Not So Much

Well, I haven't really written much in a while, but I hope you understand. Not much travelling been going on lately. I guess the travel-writing thing didn't work out so much...

Puerto Vallarta

I just got back from my sister's wedding in Puerto Vallarta a few weeks ago and was surprised at how touristy it was. Beautiful, charming, artsy, but mostly for the tourists. More later. I should be working.

All I Need Is the Air That I Breathe

For the past two weeks, it's been hard for me to breathe in Cairo. Literally. The smog is so bad here that when combined with the hot weather and sand and other atmospheric things I don't really know about, the air quality is horrible. It's always polluted, but it's been worse this month. I wake up every morning with puffy eyes and a cough that lingers throughout the day. The pollution is so bad that sometimes you can't even see from one Giza pyramid to the other (the 3 pyramids are a short walking distance from each other and there's nothing else in between them.) It's crazy!

In spite of all of this, and the wicked heat, Cairo is also beautiful. And sometimes, when you're on the Nile, in the middle of the city, things are peaceful and quiet and breezy and calm. Everything is still and you can ponder the things you only do in stillness.

You can watch the gorgeous bright colors of the sunset in a sand and smog-filled sky and find beauty in it. I guess you could say that about the city itself. And like many others before me have said, it's a city that calls you back time and time again. I haven't left yet, but I already know I'll be back. Many, many, many more times. To catch another smoggy, sandy breathtaking sunset. Literally.

Scratch That

I'm not sure about everybody else, but I'm a bit clumsy. It's not uncommon for me to cut a hand or foot or arm or leg on something random. Now, this in and of itself is nothing particularly new or exciting and has little to do with Egypt except for the fact that I've realized how slowly these scrapes and cuts heal here. I'm not sure if it's some kind of vitamin or nutrient that I'm missing here, because it's dirty here or if it's something else. Whatever it is, I'm not the only to suffer from it. In order to speed up, or even encourage any healing at all, I have to take extra special care to rinse my cut with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide after I shower and before I go to bed. Even then, it takes a while and I have to make extra sure that I keep Band-Aids and Neosporin on it. Not that you can find Neosporin or Hydrogen Peroxide here...)

Actually, I suspect that it's the water. The water from the tap comes from the Nile and is not very clean. My parents and I not only don't drink water from the tap, we don't even brush our teeth with it. I know it goes through some kind of chemical processing and/or cleaning because I can smell it every time I shower. The water smells like chemicals and chlorine. Like some kind of cleaner's getting sprinkled onto me whenever I clean myself. This crazy chlorine smell. I think I'm actually going to miss it when I leave here. It's just one of those smells that is so distinct that it reminds you of a particular time and place. This smell will always remind me of Cairo and of my parents apartment.

The Land of 60 Jews

I have it on the authority of Inji, our tour guide, that there are only sixty Jewish people in the whole of Cairo. (It might have even been all of Egypt.) That's right. Sixty Jewish people. It's not the first time I've heard this since I've been here. My dad said the same thing, but I thought he had been spreading some urban myth that he'd heard thrown around his work. But Inji is a trained tour guide. She went to school for four years learning Egyptian and World History, Religion, and many languages to do what she does. She had to take an exam to get her certification and has to renew it every five years. She knows what she's talking about.

Even hearing it from her, I thought it was bullshit. But I guess if you're Jewish, unless you're the Israeli Ambassador or his staff, you're probably not going to want to live here. At the very least, you probably won't admit you're Jewish to many people. And I don't think there are any synagogues that are functioning anymore. Egypt has had an established, if not fragile, peace with Israel for a while now. At least to the extent that the rest of the Arab nations halted trade with Egypt at some point over their objections. That said, Egypt is growing more and more conservatively Muslim every year; and I could imagine that it could be really dangerous to go to a synagogue here.

The Israeli Ambassador is just down the street from where I live, but the street leading up to it is barricaded with armed Egyptian guards on all sides. The synagogue is also blocked off. This Arab/Israeli tension is something all of us know about. We've seen the video clips of bomb sites and fighting and war torn streets. But it seems like something far away. Like if you just choose not to visit Israel or Gaza or the closely surrounding areas, it doesn't directly affect you and you'll be safe. It's only the metal detector you go through before you can go inside the 1st Synagogue in Cairo, (and the comment Inji made about how dangerous it is for the people who live so close to it) that reminds you of how close you really are to everything.

And it's not just the synagogues and Israeli Ambassador. Egyptian police and security check your trunk and run bomb detectors under the car before you enter any big shopping mall or hotel where tourists would go. And there are metal detectors before you enter some of the hotels and tourist attractions, and even high school graduations at the pyramids. I've heard that they won't let cars drive up to the front of hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, a Red Sea resort town on the Sinai where a bomb exploded last year. It's something that goes on in the background and really doesn't interfere with everyday life. But it's there. Reminding everyone that these people aren't fucking around.

Bricks and Stones

Cairo is a growing city and so, there's a lot of construction. It seems that as big and full as the city is, there's always room to put up more buildings. Construction's a bit different than I've seen in other places. There's no building with wooden beams and sheet rock here. No nails or plywood. Nothing that crumbles or molds in the first bit of flood. In Cairo, in the middle of the desert, they build with brick and sand and cement and metal. Even apartments are built this way. Nothing shoots up overnight, like the insta-partments I've seen in Austin. There's no building that's going to be rushed to make a faster profit. Egypt is somewhat disorganized and this is a factor in the slower way of building, but it also hints at something more. These buildings are made to last. It makes sense that in an ancient city with ruins thousands of years old, the notion of being only a small part of a greater whole, a tiny speck in an entire universe of time would be a natural way of being. That things are built with the understanding that far after we are gone, generations after us, will be people that are still here; these buildings will be used again and again until they crumble to the ground. When I first set foot in St. Paul's Cathedral in London in 2000, I felt this. And most other parts of Europe. This feeling of being connected to a deep, rich history that we are all a part of. It's not something I think that much about in the U.S. Our buildings are young and built without much thought for the future, it seems to me. It's easy to forget about the rest of time and the world and other people with nothing to remind us. There's no way to forget it here.

My Space Invaders

After having changed my MySpace location to Cairo, Egypt less than a week ago, I've decided to change it back to living in Texas. I have gotten more friend requests from single men (or boys) living in Cairo than I ever thought possible and it's getting annoying. Funny and very telling of the men here, I think, but mostly annoying and starting to piss me off. Anyway, it's not like all Egyptian men are these creepy, annoying and gross little perverts. And there actually are some Egyptian women that have boyfriends and don't cover their hair. (They're probably upper middle class from what I can tell, though...) And I'm sure some of these MySpacer's are just looking to make friends, but I'm very suspicious. I just can't help it! Anyway, I didn't start this blog just to bitch about Egyptian men. It's pretty easy to do, though.