evacuation

Where do I even begin? As we took Austrian Air out of Sharm El-Sheik, Dory commented that we just couldn't put this into narrative; we didn't know what came first and what came second. I still feel that way, but I also really strongly feel that I won't begin to feel better until I can figure out what this all means, so I need to try... bear with me.

My version of events

Half of our group was stranded in the Sinai during the revolution, and we jokingly named ourselves the Dahab Contingent, after the chill-out beach town we were stuck in, and the fact that the phone calls we received from Study Abroad always discussed an indefinite “contingency plan” that usually involved us remaining in limbo for one more day in a beach town. Our story is stressful but uninteresting: being stuck in a beach town with a lot of beach bums while Cairo convulsed was insanely frustrating; tensions ran high, and we all dealt with it by weirdly having dance parties and ridiculous sessions of snorkeling or laying on the beach while on edge waiting for the ringtone of our phones to hear what study abroad or our program coordinator would say. Cellphone networks in Cairo were down, so I couldn't get through to my parents, who were visiting me and scheduled to leave on Friday. Obviously, this just made me even more out of my mind with worry, but I finally got through to them on Saturday before they left on one of the last scheduled flights out of Cairo. Meanwhile, we passed the nights at a bar that had a big TV screening al-Jazeera English, worrying and speculating constantly on what every little thing meant: Clinton's initial statement, Mubarak's completely out-of-touch speech, the jailbreaks that happened across the country, El-Baradei's return... the government cut out internet late Thursday night. I've realized that I will never again say a bad word against Facebook or Twitter; while in the States they seen inane, in Egypt and the Middle East, they play crucial, crucial roles in organizing people and informing them when other outlets completely fail.

We were evacuated from Sharm El-Sheikh, which is apparently to Russians what Cancun is to Americans. After seeing a Russian man in a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air windbreaker bribe a policeman to cut in security in front of us, I became insanely prejudiced against the entire country and the ridiculous outfits I saw. Observation about crises: when you can't deal with the larger situation, you can deal with particular minute details and hate the hell out of them to take out all your frustrations. Russians, I'm sorry, but you were it.

Dory didn't have a passport; she lost it and it was supposed to be delivered to the Embassy on the day we were evacuated from Sharm. She literally showed up to the airport for a flight to Vienna with a photocopy of her passport, and explained repeatedly that her passport was in Cairo, and Cairo was unreachable. After two hours hanging out with Colonel Salem of Customs and a nice man from Austrian Air, we finally, finally got her through. I still can't believe we got somebody with a passport photocopy onto two international flights. Being in Vienna was surreal; being in Paris more so. We arrived on Sunday night at midnight.

Other people's events

The other nine people on our program (seven students, our program coordinator, and our professor) were in Cairo. Their version of events, as I've heard it from them yesterday when they finally, finally arrived in Paris, is astounding. They went out several times to watch the protests; I know that sounds reckless and stupid from the news coverage, but they reported that protests were actually very peaceful, and as hard as it is to believe, in between frantic periods, protests involve a lot of downtime. Their eyes watered from lingering tear gas in the air, and they were shown shell casings and tear gas canisters printed with “Made in the USA”, but protesters also shared bread and water with them, stopped to chat with them, and very frankly, told them when to run.

Our neighborhood was being boarded up; our supermarket had to obey the new curfew and there was a line of people waiting to get in so they could stock up on food before curfew fell. The last night in Cairo before they went to the airport, our security guards wouldn't let them leave the building. Looting had begun, so our neighborhood formed an impromptu militia, strung chains across the street to keep cars from passing through, and patrolled the streets with sticks, horsewhips (?!), and pipes. The Cairo 9 stayed inside watching Al-Jazeera; apparently protesters caught the few people who vandalized the Egyptian Museum and tied them up; the military and the protesters together formed a ring around the museum to secure it.

