches. All these people, they just choose to care, to get up for it, to get down, to imitate the very first and maybe the only step of love.
For all its supposed meaninglessness and jockery, I walked out of the cafe a little stirred, a little angry, a little proud, and happy. I passed walked passed a man sleeping on a bridge on the way home, and then a dirty, shoeless kid, with these invariable eyes. No, Team Social Justice still has a match on its hands. But the lovers and heroes on the US soccer team had been so obsessed with a result, so obsessed all their lives, with their meaningless little game, that any fan who should chose to flick the switch could trace the face of love on the pitch with his own heart and mind.
So I felt a little proud, a little vindicated, a little angry? Oh, Solomon, everything is meaningless. What a great, good God.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
if i was crying, it was for freedom, from myself and from the land
[whoa, that was a close one, I nearly couldn't think of any cryptic song lyrics for the subject line; this is mostly from about a week and a half ago]
How the times change. I used to think I was good at persuasion, like, the debate kind of persuasion. I was built and trained, I thought, for evangelism and conversion, knit of Cartesian wool. I saw philosophy, apology, and accumulated knowledge as essential tools in the arsenal of the Christian soldier. I had solid answers for 'the nuts and bolts' questions, the tract questions, what does a Christian believe and how does he act in this situation or that etc, and for the big questions, poetry. Politics too, you know, I had great answers, facts and poetry style, especially after I figured out that my religion and my politics could be separate. That became the whole issue, really for both, separating my politics from my religion and presenting the results to either side. See? Easy...
I was talking with a friend tonight though, and I felt the words I was so good with... I felt like a kid with broken crayons who couldn't color inside the lines to save his life. We were talking about politics first, he brought it up, not me. There's these Bahais here in Egypt and they want to put "Bahai" under the religion section of their birth certificates and the religious powers that be haven't taken well to the suggestion. They say that there are only three religions and that Bahai is merely an 'adjective'. I don't suppose they have a 'blasphemer' stamp over at the Department of Health either.
We started talking about politics and religion, because there's none of the separation business here and I was having the hardest time ..>..>listening. I felt like, I can't really be bothered, because that itself is a new political disposition I've taken to, just let him talk, take it out on a Westerner, so that he knows we're listening. But, I mean, that's just the thing, I still felt the weight of responsibility, like I was an emissary from some dignified 'Western' collective. Instead of this pressure to share the gospel of Jesus, I felt this pressure to stand up for human rights and world peace etc. You know, to be respectful and listen, but then remind him of what he was really saying.
I asked him if he thought that the government should be responsive to religious law and he said yes, if the government were to implement the rules of Islam things would be much better. I asked him if he thought the Taliban was a model of an effective government and he said yes it was. I asked him to ask his friend, and his friend agreed. That was a good government. Successful? I asked. Yes.
I remember last time we talked, we were watching Al-Jazeera and he asked me if I had seen the new Al Zarqawi video and I said no I hadn't but I'd read something about it on the BBC. We got into it and I asked him what he felt about Zarqawi. He said, you know, when there's a bully at school, and someone stands up to the bully and punks him, you feel like, yeah! we got 'em. You put a vindictive sneer on your face and tell him to suck it and tell you how it feels.
I remember that time, I launched into a canned rehashing of Zarqawi's various inconsistencies and atrocities and then suddenly becoming very disenchanted with it. I rambled on for about five minutes but began tying knots with my sentences so that in the end I said nothing. It was a vague, beggy acquienscence, even, an admission of defeat: yes, I agree, the US is oppressive. At the same time, it was like... let's not talk about it.
I thought after that that I would give no more canned answers and the ..>..>next time he told me how he felt I'd just try to be all tabula rasa-like and see what I could let him write on me. In the end, I was sure we'd reach some Zen agreement on the unity of us all. But when he began telling me about the Taliban, I felt that pressure again, like we should fight: "tell him Alex ... tell him The Truth!" Incidentally, "Saved" had been on TV, and the conversation paused as I wanted to see the end, before we walked over to a coffeeshop.
When we resumed I marched right back up to the Taliban questions. I tried to ask listening questions, you know, questions where I wouldn't go all white-mans-burden and be tempted to burnish my knowledge on the subtleties on judeo-christian political philosophy. Thing was though, there wasn't any question I could ask that wasn't some version of "isn't it absolutely correct that church and state should be separate and that individuals should practice their religion individually and that you are wrong?"
On the way to the coffeeshop, when I was still probing about the Taliban, he had instructed me that if I had religious questions, he couldn't answer them all, I should ask a sheikh. I was going to sass him and say, "Well why shouldn't you tell me, its not like the sheikh knows everything. Everyone has a different interpretation anyway." The thing was, my ideological resistance to the Taliban was about as gutteral as his support of it. I am sure there are many denunciations of the Taliban, but I wasn't feeling any of them. I mean, the Taliban is supposed to be a slam dunk for a liberal democrat. But I got to thinking that that's just the thing: for a liberal democrat. All my learning has tired in my brain and gone to my gut. And then I was disinterested and my critiques were Jello: colorful and substanceless.
Eventually, we came to straight religion. Sometimes we do that, quiz each other on this or that on Islam or Christianity. So when it came to questions and answers about my religion, I found ..>..>that I might have said the same thing he did: well you should talk to my sheikh. All my answers were these old things, these answers I used out of a sense of responsibility to not misrepresent all the teachers who have put some much care and effort at getting the details straight, at infusing me with a solid theology and philosophy.
Those answers were also Jello. He asked me what Jesus was, man or God or what, which is a popular question in these parts. I think its the stumper Muslim apologists smack their lips over: see? Absurd! The pagan crazies...
Christian theologians may smack back, thinking in triumphant righteousness, yes! absurd! and launch into a soliloquy on divine mystery, on the poetry of creation. I tried that tonight. He asked about Jesus and I said something about the trinity. I said Christianity was about mystery, and I rehashed a few bombass mystical thoughts I'd had in days passed. A few years ago I would have been trying to convert him, but in the run of conversation, I was just trying to explain. And I couldn't. Like I couldn't refute the Taliban or Al Zarqawi. It was like the zenith (or nadir) of academic disinterest. I was so objective I couldn't say anything, didn't care about anything I was saying.
