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November

November 1st, 2003
    This day I had a good walk around town. I bought two books at the American University in Cairo: Muslim Neoplatonists and Four Gothic Novels. I then explored an area North of Khan Khallili, and discovered the most beautiful ruinous gothic mansion ever. It was in a sort of roundabout surrounded by a garden. I really despair to describe it, but it had many stories of ruinous crenellation, coverd with statues and crumbling decorations. A guide showed me inside. We saw the vast ballroom, described as a “disco” by my guide, the office with vast carved bookcases, the lounge, which was embellished by paintings of lounging dreamy nudes on all walls and ceiling, and featured a dumb waiter, or “food asenscir.” Sometimes I find things or places so perfect and beautiful that I am reduced to despair and must hurry away. A sort of pain is always associated with beauty of this type. Perhaps like an untimely reminder of mortality.
    In other notes, the lack of beer is becoming rather agonizing.

November 2nd, 2003
    I’ve been reading Gothic Novels. The cCastle of Otranto was hilarious, but Vathek put me in a very grim, reflective mood. The final pages were astounding. I am realizing the cultural exile I’ve entered here. Today I wanted very much a book of Nietzsche, and realized that in a cilty of millions, the few copies are probably guarded and not easily found.

November 3rd, 2003
    This day I bought for five pounds a corrugated plastic image of Jesus and his mom.

November 4th, 2003
    Yesterday I decided to walk home from school. The taxi ride is just too stressful, sitting in packed traffic, then zooming through crowded streets with civilians narrowly escaping death on all sides, not to mention haggling over the fare. The walk was nice, despite the constant exhaust fumes that burned a hole in the back of my throat. I notice that if I spend too much time on the street, my throat gets sore from the extreme toxicity. Apparently, the natives are used to this and don’t notice at all. I’m noticing that Arabic is the most sexually dimorphic language that I’ve ever studied, which is not surprising. Also the plurals are really strange. There is one ending for singular, a dual, an ending for three to ten, and the singular is used for eleven and higher. Weird.
    I usually wake up at about 7:30 AM when everyone else is still asleep. Everyday I hear this strange music play, and an amplified female voice speak. Its happening now, and I’m tempted to go down and find out what it is. In my daily habits, I usually eat a pomegranate for breakfast a wonderful luxury, but inexpensive here.

November 6th, 203
    Yesterday I traveled out to Nuweiba on the gulf of Aquaba with three friends from my Arabic class. We are staying on little huts on the beach. There is no electricity. I spent most of today reading Frankenstein, alternating that with periods of snorkeling around the reef offshore. Amazing fishes and corals abound here. All in all a very idyllic existence. It’s not really in my nature to enjoy tropical beach settings, but for a few days its quite nice. My companions are Julian, a Swiss student, Rachel, An English journalist of charming demeanor, and Meriam, a Swiss who knows the local Beduin and arranged the trip. Right now I’m enjoying the wonderful feeling of refreshed languidity that results from long periods of swimming in the sea. The moon rose through purple mist.

November10th, 2003
    On Saturday we went out into the desert two local Bedouin, Faradge and Ibrahim. We rode in the back of a pick up truck for about an hour and a half through desolate rocky mountains until we arrived at a place to camp in a sort of cave by a cliff. We split up and wandered around the desert alone. I found some dessicated sandles by an abandoned Bedouin storage hut. The desert was awesome. It was a little like the American West, but it felt friendly, unlike the weird eerie horror of the American desert. I climbed over many orange ridges to view eroded hills. The moon lacked a day of being full and was an awesome presence at night. We told riddles around the fire at night. After dinner, Faradge tried to seduce Rachel. Once the moon set in the early morning, the stars were incredible. We went back to the big Duna camp and had time for a snorkel. I talked with Julien in French for a while, and with Rachel. This is my last week of class, but I don’t think I will continue. I’ll try to get a fucking job again instead. The ride to class is just a serious pain, sitting in traffic and haggling over the fare. While out on this trip it felt so very civilized to be hanging out with two Swiss and an English girl. We all spoke English, French and a little German with each other, and of course our little Arabic.
   
