You Can't Make Mistakes.

God’s Country.

A couple of friends and I decided that it would be a good idea to get out of Cairo and breathe some clean air, swim in the sea and relax at the beach. So, we got a car, loaded up the cooler and drove across Sinai to a little coastal town called Nuweiba and chilled on the beach for a few days.

Driving through Sinai definitely gives one a sense of why nomadic folks often went there to talk to their god. It makes one feel small and alone. I can’t imagine taking the same journey on foot or camel-back. I got to drive back as well, which was pretty superb. I am most certainly in love with driving through the desert.

It was an absolute blast. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

Liberation Theology for the 21st Century

I caught this article from the Christian Science monitor this morning on the trepidation of Arab states over reacting to the current situation in Iran. They cited the “voice of a disenfranchised [Iranian] people” as the mechanism for the current political and social unrest and that this is the biggest political crisis facing Iran since the 1979 revolution.*

I have been reading a great deal of late about the 1979 Iranian revolution and have begun to understand that the socially and economically disenfranchised in 1970s Iran were not actually active participants in the revolution, nor did they derive any particular benefit from it. Neither the poor nor the merchant class were particularly involved in the rise of the Khomeini movement. It was a revolution apparently driven by an increasingly religiously motivated middle-class and the urban intellectual class which drove the development of an opposition to the Shah. That there was little involvement on the part of the rural poor is quite surprising considering that the themes employed in the revolutionary rhetoric on the part of Khomeini and his supporters was seemingly socialism wrapped up in Islamic topoi or terminology.

In other words, the revolutionaries of 1970s Iran employed a specifically crafted rhetorical framework based on sort of liberation theology in order to galvanize certain parts of the population and pulled support from the most unlikely sectors of Iranian society, all the while setting the stage for continuing the disenfranchisement of the already disenfranchised. Many of the secular intellectual socialists and Marxists went up against the wall when Khomeini’s revolutionaries seized control, many succumbed to the pressure being exerted around them and conformed to the newly political and religiously-mapped social environment around them.

It would seem that all of the seeds of disenfranchisement sewn by the 1979 revolution are now coming to fruition. The intellectual class is no longer happy to be subjugated, the poor are fighting back, not in line with the religious elite who are waiving the liberation-theology around—still, and again—but against them. In 1979 it was that same—then very young—urban middle class who were becoming more religious who built the revolutionary movement. They made Kohmeini into a a figurehead, and he tacitly accepted the role allowing them to drive the revolution forward.

The funny—or maybe “horrifying” is a better word—thing about revolutions, and revolutionaries, is that they cease to function as a revolution the moment they are no longer the opposition. That is unless there is a political mechanism established at the same time for limiting the authority of the revolutionary leaders. This was never the case in Iran. Indeed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had to die before his position as the leader of the revolution—and therefore the Iranian government after the revolution—would be questioned. After his death he was replaced by another revolutionary leader who had become entrenched in the “new” political system in Iran in the 1980s.

Now that “revolution” is being called into question, mostly because it is no longer a revolution. Just as Castro’s revolution lost its meaning the moment that he took power in Cuba and Che Guevarra—the real revolutionary—went on his way, as is the preferred role of the true revolutionary. How to ensure then that the revolutionaries live up to the ideals of the revolution and not their own desires for power? How to keep the bitterness of their previous disenfranchisement from their policy and administration and marginalizing those that they once sought to free from disenfranchisement?

I am loathe to cite the American political system as a standard for post-revolutionary political development—and indeed it has its problems, not least of which is the unabashed power-squabbles of our present party-system—but it worked. When the first Americans called for the revolutionary leaders to retain their power, they stepped aside and had an election. The established a set of rules, the interpretation of which has changed over time, but which are still the rules, nonetheless. Those rules, for better or for worse, continue to keep the political system as fair as we can make it. There is still power-grabbing.

There is still lying, cheating, and stealing. Indeed, more than a few of us have been concerned that the administrative regime of President Bush and his cronies would have a deep effect on the way business was done after they left office. It seems, though, that this is not the case. We shall see, but it seems that we are moving back to normal after years of opacity and circumvention of the Constitution to protect the interests of the few at all possible costs.