At the same time, I knew, I know, that Christian mystery is what makes me cream my proverbial jeans in class and in song, that every amazing thought I have goes through John's invocation; it makes my heart beat fast when I read and write, when I sing in the car and on the street. But it seemed so very far away tonight. They were all old things I had said and had felt sure of before, and desparate for some kind of validity, some sort of solid ground, I used them again. Talking to my friend, I felt a total inability to connect, to say anything that mattered to him. I wondered if a Christian philosopher and a Muslim philosopher could ever make sense to each other. (But then, did they send the Muslim to Oxford anyway?)
I kind of wished I had kept my evangelist's tools sharp and ready, to give precise, nuanced, correct, answers. Have I been in to much school for my own good? I honestly wonder if it would have done any good to ..>..>try to give him some sense of the benefit of international human rights regimes and what not. I had these roomates for about a month who were pros at crafting Christians concepts for Muslims. As far I could tell it worked. You know, they would ask like, stuff about apostasy or Jesus to them, and they knew some Quran, and they knew that the key word was "where's the proof?" Like where does it say this or that in the Quran, and then it turns out that what it says is problematic, and then refocus the conversation on this logically complete Calvinism that drives me crazy when I think about it too much. I can't stand all the work this entails. Anyway, there are too many things to get 'wrong': Oh, shit, Ahmed is going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper logical equation. Hell, I'm going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper equation. To be clear, I enjoy a proper equation as much as the next guy.
My friend is not a fundamentalist Muslim. He hasn't a big bushy beard. He's a refugee, and he's relatively well-connected at AUC; he's had quite a few connections with Westerners. I've given him a few of my readers and he reads them. He's translated for journalists and NGOs; he puts up with shit at UNHCR and CARITAS. He speaks good English; he likes Steven Segal and takes care of his mother. He probably reads and watches more news than I do. He even told me he would marry a non-Muslim if he liked her. I suppose I would expect that I have a lot to say to him, a lot about Jesus and U-N-topia and how we'll all get a long in the next world, but I can't. I've no good words.
I wonder if when Jesus said, "hate your family, hate your mother and father," he wasn't talking about the way we speak. I wonder if he wasn't saying, forgo the world in which you are intelligible, forgo your mother tongue and your fatherland and take up the impossible task of preaching in another language. Forgo your family of friends where you are a hero, where you are understood, and where you make your value. Because going to New Places will mean silence for your family, untranslatable gaps, unimaginable darkness between your world and those of your loved ones. And when its all over, you might not quite look like the son they raised. At least, if you really intend for that place to be new, because otherwise, you'll just be like those ridiculous five-star hotels, a little bit of America in the middle of Cairo or Kinshasa or whatever corner you've found yourself in. I've kicked stones over those edges, but I've not heard them hit the bottom. I eye it nervously and it eyes me back.
I suppose I could be feeling the same kind of understanding gap at home, and I do remember going on a trip to Mexico with a bunch of non-college students and feeling very nervous and lost. Many of them were recovered drug addicts and I felt like neither of us had anything to say to each other. (They did not feel the same way, and I found many of them rather overeager). I think the difference is a matter of proximity. That experience was five days away from being digested in a familiar circle of friends and family, by friends who could easily recall or imagine what I was saying. I guess really its not so much a leap over the edge of an abyss but a steady walk away from what you know, which is why it take so much time, and so much distance, and why it seems so absurd at times, even most of the times: Home is that way [points in opposite direction]. And then you just keep going, for no good reason.
Alright, that's all I have or now... persnaps a conclusion will come to me later. Peace.
How the times change. I used to think I was good at persuasion, like, the debate kind of persuasion. I was built and trained, I thought, for evangelism and conversion, knit of Cartesian wool. I saw philosophy, apology, and accumulated knowledge as essential tools in the arsenal of the Christian soldier. I had solid answers for 'the nuts and bolts' questions, the tract questions, what does a Christian believe and how does he act in this situation or that etc, and for the big questions, poetry. Politics too, you know, I had great answers, facts and poetry style, especially after I figured out that my religion and my politics could be separate. That became the whole issue, really for both, separating my politics from my religion and presenting the results to either side. See? Easy...
I was talking with a friend tonight though, and I felt the words I was so good with... I felt like a kid with broken crayons who couldn't color inside the lines to save his life. We were talking about politics first, he brought it up, not me. There's these Bahais here in Egypt and they want to put "Bahai" under the religion section of their birth certificates and the religious powers that be haven't taken well to the suggestion. They say that there are only three religions and that Bahai is merely an 'adjective'. I don't suppose they have a 'blasphemer' stamp over at the Department of Health either.
We started talking about politics and religion, because there's none of the separation business here and I was having the hardest time ..>..>listening. I felt like, I can't really be bothered, because that itself is a new political disposition I've taken to, just let him talk, take it out on a Westerner, so that he knows we're listening. But, I mean, that's just the thing, I still felt the weight of responsibility, like I was an emissary from some dignified 'Western' collective. Instead of this pressure to share the gospel of Jesus, I felt this pressure to stand up for human rights and world peace etc. You know, to be respectful and listen, but then remind him of what he was really saying.
I asked him if he thought that the government should be responsive to religious law and he said yes, if the government were to implement the rules of Islam things would be much better. I asked him if he thought the Taliban was a model of an effective government and he said yes it was. I asked him to ask his friend, and his friend agreed. That was a good government. Successful? I asked. Yes.
I remember last time we talked, we were watching Al-Jazeera and he asked me if I had seen the new Al Zarqawi video and I said no I hadn't but I'd read something about it on the BBC. We got into it and I asked him what he felt about Zarqawi. He said, you know, when there's a bully at school, and someone stands up to the bully and punks him, you feel like, yeah! we got 'em. You put a vindictive sneer on your face and tell him to suck it and tell you how it feels.
