Evening in Alexandria

The Austrians and the pension owner, whom we will call "Hossein," delayed their trip to the duty-free shop to take me to my room. I had already agreed to take it sight unseen, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it appeared to be clean enough. On the second night, I found a human toenail (the whole thing, not just a clipping) embedded in the blanket, so my first impression may not have been correct. I did at least recognize right away that the toilet down the hall was filthy beyond any further mentioning, but that's about par for an Egyptian pension. Paying the equivalent of a few dollars for a room, I had no right to expect anything more.

Safely settled, I tagged along to the duty-free shop. The poor Austrians weren't at all sure why they were going to the shop in the first place. They had been told that the trip was somehow related to Hossein's sister's wedding, but had no idea how, or what role they could play. Twenty minutes later, we found ourselves on the ground floor of a store selling heavy appliances. As someone for whom "duty-free" is synonymous with inexpensive alcohol, I was a little disappointed. At least, that is, until I was escorted upstairs where I found a full range of beer, wine and spirits. And the prices! A bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label for less than $10 seemed to good to be true. A closer inspection of the label confirmed that it was. Too many glasses of "John Waler" makes a man go blind.

Hossein mentioned that he might want to add a thing or two to the tab. Subsidized by the Austrians' freshly issued entry visas, which allowed them to make duty-free purchases, he added nine cartons of cigarettes, eight bottles of whisky and six bottles of vodka. As soon as we walked out, he started distributing all this treasure to a crowd of men that had gathered around the shop. What Hossein's relationship to these guys was I have no idea, but I started to suspect that this might not be wedding-related shopping - or if it was, I wanted an invitation. I bought six cans of Sakara Gold because I wanted to get in on the illicit action. Unfortunately, at LE 6.5 each, the beer was no cheaper at the duty-free shop than it was anywhere else in town. My black market venture was a failure, but I could at least drink my inventory.

The Austrians and I then went out for a shawarma and a wander. I usually don't hang out with strangers - even among my friends there are only a handful of people that can stand to travel with me. There are advantages to being friendly though, in that fellow travelers may have some local knowledge that you don't, and they might lead you to try something you'd never otherwise consider. The other thing is that when you're with other people you can get ice cream. I always want ice cream, but I also think that there's nothing more creepy than a single man in his early thirties eating an ice cream cone while surrounded by children. You look like a sex offender fishing for victims.

The Austrians fit squarely into the "making me do things I wouldn't normally do" category. We walked over to the beautiful 18th century Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi mosque (would do) where we found a children's carnival (wouldn't do). The carnival spread over the streets and alleys directly to the east of the mosque and featured hand-powered rides, along with smoked yams: the Egyptian equivalent of corn dogs and cotton candy. Among the merry-go-rounds and the swings, we spotted an ancient bumper car installation. Andrea, the female half of the Austrians, was keen to try them out, and I have a hard spot in my heart that loves bumper cars, so I was game too. I chose a car with a tortoise painted on the front, which wrongly suggested both that my car was slow and that it had a hard outer shell capable of protecting the soft, vulnerable body inside. The governors seem to have been removed from the cars, because so long as you kept your foot on the pedal, you went faster. The only thing that could stop your continuous acceleration was smashing into the wall or another car. This wasn't advisable because the "bumpers" on these brightly colored death traps had long since worn away. "Bumper cars" was a misnomer for things that were really nothing other than small cars without seatbelts, and in this ride, as in real life, accidents hurt. I was done being aggressive after a couple teeth-shattering head-on collisions and the name of the game became avoidance and preservation. This was also smart because, other than the Austrians, the other drivers were all part of the under-ten set, and their parents didn't look like the type of people who were going to forgive if I knocked their kid onto the track.

Back at the apartment, we divvied up my six beers and watched a David Carradine movie that was maybe the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. I just went to IMDB to find the title, but it looks like Carradine was in so many bad movies over the years that we may never be able to single out which of them this was. Hossein, who hated the movie more than I did but wouldn't change the channel, refused to accept an entire beer for himself. He instead had a little tea glass which he would clink against your can whenever he needed a top-up. In return for the beer, he shared his sheesha. I'm not a big smoker, but waterpipes really are a gentle way to enjoy tobacco. "Gentle" was not the Hossein way, unfortunately. At one point, pretending like he wanted me to watch how to use a sheesha, he grabbed my nose and when I gasped for air (and because I was sort of shocked), he blew an enormous puff of smoke into my mouth. This did not sit well with me in any sense of the phrase, especially since almost all the smoke had gone into my stomach. About twenty second later, I kind of got a little bit sick on the floor, spoiling the party for everyone.

