1/17/11-1/20/11 Amena's last few days in Cairo!!! =(

On Monday the 17th, in Arabic class we learned the Arabic for "there is/there are" and "there is not/there are not." We also learned the adjectival phrases-- unlike in English, in Arabic, we mention the noun before the adjective, which, from what I remember from high school, is similar to the way adjectival phrases are written in Spanish. Later that day, the class went to Leslie's apartment again to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dr. Denis began the lecture all the way from the beginning of the conflict. He explained this conflict began 114 years ago when a Viennese Jew named Theodore Hurtzel was convicted of treason against France and then sent to jail. Hurtzel was a lawyer and this case instilled in him the idea that there's anti-Semitism even in France and Vienna, so he formed the first Zionist organization in Switzerland, saying that the Jews needed their own Jewish state, and they thought the land occupied by Palestine was perfect for them because supposedly it was the original home they'd lived in and had been kicked out of in 70 AD. Then, he defined Zionism as a political manipulation of Judaism-- it's basically Jewish nationalism.

On Tuesday the 18th, our Arabic teachers came to us in Zamalek and we had class in Cafe Noir. First, everyone ordered food and drinks and then we began our lesson. We covered the numbers from 11 to 99 and nationalities. Later that day, we went to Tahrir Square and walked down Talaat Harb. We saw the old American University of Cairo campus and the Madbouly Book Store, which was a place that used to sell revolutionary books that were not permitted to be sold anywhere else. After that, we visited the Yacoubian Building, the setting of one of our required books for this study abroad called The Yacoubian Building. I didn't expect much from the building, as Dr. Denis had warned us that there was nothing special about the building, but I did expect to see architecture of some significance, but I didn't. Next, we went to a photography store called Lehnert and Landrock, where my classmates and I bought more souvenirs. At the end of the walk, most of my classmates broke off to eat, but a few of us decided to go shopping. I bought a bag and several pairs of shoes and was very satisfied with my purchases.

 Arabic lesson at Cafe Noir

Madbouly's Bookstore for revolutionary books

The building from The Yacoubian Building
 

On Wednesday the 19th, we met our Arabic teachers at Al-Azhar park. We took pictures at the top of a hill that had a great view of the city with its numerous minarets and expansive view. The park was truly beautiful with lush green grass, tall palm trees, antique-style gazebos, and a variety of flowers. After our photo session, we went to the park cafe, which was a charming and delightful two-story building with a nostalgic, homey feeling. We spent a good three hours eating, drinking, talking and truly enjoying the setting of the cafe.

 Fountains at the entrance of Al-Azhar Park

Al-Azhar Park again!

Beautiful, chic cafe at Al-Azhar Park

Picture with our Arabic teacher, Hasnaa

On Thursday the 20th, we went to Leslie's apartment again to hear one final lecture from Riham. First, we had a little reflection session on our perceptions of Egypt and what we learned from our stay in Egypt. Then, we had a question and answer session in which the topic of discussion revolved around the controversial topic of the face veil. Although we still have an Arabic final tomorrow and the program doesn't officially end until th 24th, at the end of the discussion, we wrapped up the program by filling out official End of Program Release Forms and evaluations. This makes it feel like the program is almost over, and I guess that's because it is =((( That night, Denis and Nevenka invited all the students at their apartment for a going away pizza party. It was fun, but I felt a bit of sadness in the room as everyone knew that the program really was coming to end. We all really loved the looks on the Sullivans' faces when we surprised them with our gift.

Gift for Denis and Nevenka

The gift =)

Thus, this will be my last blog. I have to say that Cairo was much more than I expected it to be. I came to Egypt thinking that it was all about the pyramids and hieroglyphics, but it's much more than that. It's also about the hospitable and welcoming people and the halal food that I was so happy to hear I could eat! As I think about going back home to New York, I am confident that this is an experience that I will remember nostalgically for the rest of my life. And so I have no doubt in my mind that I will come back to Egypt to not only experience new things, but to re-experience what I experienced on this trip. 
 

