Better Make Way For The Young Folks in Egypt
I have been glued to Aljazeera on my computer for a week. I am bleary-eyed. This youtube video posted today was a bit uplifting. Notice all the women.
Egypt
Following Uprising in Egypt on Twitter
Protests going on from early morning and people will remain in Tahrir Square all night. It’s spread all over the country and other countries. Three dead. It’s after midnight there and twitter, cell phone, TV and all the rest have now gone down but there are some iconic pics that have been coming out of Egypt. And YouTube is full of video. This uprising is a really big deal! Even a friend in Serbia is all but afraid to hope.
My fav post:
Lessons of Tunisia:
To the Arab dictators: u r not invincible.
To the West: u r not needed.
To the Arab people: u r not powerless
Trouble In Egypt
An explosion has taken place in the ancient area of Al Hussein-Cairo, Egypt, the number of killed and wounded is still unsettled. How the bomb was exploded is not exactly specified. It’s the most glorified and valued area for Egyptian and every Muslim; for both Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim this place is highly sacred. It’s the place where prayer is practiced every day, and it’s the place where Al Hussein (Prophet grand son) is believed to be buried. It is also the place of an important market and center of business where hundreds of Egyptians make a living on selling goods and offering services to visitors. It is well known that the place is a preferred spot for Egyptians and foreigners to spend an evening, says one Egyptian.
The news agencies are saying it was a militant Islamic group.
“Muslims usually comes to this place seeking spiritual calmness and peace of soul, not it’s ridiculous to claim that a cowered act like this would be made by a Muslim or some one who understand and believe what Islam is,” says this Muslim. He believes it was Mossad, the intelligence arm of the Israeli government.
But consider this. If it was done by an Islamic group why would an Islamic do such a thing? Here is one answer.
I know next to nothing about Islam but it just so happens that I just finished reading Bernard Lewis’ 2002 book “What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity In the Middle East.” He takes 105 pages to itemize, often from journals and diaries, the gradual contacts of Islamics with the West, from the beginning of Islam, and the resulting modernizing influences of the West over the centuries on the Middle East. (This book was written for the Western reader so my apologies for copying much of what may already be known.) Then he goes on to say: Read More
The Looming Tower
Have recently finished the acclaimed “The Looming Tower” by Lawrence Wright which is a history of Islamic radical fundamentalism beginning in the 1930’s and 40’s and ending with the bombing of the World Trade Center. Including the ridiculous and ultimately tragic machinations of the CIA and FBI, it reads like an unbelievable novel…and it left me drained and feeling hopeless.
The Christian Science Monitor reported today that Al-Qaida said in its monthly magazine posted on an Islamic web site that “cutting oil supplies to the United States, or at least curtailing it, would contribute to the ending of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.” The group said it was making the statements as part of Osama bin Laden’s declared policy. It was not possible to verify independently that the posting was from the terror faction, said the Monitor.
Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for last year’s attacks on oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Yemen after bin Laden called on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West. The group also was behind the 2002 attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person in the Gulf of Aden, according to the paper.
Also reported today was that Egypt has arrested nearly 80 members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
What really frightened me recently was the sight of a young artist, on his knees in front of Santo Domingo, working on a gigantic poster of Bin Laden. It was never put up because the next day the PFP routed and burned the planton in the Santo Domingo Plaza.
Edfu
Israelis Bombed 9/11?
While waiting for the others to come out of the temple at Edfu, and when it became apparent that Bob wasn’t going to buy anything, Bob was invited into a seller’s shop for tea. The seller, who seemed more educated than usual here, wanted to talk about things…did Americans think, he asked, if the massacre of 59 tourists at Luxor was masterminded by the Israelis? No, Bob said, no one in America that he knew thought that. “We think it was the Israelis,” he responded confidently.
The same rumor was going around the Arabic world after 9/11 that the Israelis had done it. Seems to be incomprehensible to some middle eastern people we have met that Osama or any Muslim could be responsible for such mass killing.