November 13th, 2003
    After experiencing it for several weeks, I’ve decided I like Ramadan. True, there is something grim and hard core about it, but also something gentle and sweet. Today I walked up to the Tawfikiya Souq just before Iftar time. The streets were filled with people sitting on benches and plastic chairs with their food waiting before them. I hear these vast public banquets are provided by the rich. I reached the souq just in time to buy my vegetables just before the evening call. A small man held a single date before his lips, praying with his eyes closed. Later a man offered me to join his meal, but I stupidly declined without thinking. This was exactly the sort of opportunity I need to sieze if I am to keep learning Arabic. Today was my last class. I also applied to work at the AUC and received the usual call me in a month, maybe then we’ll see. I had a nice final walk home from class, however, and enjoyed eating tons of dates. I’m afraid I’ve developed something like a date addiction. I tend to eat about one kilo of fresh dates per day. I like the orange kind best. I’ve been here two months today. Walking back from the souq just now, I felt strongly how good it is ythat I am here. I seriously think that I escaped some accident or mischance by leaving Portland. Probably a bike wreck. But who knows? I felt so strongly that I had to leave by my 26th birthday. Perhaps it was only decline and stagnation that I avoided. At any raqte, although my move has not been without its certain difficulties, I still have a deep feeling that it was a good choice. Al Hamdulillah!

November 14th, 2003
    In Arabic, the word for thief, Harami, is the same word as forbidden “haram.” Thus thieving is by nature prohibited, like eating pork. I am amazed at the lack of theft here-shop owners will often leave their stores open and unwatched, and street vendors will leave out their stacks of bread and piles of money. Somehow this strict moral propriety here is connected in my mind with the fact that torture happens here, and is basically condoned. I asked my Arabic teacher about the police bust of the corn vendor I witnessed, and she said that such vendors litter the streets. No thought was given to what would seem to me to be the crux of the issue: whether this vendor was guilty of littering. I’ve encountered this type of thinking somewhere before, and it seems to be linked to submission to dictatorship. That being said, I must say that the largely benign dictatorship of Mubarak seems to suit the Egyptians just fine.

November 16th, 2003
     I now possess over 4.5 kilos of fresh dates, in three varieties. This addiction is getting out of hand. I also found a superb cheesesource, and finished reading Lord Jim yesterday. That book was pretty lame. The beginning was enlivened with excellent prose, but the tale trailed off into some kind of imperialist boy story. I’ve also started Vanity Fair, which seems to be a brilliant and incisive unveiling of our gross bestial natures.
    This day I visited the incredibly wonderful and surreal Agricultural Museum. The admission was 10pt, or about 2 cents. This museum was filled with brilliant ancient weirdness of high quality. Some exhibits were entirely obscured by dust. There were astoundingly elaborate wooden models of dams, factories and mills, thousands of preserved animals, and innumerable archaic vestiges of every description. Some of the stuffed trophy animals were so decayed and dilapidated that it was impossible to tell what animal they once had been. The best room was devoted to old models of diseased animal parts. I suffered a fit of delighted, weirded out laughter in this chamber of plastic monstrosities. An enormous varnished digestive tract, fully inflated, was the centerpiece. Surrounding this were large dusty cases containing the models and preserved, infected and parasitized internal organs, all clearly labeled. The elaborate, painstaking model of a cow’s ulcerated clitoris was worth the price of admission alone. Other triumphs of surrealism too numerous to enumerate graced this silent and dusty chamber. There was also a whale skeleton, a room devoted to chicken farming in the 1930’s, sheep farming, rabbit farming, etc…I saw nothing which was newer than 1973, and that seemed an obvious intrusion. Most things seemed to date far back into some obscure past. Walking the endless, silent galleries, I reflected that all those who made, arranged or planned these exhibits were undoubtedly dead. I almost wanted to steal something from this museum, and could easily have done so, but soon reflected that this would be a vile act. Other notable items: A photographic display called “types of woman peasants” from 1920, two python skins, dioramas of desiccated wolves and foxes, some with their glass eyes missing, hundreds of models of breads from around Egypt and the world, some collected in “the Jewish quarter of Cairo.” Most of these objects and displays indeed seemed to derive from the 1920’s. The exterior of the building was interesting too, being decorated by agricultural sculptures. All in all, one of the coolest places I’ve visited in Cairo so far.