They got to the airport the next day seven hours before their flight to Paris, and it was complete chaos. Some of them told me that people couldn't get to their luggage that was five feet from them; when they made it through security, there was apparently piles of luggage people had simply abandoned. To get through, one of them crawled through the luggage x-ray machine; they also had to pass luggage over their heads and over a metal barrier, then hop the barrier themselves. Security and screening was nonexistent; in the mayhem, they lost one of the suitcases (it's a miracle that they didn't lose more!) Unsurprisingly, they missed their flight, and spent the night in the airport. By the next day, the State Department had decided to evacuate the 90,000 Americans in Egypt.

The Embassy only allows one suitcase per person; the Cairo 9 had already packed one suitcase for each of us, making the decision to leave certain belongings behind in our apartments. Now that the amount of luggage was being halved, they selflessly unpacked everything, and repacked, giving all of us half a suitcase. In Dahab, we were all told to make emergency lists of our most important belongings; to get more things out, all of them wore our sweaters, extra pairs of pants, multiple scarves, and hats.

Food wasn't being trucked into the airport, so the prices at airport cafes shot up. While they were first on a supposed list to be evacuated, they arrived at the terminal to be told there was no list, so I think they were on the fourth plane out to Athens. After spending the night in Athens, they finally arrived here, where we were waiting with chocolate crossaints we stole from our hotel's breakfast parlor.

This day has been just as surreal as the past ones; yesterday, we were taken shopping for coats since none of us brought any, but we haven't seen much of Paris besides our hotel and the University's center. Everyone at the Center and back at the Study Abroad office has been amazing and fantastic and incredible, and some of them I know didn't sleep for two to three days getting us out of Egypt. But it's also hard to adjust to Paris, as wonderful a city as it is. I think all of us responded to the stress and constant crisis mode we had been in by focusing on small things. We all complained constantly about things that seem ridiculous to other people: where was the hotel's conditioner? Why is Paris so cold?

We also have all developed hoarding tendencies when it comes to food; I don't know entirely why since we were never deprived of any in Dahab, but hearing about food shortages and telling our friends in Cairo to take our food must have made us really anxious, because we couldn't stop taking the little jams and yogurts our hotel kindly gave us for breakfast.

It's also completely surreal to see what belongings we have left. After surviving off of the backpack and small bag I packed for the weekend, it seems like the world to have more than one pair of pants. My half-suitcase of belongings is random, but treasured; I'm so, so happy to have what I have, especially the ludicrous: my Twins hat made it out of Cairo on the evacuation flight. Samira insisted that Phoebe wear it, and apparently several people wore my scarves. I have a fraction of what I came to Cairo with, and every now and then, I get so sad when I think of what was left behind, but I can also marvel at what I have: a pair of boots! My North Face vest! My favorite green shirt!

We spent the entire day telling each other our stories, just constantly talking, loudly and hurriedly. I think it's because we need to tell one another these stories to keep them alive as they already fade; the Parisian environment is not conducive to remembering the chaotic liveliness of Cairo, or even of the hour-by-hour way we lived these past few days. I'm also awed listening to the Cairo 9's stories; as stressful as we found our experience, it is absolutely nothing compared to what they had to do. We're so, so relieved to be together, and our groupthink tendencies are even stronger now, as our poor waitress found out at dinner when we showed up and requested a table for 18.

We're not totally okay yet, but we're safe, sound, and have enough. I think until we figure out what this experience has meant to us, it's difficult to move on, and I still can't puzzle out what this has meant to me, although I can concretely explain what I lost and what I gained. It's probably even harder as we mourn the new routines we had been slowly building in Egypt, and all the people we had met who are hopefully safe, but perhaps out on the streets with millions of other Egyptians. All I know is, I can't stop obsessively following what's happening in Egypt, I have so much respect for the Egyptian people and the civil organizations they've formed in the wake of anarchy, and hopefully as a group we can find a larger moral to our own personal evacuation so we can digest this and build a new month in Paris. We'll see how this goes.

week four

January 25^th is traditionally Police Day in Egypt. Of course, protestors have also designated the day one of protests, so the police are the only ones not getting their own day off. Hopefully they get overtime pay (unlikely).