Search For Truth In Egypt
Cafes and Food
You can have what Bob calls “mystery meat,” which in Egypt is called kebab-lamb or chicken sliced from a vertical spit-very good in pita bread. Kofta is ground meat peppered with spices, skewered and grilled. You can find delicious spit roasted chicken. Tagen is a stew cooked in a deep clay pot with onions, tomatoes and rice or cracked wheat. Stuffed cabbage leaves are called mahshi karumb. Fried fish is great. Kushari is tiny noodles, tomato juice, lemon and onions looking somewhat like a soup.
We were welcomed into one empty cafe and graciously given the best seat upstairs near a window where we could look out on the street while eating kushari, a “traditional Egyptian dish” as the proprietor called it. He gives us an idea that if we could get away from the sellers that the Egyptian people would be wonderfully hospitable and gracious. We were touched.
In certain cafes men sit, play backgammon and smoke sheesha pipes.
Luxor
No knobs on anything in the hotel. Had to lift the toilet lid to figure out how to flush and while leaning over the toilet tank the fan blades from the fan above fell off and konked me on the head before bounding into the tub. Lonely Planet uses Budget, Mid Range and Top End for classifying hotels and this was a MidRange which I think is a pretty good gauge of the local economy. Takes money they don’t have to clean and repair.
Ongoing Search for Truth
When I was in college, ironically, a book by the great theologian Martin Buber called “I and Thou” gave me my first understanding about bridging the gap between the “I” and the different “thou.”
More recently cross cultural writers have been writing about the concept of “the stranger” describing our fear of the “different” as a genetically built-in survival response mechanism that is a healthy one when used to keep ourselves safe, but if we are not aware of our subtle responses on this level and let it operate when it is inappropriate then we can be very damaging to each other. Ahdaf Soueif writes in English and the theme of her autobiographical novel “In The Eye Of The Sun” is the notion of foreignness. Her latest novel “The Map of Love” was shortlisted for UK’s Booker prize.
Thinking about all this reminds me of an experience I had years ago when managing a student foreign exchange program. I gave a party for all the exchange students in my home and wanted to include some older students to provide perspective so I went to a local private University and was referred to three foreign students who happened to be from Saudi Arabia. While inter-viewing them I was told by one that our culture and our values were “ugly” to the Muslim “as if you took a lid off a garbage can and looked in!” The way he said it made me shiver. I didn’t invite two of them to the party even after they complained that American were not friendly and that as students here for the last two years they had never been invited into anyone’s home. If not to the party, I should have invited them to my home. The third did come to the party, cooked a fantastic chicken dinner for the students and is my friend in Salem still.
A Felluca Ride Up The Nile
In Aswan, a felluca, an ancient sailboat of the Nile, is a common means of transport up and down the Nile River. It has a broad canvas sail and the boat itself has a shallow deck upon which are thick cotton covered pads to sit on and watch the dark waters of the Nile slide by in the hot dry desert wind during the day and to sleep on at night. Two gracious Nubian men in flowing jalabayas sailed the boat-one at each end-and cooked for us in a tiny area on a small propane stove.
The first afternoon, the wind became too strong and tangled the sails. Was amazing to see one small, lithe Nubian scoot up the mast to untangle the sail.
Before leaving Aswan, we sailed to nearby Kitchener Island where about 12 Nubian young girls-secondary school students studying to be teachers- surrounded us laughing and talking and asking questions-practicing their English. I love your sweet soft faces I said…oh thank you very much they said laughing. Then “I love you,” one said, probably coming from a lack of vocabulary to be able to say anything else.
A couple years ago I saw a contemporary rendition of the opera “Aida” in which a Nubian princess was captured by the Egyptian army. The music was composed by Elton John and the historical revision sympathetically illustrated the plight of the Nubians. After their lands were submerged under water when the High Dam was built, most Nubians today occupy the lowest paying jobs.
We sailed the Nile with six other people for an incredibly beautiful and langorous two day trip to Edfu. We were joined by a young couple from Milan Italy, another young couple from Paris and two friends-one from the Czeck Republic and the other from Slovakia. The two from Czech and Slovakia had just spent a year and a half in Israel as nannies and were relieved to be out of the country…not because of the danger from the Palestinians but because they didn’t care for the Israelis.
