Cairo is

Tags

Big city, Egypt, Hassle, Nile, Places to see in the Middle East, traffic, Travel to Cairo

I have been in Cairo for a full mad week now, which explains my absence from my favourite online playground.

Enter Cairo.

Noisy, alive, sprawling, fast, dusty, fragrant, colorful.

This city is a heavy-breathing, powerful beast. Old French villas, elegant slim mosques, brown tower blocks and the Nile flowing calmly through the restless, ever changing human landcape.

The music of Cairo is a never ending cacophony of car noise. The traffic is a murderous shambles. I spent my first two days here worrying I was to start and end my trip on the same side of the road.

It is practically impossible to cross the street. No car ever stops. They come at you in their thousands, at crushing speed, like one of those massive waves you see on TV at a particularly succesful surfing contest.  You basically jump into this sea of blasting, jumbled metal, close your eyes and pray.

Now I’m no traffic sissy. I’ve done my share of bad traffic in Amman, Istanbul, Mumbai and a few other brave places where people take their lives in their hands every day to get milk. Cairo makes them look like a village roundabout in Germany.

And the hassle, oh the hassle, please come here if you want the write the book of hassle.

You know that feeling of sailing a crowd on your own, you and your thoughts, unseen and untalked to? Forget it! You are never alone in Cairo.

Any tiny trip is a social occasion. People talk to you randomly, men follow you singing, boys shout as they fly past on scooters, kids run into your knees, old ladies approach you with tissues, mints and cigarettes.

Welcome to Egypt.

The funny thing is I love it. The energy of the city is splendid.

The trays that waiters carry in the morning to cater to bored, winking policemen, the sun playing with the iron cast balconies of crumbling houses, men rowing down the Nile, fruit and veg overflowing.

The dance of everyday life and the smart men and women of an ancient land talking about the frustrating chaos of the present. The twinkle in their eyes, the cloud of perfume, that beautiful, glowing skin.

Lamb testicles on restaurant menus.
Stumbling upon an island of fragrant jasmine on a side street, the moon over the understated beauty of an old mosque, cafes where people sit in rows smoking argyllas and watching the spectacle of the world.

Cairo is

Of lines, rivers and desert beauty

Tags

Borders, Holy water, Jordan, Jordan River, Places to see in the Middle East, The Baptism Site, travel

One sunny morning drive out of Amman through one of its colourful suburbs, take the desert road and marvel at the emptiness around, as it stretches out in shades of yellow, dusty light.

And then, 50 minutes later, arrive at the Baptism site, on the Jordan river. (more on the history of the place here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_of_Jesus)

Once you are there, wait patiently on a wooden bench in the shade and chat with the guy who makes nice, strong Arabic coffee. 

As this is a border area, you are not allowed beyond the hut of the friendly barista on your own. There is a mini bus every half an hour or so, which will take down a winding, scorched road to the Baptism Site.  

And then you are there. The landscape is one of dry, harsh, quiet beauty. 

The river is a mere greenish trickle today.

It is hard to imagine it as it must have been 2000 years ago. And yet, despite its miniature size, it is hard to take it all in.

The sights are bare and uncompromising as you walk around with a guide and your thoughts.

And then you get to the border. Jordan and Israel stand face to face over the exhausted little river. 

The Israeli guards give you bored looks over the water. The two flags fly in the blinding light, barely 10 metres apart. 

A bunch of pilgrims in white ceremonial dresses get in the water on the Israeli side.

On the Jordanian side, a few sun burnt Brits are filling their bottles with holy water. They could shake hands with the other country’s tourists if they stretched out a bit. 

Two sides to every river.

Morning alert: an insufferable breech of etiquette is being committed behind your back

Tags

Co-workers, office etiquette, Office Space, Rant, stuff that gets on my nerves, Work

Most of us spend most of our waking hours in a shared space, that has computers, blinds, a fridge if we are lucky and a number of people engaging at any one time with one or all of the above.

And then in this seemingly quiet environment, just like in one of those set up rooms where Big Brother films the sprawled limbs of contestants sitting around getting bored, in walks the Drama.

Or not quite.

In walks the chatty guy on his way to  the fridge. Or the blinds. One thing about those office blinds is that they cause a small but steady number of people to develop a permanent obsession, which manifest itself in their continuous pulling up and down, accompanied by grunts of dissatisfaction.   

And anyway, as chatty Co-worker walks by your computer aiming to correct the angle of the blinds, he slows down to look at your screen and then stops for a better read.   

“Oh, so your mum is coming to visit!” he observes to your startled back. “When is she coming? That’s lovely. I hope my mum can come over at some point.” 

