Another Revolution?

Egypt's President, Muhammad Morsi, essentially declared himself a dictator last week.  He says this is a necessary step to bring stability to Egypt, but most Egyptians view this as a return to the politics of the past.  This time they are not willing to go along with it.  There have been protests ever since the declaration, and they are turning more violent as the days go by.  The biggest protest is expected this Tuesday.  Many opposition groups have banded together to protest Morsi and his decree.  Even some Islamist groups have joined the opposition.  On the same day, Morsi's party, the Muslim Brotherhood, is also planning a demonstration in support of Morsi.  No one expects these gatherings to be carried out peacefully.

I have talked with a couple Egyptians about this situation.  I am sure the Egyptians I know are not necessarily a representative sample of all Egyptians, but Morsi seems to be less and less supported the longer he is in office.  One lady I spoke with is frustrated that she can't just 'live her life and feed her family'.  She also is disappointed in what she calls people's selfishness.  One person supports Morsi and does something good, like cleaning up the street.  Another person comes along who doesn't support Morsi and spreads garbage along the street again.  In times past, Egyptians used to help each other and their country.  Now they have lost their sense of camaraderie and patriotism.

Another, younger woman, is proud of Egyptians.  "You have to understand, she said, "for so long Egyptians suffered under dictators and did whatever they asked.  Now, since the Revolution, the Egyptian people have decided that they will not accept another dictator.  These protests are a good thing because they show that the Egyptian people really do want democracy and justice."

On the whole, I am supportive of the protesters.  It is good that the Egyptians will no longer submit to tyrants.  However, the ousting of a tyrant is a messy process.  And in addition, the place the protesters have chosen to make a stand is again Tahrir Square— two blocks from the U.S. Embassy.  There is no sign that the protesters are targeting Americans, but there is spillover.  Molotov cocktails are being thrown near the Embassy walls, and rocks have flown over the walls.  Embassy employees were sent home early today because of the fighting, and they had to drive through areas where tear gas was being used.  My poor husband came home coughing and with eye irritation from the gas. 

We will be perfectly safe, and it will be interesting to see how this all turns out.  Most people seem to expect that Morsi will be ousted fairly soon.  For everyone's sake I certainly hope so!

UPDATE 11/30/2012:  After a week of continuing protests, this weekend is set to be the biggest yet for protesting.  Morsi has shown no serious signs of backing down, and in fact, the Constituent Assembly rushed through a vote on the constitution early Friday morning.  The only members who voted on the constitution were the extreme Islamists, as everyone else abstained in protest.  This does not mean Egypt has a new constitution yet– it will have to be ratified by popular vote to take effect.  The constitution that was passed is severely lacking in many human rights issues and also appears to establish Sharia law.  There is little doubt that this version of the constitution will fail in a popular vote, but what this vote has done is create a unified opposition party out of the multitude of smaller political parties, and intensified the feeling against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here's a picture of the road in front of the U.S. Embassy:

You can see that a new wall is being built, but that might not make us any friends.  The wall will push people more towards the British and Canadian Embassies.  None of these countries are targets of the protests, they just happen to be in an unfortunate location.

Luxor

Luxor is located in Upper Egypt, and was the capital of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt.  The ancient name of Luxor is Thebes.  The city and the surrounding area has a huge number of tombs and temples, many of which are very well preserved.  The two major temples are Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple.  Luxor is also the sight of the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, the Valley of the Nobles and the Colossi of Memnon.  We saw all of these sights and there are actually many more, including several good museums.

By the time of the New Kingdom, Egyptians had figured out that building a pyramid for a nobleman made a great advertisement for where a lot of gold, jewels, and other treasures were located.  Most of the pyramids were completely emptied within a couple hundred years of being built.  So during the New Kingdom time period, Egyptians began burying their pharaohs in tombs dug into mountainsides.  Most of these were also robbed of the treasures, but the paintings and other decorations are largely intact.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the tombs.  You will just have to come see them for yourselves—they are remarkable! 

Before we joined the cruise, we went by ourselves to the Valley of the Nobles and Medinet Habu, the memorial temple of Ramses III. 