English has truly become the international language. Everyone on the felluca was fluent-the French girl saying that her generation was quite happy with English but that her parents and older sister still resented it.
The first evening over dinner we traded information and honest understandings about the foreign policies of our respective countries. The French girl described her insights into the story of “Chocolat” and the French guy talked about the 35 hour work week and how it has not created more jobs-just means that more work is now done in less time.
The Italian and French couples had a lot in common and were planning to meet again the night we got off the felluca-and I imagine they will remain friends-a wonderful thing that could not have happened a generation ago-the upside of globalism and a common language.
Cultivating Hate In Children
On the same day that Arafat finally condemned the terrorism against Israel, his wife, who lives in Paris, granted an interview with an Arabic-language magazine, Al Majalla, wherein she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation.
My eye caught the following feature article that Mary Kelly, former editor of Egypt Today magazine and who lived in Cairo for 8 years, reported to the Herald Tribune: “…children, still in their school uniforms, were seen laughing and changing as they half-marched, half skipped along the sunny road in Cairo, toting knapsacks and book bags.”
The account continued: “One might have thought it was an ater-school field trip if it were not for the boys in the center displaying a Palestinian flag…In the evenings, Egyptian family members swapped stories of their children participating in such demonstrations. Over dinner at home with one family in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo, Fatma, 10, told me how an older boy at school rallied her classmates on the playground during recess. Their rhyme was addressed to Ala Mubarak, son of President Hosni Mubarak, “We sang ‘Ala, Ala, tell your father the Americans will not help you!”
Unicef has called for an end to the Israeli-palestinian violence for the sake of the children…against a backdrop of rising anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in the Arab world, children are getting powerful messages about who their enemies are. In Egypt, TV is showing virtually nonstop news coverage of the crisis and nationalistic, pro-Palestinian programming. Old footage of Palestinian children being shot and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers roll in slow motion with melodramatic music playing in the background (we saw it on the TV in the hotel)…A political solution…won’t erase these mental images…and America gave the green light, the adults say over and over again.
A UNICEF rep in the West Bank said on CNN that ‘it will be a question of one, two, even three generations.'”
US News From Egypt
News in the International Press
Subjects we have been reading about lately have often covered the European Union, deregulation of the labor market, global economic trends, immigration problems, agricultural pollicy and the issues stemming from the World Trade Organization agreements, market liberalization, the by products of globalization, economic indices and their interpretations, the subtle balances between countries which are being upset by the Mideast dispute, the International Court and the French elections.
Many articles are critical of the States. A piece entitled “The Sole Superpower” stated “Today, there is only one superpower. It may listen to the opinions of its allies but it’s views and decisions are rarely influenced by them…The sole super-power certainly has responsibilities. As for the Europeans, it seems that they will continue, helplessly to bite their lips.”
An op-ed piece questioned the “Bush administration who has appointed a record number of corporate executives to high-level positions, who often regulate or do business with their former employers. Further, that may of the business execs first entered the private sector after previous careers in the Reagan and Bush administrations….Dick Cheney being the quintessential example of what is called crony capitalists or men who live by their connections.” Isn’t this what caused the Asian financial crisis…and why Japan is trying not to fall apart…and we are suprised by ENRON?
Another Washington Post article described the battle between the State Department and the Pentagon regarding how to proceed with the Mid-East dispute and war with Iraq.
A Coptic Christian Guide
In Luxor we did have a tour guide and it made all the difference. We were able to enjoy the sights without being constantly by the touts. A Coptic Christian, he explained that to be a registered tour guide you need four years at Cairo University and that he had two more years in history and languages.
I asked him what the difference was between the Coptic Christians and the Eastern Orthodox. He said the split came because of a differing understanding of the nature of Jesus. One believes that Jesus is both God and man and the other believes Jesus is just God. The way his Pope describes it, he says, is that the sun shines and you can see the light and feel the heat-two different aspects-but it is just one sun.
Laughingnomad 