1/16/11

Today in Arabic class, we translated sentences with the demonstrative pronouns. I’m glad we had this extra practice because I now understand the demonstrative pronouns. After that, we learned about the interrogative words. At first it was a bit confusing that the interrogative word comes at the end of the sentence, but I eventually got used to it. We also have a test tomorrow on everything we learned so far, so tonight, I know I’m going to be up late studying for this exam.
   
After Arabic class, we had our final dardasha with Nevenka. We went over the interrogative words we learned today in class and also the numbers, which I’d been wanting to learn since the beginning, since it would’ve been helpful to know the costs of items when I went shopping.
   
Late in the afternoon, we attended a lecture by Dr. Denis Sullivan on Islamism. He defined Islamism as the political manipulation of Islam. He explained that Islamism doesn’t have to be disparaged. There are many well-intended people who use Islamism for the benefit of people, so Islamists are not always extremists. In order to explain Islamism, he talked about the Muslim Brotherhood. He mentioned that five years ago the Muslim Brothers had 88 seats (20%) in Parliament, but this past election, they were shut out of Parliament. So why did this happen? Why did no one vote for them? The Muslim Brothers are banned, but tolerated, so they weren’t recognized as an actual political group. The phenomenon is that the single most popular group is the Islamist group.
   
The way they began was that in the late 19th century, people would come across seas to spread their influence of Islamism through the guy who found the Muslim Brothers, Hasaan al Banna. In the 1920’s he got caught up in post-WWI nationalist endeavors, so he founded the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the independence of Egypt to give people what the monarchy wasn’t providing. So many people joined him that the Muslim Brotherhood became a party. They wanted to use Islamic teachings to help the poor and create Islamism.
   
The rest of what we learned about the Muslim Brotherhood was a repeat of what we learned about them during the lecture on Egyptian politics. We’d learned that when someone attempted to shoot Nasser during a public speaking, he thought the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for it and he threw them in jail. Nasser even tortured and hung them. When Sadat became President in 1970, he didn’t have the support of the Nasserists, so he released the Muslim Brothers that were in jail and encouraged Islamism, but had them promise they wouldn’t use violence. During Sadat’s 11 years in office, a new Constitution was created saying that sharee’a was the principle source.

1/15/11

Today, I had a free morning so I decided to sleep in. When I woke up, I started on my Yacoubian Building paper. I was about half way done when I got hungry so Noureen and I went to Hardee’s for lunch. After lunch, we headed to Islamic Cairo to conduct our tour for the next paper. We had some difficulty explaining to the cab driver exactly where we wanted to go because when we told him what specific street we wanted to be dropped off at in Bab Zuwayla, he said that he would not be able to take his taxi into that street. So we had to figure out another street nearby where we could get dropped off.
   
Once the cab driver dropped us off, we found our way to the beginning of the tour as mentioned in our guide book Historic Cairo. The first stop was Mosque of Atinbugha al- Maridani. We saw a mosque that we thought was the one we were looking for, but we couldn’t find out for sure because there was no sign indicating the name of the mosque. We went inside anyway and took pictures, but were very doubtful that this was the mosque from the book that we needed to visit. As we walked to a nearby mosque, we realized that that was actually the Mosque of Atinbugha al- Maridani because it had all the features mentioned in the book, even though this mosque had no sign either.
   
We were happy that we were on the right track in terms of the tour, but there were so many other things bothering us. For example, it had rained earlier in the day so the dusty roads were now extremely muddy and slippery. My sneakers and pants had so much mud on them when I got back to the hotel room. In addition, even though the streets were extremely narrow, there were still cars, trucks, and motorcycles swishing past us, constantly honking. I think we were all more bothered by the constant loud honking than the mud—sometimes the driver didn’t even need to honk, but honked anyway.
   
