You Can't Make Mistakes.

Is there anything he can’t do?

Thanks to Michael Fountain for bringing this gem to my attention. It is superb.

What will Obama do?

What would you like Barack Obama to do if he is elected President?

“Please stow all lethal weapons in the overhead compartments before take-off…”

Recently, I went to the Cairo International Airport to pick up my roommate upon her return from the States. The affair was run-of-the-mill in most ways. I caught a cab, asked him to wait for us, and so on. While waiting for her in the corrals meant to keep predatory cabbies and others away from the actual exit doors of passport control in the arrivals hall, I noticed a young man pick his little brother up and perch him on one of the rungs of the corral railing. When he did this, the kid lost his balance a little and, in an attempt to correct, put his arms out wide. In his right hand was a convincing toy pistol.

My jaw must have dropped off my head, because the older brother snatched the gun and jammed it into his jacket, giving me a sheepish smile and shrugging laugh. I laughed out loud. I actually had to walk away so as not to raw attention to the situation any further.

This is just a symptom of something that I have noticed with increasing frequency here. People seem to have no fear of guns—even when they are inappropriately located, or being used inappropriately.

When living in Alexandria, I noticed this phenomenon not a few times. There was one afternoon where I hit the dirt on the sidewalk of the busiest street in the city because I saw a youngish kid in the back seat of a car taking aim out of the window with his toy Glock. Where I come from, you duck when something like that happens. Not in Alexandria though! Everyone else on the street looked at me as though I was having a seizure—unconcerned, but mystified by my sudden change in vertical/horizontal orientation—and continued on their path, unfazed. One woman actually stepped on my jacket and called me humar.

This was very disturbing, to say the least.

Another afternoon in Alexandria, I saw a group of three teenagers near my apartment holding up passing cabs with their toy—I assume—rifle. The cabbies would look momentarily startled, and then laugh riotously along with the kids. In the States, you would be arrested and held as an enemy combatant for five years without charges in an unnamed, secret detention facility: or at least you would be snatched up and roughed up a bit by the local cops. No such response here.

As I continued to wait, now on the other side of the corral, for my roommate’s tardy plane, the kid waved at me with his free hand, revolver dangling in the other. No airport authorities swarmed around, no police. Not even a second glance from anyone. Nada.

Meanwhile, poor bastards all over American airports are being cavity searched for tubes of toothpaste and fingernail clippers, as they not only pose a threat to individual airplanes, but to national security as well. I suppose that this is yet another indicator that though globalization is changing everything everywhere, differences are still glaring.

Welcome to the new world. Please check your nail-clippers at the door and be sure to keep your guns concealed from view.

These are a few of my favorite things

This is my favorite new blog. I was not surprised to see that I do, as a white person, like many of the things listed: just on the first page!

Stuff White People Like

This will be a useful tool for anthropologists of the future to know what the cultural values of white people in the 21st century, as there is very little other cultural artifacts left by white people.

Brilliant.

Would it be so bad?

As we sit here in the Second Cup listening, ironically, to a late-nineties remix of a song entitled “Silence,” I can’t help but muse: “Would actual silence be that bad?”

It’s like there is a disease these days which makes it physically uncomfortable to sit quietly—or speak to each other in a civil way—to the point that we will listen to endless hours of the same terrible music. I thought this same thing last night as I sat at the BCA and listened to Money for Nothing (Dire Straits, 1985) for the fifteenth time of evening. It’s for some new music everywhere in Cairo. I don’t mind listening to Dire Straits once in a while. I don’t mind listening to anything once in a while, but I have low tolerance for listening to the same thing—especially if is is crap—over and over again. Whereas, everyone here—especially the expat—seems to have a high tolerance for such musical assault.

Perhaps I will start a foundation to bring new music to Cairo. I’ll get to that right after I start the “Fund to Build Footbridges over Gameat al-Dawwal al-Arabiya Street.”

Update:

As if to ice the cake, My Humps (Black Eyed Peas, 2005) just came on. Score one for Egypt.

She’s a Reporter Now!

Much in the same spirit of the following video—which we regularly see on one of the satellite channels from Dubai—my dear friend and flatmate in Cairo has recently become a reporter for our old standby hometown newspaper: the Kalamazoo Gazette.

For clarification: the woman in this commercial piece has dandruff, and then gets some Sunsilk shampoo—which cures her of dandruff—after which she suddenly—and mysteriously—becomes a reporter and then interviews famous blonde people. For further clarification: Stacey does not have and has never had dandruff. And anyone who says otherwise is a damn liar.

You can view her recent journalistic debut by following the link below:

Iraqis Grateful for Health-Support by Stacey Pollard

I am currently trying to convince her to be a foreign/local correspondent on this humble blog. That would take some pressure off of me to blog constantly. Then maybe everyone wouldn’t bay for my blood after a month of not blogging. We shall see.

This is for all those die-hard fans

I have no explanation for this really. Anyone else?

Pay special attention to the “Fantasy” section. It’s worth it.

Lazy bastard begs for forgiveness

I have been woeful about updating the blog of late, but I am now back in the swing of things and will be updating more frequently and with more podcasts. I recently had a certain out-of-town visitor to whom I gave my full attention while in-country. It was well worth it.

I promise to be more vigilant now, however, cheers.

While my friend Lesley was here visiting her in-laws in Alexandria, she and her two daughters, and her husbands cousin came to Cairo to go to the souq: Khan al-Khalili.

Khan al-Khalili is actually just the name of a single, very short street. However, a gigantic souq has sprung up in the past 1000 years which now comprises nearly an entire district of the city. It is superb. You can buy absolutely anything there.

We set out this day with a mission to purchase belly-dancing garb for a friend of Lesley’s and, as the photos of Sarah dancing will tell you, we were very successful.

Oh yah, and the Pyramids

A few photos from the Giza plateau near the pyramids. Jeff, Mamoon, and I rented camels for a few hours and hired a guide—Ragab—to take us riding and then get us in the “back door” of the Pyramids site. Something that he insisted was the “Egyptian way.”

It was a great time, even though we did get chased off by the cops, on camel-back. The kid that was minding the camels pulled the reins of mine down so that the camel would lower his head and then somehow scrambled up his neck and threw himself onto the saddle in front of me before inciting the camels to trot away from the cop at a clip.

Fun times.

Whirlwind tour

These are some pictures that Jeff and I took as we wandered around Cairo for a couple of weeks in February. High on my list was the Lehnert and Landrock Bookstore, famous for their photographic depictions of Cairo in the early 20th century. We bought a load of postcards there.

Cairo is a great city to walk around. There is always something interesting to look at. Interesting people to see and talk to. It’s busy though, and full of cars and traffic, noise and pollution—not to mention that someone or another is always trying to sell you something. But hey, that’s the way it is. I wouldn’t love it so much if it were any other way.