November 19th, 2003
    This day I walked over to Zamelik to look for a job at a certain school, but I could not find it. The street ended before it got to number 44. There are certain days when everyone stares at me with evil eyes. This was such a day. I swear, guys were looking at me as if I’d just raped their sister. I went into a store to buy some ginger, and the grocer seemed about to smack my face after every word. I would walk the streets and men would stop their conversations when I was 50 feet away and just stare at me until I passed them. To one such group I managed to say Sabah al Kher very loudly, and they just managed to reply. Right after this I found a large black feather, as if from a melanistic peacock, lying on the sidewalk. I put it in my front shirt pocket and everything seemed to change. It was like I was invisible. Nobody looked at me the rest of the way home.
    For some reason there were literally thousands of police on the streets today. It was almost impossible to leave my neighborhood. There is a huge gnarly clot of flyovers and roads and a bus stop across the street from my building, and this was literally lined with cops, one standing every 5 feet or so, all along every curb on both sides of all streets. These were the black-clad Einsatzgruppe type cops, carrying very long black truncheons. Maybe the exalted Cyclops himself was going to pass by. At any rate, the number of these guys was just jaw-dropping, and really reminded me that I’m now living in a dictatorship. Since I don’t really have anything to do with society, however, this does not affect me. Finished Vanity Fair.
    All institutions in society, the government, schools, businesses, work, jails, the state and the church serve to control individuals, to cut them off from the fount of creativity that each being bears inside itself. The specific task of the church is to reign in, control, explain, and ultimately to plug up the source of innate knowledge of the divine.
   
November 23, 2003
    This day I crossed many lanes of traffic to watch the sunset by the Nile. I thought there might be no traffic at this time because of iftar, but no. I read Don Quixote. As the sun set and the evening call went out, a pair of mating ants landed on my forearm. I watched them have sex for a while. Later, the queen spread her wings and flew off. I realize that one of the things I like most about Cairo is that despite its size, it feels very cozy and welcoming. Here every space is filled with detail and there are always people just sitting around living. This is so unlike American cities, which can be cold and empty. Cairo is like an enormous village.
    I’ve also been meditating on the whole exact change problem. Perhaps I’ve already mentioned that this is a big problem. People expect exact change, and will get quite angry if they don’t get it. I think this is because when you offer to buy something, you make a deal X for Y$. But, if after the deal is made, you further expect the granting of precious, scarce small bills, in a sense you aren’t staying with your side of the deal. The ATM machine machine dispenses 50 and 100 Pound notes, which nobody will take, and are thus worthless in a way. I’ve learned that having the right amount of something is sometimes more important that having enough of it. O, and did I mention that Arabic for change is “Fuckkit”?


November 25th, 2003
    Today is a strange day. Instead of the usual morning call to prayer at 6:30 AM, we got a tremendous rant lasting well over an hour. I went to check the poste restant, but it was closed, as was everything else. Apparently, this is some sort of Ramadan ending holiday, although it has been more than a month and the liquor stores are back open, Hamdulillah. The streets are more empty than I’ve ever seen them. The flies in my apartment are really driving me insane. With a rolled up newspaper I kill them, obliterating their foul carapaces in vast numbers, smashing them, 86ing them from life, massacring them, yet still they come. I brush them off and they unfailingly land back in the exact same spot. They fly into my nose when I’m asleep. I saw a golden emblem in the shape of  fly, given by an Old Kingdom Phoaroh to his general. Apparently the fly embodied characteristics of vexacious persistence valued in a military commander. And then again, your huge pile of rotting garbage and dead animals, where would this emblem of the third world be without its characteristic swarm of flies? Nowhere, I tell you.
   
November 27th, 2003
    Lately I’ve been waking up at dawn. Today I was looking out over the Eastern horizon over the Muqattam hills when I saw the first edge of the sun’s disc appear. It happened all of a sudden, like a brilliant light being turned on. Strangely enough, in my 26 years on the planet, this was the first time I’d actually observed the moment of sunrise.
    I’ve also noticed some idiosyncrasies in Egyptian television. First, there are very few advertisements. What we get instead are painstakingly slow computer generated graphics of the name of the station and program. Like each letter will appear and crawl into place. This just goes on and on. Another weirdness is the jarring camera work. During some soap opera or sitcom, the camera will whip around the room, focusing on each face in turn, then zipping to another place. Another favorite device is to show a blank wall, and suddenly a person stands up and appears in it shouting. Also, the zoom is applied as frequently and dramatically as possible. During a cooking show, the camera will suddenly zoom into the cutting board, and the cameraman twiddles the focus back and fourth, trying to get the onions or whatever in focus, while the cook has moved on to do something else. It makes me feel like I’m stoned.

November 28th, 2003
    I have observed curious geometrical propensities among the Egyptians, and not only in the intricate decorations of the mosques. When flat cakes or bread are cut into pieces, an angle of 45 degrees is used, producing diamond shapes, as against the squares produced by the 90 degree cut used in the West. Often the paving stones of streets or squares will contain hidden patterns that leap out suddenly at the passerby. Most interesting of all, the steel posts supporting the streetlights are not simple tubes, but rather have been constructed by spiraling a flat piece of metal around and around.


December Journal


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