As I lay in bed, listening to Hossein cough and wheeze in the next room well into the next morning, I made a mental note to conduct a little research on tuberculosis transmission. I also started to think of how best to tell Ms. C that there was a very strong chance that I was going to die of consumption. I ultimately decided that it would be best to casually mention it in a blog post.

From Cairo to Alexandria

Ramses train station is chaotic, and the ticketing system seems unnecessarily complicated. There are separate ticket lines regimented by type of train, final destination, passenger nationality, and ticket class desired. The signs telling you which line is correct are exclusively in Arabic, including the numbers. It took all of my months of language training to find the correct line. It took that same training to understand that I had not actually found the correct line. Finally, it took away all of my pride to have to be led to the correct line by a patient station attendant.

Once there, I was reminded that Cairenes don't queue, they just rush. Even worse, you haven't necessarily won even after muscling your way to the ticket agent. You can be right in the middle of a transaction - actually in the process of handing over your money - and still your position isn't secure. People will still try to get ahead of you, either by insinuation or by brute force. Once you've managed to buy your ticket and make it to your seat, though, the trip to Alexandria is actually pleasant enough. Trains run regularly and usually take only between two-and-a-half and three hours. First class tickets are cheap - depending on whether you get the Turbini (LE 50) which makes one stop, or the Francese (LE 35), which makes quite a few more. I took the Turbini out and the Francese return, not by design, but because in each case that was the next thing leaving that had available seats. I also wanted one of the first class cabins which are comfortable and not much more expensive than the fairly miserable third class seats. Only a few liberal arts majors would suffer through sitting in the third class carriages and for reasons that they will articulate to you poorly.

The train stopped in Tanta, about half-way between Cairo and Alexandria, where a handful of vendors selling snacks and newspapers boarded. I had no apropriate snack money, having used the last of my reasonabe-sized currency to pay for a taxi to the train station. The vendors were nonetheless doing well with my fellow passengers. Too well, in fact, because they had only made their way half-way down the carriage when the train begin to slowly pull out of the station. Still, they continued to trade. Every additional purchase raised my blood pressure. "Get off the train!" I thought at them, "You're going to get stuck on the train!" As we gathered speed, all of them hopped off - except one, who was stuck selling sweets to a little old thing. My jaw tensed in sympathy as memories of my nine years of hard labor at Albertson's Supermarket begin to surface. I watched this little old crone insist on clawing exact change out of her bag. Our man did not have time for this. "This can't end well," I realized, "he's going to be stuck on board all the way to Alexandria." The carriage conductor wasn't going to let that happen, however, and scowled at him from next to an open carriage door, through which the landscape could be seen zipping by at an alarming speed. The nasty old lady finally passes over her money and our man makes a bolt for it. I can hardly watch. I already realize before it happens that he's going to die. He jumps from the train... he hits the ground... and nothing! He jogs it off. He doesn't even lose anything from his basket. I am ecstatic! I am breathless with excitement! I have just witnessed unbelievable acrobatics! Laws of physics have been broken! Nobody else seems to care. I realize that this same scene probably repeats itself on every hourly train that passes through Tanta.

Alexandria is freezing when I arrive. I haven't prepared for this at all and am shivering as I walk down the platform. A railway worker sees this and does what I hope was a really exaggerated version of my shivering.

"Bard!" I say. Which might mean "cold!"

"Your Arabic is very good!" he replies.

Yes, I start to think to myself, yes it is.

Alexandria may have been freezing, but the northerly winds had cleared the sky of pollution. There was a contrast between the clouds and the sky that simply doesn't exist in Cairo. I took a picture as proof, but with my cell phone instead of my adult camera. Members of my family have commented on the fact that I like to take travel photos. It's true, I do. Unfortunately, I had left my lovely Canon G10 in Cairo. My first trip out of Cairo and I'm snapping photos with a primitive cell phone camera. Gutted.