Although we were going in the right direction, we had a lot of trouble searching for the mosques in the guide book because most of them were not labeled and some of them were so dilapidated that we were not even allowed to stand around them. We were disappointed with the mosques we saw on this tour because after seeing the Mosque of Ibn Tulun or Barquq, these mosques seemed very unappealing and unpleasant. Most of them were either completely closed down and the ones that weren’t needed major upkeep.
   
We ended the tour at the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, which was the most beautiful of all the mosques we’d seen that day and it was one of the mosques we’d seen earlier with the class. However, at night time it was especially beautiful because it was illuminated with a green light, which gave it an alluring glow.

 Group picture in front of the beautifully lit Sultan Hassan Mosque at night

1/14/11

Today, we visited Old Cairo or, as it’s more commonly referred to, Coptic Cairo. Coptics are the Christians of Egypt and while 90% of the people of Egypt are Muslim, 10% are Coptic. When Dr. Denis gave a little introduction at the beginning of the tour, I was surprised to learn that when the Muslims came to Egypt, they did not persecute the Coptics. In fact, more churches were built after the Muslims took over than before. Before the Muslims came, the Roman Catholic and the Western Christians persecuted the Coptics.
   
First we saw the Fortress of Babylon. The first church we went into looked like a regular church with the pewter and the stained glass windows depicting the different biblical scenes. But an interesting thing I noticed was that there was a pulpit similar to the one in the mosques we saw in Islamic Cairo. I also noticed that some of the structural designs were similar to the mosques, such as the dome shape. I thought that the Coptics borrowed the style from the Muslims, but turns out the Muslims borrowed it from the Coptics. I also thought it was interesting that the church had been built on top of the Fortress of Babylon so that if there were Coptics praying inside and someone on the outside wanted to enter and persecute them, they could escape to the Fortress through a trap door.
   
We saw one more church where the Coptics claim the Holy Family fled to when the escaped persecution in Jerusalem. I haven’t heard the Quranic version of this story, so I guess this is going to be my next point of focus when I read about Jesus, or Prophet Isa as the Muslims call him. I also liked how the ceiling of the church was in the shape of Noah’s arc.
   
Next, we visited the Ben Ezra Synagogue where I learned that there are very few Jews left in Egypt, only about 55 in Cairo and the synagogue is actually no longer active. It was deteriorated, but about 20 years ago a Canadian woman collected 20 million to restore it. So what we can see of this synagogue today is not original, except for the ceiling.
   
The last site we visited was a mosque. When we got to the mosque, it was time for the third prayer of the day, Asr. But we also noticed some men carrying a coffin and I knew that there would be a janaaza after the Asr prayer. So I caught up with the jamaat  for Asr, and soon after, we prayed the janaaza. The mosque had a melancholy mood because of the janaaza, but even if an outsider didn’t see the coffin or know that there was a janaaza going on, I feel like he would know because of the tone of the Imam who was reciting the prayer in an obviously mournful way.

Church at Coptic (Old) Cairo

 Well next to Ben Ezra Synagogue where Prophet Moses was (supposedly) found

1/13/11

Today in Arabic, we went over our homework on the demonstrative pronouns. We also received our grades for the first exam and I was happy to learn that I got a 25 out of 25. But within a few minutes, Hasnaa informed us that we would be having another exam on Sunday and went back into my panic mode about what was going to be on the exam and how long I would have to spend studying for it. Hasnaa also assigned us nicknames based on what she thought about our personalities, which was not always an accurate analysis. For example, she nicknamed me “hadya,” which means “the quiet one.” I thought that this nickname did not suit me at all, but I guess in comparison to some of the other louder and more hyper classmates, I am quiet. But I am by no means a quiet person.
   