I remember that time, I launched into a canned rehashing of Zarqawi's various inconsistencies and atrocities and then suddenly becoming very disenchanted with it. I rambled on for about five minutes but began tying knots with my sentences so that in the end I said nothing. It was a vague, beggy acquienscence, even, an admission of defeat: yes, I agree, the US is oppressive. At the same time, it was like... let's not talk about it.
I thought after that that I would give no more canned answers and the ..>..>next time he told me how he felt I'd just try to be all tabula rasa-like and see what I could let him write on me. In the end, I was sure we'd reach some Zen agreement on the unity of us all. But when he began telling me about the Taliban, I felt that pressure again, like we should fight: "tell him Alex ... tell him The Truth!" Incidentally, "Saved" had been on TV, and the conversation paused as I wanted to see the end, before we walked over to a coffeeshop.
When we resumed I marched right back up to the Taliban questions. I tried to ask listening questions, you know, questions where I wouldn't go all white-mans-burden and be tempted to burnish my knowledge on the subtleties on judeo-christian political philosophy. Thing was though, there wasn't any question I could ask that wasn't some version of "isn't it absolutely correct that church and state should be separate and that individuals should practice their religion individually and that you are wrong?"
On the way to the coffeeshop, when I was still probing about the Taliban, he had instructed me that if I had religious questions, he couldn't answer them all, I should ask a sheikh. I was going to sass him and say, "Well why shouldn't you tell me, its not like the sheikh knows everything. Everyone has a different interpretation anyway." The thing was, my ideological resistance to the Taliban was about as gutteral as his support of it. I am sure there are many denunciations of the Taliban, but I wasn't feeling any of them. I mean, the Taliban is supposed to be a slam dunk for a liberal democrat. But I got to thinking that that's just the thing: for a liberal democrat. All my learning has tired in my brain and gone to my gut. And then I was disinterested and my critiques were Jello: colorful and substanceless.
Eventually, we came to straight religion. Sometimes we do that, quiz each other on this or that on Islam or Christianity. So when it came to questions and answers about my religion, I found ..>..>that I might have said the same thing he did: well you should talk to my sheikh. All my answers were these old things, these answers I used out of a sense of responsibility to not misrepresent all the teachers who have put some much care and effort at getting the details straight, at infusing me with a solid theology and philosophy.
Those answers were also Jello. He asked me what Jesus was, man or God or what, which is a popular question in these parts. I think its the stumper Muslim apologists smack their lips over: see? Absurd! The pagan crazies...
Christian theologians may smack back, thinking in triumphant righteousness, yes! absurd! and launch into a soliloquy on divine mystery, on the poetry of creation. I tried that tonight. He asked about Jesus and I said something about the trinity. I said Christianity was about mystery, and I rehashed a few bombass mystical thoughts I'd had in days passed. A few years ago I would have been trying to convert him, but in the run of conversation, I was just trying to explain. And I couldn't. Like I couldn't refute the Taliban or Al Zarqawi. It was like the zenith (or nadir) of academic disinterest. I was so objective I couldn't say anything, didn't care about anything I was saying.
At the same time, I knew, I know, that Christian mystery is what makes me cream my proverbial jeans in class and in song, that every amazing thought I have goes through John's invocation; it makes my heart beat fast when I read and write, when I sing in the car and on the street. But it seemed so very far away tonight. They were all old things I had said and had felt sure of before, and desparate for some kind of validity, some sort of solid ground, I used them again. Talking to my friend, I felt a total inability to connect, to say anything that mattered to him. I wondered if a Christian philosopher and a Muslim philosopher could ever make sense to each other. (But then, did they send the Muslim to Oxford anyway?)
I kind of wished I had kept my evangelist's tools sharp and ready, to give precise, nuanced, correct, answers. Have I been in to much school for my own good? I honestly wonder if it would have done any good to ..>..>try to give him some sense of the benefit of international human rights regimes and what not. I had these roomates for about a month who were pros at crafting Christians concepts for Muslims. As far I could tell it worked. You know, they would ask like, stuff about apostasy or Jesus to them, and they knew some Quran, and they knew that the key word was "where's the proof?" Like where does it say this or that in the Quran, and then it turns out that what it says is problematic, and then refocus the conversation on this logically complete Calvinism that drives me crazy when I think about it too much. I can't stand all the work this entails. Anyway, there are too many things to get 'wrong': Oh, shit, Ahmed is going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper logical equation. Hell, I'm going to hell because I don't know how to make a proper equation. To be clear, I enjoy a proper equation as much as the next guy.
My friend is not a fundamentalist Muslim. He hasn't a big bushy beard. He's a refugee, and he's relatively well-connected at AUC; he's had quite a few connections with Westerners. I've given him a few of my readers and he reads them. He's translated for journalists and NGOs; he puts up with shit at UNHCR and CARITAS. He speaks good English; he likes Steven Segal and takes care of his mother. He probably reads and watches more news than I do. He even told me he would marry a non-Muslim if he liked her. I suppose I would expect that I have a lot to say to him, a lot about Jesus and U-N-topia and how we'll all get a long in the next world, but I can't. I've no good words.
I wonder if when Jesus said, "hate your family, hate your mother and father," he wasn't talking about the way we speak. I wonder if he wasn't saying, forgo the world in which you are intelligible, forgo your mother tongue and your fatherland and take up the impossible task of preaching in another language. Forgo your family of friends where you are a hero, where you are understood, and where you make your value. Because going to New Places will mean silence for your family, untranslatable gaps, unimaginable darkness between your world and those of your loved ones. And when its all over, you might not quite look like the son they raised. At least, if you really intend for that place to be new, because otherwise, you'll just be like those ridiculous five-star hotels, a little bit of America in the middle of Cairo or Kinshasa or whatever corner you've found yourself in. I've kicked stones over those edges, but I've not heard them hit the bottom. I eye it nervously and it eyes me back.