The Valley of the Nobles is being somewhat reconstructed for safety reasons, but the tombs are still largely intact. 

We couldn't take our own pictures of the paintings inside, but here are a few of what we saw from the internet.  They really did look this clear, this isn't fancy photography or re-touching!

Next we went to the memorial temple of Ramses III.  This wasn't a temple for making sacrifices to gods, it was built so that people would remember the king when he was gone.  The paintings in this temple were nearly as spectacular as in the tombs, even though this temple is open-air:

The hieroglyphics in this temple were carved remarkably deep, and this allowed them to be more clearly preserved up until the present time.

Once we joined the cruise, the Egyptologist on our boat took us to the rest of the sights.  First was Karnak Temple, which is known for its large number of enormous pillars:

The most remarkable thing about this temple, apart from its architecture, was that it was built, re-built, and added on to by up to 30 different pharaohs.  As a result, it has a variety of buildings and architectural styles.  As was the case with many ancient Egyptian temples, parts of Karnak Temple were also used in Christian times as a church.  There is evidence that the ancient Egyptian creation stories inscribed on the pillars were 'edited' for decency by the Christians.  (If you're curious as to why, look up the god Min.)

Next, we visited Luxor Temple, which has been impressively lit.  Because of the lights, we visited this temple just as the sun was setting so we could see the full effect. 

There is a mosque on top of Luxor Temple, that was built before the ruins were excavated.  A set of  conflicting historical preservation laws prevents the removal of the mosque, so it sits in one corner atop the temple.

All of the temples to the gods were built on the East side of the Nile, and the tombs and memorial temples were built on the West side of the Nile.  Since the sun rises in the East, and the sun brings life, the ancient Egyptians felt it was the appropriate side to worship their gods who also bring life.  The sun setting in the West signified death, thus the location of the tombs and mortuary temples.   As most of these sites did not allow photography, there isn't much I can show you.  Below is the reconstructed mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut— a powerful female Pharaoh. 

We sailed from Luxor down the Nile to a couple of smaller towns.  I will post pictures of them on the next blog entry.

A Cruise on the Nile

Last week we flew to Upper Egypt, which, confusingly, is located in Southern Egypt.  It is called 'upper' because the southern part of Egypt is at a higher elevation than the northern part.  There are two major cities in Upper Egypt, Luxor and Aswan.  The land between the two cities is mostly farmland, with a few small towns interspersed along the way.  People in Upper Egypt tend to be more conservative, more traditional, and much darker skinned.  They are admired by the people in Lower Egypt for maintaining a high moral standard and a simple way of life.

Our cruise took us from Luxor to Aswan over a period of five days.  We saw many sights from the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom time periods of ancient Egypt and we could not recommend them more!  The sights in Cairo date mostly from the Old Kingdom, and as such they are not nearly as well preserved.  In Luxor, Aswan, and several towns in between there are extremely well preserved tombs and temples. This post consists of pictures related to the cruise itself, and the next few posts will be about the historical sights we saw.

As soon as we arrived in Luxor we could tell that we were in a significantly different part of Egypt from Cairo.  The contrast may not be as clear to you all at home, but the picture below is still startling to us- the clear sky, the blue water, the greenery, and the calm atmosphere are all things that are sorely lacking in the big city. 

On the other hand, the salesmen are much more aggressive and rarely take a simple 'no' for an answer.  One night we tried walking around the town outside our hotel but only lasted about five minutes.  Everyone up and down the street started calling to us to take a taxi, take a carriage ride, or buy their stuff.  We nearly ran back to the hotel to escape!

We spent two nights in Luxor before we got on our boat.  We were in a five star hotel (by Egyptian standards) which was quite nice, but nothing compared to the Pottery-Barn-Catalog of a boat that we sailed on.  The boat had 30 cabins, but only eight passengers.  We're still not sure why the company chose to run the boat with fifty crew members having so few passengers, but we are grateful they did.  The other six people were great- a middle aged doctor and his wife who were U.S. citizens of Egyptian heritage, and a family of four with 11 year old twins.  The kids were a year and a half into a two year tour of the world that their parents were taking them on. 