I was also struggling to find the hotel at which I had hoped to stay. Street names change as quickly as the political climate in Egypt, so it's very easy to find yourself with an outdated map. Interestingly, the streets whose names have so often changed are themselves often ancient. For example, the hotel I was looking for was just off the Sharia Nabi Daniel, which is believed to be only the most recent iteration of one of the two primary streets plotted by the architects of Alexander the Great's eponymous city. Whether the fault of my map or my navigation, I wasn't finding what I was looking for and I hate not knowing where I'm going. Or rather, I hate looking like I don't know where I'm going, mostly because the touts are a lot harder to dodge if you're genuinely confused and you show it. I did manage to shake off one guy who was trying to lure me into a pension by confidently walking off in the opposite direction. After another fruitless half-hour of combing the streets where my hotel should be, I finally decided that I'd just stay anywhere with a bed. Moments later, I ran into the same tout - actually the owner of a pension - as he dragged a young Austrian couple who were staying with him to the duty free shop. I recognized the two from the train (two of maybe six Europeans on a train of hundreds) and they let me know that the place would do, so I took a room. Now I would have to live with the embarrassment of accepting the help of someone I had taken pains to avoid only an hour before - circumstances this guy was going to go out of his way to remind me of several more times before the night is over.

My Weekend Starts on Thursday

The first of eight weeks of class is now over and I thought I'd write quickly about my fellow students. There's not a great deal to say about them as a group, as it's not easy to characterize so diverse a student body. I can that they're nearly all very young - particularly a pack of semester-abroad students from the UK who, based on my admittedly unscientific "acne dating" technique, can't be any older than sixteen. There are a few students my age, but not many. Yesterday we practiced numbers by giving the year of our birth. Other than the instructor, I was the only person in the room to give a date before 1980. That I would be sharing a classroom with someone born in the year 2000 makes me a little sick, and not only because alfeen is so much easier to say than alf-tus9umeiyya-taminniyya-wee-sab9een.

The Americans here are a very diverse group - from aid workers to missionaries to college students to a bunch of military types. As is usually the case given our schizophrenic culture, the most obnoxious and the most likable people in the program are American. I've also noticed that you'll only ever find Americans wearing the keffiyeh and that there appears to be an inverse correlation between feeling the need to parade around in a keffiyeh and the ability to successfully learn the Arabic language. I have a few theories as to why that is, but am waiting on a few more data points to come in before I release anything.

I'm surprised by the lack of New Zealanders and Australians. In most travel scenarios, you can't find a ten-bed mixed hostel without them, but I haven't seen a single one in three months. I imagine it's a combination of expense and practicality - relative to Chinese or Indonesian, there's probably just not that much emphasis placed on Arabic, and I don't suppose you're likely to make the sort of investment necessary to acquire a language like Arabic without some sort of return. This doesn't mean that my apartment is completely without kiwi charm, however. The school has inexplicably decorated my walls with pictures of New Zealand's south island. When the chaos outside seems like too much, I can turn to shots of Lake Wakatipu and the Franz Josef glacier and dream of world without either cars or their horns. I see Ms. Chadha's hand in this.

The rest of the student body is your usual mix of Europeans, with an especially good showing from the Norweigans and Swedes, really far more than makes sense unless it has something to do with escaping their miserable weather? I'd like to ask one of them to explain to me the relationship between Scandinavians and chewing Tobacco. In almost everything that really matters, like healthcare, education, and blonde hair, the Scandinavians lead the world, but I've met a fair number of Swedish and Norwegian snus junkies over the years. I can't say that I know anyone at home who touches the stuff.

Speaking of nicotine addictions, one of the guys I know here has been trying to quit smoking (in Egypt? really?). He tells me he went to the local pharmacy to ask for a nicotine patch. The pharmacist literally had no concept of what he was asking for. He just couldn't comprehend why anyone would want or need to receive nicotine through a patch - "why don't you just smoke cigarettes?" he asks. My advice to the student was that he forget the nicotine and instead get hooked on the over-the-counter muscle relaxants that are so widely available here. These including a choice between rest-of-the-world Valium and, terrifyingly, something called "Egyptian Valium." I think I'll limit my pharmaceutical intake to benadryl and DEET.