I suppose I could be feeling the same kind of understanding gap at home, and I do remember going on a trip to Mexico with a bunch of non-college students and feeling very nervous and lost. Many of them were recovered drug addicts and I felt like neither of us had anything to say to each other. (They did not feel the same way, and I found many of them rather overeager). I think the difference is a matter of proximity. That experience was five days away from being digested in a familiar circle of friends and family, by friends who could easily recall or imagine what I was saying. I guess really its not so much a leap over the edge of an abyss but a steady walk away from what you know, which is why it take so much time, and so much distance, and why it seems so absurd at times, even most of the times: Home is that way [points in opposite direction]. And then you just keep going, for no good reason.
Alright, that's all I have or now... persnaps a conclusion will come to me later. Peace.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
che and his books
1. I saw two kids with Che shirts on today. I thought to myself what terrible, ignorant, hypocrites those people they were. Then I thought, kids pissed about kids wearing Che shirts are like Christians who flip a bitch over using the Lord's name in vain. In the end, we're all still in university/church.
2. On a related note, in an effort to better adhere to the third commandment, I will henceforth modify a common singular first person stative to "I amsh."
3. I'd say most my social program for this year has been a failure. I have kissed no babies, contracted no cuddly parasites, attended no protests, and converted no Muslims. Then, the other day this guys stopped me on campus. I'd known him from my refugee studies class the previous semester; he's from Liberia. He'd asked me for my readers, 15 burdensome, half-read, soporific tomes I was more than happy to unload - they would have really put a cramp in my packing-for-home style. I thought nothing of it, figuring it would be a miracle if he made it through the first half in a year.
I guess motivations make a difference; he'd read them all and posted them to this sister in Liberia. It made me so happy to hear that. These are hard to get here, he said, expensive. I was a bit shocked: expensive? The copy center that produces these readers--often entire books copied--is about as above board as an Edgar Allen Poe piece and I can buy a semester's worth of reading for what I would pay for a single reader in the 'States. I can go into any library or internet cafe anywhere and access half of those readings online through my university website, and once I get home, I can find near all of them in the library.
After all my bitching and moaning about the pomp and inconsequence of academia, Yayah touched Marxist me with a story about information in the right hands. Really, what I look for in my readings is what it tells me about myself. Blessed be the souls who can do their readings and learn something about others, but I read my readings with me. And the readings I do the fastest, the trembliest, and again and again, are the ones that I know are about me, and everything, and me.
No doubt Yayah the refugee found much more to take him through those readings than I did. And no doubt he knows much better to do with that information than I ever will. No doubt, if I gave him the means, he could make that information in a way I never could. And no doubt, that sort of international information is something in scarce supply in his country. Academia, like the rest of us, might yet have a redeemer.
4. I think I'm finally getting used to Egyptian humor. There's these two kids next to me who--wait, we're sitting onthese big steps, like each step the size of two normal steps--and there's this water bottle two big steps down from these kids, and they want to drink from this water bottle but its far away. They've marshalled all their straws connected them end to end and are now happily drinking from their water bottle. It works! they shouted and I laughed.
2. On a related note, in an effort to better adhere to the third commandment, I will henceforth modify a common singular first person stative to "I amsh."
3. I'd say most my social program for this year has been a failure. I have kissed no babies, contracted no cuddly parasites, attended no protests, and converted no Muslims. Then, the other day this guys stopped me on campus. I'd known him from my refugee studies class the previous semester; he's from Liberia. He'd asked me for my readers, 15 burdensome, half-read, soporific tomes I was more than happy to unload - they would have really put a cramp in my packing-for-home style. I thought nothing of it, figuring it would be a miracle if he made it through the first half in a year.
I guess motivations make a difference; he'd read them all and posted them to this sister in Liberia. It made me so happy to hear that. These are hard to get here, he said, expensive. I was a bit shocked: expensive? The copy center that produces these readers--often entire books copied--is about as above board as an Edgar Allen Poe piece and I can buy a semester's worth of reading for what I would pay for a single reader in the 'States. I can go into any library or internet cafe anywhere and access half of those readings online through my university website, and once I get home, I can find near all of them in the library.
After all my bitching and moaning about the pomp and inconsequence of academia, Yayah touched Marxist me with a story about information in the right hands. Really, what I look for in my readings is what it tells me about myself. Blessed be the souls who can do their readings and learn something about others, but I read my readings with me. And the readings I do the fastest, the trembliest, and again and again, are the ones that I know are about me, and everything, and me.
No doubt Yayah the refugee found much more to take him through those readings than I did. And no doubt he knows much better to do with that information than I ever will. No doubt, if I gave him the means, he could make that information in a way I never could. And no doubt, that sort of international information is something in scarce supply in his country. Academia, like the rest of us, might yet have a redeemer.
4. I think I'm finally getting used to Egyptian humor. There's these two kids next to me who--wait, we're sitting onthese big steps, like each step the size of two normal steps--and there's this water bottle two big steps down from these kids, and they want to drink from this water bottle but its far away. They've marshalled all their straws connected them end to end and are now happily drinking from their water bottle. It works! they shouted and I laughed.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Post-posting
1. I have been postmodern, postevangelical, post-9/11, post a lot of things, but let me tell you, you have not posted anything until you've tried postprocrastination! That's right, I'm so done with stressing out over an essay eight hours before its due and finishing with A- quality just in the nick of time. That is so passe. I am now in the more sublime and fragmented (but equally caffeinated) world of postprocrastination: pounding out page after quality, stress-enhanced page of my paper, hours--nay, days!--after the due date, where the only thing to keep you in A for awesome land is your adorable brashness. I say, take your grades and shove them up a Chico State grad admissions officer's ass, and pick up an application at your local TGI Fridays. Life is good!
1a. I was just BSing about the 'sublime and fragmented' bit... sounds kind of like blowing chunks in slow motion...