After touring Luxor we set sail down the Nile.  For the most part all we saw were small mud houses,

farms,

fishing villages (you can see the small fishing boats in the river below),

and pastures.

Every once in a while we were shocked back into realizing we were actually in the middle of the Sahara Desert:

But for the most part we spend four days seeing (apart from the stops at historical sights) not much more than this:

Life in Cairo can get rather stressful at times- the constant noise, pollution, protests, and dirt are all wearing on the nerves.  We were grateful to see another part of Egypt that was so peaceful. 

Halloween in Maadi

Our building is hosting a Trick-or-Treating event for the Embassy community on Wednesday.  Last night we decorated the lobby area with decorations our building has collected over the years.  I found the tombstones most entertaining.  Some of them would be hard to 'translate' as the inscriptions apply to being an American government worker in Cairo, so I've only posted the ones that speak to the more general dangers of living in Egypt.  Enjoy and Happy Halloween!  :-) 

(Note- the Corniche is a highway that runs along the Nile river in Cairo)

A Birthday Surprise in Egypt

In my family birthdays were always a Big Deal.  My mother tried hard to make each of our birthdays special and we always looked forward to our special day with excitement.  As this has been ingrained in me, I try to make my husband's birthday as special as I can too.  Being in Egypt has made this a challenge!

There is a brand of ice cream my husband loves that is sold almost exclusively in Texas— Blue Bell ice cream.  Last year I tried to find Blue Bell to have for my husband as a birthday surprise.  I gave up after I found out that I could, indeed, get Blue Bell in Maryland if I paid more that $100 to have it shipped from Texas, or if I bought three gallons of it at once from Outback Steakhouse.

On our first visit to the commissary here in Cairo our sponsor told us about the special ordering program.  If any U.S. commissary sells a product anywhere in the world, the commissary in Cairo can get it too.  It took a while for me to connect the dots, but I realized about a month ago that I could maybe get Blue Bell ice cream here.  I waited until my husband was away to ask about special ordering the ice cream.  It turns out that I could, indeed, get it.

What I didn't remember was that this is Egypt and nothing goes according to plan.  The day arrived for the scheduled special order to come in— happily this was the Wednesday of both my husband's birthday and a commissary shuttle.  I walked into the commissary office to pick up my order and found out that yes, my special order was supposed to be there, but unfortunately that day's plane had been canceled.  I could come tomorrow to get it, and they were very sorry for the delay.  Unfortunately, there is no shuttle on the following day so I had to wait until the Friday shuttle to get the surprise ice cream.

And then Mummy Tummy struck.  Although I was the only one suffering with it, I didn't feel well enough to be left alone for my husband to go to the commissary. This meant waiting until the following Wednesday to get the birthday ice cream.  On Sunday (the first workday of the week) I sent an email to sign up for Wednesday's commissary shuttle.  Wouldn't you know- for some unexplainable reason there was no commissary shuttle scheduled this Wednesday.  Asking why the shuttle was not running this Wednesday when it runs every other Wednesday got me nowhere.

The following Friday I went on the regularly scheduled shuttle to finally pick up the ice cream.  After a lot of sorting through papers and asking around on the part of the office staff, I was finally told that the order had been delayed and would be in the following Wednesday evening.  It would arrive too late for the Wednesday shuttle so we had one more week to wait.

Finally, two and a half weeks after the expected date, the ice cream arrived.  Having received a confirmation phone call the night before, I arrived at the commissary this Friday afternoon to pick it up.  The man went into the back of the store to get it and came back with four half gallon containers of Blue Bell ice cream.  After waiting so long and going through so many obstacles to get it I didn't want to cause any fuss about the quantity that was sent.  So we are now the proud owners of a whole lot of ice cream!  My husband was very happy to have it, but we are thinking we need to have every person we've met so far here to come over for ice cream in order to make even a dent in it. 

