Praying my neighbors don't call the Behavior Police (yes, the Behavior Police)

All I want to do is go stand in an invisible corner somewhere and scream and rip off my clothes and scream some more and beat the ground with my fists and make clouds of dust everywhere to hide my naked body.  And let down my hair in a barbaric yawp.

-My Journal, 8/28/2008

 

I wanted to do something nice for my body, to tell it I’m sorry for always covering it like some shameful thing, to show it that it is Egpyt, and not me, who thinks it should be hidden.  So I have taken to doing naked yoga in my apartment in the company of closed windows and candles.  The closest thing I’ve found to a yoga mat is a prayer rug.  Today, when I got to Shavasana (literally, “corpse pose,” where you lie on your back for a full body relaxation at the end of your practice), I heard a slamming sound and felt the room suddenly fill with light.  At first I was excited.  Light, beautiful light!  A moment later, I realized that the wind had thrust my balcony doors wide open to reveal me lying naked on a prayer rug.  Thank you, Egypt.  

Hibiscus water, guava milk & mango juice

I am hibiscus water, guava milk and mango juice.  I am in green cotton, light and wrinkled, unzipped on the side the air tickles my skin, my legs dangle freely pantsless, and I feel sexy in a daisy way dancing to the Sufi drums on my ipod, my feet beating the sand rhythm into the faded red of my living room carpet.  Abre y cierra, abre y cierra.  Last night I wore my hair down for the first time in Egypt and as I walked home somewhere past midnight from “fool and falafal” and Brazilian Café chocolate cake, I looked up at the moon I knew was full, for I’d seen it just hours before, and saw a piece of it was missing!  I’ve seen eclipses before, when the news and my astronomy Dad warn me they’re coming, but I’ve never stumbled upon one like this.  It felt strange and special, like a secret.  I have spent the morning in and out of open-window-breezes and thoughts.  What do you do when a friend whose life is so different from yours, who has always believed in the Book and the Word of God and the Prophet, asks you for advice on love?  What do you do when, standing beside the sullen hungry camel and the hippo you swear is dead but nobody seems to notice at the sad grey place of rusted bars and sickness they call a zoo, what do you do when she asks you what sex is?  What do you do with the feeling at the bottom of your stomach that says this is the first time – and perhaps the only time – in 24 years she has had someone to ask this question of questions to?  What do you say when your words may be the only ones she has to piece together a great mystery that for you should be sprawling mosaic of colors and dreams and things you’ve heard or seen or wondered so many different times and places, but for her may be nothing more than a couple of words scrawled in ketchup on a napkin, passed under the table so no one will see?  What words do you write?  How do you tell her what they mean?  What do you tell her about the blood she has been told forever is the sole indication of purity and virginity?  How do you tell her it’s different for everyone?  That is sometimes isn’t there, but that it doesn’t mean you’re dirty, that only you can know these things about yourself?  What do you do with the terror in her black-eyeliner eyes?  Does it make it any better if you tell her it’s ok to be afraid?  What do you say when, caught in a fit of shrieks and sobs, she asks you like a sister if it’s a good idea to run away from a mother who is trying to marry her to a man she doesn’t love?  Do you tell her yes, it’s  best to enter into a polygamous marriage with a married man who lives in America but who she says she loves?  How do you tell her that in your head you can’t even conceive of being a second wife?  And last, what do you do when you think you shouldn’t share these questions but you feel too small to keep them all inside yourself?  

What would you pay for half a kilo of tomatoes?

On Sunday I went to the bazaar.   When I asked the Tomato Man "how much for a half kilo of tomatoes?" he replied in broken English, "Four of your children."  Confused, I told him in broken Arabic that I had no children.  "Four children by you!" he shouted.  I couldn't decide whether he wanted me to have four children with him or what, so I politely (if urgently) declined his invitation for a cup of coffee, handed him a couple of pounds and went in search of vegetables that I could buy with money instead of children.

The Beat goes on...

 

Through the streets of wandering eyes, somewhere between the Sea of Blue and the sea of rubber and petrol and cranky horns and the foreign tongues protruding from greasy-faced-shiny-haired-men I pass into a stir-fry of chirping and giggles, bouncing and cawing, Miss, Miss, Look at me!  Look at ME!  In your seat Youssef, Mazin keep your wet-paint-sticky-slimy-hands to yourself Is that CLAY up your nose?  I surrender you all to 2:00.  And on and on I wander…

 

I survived the first kids’ session and am gearing up for another one this week!  There are good days and no-so-good days but overall it is getting better.  The children are wild and I am beginning to accept that they will always be wild.  I am searching for ways to go along with them instead of fighting.  It is exhausting to fight.  So we do the important things in the morning when, relatively speaking, there is calm.  Reading and questions and cross-words, coloring or word-searches for those that finish early.  I started trying to train them to sit in their seats and raise their hands if they have a question and some of them learned that I won’t acknowledge them unless they are sitting down and being quiet.  I try to take them outside in the afternoon when there is no hope of keeping them in their seats.  We sometimes do treasure hunts; one day we had a “campfire” and made s’mores; another day juggling and so on.  The most interesting thing happened during our circus juggling lesson.  All of the girls started putting the scarves over their faces like the women who wear the veils.  The boys, on the other hand, ran around playing bullfighter. “Toro!  Toro!” they shrieked.  I thought I must be in Old Aldalucia or some other place where the women are veiled and the men fight bulls.  So I chased after the boys, shouting at them in Spanish, although I don’t know if they realized that’s what I was doing.  On the last day we learned about music.  My boss said I had to do something exotic because they already knew the “normal” instruments.  Planning lessons is especially difficult because I have to have a new topic everyday and it can’t be anything that I or any of the other teachers have already done because if one just student has already covered this topic, the parents will complain.  There are only so many topics you can cover with wild 9-year-olds who are learning English as a foreign language.  New and fresh, new and fresh. 