You mumble a shared hope that his mum can indeed visit, suggest the month of May perhaps and then subtly return to your computer.

This time you open a big fat work email. This will shut him up, you cunningly smile to yourself.

It is an email he himself has received, it can be read in the comfort of his own chair so there would be absolutely no point in hovering. 

But the thing is, there is.  

 “Oh, do we really have to do that? Noooo!” he thunders. “When is the deadline? Scroll down, will you, I can’t see that anywhere. Do they actually know how busy we are????”

Yes, we are extremely busy. So little time, so many opportunities to stick our nose in other people’s business. It’s just not fair.  

How do you, smart people in offices everywhere, keep that little square in front of your eyes to yourself?

 

Three bad boys who gave reading a bad name

Tags

Books, Classical Arabic, Colloquial Arabic, Cultural differences, Culture, expat, Family, Reading, Social behaviours

I am an obsessive reader. I read everything I can get my hands (or eyes) on. 

I suffer withdrawal symptoms when I haven’t got enough reading matter at hand (and despite being a reading addict I am quite selective about what I like to read, which makes my daily foraging task doubly difficult). 

When I first came to the Middle East my confessions on the subject were met with suspicion.

Hello! What are you doing?

I’m reading a book.

Why? 

It soon became apparent that most of my my bright, charming, lovely new friends hated it with the same passion I hated chemistry in school- and as I came to realise, for pretty much the same reasons: incomprehensible, deadly boring stuff somebody forces upon you for no obvious benefit. As filled with pleasure as a fork in the eye.  

A young Syrian guy I know went to London and he came back full of praise and awe. Everything was so beautiful, he said, but there was one thing I didn’t understand: people read everywhere, on the tube, train, side of the road, cafe, you name it. His mate listened to this account in disbelief, then said: “You must have been in a university district of some sort,  they were probably studying for an exam.”

Every time reading comes up as an entertainment option people shudder in horror. 

So when I said to my inner detective, dear Watson, we must get to the bottom of this, here’s what he found: 

1. There are two Arabic languages. There is Fusha (classical Arabic), the language of books, university lectures, news, serious stuff. And there is colloquial Arabic, which people speak every day and which, by some accounts, bears as much resemblance to Fusha as Dutch does to German. 

Now if you or I had to read the latest Nick Hornby in the language of Beowulf, we’d probably also find that a type of torture. Students are made to read a lot in school and all of it is in a difficult (though beautiful and poetic) language they don’t speak. No wonder the memory of it all is akin to my chemistry nightmares.

I know somebody who needed private tutoring during university to cope with the language of the courses. Eventually, he decided it would be easier to just switch to English.  

2. Reading is seen as a solitary occupation. You basically sit and read and ignore the rest of the world. Now here this is a big no no. The social structure of big families with very strong ties, in permanent verbal contact, means you are very rarely on your own. 

It would be supremely rude of you to sit in a corner engulfed in Pride and Prejudice while Uncle Ahmad is relaying the latest news of your cousin. And if you are on the bus alone, your phone rings every 2 minutes for much of the same, so no time at all to open that Orhan Pamuk novel you thought you might like. 

Obviously, this is a huge generalisation. There are people who love to read, who master the two languages (and more) with an intellectual ease that makes me green with envy. 

But for those who don’t, I have a suspicion that taking the combined baddies of Forced, Solitary and Hard out of the reading would make it fly.

Book clubs, dialogues, reading circles, a spoken follow up to anything you read would just inject life in its tired veins. Take the word of a reading junkie:)

Floating in the Dead Sea or Monday, manic Sunday

Tags

Dead Sea, Float, Monday, Mud, Places to see in the Middle East, Salt, Sunday, travel, Weekend, Work

And on a busy Sunday, when you are just about to start a new week (Sunday is the Middle Eastern version of Monday)  where does the unapologetic mind fly to?

The Dead Sea!

This incredible little sea (which is tragically becoming more and more of a lake, for reasons I will talk about in a future post) is to the lazy swimmer what sun is to the lazy cat.

Minimum effort with maximum return.  

You float in salty, slightly oily looking water and the only thing that could possible trouble your zen is feeling the tiniest cut on your body sting. Or an ill advised attempt to swim, which would turn the delicate lightness of your cork-like new self into heavy screams of pain, as the saltiest  water on Earth finds its way to your eyes.   

Having done all the above successfully, you come out covered in shiny strips of salt and quickly cover all that with a thick layer of mud. 

And then you wait and when you finally look like an old, dry Mars bar you know it’s time to have a shower. 

Which is exactly where this all started: time to have that pre-work, pre- new week starting shower or I’ll be late for work….

How do you get ready to float come that dreaded Monday?