You Can't Make Mistakes.

Jeff told me last night that when he met Diane Rehm last week at a talk that she gave in Kalamazoo he told her that I, his partner, was currently in Alexandria, Egypt studying. She was apparently excited, partially because her mother is Egyptian, and told him to wish me all the best and tell me that she thought that it was wonderful that I was studying here and doing what I do.

I actually got a bit teary-eyed when Jeff related her words. I am terribly sad that I didn’t get to see her speak and meet her in K-zoo, but that was almost as good. It was nice to be wished well by someone who I might even call one of my heroes.

Anyway that just made my day.

Now, a little tidbit for your enjoyment:

Cockroaches are not just a reality living in a city like Alexandria, they get up in the morning and put the coffee on and wait for you to get up and read the news with them. They are everywhere. Thankfully, we don’t have many very regularly in my apartment. This is not to say that we have none: I killed two yesterday. They are, however, manageable. On top of the very occasional cockroach, we have had a terrible ant problem. These are not the big carpenter ants that I am used to, they are little, what my grandfather would refer to as “piss-ants.”

So, we have bought everything from ant traps, to spray, to various poisons and nothing has seemed to work. Until now.

Last week I purchased a packages of these rather large pill-shaped things that are meant to kill crawling bugs like ants and cockroaches. You are just supposed to place them around in cabinets and drawers, in corners and near the places where you see these things coming from.

What follows is the instructions on the back of the package, from which I learned what these magical pills do. I would not call this technical writing so much as poetry. keep in mind that the spelling and punctuation is verbatim.

Enjoy.

Deer Lady

deer lady, put this pills inside kitchen cupboard with out any fear of damages on your kitchen equipment or your food.

deer lady, the result of this pills will show after (24-72 hour) and will be continue for months.

deer lady, after getting rid completelyof the crawling insects, leave this pills at it is still working for months.

deer lady, if you have gaze pipe at your kitchen, you should put this pills under the gaze pipe, because it is the most preferableplace to the insects

I hope that you got a kick out of that as I did. I just would really like to know who the “deer lady” is. Also, I am a little upset at having lived my entire life without a “gaze pipe” in my kitchen. I imagine that this is some sort of device for spying on your neighbors. What a cool idea.

I love that the translator of this passage was word literal to the original. I also that the writer took the liberty of composing a poem to all of the housewives in the world who might use this product, rather than simply writing out instructions in the normal dry, prose of technical terminology. It is the little things that I find beautiful, I guess.

I hope that you all can be graced with poetry on your cleaning products and insecticides today.

Well, courses are under way and going well.

I am still settling in and becoming accustomed to my Eastern bloc apartment. Currently we are waiting, and have been waiting, for a DSL connection to be started. This is very frustrating. It is amazing that you can get a DSL here in the first place, so for this, I am thankful. What frustrates me is that the company continues to give me unrealistic estimates about when the connection will be active. I wouldn’t mind if they told me that it will be ready in three or four weeks, a month, January. At least then I would be surprised when it actually happened. Currently, in order to please customers, they just tell you whatever sounds good at the time and then give you spurious assurances that it will be done then.

I am not attempting to make a generalization about Egyptians, and I won’t do so. I have certainly met Egyptians of all stripes and if I have to make a generalization, it would be that you will rarely meet a kinder or friendlier person that Egyptian. That said, this sort of thing happens a lot here. It seems that many people here, upon meeting foreigners, will go out of their way to please them. This is really polite and it is nice that people want to help you, but often there is nothing that can be done to help. Or, in some cases, those people attempting to help are also met at every turn by frustrating bureaucracy.

Egyptians even have an idiom for that. When you are expecting something on a time-line, or expecting something that should not otherwise be a problem, then you can say, “Fil mishmish.”

“Fil mishmish” means literally “in apricots” and is part of a larger phrase: “Bokra fil mishmish.” The general idea is that tomorrow things will be better or that things will work out—”bokra” means “tomorrow.” This sounds like a relatively optimistic thing to say, at first glance. However, in reality, this idiom means something more like “when pigs fly.” So if you are in a situation where you cannot get results no matter how hard you try or how many people you talk to, you say “Fil mishmish.” Alternatively, if someone tells you something that they will do for you but there is no way that it will ever happen, you say “Fil mishmish.”

Enjoy today’s Arabic lesson. Use it wisely. I’ll post again when my internet is up and running, fil mishmish.

Nose to the Grindstone or Into the Grinder

Well, I arrived back in Alexandria early this morning. Classes begin this week. I am in the intermediate level, which I expected. The placement examinations to decide our levels were ridiculous, as always, so I am not even sure what the levels mean. Everything about education is different here, of course. The courses are quite intense. The exams are terribly difficult. But, this is why I came here to study rather than continuing to study in the United States. Everything is easier there.