We had classes in the apartments, but then ventured out to grab some lunch, facing eerily quiet and empty streets. The Twitter hashtag #Jan25 was just starting up, and I figured I would remotely follow the protests and make it a nice, quiet catch-up day. Of course, although we were admonished not to, it was impossible to not venture out to our local main thoroughfare to check out the action, albeit from a nice, safe distance. We watched from the sidewalk and then the balcony of the local hotel as a group of protestors tried to cross the bridge to downtown, and were repelled by the masses of riot police who by the end outnumbered the protestors. Undeterred, the protestors just started walking north and crossed a further bridge that apparently the riot police hadn't thought to block. Apparently, we were right next to a New Yorker reporter who has her own interesting article on the events we collectively witnessed (Dokki is our neighborhood).

During all this time, there were long stretches of downtime. The riot police hung out in groups, chatting and even winking at us. We had time to get close to the crowd and then back off as they started to chant louder; more riot police pulled up in giant vans, and other groups of police left. Throughout it all, cars kept navigating through the square; one audacious driver even honked persistently at a line of riot police, demanding that they break formation so he could get through.

From there, a small group of us went to Midan Tahrir, the main downtown square, and stayed safely on the far end of the square near a metro station entrance to watch what was happening. It was largely the same: long stretches of downtime where even the protestors would sit down, followed by short bursts of frantic rushing and running and yelling. The first time this happened was during the afternoon call to prayer. As the imam's call blared across the square, the protestors rushed the riot police at the far end of the square, then were promptly pushed back. At this point, some of the scattered protestors started running, and we all retreated. But it was soon obvious that people running didn't necessarily mean anything; the riot often had a lot of meaningless adrenaline rushes.

There were still some very poignant moments that we witnessed before we left at the advent of tear gas: amongst the many people waving Egyptian flags was one man portentously wearing a Tunisian flag like a cape around his shoulders; we saw multiple groups of people carrying limp bodies to the orange ambulances; a few daring protestors jumped onto the front windshield of a riot van as it tried to cross the square. They were promptly driven into a line of riot police; I can only assume that they were badly beaten and/or arrested. And a few minutes after the call to prayer, we saw a line of protestors praying towards Mecca.

We spent the rest of the night back in our apartments refreshing the Facebook page of protest updates; one of our group had the idea of buying food for the protestors spending the night in Midan Tahrir, so we all contributed some money. I've also been avidly checking all the international news websites for their perspective on this, since it seems so, so important to me, but I know the further you get from the action, the more situated it is in context and consequence. I hope that maybe something will come of this, but I also keep in mind what our Chadi friend said this afternoon when we asked him if he was going to protest that day. He gave us a strange look, and then asked, “Against what, exactly?”

week two

This is quite a bit late! Cramming 1,400 years of Muslim history into three weeks is, unsurprisingly, quite the effort, so I've been consumed with a lot of reading lately, and our first final is this Thursday (1260-modern day... clearly we have a very thorough understanding of the entire time period).

I did write a whole bunch about last week, but then we went to Siwa Oasis last weekend, and I had to throw it all out the window. By Saturday night, most of us kept declaring it the “best weekend ever!” which is easy to say, but harder to explain. So, Han wins... I'm using photos.

In retrospect, it may have been so awesome because it was preceded by the worst bus trip in the history of all Megabus trips I've ever taken. It took us two hours alone to get out of Cairo; once we were out in the desert, the temperature plummeted to the low forties, but the air conditioning on the bus was still on; Egyptian drivers like taking breaks every hour, it seems; and by the end of the trip, the driver was blasting music and opening the windows to keep himself awake. It took me two and a half hours in Siwa to get feeling back in my feet.

But as soon as we got to our hotel, life started to look not so cold; there were cats prowling around a courtyard full of palm trees, and they had banana-honey crepes (for a dollar-fifty!). Siwa, minus the tourism, seemed a little like Gudavalli; a tiny town you could wander around in as children stared at you and yelled “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!” There are ruins of the old town right past the main square that you can wander through; mud-brick walls without roofs that form a sort of labyrinth. After exploring those in the morning, we booked a “safari tour” for the afternoon without quite understanding what we were getting into.