So there we are. I'm taking leave of my fellow students tomorrow and heading up to Alexandria for the weekend - or I guess I should say "down" to Alexandria. Relative direction isn't measured here in terms of north or south, but by the direction of the Nile's flow, so I guess I'm actually "going down north." I really don't have a plan as to what I'll do, where I'll stay or for how long, but I'm looking forward to it.

Food: Falafel

Ms. Chadha has often told me how ridiculous she thinks it is that we have one dollar bills in the U.S. "Why do you have these silly paper notes when coins are so much moe convenient and everyone else in the world is happy to use them?" she complains. Putting aside Ms. C's willful ignorance of the workings of the strip-club economy, it's a good question. I'm going to guess it has something to do with our obsessive tipping culture, but really I don't have any idea. I do know that she would be furious at the twenty-five piastre note I received with my change today at the supermarket. At today's rates, this note is exchangeable for $0.045, or just under a nickel.

That may not seem like a lot of money, but twenty-five piastres takes you one-quarter of the way to buying a delicious falafel sandwich from the little bodega just around the corner from my school. Egyptian falafel, which you can also call ta9miyya if you're able to make the gagging sound that the "9" in that word represents, is served in a delicious soft bread called "eish," along with salad and a feta-like cheese whose name I can't remember. My lunch today of two very filling falafel sandwiches, cost EGP 2, or about $0.40 cents. Adding french fries to the mix costs fifty piastres more. In my short list of places where I could potentially afford to live without ever working again, Egypt has just made a strong debut.

The school has a cafeteria on the floor just beneath my apartment, so I don't have to travel far for food. Unfortunately, the creations coming out of the cafeteria, while well-meaning, are too avant garde for me. Yesterday's breakfast options included a new twist on an old favorite - the club sandwich. The first layer was raw tuna, topped by a single slice of Kraft swiss cheese. The second layer was barbecue chicken. It was at least beautifully presented, which may explain why it was so expensive, costing the equivalent of 25 falafels!

I have a feeling that language schools in general, and Arabic language schools in particular, make a lot of their money by providing food and shelter to a nervous student population unwilling or unable to find these things on their own. It's really the only way they could possibly get away with charging such huge mark-ups on everything. In Morocco, the school charged more than twice as much to go to the airport as it cost to hail a cab in the street. Food was even worse, costing three to four times its street equivalent. I can't believe that laziness alone explains the premium I'm seeing here. Maybe there's a research paper in my future - some sort of comparison of service premiums across countries cross-correlated to a series of public safety metrics. More likely, the future holds only more falafel.

Nisba Adjectives - Round Four

First day of class is over and I'm already starting to wonder whether I'm ready to study FusHa and Ameyya at the same time. Arabic is hard enough without trying to remember which word is Egyptian and which is classical. This school has also adopted a more formal register of FusHa than I've studied previously - apparently learning case endings in the first class. Case endings, what?!

Also, for some reason, I've had to re-learn nisba adjectives three or four times now. A "nisba" adjective is a proper noun that has been converted into an adjective, e.g., "Egypt" to "Egyptian" or "Sweden" to "Swedish." It's a very simple process in Arabic and I'm not sure why it has been revisited so often in my classes. We reviewed them again today, but this time the instructor had found a set of flashcards illustrated with the most appalling racial and culture stereotypes I've ever seen (in a school setting, anyway). If you want to know the Egyptian attitude towards the Sudanese, look no further than the crude caricature of the "Sudaniyya" we saw today. The drawing of a Japanese man looked like a piece of World War II propaganda. I was glad that we didn't learn the nisba adjective for Isreali, because it almost certainly would have been a rat with a hooked nose greedily rubbing its paws together before he drinks the blood of a gentile baby. Shocking stuff.

Today's non-Arabic task is to find a supermarket. I've successfully collected enough small bills to keep me in shawarma through the rest of the month, so no need for groceries, but I'm in desperate need of mosquito repellent. You can tell which side of my face I slept on last night because it's the only bit not covered in welts. Thank goodness it's not Ms. Chadha in my place - she doesn't take well to mozzie bites.

I just met my new neighbor. He's Austrian and tells me that he's from just outside Vienna, which, I am told, is the capital of his country. I said I was familiar with Vienna and he seemed delighted: "oh, you know it?!" Either he's being very modest or the American reputation for ignorance of geography precedes us.