2. ...which is exactly what I did after getting hammered for my 21st birthday! Just kidding. It was a great day though. After staving off the impulse to stage a passive-agressive self-pity coup, I went out with some friends who bought me dinner and a bottle of vodka. I knocked a couple shots back with carrot-orange juice (which didn't work out as well as Coke, which I tried later) and then went to Cilantro in a happy mood. I talked to three old friends who I hadn't talked to in a long time, and that was a great birthday present. I also got "The Rough Guide to Cult Pop" to help catch me after the years I spent in Christian Rockland.
3. My coffee consumption and level of bourgeoiseness has gone through the roof, and its doubtful whether I'll ever be able to come back down to lead the masses in Glorious Revolution or grow a Che beard. Oh well, I've still got half a bottle of vodka...
1a. I was just BSing about the 'sublime and fragmented' bit... sounds kind of like blowing chunks in slow motion...
2. ...which is exactly what I did after getting hammered for my 21st birthday! Just kidding. It was a great day though. After staving off the impulse to stage a passive-agressive self-pity coup, I went out with some friends who bought me dinner and a bottle of vodka. I knocked a couple shots back with carrot-orange juice (which didn't work out as well as Coke, which I tried later) and then went to Cilantro in a happy mood. I talked to three old friends who I hadn't talked to in a long time, and that was a great birthday present. I also got "The Rough Guide to Cult Pop" to help catch me after the years I spent in Christian Rockland.
3. My coffee consumption and level of bourgeoiseness has gone through the roof, and its doubtful whether I'll ever be able to come back down to lead the masses in Glorious Revolution or grow a Che beard. Oh well, I've still got half a bottle of vodka...
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
out swimming in the flood
Today after dinner I decided I wanted to go get a sheesha (hookah). It had been a long time since I'd had one and I decided that it was important to scope out places for a couple prospective visitors. I like being able to take people places I've been before. When I was young I played war and now I play tour guide. I like it. I sat down after my koshari dinner, and after checking prices to see if I was walking into a ripoff I ordered a sheesha and a Turkish coffee. I love Turkish coffee, and I love smoking sheesha. And I mean smoking. I don't really care for the tobacco or even the taste, but I love blowing the smoke all over my face and doing my best dragon impression. I never pretended I was a dragon when I was a kid.
The place is this cool little hole in the wall behind campus. A bit pricier than the normal ahwa, next to campus and all, but if your still counting differences in cents, your alright. I'm alright.
Too say I sat down is a simplification. I left koshrai as if to take the metro home, or actually, to the wireless cafe I normally go to one stop away. I turned around. I slipped a street kid a pound. I walked around the block. I picked up some readers for next week right next to the ahwa, scoping it out for seats. Full of my peers and intimidating. I walked around the corner again. I walked half-way back. I stopped at the wall around the corner from the ahwa, staring at the wall of the library, gathering my courage. You gonna do it Alex? I dare you! I double dare you!
I should elaborate further. This ahwa is right next to campus, more accessible than the ones in my neighborhood. Those are really intimidating; all those guys have been going there for years, eternities practically. Generations live and die there. Who knows. There's this one right around the corner from my place that I've passed a few times, longingly: oh, but for the neighbors. This would just be practice. A home away from home. I practically live at the library anyway. Finally, I stumbled around the corner. Everyone saw me, and having already stumbled around a bit, it was too late to back out again. I sat down.
Okay, there. Apple sheesha and a Turkish, mazbut, just right, on the sugar. Delivered. I dug into the sheesha, and I didn't cough. I don't cough much on them anymore, even the harsh ones. I thought maybe I'd found a place, settled in, done the Egypt thing.
I should explain. The other day I phoned my friend from the wireless cafe, this wireless cafe, and I told him I was at a cafe. He was impressed. So cool he said, the neighborhood coffee shop, I was there, just kickin' it. Oh, no no no, I corrected him, I'm at Starbucks Egypt, well, not quite, the local version, misleading named Cilantro, plunking major dime for a place where my laptop doesn't make me a precocious freak. And then I felt sort of bad. Like, I should, as a confused writer and American emissary to the world, soak as much of it in as I can, and squeeze my exotic goodness all over everyone when I get back.
So I sat down at the ahwa, doing my best to soak, but not thirty seconds later and I was getting stares. Or at least, I thought I was getting stares, I was seeing stares, even from these AUC Egyptians who must see me, the Americans, all the time, punky and precocious, sitting wherever they damn well please and coughing like amateurs all over the national pastime. I didn't cough but I still knew I was getting stared at. Shorn of an intimdating pack of buddies or newbie confidence, the stares cut me to the core. (You know, I loved my friends from last semester. But the truth is I came to Egypt to be alone. Yeah, yeah, at the bidding of that stupid journeyman trope. But I did. I know I 'll go with my friends anywhere, take them anywhere. But facing Egypt--anything--alone, that's all new. Interrogated, where, why, what are you doing here? Where are we going ? I just don't know. And it's kind of interesting. Sometimes it makes me bitter.)
To be honest, I don't much like sheesha save for the conversation and the smoke. But the conversation was with myself and the smoke was the winds. Winds are good for poets, hurricanes, and kites, but shitty for sheesha, because it blows the smoke all over the place and makes smoke rings impossible. Usually, I prove I'm a freak but not a newbie by blowing a few smoke rings, of varying caliber, but they get the point across.
Nicotine, or tobacco, or whatever the fuck it is in sheesha that has it on the American Lung Association no list makes your stomach turn. Worse than coffee, and I had a coffee to. It turned my middle from esophagus to intestines into an vomity, firey, farty pit, like all my lost conversation was turning into Pepto Bismol fodder. Oh, God, it was so lonely. I tried staring at the building in front of me. Really, it was crumbling and ancient and romantic, a great picture. Faded glory, the order of all of Cairo. Colonial, reemerging, surviving. Contradictory and everything else in your social science readers. It was beautiful, really.
But the stares were driving me crazy, the attendants wanted to close, it was only 930! wtf! and I was going nuts inside. Nucking futts man. I couldn't take it, so I left. Funny how that happens. That's my story. Now I'm at the wireless cafe, blasting 'Baby Britain,' because that is my new favorite song.