Three girls and I got the most decrepit Jeep; we couldn't open the doors from the inside, and to turn off the car, the driver literally just pulled a wire (keys? Who needs them?) We sped off into the Great Sand Sea.... and down dunes. At eighty degree angles. I think at some point, our drive just though our shrieks were amusing and did it on purpose.

After that and a try at sandboarding and running down dunes, we headed to a hot spring that smelled disgustingly like sulfur but was fantastic in the cold-ish desert. After that, a bonfire, dinner in the desert, and a drive back to our camp.

The next morning, unfortunately, I woke up to the only bad part of our trip: mosquito bites. Egypt has mosquitos, something I had been willfully ignoring, but these mosquitoes apparently don't obey normal mosquito laws like, oh hey, let's be civilized and not bite people on their EYELID. After putting my contacts in, I realized that:

1. I had seven mosquito bites on my face, all on the side I wasn't sleeping on, and
2. I looked like the Phantom of the Opera

After the blow to my vanity, I had to admit I looked pretty ridiculous, and having a swollen eye was certainly a novel experience.

We spent our second day wandering around on our bikes. Siwa is mainly famous for two things. The first is homosexuality; Siwan men used to have to live outside the town to protect their herds, and apparently homosexual marriage was common through the 1940s, when even the remote location couldn't stop the long reach of the law. Nowadays, apparently Siwans are very touchy about this reputation; it's certainly true that their women are THE most covered women I've seen Egypt; in addition to a head covering, they drape a black cloth over their entire face, even their eyes. We were all really disconcerted by this; it gives the effect of, I kid you not, a Dementor from Harry Potter or a Nazgul from Lord of the Rings, and I honestly jumped a little when I saw a woman out at night.

The second is the Siwa Oracle, who apparently consulted with Alexander the Great over whether he was the son of Zeus or not. Nobody knows the answer, but he wanted to buried here; a couple years ago, some Greeks claimed they had found his tomb, but it's since been debunked. The ruins of the Oracle's building are still up, and they look out onto the beautiful palm trees of the oasis.

It was near there that we ran into a Siwan student who we had met the day earlier, and he gave us a back road tip about a salt lake that tourists don't go to. We headed off on the vague directions of “When the sign says take a left, take a right, and then keep taking rights for twenty minutes and then take a left.” Miraculously, we found a long road along the lake, and a series of peninsulas and deserted islands that were beautiful. We also found a donkey skull, which Willy transported back to Cairo (I think it's decorating the boys' apartment). 

After an improvised picnic on one of the islands of one granola bar, one orange, one pita bread, peanut butter, and dried dates, we biked back to town, where I spent all my money on a scarf and a salt candle. Thankfully, tameya here is only a pound, and one of my friends bought me dinner so I could eat something besides pita and falafel, and we boarded the bus back to Cairo completely exhausted. The trip to the Egyptian Museum the next day was quiet, despite the astounding amount of antiquities literally stockpiled in that place. It's slightly unfortunate, because if we have the Best Weekend Ever two weeks into the trip, won't the rest of the trip feel a little disappointing? 

I hope not! Dharma and Suseela are coming to visit this weekend, so hopefully I will have some amusing stories from that, than Nana will of course object to and offer his own take on. I apparently have been telling enough Kodali family/childhood stories here that people have asked to meet my parents.... dun dun dun!

week one

I thought sending weekly e-mails would be a nice exercise for me instead of keeping a blog, but it also seems like a somewhat self-involved enterprise, so I figured the most non-intrusive way to do it would be utilizing the ubiquitous travel blog. Sigh. I'm going to try to keep it to a weekly post, although we'll see if it withers away to nothing, or if I get overzealous about it.

Anyway, after a week, life seems settled here: classes four times a week, Arabic twice a week, walk to school in the morning, even a gym membership at a nearby hotel! But I just said “Good evening” to our watchman this morning, so clearly I have still have quite the long way to go before I become even marginally self-sufficient here, which is enormously frustrating and humbling.