After a couple of hours, we had to leave for the Arab League, which is kind of like the Arab version of the United Nations. There, we met a representative who discussed a couple of issues involving the Arab nations. One of the main issues we talked about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Before I start talking about what he said, I just want to make it clear that I did not always clearly hear what he was saying. Even though he was speaking into his microphone, I had a hard time understanding what he was saying because I didn’t feel he was loud enough and also because his accent kind of threw me off. So I just want it to be known that I may have misheard what he said—I’m just going to talk about what I thought he said. In terms of negotiating over Gaza, he said that if Israel was really serious about the negotiating over eventually returning Gaza, they wouldn’t have already hired contractors to start building on it while negotiations are taking place because that means that they don’t negotiate on faith and don’t plan on returning the land. He also mentioned that while Palestinians are at the negotiating table, they Israelis divide up the land. Therefore, because Israelis have no faith in their negotiations, the Arabs don’t fear there will be any progress.
   
One of my classmates asked about Hamas and he answered that the situation with Hamaas is complicated because of something that happened with the 2006 election (again, I couldn’t hear everything he was saying). Some Islamic people are willing to accept Islam as Hamas does, but others are not as comfortable with this level of Islam. It seems that Hamas is arguing for resistance and negotiations in the war on Gaza, but they don’t know where to go because they see that resistance is not working and negotiating is not working. He mentioned that the main question of debate is, “Whose side is time on?” There are those who talk on the side of the demographic bomb and these are the ones who say that Israel should ask more people to come to Israel so that they can have greater demographic growth than Palestinians as the Israelis expel the Palestinians. Then, he mentioned the significance of the wall put up the Israelis. The wall tells the Israelis and the rest of the world, and I quote him, “This is the land that they want and the rest can go to hell.” This wall lets Israel keep as much land as they want, but what Israel doesn’t recognize is that Palestine will either want Israel to abide by their 1967 agreement or if they want all the land then they should take all the people, too.
   
I thought that this last point that he made was the most important one. If Israel really just wants all the land to put under their name for religious reasons, then they can have all the land in their name. All they have to do is accept the Palestinians, not even as Muslims, but just as human beings and treat them as such. I feel that if Israel wanted to take over all the land and their sole reason was because they believed the land is holy for them, then they should have no problem taking in the Palestinians and treating them as part of their country. But in my opinion, this is not what Israel wants, and so it will never do this. They simply want to slowly but surely wipe out the Palestinians in a very “legitimate” and systematic way, similarly to the way white Americans systematically wiped out the Native Americans.
   
From the viewpoint of his job, he also mentioned that if Israel established good relations with Palestine, it would be able to establish better diplomatic relations with 56 other countries. When one of my classmates asked why people perceive the Arab League to be so inefficient, he answered that the Arab League is only one tool that can help resolve issues, but it can’t do it all by itself and it shouldn’t be blamed for being ineffective because even though there are failures, there are also successes. I am very much in agreement with his last point. One organization cannot be expected to solve such a serious and long-lasting issue on its own—it takes much more effort.

At the Arab League

1/12/11

When we went to Arabic class this morning our teacher Hasnaa had a little surprise for us. She and another teacher showed us how to cut up small pieces of bamboo to create a paint brush-like utensil to use for calligraphy!! After we cut up the bamboos, we dipped them in ink and attempted to write words in Arabic, most of us just wrote our names. When Hasnaa and the other teacher showed us how to do the calligraphy, it looked so easy, but when I tried to do it, I realized that it wasn’t as easy as it looked because we were basically doing calligraphy with a piece of wood. It took patience, style, and a very specific curving of the hand to do calligraphy. In addition it made a really unpleasant sound when the bamboo scraped against the paper. No matter how many times I wrote my name, it didn’t look remotely as nice as when the other teacher did it. In the end, I just asked her to do the calligraphy for me for my name and she did it beautifully. I guess if I practice and just spend a bit more time on it, I’ll be able to write beautiful, intricate calligraphy as well.
   
After Arabic Dr. Denis treated us to sandwiches at a local restaurant called El Shabrawy close to the Arabic Institution. I got a large chicken pane sandwich and it was delicious. After lunch, we visited St. Andrews, which is an organization that works with refugees who are mostly from Sudan. They help the refugees find safety. From Stephanie, I learned that the refugee services have been around for 30 years. The organization started when there was a famine in Ethiopia, as the famine created an impetus for this type of organization. So a grant was written to fund adult education programs for these Ethiopian adult refugees. Then, the organization started children’s schools to teach them Arabic so that they can fit in socially and find educational opportunities. One and a half year ago, they adopted a Sudanese curriculum for children’s programs, which allows them to move on to higher educational levels.
   