God, there is one other thing. I was--am--so glad to be here. So glad. Oh kay, that's all for now. This all has a more simple, less hysterical explanation, but hysteria is all I have energy for right now. Now its back to my Research Paper. Ha Ha Ha
The place is this cool little hole in the wall behind campus. A bit pricier than the normal ahwa, next to campus and all, but if your still counting differences in cents, your alright. I'm alright.
Too say I sat down is a simplification. I left koshrai as if to take the metro home, or actually, to the wireless cafe I normally go to one stop away. I turned around. I slipped a street kid a pound. I walked around the block. I picked up some readers for next week right next to the ahwa, scoping it out for seats. Full of my peers and intimidating. I walked around the corner again. I walked half-way back. I stopped at the wall around the corner from the ahwa, staring at the wall of the library, gathering my courage. You gonna do it Alex? I dare you! I double dare you!
I should elaborate further. This ahwa is right next to campus, more accessible than the ones in my neighborhood. Those are really intimidating; all those guys have been going there for years, eternities practically. Generations live and die there. Who knows. There's this one right around the corner from my place that I've passed a few times, longingly: oh, but for the neighbors. This would just be practice. A home away from home. I practically live at the library anyway. Finally, I stumbled around the corner. Everyone saw me, and having already stumbled around a bit, it was too late to back out again. I sat down.
Okay, there. Apple sheesha and a Turkish, mazbut, just right, on the sugar. Delivered. I dug into the sheesha, and I didn't cough. I don't cough much on them anymore, even the harsh ones. I thought maybe I'd found a place, settled in, done the Egypt thing.
I should explain. The other day I phoned my friend from the wireless cafe, this wireless cafe, and I told him I was at a cafe. He was impressed. So cool he said, the neighborhood coffee shop, I was there, just kickin' it. Oh, no no no, I corrected him, I'm at Starbucks Egypt, well, not quite, the local version, misleading named Cilantro, plunking major dime for a place where my laptop doesn't make me a precocious freak. And then I felt sort of bad. Like, I should, as a confused writer and American emissary to the world, soak as much of it in as I can, and squeeze my exotic goodness all over everyone when I get back.
So I sat down at the ahwa, doing my best to soak, but not thirty seconds later and I was getting stares. Or at least, I thought I was getting stares, I was seeing stares, even from these AUC Egyptians who must see me, the Americans, all the time, punky and precocious, sitting wherever they damn well please and coughing like amateurs all over the national pastime. I didn't cough but I still knew I was getting stared at. Shorn of an intimdating pack of buddies or newbie confidence, the stares cut me to the core. (You know, I loved my friends from last semester. But the truth is I came to Egypt to be alone. Yeah, yeah, at the bidding of that stupid journeyman trope. But I did. I know I 'll go with my friends anywhere, take them anywhere. But facing Egypt--anything--alone, that's all new. Interrogated, where, why, what are you doing here? Where are we going ? I just don't know. And it's kind of interesting. Sometimes it makes me bitter.)
To be honest, I don't much like sheesha save for the conversation and the smoke. But the conversation was with myself and the smoke was the winds. Winds are good for poets, hurricanes, and kites, but shitty for sheesha, because it blows the smoke all over the place and makes smoke rings impossible. Usually, I prove I'm a freak but not a newbie by blowing a few smoke rings, of varying caliber, but they get the point across.
Nicotine, or tobacco, or whatever the fuck it is in sheesha that has it on the American Lung Association no list makes your stomach turn. Worse than coffee, and I had a coffee to. It turned my middle from esophagus to intestines into an vomity, firey, farty pit, like all my lost conversation was turning into Pepto Bismol fodder. Oh, God, it was so lonely. I tried staring at the building in front of me. Really, it was crumbling and ancient and romantic, a great picture. Faded glory, the order of all of Cairo. Colonial, reemerging, surviving. Contradictory and everything else in your social science readers. It was beautiful, really.
But the stares were driving me crazy, the attendants wanted to close, it was only 930! wtf! and I was going nuts inside. Nucking futts man. I couldn't take it, so I left. Funny how that happens. That's my story. Now I'm at the wireless cafe, blasting 'Baby Britain,' because that is my new favorite song.
God, there is one other thing. I was--am--so glad to be here. So glad. Oh kay, that's all for now. This all has a more simple, less hysterical explanation, but hysteria is all I have energy for right now. Now its back to my Research Paper. Ha Ha Ha
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Niger is a country in Africa
Lost in translation: An on-campus group had already been advertising themselves under a sign announcing "Starvation in Niger." What they meant to say, I'm sure, is, "this week we're having table-a-thon and for every hour we sit here, we want you to sponsor us with whatever amount of money you would like to give, and all the money collected will go to help end the starvation in Niger." I heard through the grapevine that a couple of mischevious AUC students thought it would be funny if they demanded from the tablers an explanation for their insensitive media. "As Africans," they are reported to have said, "we are deeply offended that you would advertise like this, portraying all Africans as starving and helpless people." (The reader should notice the great irony in Egyptian AUC students being offended on behalf of all of Africa, as Egyptians tend to dissaociate with black Africa, and AUC students are not quite known for their activism). They apparently carried on the charade for a good while in the same concerned tones, and flummoxed and flustered, the tablers did their best to smooth their ruffled feathers and convert some pagans to the cause. Our joculant protagonists, as they later admitted, realized they had taken their joke a bit too far, disengaged, and went off to class.
The next day, another sign, dutifully printed out and stapled under "Starvation in Niger" read: "Niger is a country in Africa."
Hair length: Ashton Kutcher - That 70's Show
Immutable natural law of the week: There is always more room on the metro.
The next day, another sign, dutifully printed out and stapled under "Starvation in Niger" read: "Niger is a country in Africa."
Hair length: Ashton Kutcher - That 70's Show
Immutable natural law of the week: There is always more room on the metro.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
sometimes, i'm just so top of the shelf
Ethnicity of the Week: Tom Cruise
Segue into: That makes two times I've been hit on in Cairo. By guys.