Honestly though, the place where most of my educations occurs is in the street. Buying groceries, taking taxis, feeding myself, getting my hair cut: these are the things that teach me the most. I attempt to talk to every single person that I meet on a daily basis, and not just to tell them my name and where I am from, but to ask them about their lives and the place that they live in. Honestly, the best advice about how to live here will never come from some silly travel guide, rather, it comes from from the little old lady from whom I buy tomatoes or my new friend Shami who works at the pizza place. These folks know everything about this place. Why would I ask the staff at Lonely Planet when I can ask them.

Now is an especially interesting time because Ramadan is upon us. This has created a whole new series of interactions for me to have with folks. I talk to guys that I meet in the street, in cabs, and at cafés about religion more than ever. I have also met a whole new group of people that I might have had I arrived after Ramadan: Copts. There is a large Coptic Christian population here and during Ramadan they, out of a sense of propriety also adhere to a type of fast wherein they don’t eat in public during the day, though often they will drink water, coffee, and tea as normal. It makes it a little more possible here to cope with the days of not eating, businesses being closed, etc.

I myself have fasted, relatively strictly, over the past three years, but for some reason, I found it very difficult to do so here. I had assumed that I would have an easier time of it being surrounded by many people fasting, but it was actually very difficult to begin. I fasted fully for the first day last week and my roommate and a German friend and I made Iftar at my apartment in the evening, but then the next day, I just couldn’t do it. I was also traveling, about which there are a different set of fasting rules anyway.

I have been a little surprised by my own reaction to fasting. I think that it is a wonderful tradition, typically. It teaches a good lesson. It is good as a way of cleansing the body. It instills discipline. But even with all of these things, I have found it impossible to keep up with here. I think that this has in part to do with my current workload. If I don eat all day and am parched and thirsty, my blood sugar gets terribly out of whack and the next thing I know I have to take a four hour afternoon nap. I can’t afford that much time right now, so, maybe it is for the best.

It is wonderful to experience here, regardless. There is a sense at the end of every day of quiet—though sometimes quite boisterous—celebration. People are in especially good spirits in the evening. I can wait to see the Eid at the end of the month. It should be a great deal of fun. Plus I have a week and a half off school, so it will afford the opportunity to travel around a bit and experience Eid in some other places as well as here.

For now, however, it is into the grind. This week begins the busiest period that I will ahve ever experienced, and I can’t wait. I am doing, right now, all of the things that I love the most. I look around myself everyday and just feel wonder. That is a good feeling to have.

Welcome to Egypt

Well, sorry for the hiatus in writing, but I was busy moving to Egypt and just established a proper internet connection this weekend, sort of. Apparently my wireless router arrived at the apartment this morning. Everything here takes a bit of doing. Nothing is easy, really. This is a phenomenon that I have come to refer to as “Welcome to Egypt.”

“Welcome to Egypt” can be used as a normal daily greeting or as a mode of identification with other foreigners who are clearly in the same boat. When you see people attempting to do something that would normally work just fine at home, but which here works only partially or not at all, you say: “Welcome to Egypt” and everyone smiles and laughs and understands each other. It is a nice way of saying, “I feel the same pain as you. I just want to check my e-mail or go to the grocery store too.”

But it is perhaps not as bad as all that. I love it here. There is so much wonder in everyday life. I, for instance, am currently in Cairo for the weekend visiting American friends who have also just moved here to study and work. Every part of this journey has been frought with complications. I decided to stay an extra day upon realizing that I bought a train ticket for the wrong time of day yesterday and would have had to make my return trip at 8 in the morning rather than 8 at night. The answer to this dilemma: play pool and drink with Brits at the BCA in Mohandiseen. I had a right wonderful time. Everything worked out better than planned.

Getting here was also no big deal. I got on a plane in Detroit and a few Xanax and several hundred drinks later, here I was.

I found an apartment in Roushdy in Alexandria. It looks like the sort of apartment that you woul find in East Berlin in about 1983, but it is quite nice. There is good breeze from the Mediterranean and the light is great. It will be a perfect place to live until next June.

The school is also quite nice. It is a little building inside the Alexandria University compound across the street from the Bibliotheca Alexandria in the Kulayat al-Adab (the College of Literature). We took placement exams last week to put us into classes according to level of proficiency in Arabic. The results are due in today, apparently.

I am excited to start classes, but as usual for me, classes have been going on since I set foot here. Every day is a learning experience. Going to the market. Finding a place to live. Having DSL set up and having someone call you on the phone to deliver your router, only able to speak Arabic. These are the experiences that I live for. Every day is an adventure into the mundane. Living here makes it seem as though commonplace things are extraordinary.

Now, though, I must prepare myself and leave for the train back to Alexandria. I will write again very shortly and include some pictures of my journey.