Stephanie also mentioned that if everything goes well with the Sudanese referendum in March, the Sudanese students might be able to take exams and advance. She also stated that refugees leave their countries either temporarily until conflict ends or sometimes indefinitely. Unfortunately, in Egypt refugees are not allowed to work so its very hard for them to live in Egypt. Another difficulty is that access to school is limited—Iraqi refugees aren’t allowed to attend public schools, but Sudanese refugees are. This is because Iraqis are Shitte Muslims and most Egyptians are Sunni Muslims.
   
I really liked Stephanie’s presentation and her manner of presentation. I was very glad to learn that there were some students in the class who want to work with the organization for a few months. I really hope that they can help provide refugees with extended opportunities.
   
For dinner, I went to Pizza Hut (again!) and this time, I just got the fire wings. They were sooo spicy and sooo good, as always.

Doing calligraphy during Arabic class

1/11/11

Today, when I woke up for the Fajr prayer at dawn, I made sure I didn’t go back to sleep because I knew I had to study for the quiz. I studied the alphabet, greetings, numbers, personal pronouns, and possessive pronouns. I was able to study it all before the quiz. At first I was a bit nervous about the quiz because I thought it would be difficult, but I found it fair—long but fair. I felt proud that although Hasnaa allowed us to look at the alphabet chart, I didn’t need to because I remembered all the letters. So we spent most of the class taking the quiz. And after that, we began learning about the demonstrative pronouns. I had no trouble with them at first, but when Hasnaa started to talk about how whether the demonstrative pronoun comes before or after the noun depends on whether we’re talking about a sentence or a phrase, I got a bit confused. After a good 15-20 minutes, I finally understood where to place the demonstrative pronouns. At this point, my only confusion was how to make words plural.
   
For lunch, I just had a bag of chips and some chocolate that I grabbed from a kiosk on my way to Leslie’s apartment for Dr. Sullivan’s lecture on Egyptian politics. He began from the beginning when Nasser overthrew the monarchy of King Farooq on July 26th, 1952 (also the name of a street in Cairo). Nasser made all political parties illegal, except his own and said he would create policies for the common people, but didn’t know anything about economics. He unwisely applied Soviet policies to Egypt and got most of his revenue from the Suez Canal. But by 1967, even though education was boosted and he’d created policies to empower poor people, through the ‘60’s the economy came crashing down. In 1967 he resigned after a humiliating defeat from Israel. He died three years later in 1970 and Vice President Sadat became President.
   
Under Sadat, Egypt defeats Israel in a war but does not gain back the Sinai. Ultimately, Egyptians got back the Sinai in ’82. So basically, Sadat flipped politically in foreign policies from Nasser. He created the Open Door Policy, created a combination of capitalism and socialism in which he promised free education and a job for life, but this promise was not kept, so the Egyptians don’t believe in government anymore and turn to the private sector. Also, although Sadat still kept Nasser’s one-party system, he allowed left, center, and right planks of that party. However, Egyptians were upset with him because he signed the Camp David Accords, in which he declared peace with Israel. We don’t know for certain if this was the reason Sadat was assassinated in 1981 and Mubarak became President.
   
I’m really glad we had this lecture because this lecture combined with the presentation given by Dr. Dina at the office of Al-Ahram really helped shape an idea of Egyptian politics in my mind. I can truly understand the great changes Egyptian politics have gone through in just the past 50 years. Dr. Denis mentioned that Egypt has seen unbelieveable economic growth in the past five or six years and I hope this growth can continue well into the future because not to sound like a pessimist, but based on what I’ve noticed during my short stay here, the blue collar Egyptians deserve more rights and opportunities.