Pride of Lebanon: [shouts something in English]
Alex: [correctly hears himself address and unwisely turns around]
POL: Where, where you from?
Alex: Uh, [trying to avoid saying America] America, the States, California
POL: Oh, I asked because I thought you looked like ... [pauses, searches for word]
Alex: [braces for Chinese, but waits expectantly to be surprised, never having been Laotian before]
POL: Tom Cruise!
Alex: Oh! [genuinely surprised, only realizing blog potential later]
POL: Come, I want to invite you to pizza. I will pay, I have lots of money
Alex: Uh, em, [hesitating, intrigued by the offer of free pizza but having finally learned not to take candy from strangers] no thanks, I've got to go.
POL: Why? Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I'm from Lebanon.
Alex: I have a form to turn in.
POL: Ah, a what?
Alex: An application, for a loan, for university. [he says not untruthfully, referring to the FAFSA, due soon]
POL: Oh, you want money? I have lots of money. [Opens wallet and displays some twenties, Alex notes he is a few short of next years tuition] Come on, I take you to Kentucky Chicken [motions to nearby KFC]. I love Tom Cruise.
Alex: Oh, no thanks, I've really got to go.
POL: [blatantly changing the subject] You like girls?
Alex: Tában ['of course,' showing off extensive knowledge of Arabic]
POL: [garbled, maybe out of POL's mouth, maybe to Alex's ears] Oh, I not laik-ees them. Where do you live?
Alex: I have an apartment in Maadi [a bit of a truth composite]
POL: Alone?
Alex: Yes.
POL: Come on, I'll take you to Kentucky. I will pay. Or you pay. [Alex refuses again] Can I come to your house right now, alone?
Alex: No, I'm living with my friend.
POL: I thought you said you have an apartment alone?
Alex: Not yet. I'm moving in later. [true]
POL: Well, can I come over then?
Alex: [tries to explain with his face, chuckles] Um, [heehaws extensively] No.
POL: Why? [slightly incredulous]
Alex: It would be awkward. [walks away]
POL: [clicks and signs frantically with hands]
Alex: [turns to see his motions but knows he has made the right decision, he's a pizzatarian but tonight, it's a frozen pizza pie]
Alex: [continues walking]
Alex: [LOL, half way to library]
Segue into: That makes two times I've been hit on in Cairo. By guys.
Pride of Lebanon: [shouts something in English]
Alex: [correctly hears himself address and unwisely turns around]
POL: Where, where you from?
Alex: Uh, [trying to avoid saying America] America, the States, California
POL: Oh, I asked because I thought you looked like ... [pauses, searches for word]
Alex: [braces for Chinese, but waits expectantly to be surprised, never having been Laotian before]
POL: Tom Cruise!
Alex: Oh! [genuinely surprised, only realizing blog potential later]
POL: Come, I want to invite you to pizza. I will pay, I have lots of money
Alex: Uh, em, [hesitating, intrigued by the offer of free pizza but having finally learned not to take candy from strangers] no thanks, I've got to go.
POL: Why? Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I'm from Lebanon.
Alex: I have a form to turn in.
POL: Ah, a what?
Alex: An application, for a loan, for university. [he says not untruthfully, referring to the FAFSA, due soon]
POL: Oh, you want money? I have lots of money. [Opens wallet and displays some twenties, Alex notes he is a few short of next years tuition] Come on, I take you to Kentucky Chicken [motions to nearby KFC]. I love Tom Cruise.
Alex: Oh, no thanks, I've really got to go.
POL: [blatantly changing the subject] You like girls?
Alex: Tában ['of course,' showing off extensive knowledge of Arabic]
POL: [garbled, maybe out of POL's mouth, maybe to Alex's ears] Oh, I not laik-ees them. Where do you live?
Alex: I have an apartment in Maadi [a bit of a truth composite]
POL: Alone?
Alex: Yes.
POL: Come on, I'll take you to Kentucky. I will pay. Or you pay. [Alex refuses again] Can I come to your house right now, alone?
Alex: No, I'm living with my friend.
POL: I thought you said you have an apartment alone?
Alex: Not yet. I'm moving in later. [true]
POL: Well, can I come over then?
Alex: [tries to explain with his face, chuckles] Um, [heehaws extensively] No.
POL: Why? [slightly incredulous]
Alex: It would be awkward. [walks away]
POL: [clicks and signs frantically with hands]
Alex: [turns to see his motions but knows he has made the right decision, he's a pizzatarian but tonight, it's a frozen pizza pie]
Alex: [continues walking]
Alex: [LOL, half way to library]
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
bitchbitchbitch, or, The Perils of Going to University with The Super-Rich: Yesterday I paid 495 pounds for two mediocre political science boooks (85 dollars for those of you keeping score at home). That's as much as I expect to pay for rent.
List of Things I Miss:
half.com
dancing with roommates to college-kid rock at 2 AM, or whenever
the ubiquity of good french fries
peanut butter from Costco (Costco peanut butter, 6 bucks for two huge things, cf hamburger five dollars; imported peanut butter, 5 bucks for a mediocre sized Skippy, cf large koshari eighty cents)
Deep Thought of the Week: Democracy was my first religion.
Segue into: There's no more Lurpak butter at the supermarket
This Danish cartoon row has irked me more than I thought news could. I haven't felt this partisan and offended in awhile. I am so convinced we're right. The two sides shout, "See, they simply don't understand, the cretins." Yes, I'm beginning to see.
Nationalities Ascribed to Me Since I've Been Here:
Japanese
Chinese
Vietnamese
Hawaiian (my personal favorite, for creativity)
Native American (possibly, nay, likely correct! but only sortof...)
New Found Phobia:
Dogs. For a long time I've given answers that really skirt the issue: "I just really dislike dogs that aren't on a leash." Yadda yadda. But now, when I walk back to my apartment at 4 AM from Cilantro (the local version of Starbucks, which, relatively speaking, maybe an even bigger rip-off) there's all these stray dogs kicking around, and they always wake up and bark at me whenever I walk home. One night I even took a taxi just to avoid them.
