The Balcony

If I was Monet, I think the balcony would be my Japanese bridge.

Balconies have become an obsession for me here. Whether they are bare, marked only by a mother looking over the city with her children or an old man smoking a cigarette, or decorated by the clean laundry of an entire family, baby-size shirts to dress pants and full-length jellabiyas...I am captivated. There is something fascinating to me about the idea of a space that is both so public and so private, all at once.

Sometimes there is striking contrast: aging building, bright laundry, babies' clothing, evidence of new life. Other times there is just this sense of complicity between the balcony dwellers, as if when you step out onto the floor of your balcony, you are stepping onto the floor of the city, the shared ground of 4 million other lives.

A less dreamy, romantic reason would be that it is easier to take pictures from a balcony without calling attention to myself...always a welcome advantage. :)

(note: most of these pictures are from my old neighborhood in mouharrem bek, alexandria, but the last two shots I took from my friend max's apartment in cairo)

Babytea!

Caitlin and I go to the supermarket at least twice most weeks. Sometimes we don't even buy anything...we just look around and see what's there. This is a more entertaining activity than you might think; sometimes we find products like the following:

Baby tea....tea for your baby. I especially like "baby calm"...tea to make your baby go to sleep. I almost bought that one for myself.

Correction:

In my second post about the strike, I said that there were 'apparently' no protests in Cairo. This, happily, is not true. Read more here in the New York Times article summing up recent events. I have to agree that the quiet still sent a very powerful message, especially in a country where noise almost seems to be a staple of life.

"Don't go anywhere"

edrab 3am = "general strike"

(The number 3 stands in for the Arabic letter ع in the Arabic chat language.)

goodbye, mouharram bek

Now that I am living in a new area of Alexandria, it seems like a good time to post some pictures of my old neighborhood in Mouharram Bek (pronounced Mouharram Bay...I still haven't been able to figure out why it's spelled with a 'K', even in Arabic I see it spelled with the equivalent of the K sound).

Mouharram Bek street is along the yellow tram line. Since the name of our street is the same as the name of the district, we often say we live 'along the tram' to clarify.

Another shot of Mouharram Bek street.

The roof of the girls' school next door, the one that starts our mornings (after the athan, of course) with a half hour of warm-ups, chanting, xylophone playing, Qur'anic recitations, and nationalistic songs. When I was in Jordan I got to see these more close-up, and I do have to say that I think having students do public speaking every morning (the students are responsible for most aspects of the warmup, including a short lecture usually proceding the qur'anic recitation) does help build confidence and public speaking skills. I don't think any school in America prepares its students as consistently for public speaking. That's Jordan, though...and I don't think there is all that much to be said for Egyptian education as a whole.

students at work/using super-spy capabilities on my camera

Construction scene, across from my bedroom window (but several floors higher). A lot of the buildings here are left unfinished at the top, so that new flats can be built above them.

someone peeking out the window during classes......

Oh, never mind.

Well, it turns out that the police seized the textile workers' factory in Mahalla, which was supposed to have started the strike, so there are no demonstrations, apparently not even in Cairo. It is quieter...there is a lot less traffic. It looks like more people did stay home today, but that's about it. Link to the story on Reuters: http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL06355028.html Yay emergency rule.

Apparently the elections on Tuesday will also be a fairly ho-hum affair, since most of the 'independent' candidates from the Muslim Brotherhood were either arrested or not allowed to register.

Although these are obviously disappointing developments as far as the future of Egypt is converned, I guess it's a win-win situation for us...we have no classes, and we get to stay home on what looks to be a very windy, blustery day.

More later, since obviously I have nothing else to do.

idrab....

It's a shame I put off the transferral of my journal entries from Jordan, etc. for so long....because real life has finally caught up with us. Earlier today, we received a text from Nehad, saying: "All classes tomorrow are cancelled. There will be strikes all over Egypt and it will be difficult to move around." We haven't received any emails from the State Department about it...officially this is not supposed to happen here, but the internet is buzzing. The most thorough coverage is coming from blogs among activists and freelance journalists here in Egypt (like this one and this one)...though any decent google search will turn up dozens of articles, mostly talking about Mubarak warning against the strike. There is apparently a facebook group for the strike, called "April 6". When I visited their page, I recognized the poster....these fliers are all over the walls across the street and around the University of Alexandria. They must have just gone up recently as well....I noticed them (I saw more than one man stopping to read), but in my usual attempt to walk quickly and avoid making eye contact with members of the opposite sex, I mixed up the word for 'strike' with the word for 'taxes'. I remember wondering to myself why there were posters up about a general tax!! Now that I think of it, this man was stopping to read posters right by a cluster of street policemen.

A while ago I remember reading an article talking about how agitation from the labor groups was what was really going to shake Egypt up (as opposed to solely political movements, like the pro-democracy 'Kifaya!')...we'll see if that's what is happening now.

Anyway, the facebook group has a long list of commands/demands, which I am sure are translated elsewhere, but I will translate them here:

Don't go to work.

Don't go to University.

Don't go to school.

Don't go to the store.

Don't go to the workshop.

Don't go to the precinct (police station).

Don't go to the market.

We want salaries to live on.

We want to be employed.

We want education for our children.

We want humane transportation.

We want hospitals to treat us.

We want medicine for our children.

We want fair elections.

We want safety and security.

We want freedom and dignity.

We want apartments for newlyweds [If you read the New York Times, you should have noticed an article about how young people in Egypt are unable to get married because of the rising costs]

We want bread and food.

We want social justice.

We want to cultivate, to build, and to manufacture.

We want trials for thieves.

We want to know our rights.

We want the Constitution to protect us.

We want our country to be for us.

We do not want rising prices.

We do not want favoritism.

We don't want thugs for policeman/officers.

We do not want torture at the precincts.

We do not want royalties.

We do not want corruption.

We do not want bribery.

We do not want arrests.

We do not want to fabricate issues.

We do not want empty speeches.

We do not want promises of prosperity.

We do not want to pass judgement.

We do not want forgery.

We do not want aid from America.

We do not want to have to resort to Israel.

As yet, we haven't heard anything about demonstrations in Alexandria or where they would be. It may just be that everyone stays home and the city goes dead. Since I now live in a fairly central area of the city, I'll probably know if anything happens. And if not, now that we have internet in our apartment again...we can find out that way.