 

So I decided to teach them about Candombe, which is the traditional African drumming from Uruguay.  I was sure it was something not even my boss would have heard of.  So I taught them about Uruguay and then handed out plastic drums and shakers and braced myself for the chaos that was sure to come.  But somehow it stayed under control.  I don’t know what happened exactly but it was a thing of beauty! I gave the drums to the quietest children and told them they had to behave if they wanted drums next and I immediately took the instruments from anyone that made a sound.  They were focused and excited as I explained to them about rhythm and beats.  Then I stood up in front and clapped out a 4/4 rhythm.  They followed on their various percussion implements and by some miraculous force we stayed together through changing tempos and even shifts from 4/4 to 3/4 and back again.  We danced all the way up to a splendid climax and it was tough to say whether the hairs on my arms joined in the dance or whether they were merely tingling from the sheer vibrancy that filled the room.  On Monday it will be a new batch of kids and excitement…

 

I started adult classes as well, so on Mondays and Wednesdays I am at work for 12 hours, plus 4 hours on Tues and Sat.  It’s a pretty unbalanced schedule, but I think it will be nice to have 3 days off, along with Saturday mornings and Tuesdays afternoons so I can focus on things other than work.  I found a belly dance class on Sunday afternoons, and starting in September I will hopefully be studying Arabic once or twice a week at the University of Alexandria.  So my days are starting to fill themselves. 

 

Last weekend I went to Asia!  I traveled with some of my American and British friends from work to Dahab and the Sinai (which is technically part of Asia).  I’m getting bored with sentences so I’m going to write snapshot style…10-hour bus ride.  Ambush by cab drivers at the Sharma Sheikh bus station all wanting to take us to Dahab for an insanely high fare.  Finding bus to Dahab instead.  Riding in the back of a pickup truck with Crazy German Wandering Backpacker.  Seven Heaven Hostel.  Three beds literally right on top of each other and a tiny fan.  Very hot.  Melting hot.  Drinking a 1.5 liter bottle of water in 10 mins.  Drinking another 1.5 liter bottle of water.  And another.  Swimming in the Red Sea!  Which is not red.  Swimming in my pajamas because the tiny black bikini I borrowed from Lizzie would have been scandalous.  Overly zealous shopkeepers and restaurant hosts.  Welcome to Egypt.  Come and have a look in my place.  My way better.  Come.  Please.  Very beauuuutiful.  Horse ride?  Horse ride?  You want taxi?  Camel? 

 

We left at 11:00 p.m. Friday for Mt. Sinai.  At around 2:00 a.m. we began our ascent of the mountain.  Hacking dust and tripping over slippery sand and rocks we avoided the camels coming down the trail in the dark and the Bedouins in their unflinching efforts to get us to ride their camel to the top.  We were but tiny ants scurrying through the dust, holding tight to the sleeve of a companion for fear of losing the trail every time the bejeweled sky distracted our gaze and we looked up, wondering what Moses must have wondered stealing glances at the very same sky.  And every whiff of cigarette smoke on the wind sends our eyes searching for the Burning Bush.  We climbed the 375 stairs up the last stretch and thanked whichever deity was surely up there watching that we had chosen the Camel Road and not the three thousand and something Steps of Repentance.  At the top we huddled together in a hut (it was the first time I was cold in Egypt) and sipped mint tea, as the wiry squirrel of a man, a young Bedouin surely high on something lit up a sheesha pipe to pass around.  I went outside and climbed up to a flat rock where I could sat cross-legged and close my eyes, breathing in the cool.  I felt the lack of oxygen and the fatigue fill my blood with a sense of invigoration that I did not expect to feel having climbed a mountain at 2:00 a.m. with no sleep.  Some minutes later I realized there was a group of tourists taking pictures of me so I got up and searched for a place to relieve myself.  There was a bathroom, I was told, but when I got there a young boy had locked the door and was demanding money.  I didn’t have any money on me and I told him my guide had said the bathroom was free.  He stood there challenging me for a while and finally stormed off, leaving the door locked.  So I crouched next to a rock and looked up at the sky.  Never before have I seen a shooting star while peeing on a holy mountain. 

 

We watched as the sun came up over the valley.  It was beautiful but somehow the sun was not the main attraction.  It was the people.  The tourists from all over the world crowding together in little groups, all pushing and shoving to get the best photos and avoiding anyone who did not speak their language.  I would have expected this at Disney World but not on top of Mt. Sinai.  It was strange, I have to admit.  At first, I was disappointed.  Where is our appreciation for nature and beauty and sacred things?  The others I was with shared this sentiment.  But the more I looked around, the more I actually began to smile.  Here we were, all of us, on top of this mountain in the middle of nowhere with all of its power and majesty and spiritual awe.  Here we were at dawn, dusty and exhausted, peering out into greatness and all we can do is squabble.  Is that not human?  Is that not what we always do?  It was somehow a perfect little picture of the world.  A single raindrop fallen from the cloud of Humanity.  And there we were.  All of us.  Together yet segregated into groups of things more familiar.  Each one wanting the same thing.  A nice photo.  A comfortable seat.  An unobstructed view.  A closer look than the next guy.  We cling to that which we know, ever suspicious of the ones we think are different.  And yet we all do it.  How different are we really? 

 

Check out my pictures in the upper left where it says “Egyptographs”!