List of Things I Miss:
half.com
dancing with roommates to college-kid rock at 2 AM, or whenever
the ubiquity of good french fries
peanut butter from Costco (Costco peanut butter, 6 bucks for two huge things, cf hamburger five dollars; imported peanut butter, 5 bucks for a mediocre sized Skippy, cf large koshari eighty cents)
Deep Thought of the Week: Democracy was my first religion.
Segue into: There's no more Lurpak butter at the supermarket
This Danish cartoon row has irked me more than I thought news could. I haven't felt this partisan and offended in awhile. I am so convinced we're right. The two sides shout, "See, they simply don't understand, the cretins." Yes, I'm beginning to see.
Nationalities Ascribed to Me Since I've Been Here:
Japanese
Chinese
Vietnamese
Hawaiian (my personal favorite, for creativity)
Native American (possibly, nay, likely correct! but only sortof...)
New Found Phobia:
Dogs. For a long time I've given answers that really skirt the issue: "I just really dislike dogs that aren't on a leash." Yadda yadda. But now, when I walk back to my apartment at 4 AM from Cilantro (the local version of Starbucks, which, relatively speaking, maybe an even bigger rip-off) there's all these stray dogs kicking around, and they always wake up and bark at me whenever I walk home. One night I even took a taxi just to avoid them.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Wiping with official tender (contains explicit content)
So last week I got this week-long job proofreading for a translation company; I was supposed to proofread the English text of newspaper articles translated from Arabic to English by Egyptians. They said they wanted native speakers, so I qualified. So mostly I'd have to say the job was pretty awesome, if a bit humorous. The quality of the work we received was terrible, and judging from the attitude of the translators, it wasn't their fault. I was a bit embarassed for the newspaper we were translating for because the writing was so bad. But then again, that made it way better for me, because I could be judgmental and scoffing like, "I know this!" And it was the first time I've done a job that involves doing anything, the only thing I've learend in school, that's writing. And it was interesting trying to figure out what was the most accurate way to convey meaning while keeping a potential interested by removing stylistic distractions. Pop stars must have to do that all the time. In a more cynical version, I though, hey, white people correcting brown people's work, being served coffee and tea by black people. In 2006. Huzzah! No, not really, everyone else working with me was Egyptian but grew up in England. The English are so funny.
Yeah anyway, that is all background information. I went to the bathroom and not all the bathrooms here come with complimentary toilet paper. I mean they don't have any. And I forgot that and normally I check but I didn't. And normally I have my backpack so it's no big, I just get out my napkins and get to it. But on this fateful day, I ducked into the bathroom on my way back from the tech's office and relieved myself, except I soon discovered I'd actually panicked myself, because SHIT! there was no toilet paper. I looked around frantically for anything other than my left hand, but there were neither rags nor cleenex nor any reusables in the trash.
And then I remembered! Those nearly worthless but now priceless rags-that-pass as currency in this country. Yes, my friends, I squeezed out of this pinch thanks to a few 25 piaster notes. That's about four and a half cents for those of you keeping score at home. 9 cents later I was clean enough to race back to my backpack to get my precious streetlady-napkins and return to the loo to finish the job.
I'm sorry, that was really gross but I'm making myself laugh...
Yeah anyway, that is all background information. I went to the bathroom and not all the bathrooms here come with complimentary toilet paper. I mean they don't have any. And I forgot that and normally I check but I didn't. And normally I have my backpack so it's no big, I just get out my napkins and get to it. But on this fateful day, I ducked into the bathroom on my way back from the tech's office and relieved myself, except I soon discovered I'd actually panicked myself, because SHIT! there was no toilet paper. I looked around frantically for anything other than my left hand, but there were neither rags nor cleenex nor any reusables in the trash.
And then I remembered! Those nearly worthless but now priceless rags-that-pass as currency in this country. Yes, my friends, I squeezed out of this pinch thanks to a few 25 piaster notes. That's about four and a half cents for those of you keeping score at home. 9 cents later I was clean enough to race back to my backpack to get my precious streetlady-napkins and return to the loo to finish the job.
I'm sorry, that was really gross but I'm making myself laugh...
Thursday, January 19, 2006
the truth about God's sovereignty
Today, I was getting on a minibus in Cairo at 3:00 AM and I realized that through all my postmodern psycho-linguistico-spiritual melodrama, I have an unwavering belief in God's protection over my life whenever I use public transportation. Airplanes don't count.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
20 year-old boy considers shaving, blogs instead
In news today, a narcissist reports that peach fuzz on the site of Alex's future chops has made contact with stubble--er, okay, more peach fuzz--on his chin, heightening hopes that Alex might look really savage some day. 17 year-olds dressed in black and head-banging to Fall Out Boy, PETA directors, and Che Guevara's widow have expressed delight at the most recent developments, but really hot babes remain mildly revolted and continue imploring Alex to "just shave it off." "Ewww," an anonymous source confided.
Puberty Project chief The Pituitary Gland has issued a statement saying that everything is going as planned and repeated earlier promises that work would be complete in five to ten years, but made no mention of handlebars, which remain nowhere in sight.
Puberty Project chief The Pituitary Gland has issued a statement saying that everything is going as planned and repeated earlier promises that work would be complete in five to ten years, but made no mention of handlebars, which remain nowhere in sight.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Aid al-Adha
It's Aid al-Adha here in Cairo, which means that I can here the belch-like protests of sheep being dragged through my building. They will be slaughtered to commemorate Ibrahim's (Abraham's) obedience to God's command to sacrifice his son (God provides a lamb).
I just got back from vacationing in Lebanon and Jordan, and returned to Cairo strangely pleased to be back.
I've always wanted to do that thing in my profile, with the song quotes. I would talk like that if I could.
I just got back from vacationing in Lebanon and Jordan, and returned to Cairo strangely pleased to be back.
I've always wanted to do that thing in my profile, with the song quotes. I would talk like that if I could.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)