Our apartments are great, but they're designed to keep out the heat during Cairo's summers. If it makes the Chicagoans and Minnesotans happier to hear this, nights are as bad as Minnesota during winter break; I wear a fleece pullover to sleep every night and drink hot tea and wear socks to avoid the freezing marble floor. Besides that, it's a needlessly big apartment and my only complaint is that because of water pollution, they chlorinate the washwater. Every time I take a shower, it's like being at the swimming pool! The other curly-haired member of our group and I have been griping about its effect on our hair.

Cairo itself is kind of nutso, but above all, very dusty. My first impulse when walking around my first day was to take out an enormous sponge and just scrub the sides of the buildings, even the trees; everything is covered in a patina of grime. The air pollution in turn makes everything look appealingly hazy. On our tour of Old Cairo today, we got to climb a minaret (SO COOL, also a little terrifying, safety guardrails apparently are optional here), and looking over the city was possibly the best moment of our trip so far. I love running across mentions of the city in our history readings; my two favorites are "The City of 1000 Minarets" and Saladin's description of Cairo as "the mistress that tried to separate me from my wife, Syria" (apparently Syria won that battle).

Also, Nana, we went into mosques. Women can go into mosques. Thank you for misleading me for the first twenty-one years of my life.

As I mentioned, settling in has been easy, although probably because we're so cushioned and to some degree coddled here. Even the bombing in Alexandria came as a distant surprise; we've never been near the riots, although we were warned to avoid certain neighborhoods and certain times, and we spot riot police every now and then. But for the most part, things felt weirdly normal, although we did arrive at the bus for our very touristy trip to the Pyramids at Saqqara and Giza and were introduced to Hichem, who was going to accompany us and was sent from the Ministry of the Interior. He looked very 70s James Bond in mirrored sunglasses, and a tan suit, along with a very big gun at his side. The pyramids themselves were fine, but the really fun parts was going into them: the shafts were tiny and steep, and sometimes the lights would be blocked, so it was insanely claustrophobic, but made me feel like a tomb robber or an explorer.

What else? Daily life is pretty mundane, we're all getting really miserly because everything is so cheap here (hello, five pitas for 20 cents), although parts of Egyptian culture still put me on guard. The women overwhelmingly wear at least hijab, which surprised me; I expected more women to be unveiled, but I feel like about 95% of the girls I see have at least a headscarf on. Our professor, who lived here as a child and then studied Arabic here in the late 70s, told us it very definitely is a recent phenomenon. There are also women-only cars on the Metro which we were told to take when traveling alone to avoid harassment; to be honest, they’re emptier than the male compartments, so I’m more than happy to hop on them for a better chance at a seat. But being female and relatively uncovered here is a really strange feeling; even if there aren’t as many stares as you believe, it still weighs you down, and being told by an Egyptian student that, hey, women can’t go into some coffee shops because they’re dirty and the men are being chivalrous(!) by not letting you go there is just frankly exasperating and makes me want to yell about women's rights for awhile. As for the men, some of the girls have started the game, “Who looks like a guido?” and the answer is almost all of them. I actually got confused at the pharmacy looking at hair products I initially thought were for females only to be told that I was looking at a long row of hair gel varietals for men.

We did meet more normal, non-heckling guys when we went to Ultimate Frisbee pick-up yesterday (I have no idea why I went, my legs still hurt, and no, apparently, I still cannot catch a frisbee). The group was a mix of expats and Egyptians who apparently can really easily translate their soccer skills of sprinting FOREVER into being really good Ultimate players. We went to dinner with them afterwards and realized that we were probably hanging out with a very Westernized section of society: they complained about hijabs, told us they could get us into clubs, and compared the agony of their respective hangovers. Apparently the Cairo Jazz Club is the place to be (Thursday funk nights!) so we'll see if I ever get around to that Cairene experience. Mostly we've just been hanging out in our apartments watching Lawrence of Arabia, although we did try one outing to a rooftop bar, which was freezing, and where the waiter asked me if I'd like fruit juice. It didn't really make me excited for nightlife prospects, although given my propensity to fall asleep at midnight here, that's totally okay.

And hey! It's 11:04pm. Time to finish this, go read some more about Islamic history, and fall asleep at midnight to the sound of car horns talking to each other. Another week!