Learning Arabic

The Embassy and the greater American expat community all seem to know at least some Egyptian Arabic.  Since it is not at all a necessity here, it is a bit surprising that a group of Americans is at least somewhat multilingual.  Certainly, the sort of person willing to move overseas is also likely to be interested in learning another language.  But the strongest reason for this group of Americans' language facility, I believe, is that the Egyptians themselves are so eager to teach us.

I had only been here a few days when the security guards and janitors in our compound decided that I needed to start learning Arabic.  They began by greeting me in English, but then would immediately tell me how to say the same thing in Arabic.  Every time I walked past two guards in particular, and one janitor, they would quiz me on the proper greetings.  After I had mastered 'Good Day', 'Good Afternoon/Evening', and 'How are you?', the guards began to teach me numbers.  I was expected to know numbers 1-10 after only a couple of days.  Then they started in on weather expressions. All of this was taught with careful attention to pronunciation and gender agreement.  If I got anything wrong I was strongly encouraged to repeat it until I got it right.  Their delighted smiles at my attempts were all the motivation I needed to keep working.

My good friends the shuttle drivers also take every opportunity to teach and to expound upon language learning.  Ahmed laid down the law as to the best way to learn a language without taking a class: "Listen carefully, and watch the eyes and the mouth.  You will be able to figure out what people are saying as long as you keep a close eye and ear on them."  Ayman was of the opinion that radio listening and TV watching were sufficient to learn a foreign language.  I find it hard to imagine that this was all he ever used to learn English, but I didn't feel that it was polite to question his system.

Now I have been in an Arabic classes for three weeks.  When the teacher found out that I already knew the little I had been taught she was pretty excited.  So in addition to learning the set curriculum, which is only listening and speaking, I am also learning to read and write Egyptian Arabic.  She even volunteered to meet for an additional lesson to practice writing with me. (This is extremely difficult by the way- 28 letters, each of which can take up to eight different shapes, and five vowel markers for letters that aren't included in the written words.)

It is only right that we expats try to learn what we can as we are surrounded by Egyptians that have worked hard to learn English.  Even the least motivated, however, can't help but pick up on the Egyptians' great enthusiasm to teach us their language!

How to Have a Good Life

Yesterday I needed to get out of the house for a while so I went down to the CSA club to have lunch at the coffee shop.  I ran into a nice older gentleman there I had met once before.  He is half Egyptian, half Greek, and (as he says) half Christian, half Muslim.  He greeted me enthusiastically and invited me to sit down with him.  One of his good friends had recently died and he seemed to be in a mood to analyze life.  In the course of our two-hour conversation I received a good deal of advice on how to live the best life possible.  Some of it was thought-provoking and some was merely entertaining.  I've recorded the most memorable advice here for your enjoyment.

If you want to have a happy day do the following:

• When you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and focus on what is beautiful about you.
• Wear your favorite clothes.
• Do two things that you have been putting off.  You will be satisfied and proud of yourself.

Dealing with people who are troubled:

• If someone is bothering you, for instance driving too fast or not listening to your advice, try to understand that they may have trouble in their lives causing them to not pay attention.
• If ladies drive too fast it is probably because they have some trouble they have not gotten out. (I'm not sure why this one only applies to ladies!)
• If you have trouble in your life, the thing to do is to talk it out.  Then you can move on and be happy.  You should never tell someone, 'Don't talk about that'.  Just let them say it so they can be peaceful in their minds.
• Never argue about things.  Either you know more than the other person or you don't.  If they feel they must argue about something that you know more about, you won't be able to convince them through argument anyway.

Waking Up and Going to Sleep

• Meditate in the morning and ask God to be with you and give you strength.
• As you go to sleep at night, think of a happy memory.  You will relax and go to sleep without any pills.

Memories

• Create as many happy memories as you can.  When you are old you will appreciate having them to think over.
• It is always best to have someone to share your happy memories with- then they can have those memories too.  Talk about your memories with someone else so that you both can share them.

Three rules for living a long time:

• Avoid stress.  Don't discuss politics too often, try to forgive yourself for the bad things you may have done.  Remember that you have also done good things.
• Don't own a car.  You are much healthier if you walk everywhere and always take the stairs.
• Drink a little something in the evenings.  Not too much- just a little.