Perhaps another revolution in Iran is what is called for. Perhaps not. Perhaps the present regime is learning something from the political strife that is now boiling throughout Iran. Likely not. If there is another revolution, it cannot continue as normal. It has to live up to the ideals which galvanize and excite it in the first place rather than simply serving the interests of those who do the exciting.

Khomeini’s liberation theology still applies in Iran, possibly now more than it did before. The present regime had better hope that the people never get their hands on copies of his book, Islamic Government as they would find themselves out the door in very short order. The principles which are outlined therein are a far sight more fair and reasonable than those under which the present regime operates.

For more information about the Iranian political system and the 1979 revolution, I suggest the following:

• Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam Khomeini by Hamid Algar.
• Khomenism: Essays on the Islamic Republic by Evrand Abrahamian.
• The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Ajromand.
• Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. Or for the more visually inclined, the film version.

———

* In solidarity with that voice, the background of this blog is now a picture of Naqsh-e Jahan Square in breathtaking Isfahan.

Itchy and Scratchy

I came down with a rather bad case of poison ivy last week. I was absentmindedly pulling weeds and likely picked it up then since I wasn’t wearing any gloves, which is abnormal.

In any case, I usually don’t have any problem with it. The point of contact is itchy for a few days, I put calamine on it, it goes away. This time is totally different.

I have had it since last week and it has been spreading. I think that this occurs while I am sleeping so I am reduced to sleeping in a burqa to keep myself from making contact with my own skin.

The funniest part about this experience, though, is the advice that I have found for getting rid of it.

I was, against my better judgment, trolling Google last night looking for remedies. I found the usual sort: calamine, steroid shots, vitamins, etc.

Then I found a treasure trove of insanity. There were recommendations that poison ivy victims use everything from hair dryers to cool whip to saran wrap on their poison ivy. They went something like this:

“I had poison ivy a few years ago, and it was so bad and nothing worked so in desperation I mixed together a paste of bleach, oatmeal, furniture polish, and baking soda. Then I spread the mixture on my poison ivy and wrapped it with saran wrap for five hours. Then I removed the saran wrap and used the hair dryer to dry the mixture into something just shy of concrete and then sanded it and the rash off my skin with a belt-sander. I never got poison ivy again.” – Ralph, Oklahoma, 2001

“When we were little, and got poison ivy from playing outside in the woods, my grandma would draw us a really hot bath, as hot as she could get it. Then, she would pour kettles of boiling black tea in it and tell us to get in. It scalded something terrible, but when our skin finally healed from being scalded, the poison ivy was gone too!” – Sally, New Jersey, 1997

“I get poison ivy every summer because my cats play outside and then come in and I pet them and end up with it all over my hands and neck. Every summer! I don’t know, I just love my cats! So, now I take 8000mg of vitamin c and 10000mg of zinc and wash it down with a tea made of poison ivy leaves, cat hair, and acetone. It works like a charm! I have to carry my liver around in a bag from all the vitamins, but I haven’t had poison ivy in 10 years!” – Gertrude, Idaho, 2006

The moral of the story: don’t google your symptoms, or about any sort of home remedy unless you want to be amused. People are crazy! For now, I am sticking with the way that has worked for me in the past, that my grandma recommended to me one time: cover my entire body in a paste made of baking soda, cut a clove of garlic in half, put one half in my mouth and bury the other half in the yard where the poison ivy is, do a little dance, and take a hot shower, then a cold shower, then a hot shower, then a cold shower, then a hot shower and then dry myself off with a hair dryer with a diffuser attachment.

Then I am going to judiciously apply calamine and aveeno, remember to take my vitamins and hope it goes away by the end of the week.

Wear gloves and long sleeves folks.

Well, I’m shocked.

This article in the Washington Times week takes a whimsical look at a new piece of technology which is of interest to our very own Department of Homeland Security.

Briefly, this device would replace the boarding pass with a simple bracelet worn around the wrist, including the following:

1. Your personal information
2. GPS capability to track your movement and the movement of your luggage throughout your flight.
3. A high voltage shock device to shock the wearer into immobilized submission, should it be necessary.

Seriously. Look into it.

Don’t forget to check out the video.

Look into it and then write your congressman, your dog-catcher and any other public official you can think of.

I for one would rather die in a fiery plane crash than slapped with a shock collar every time I get on an airplane. Terrifying. Looks like I will have to start looking more seriously into transport on freight ships for overseas travel.

Hopefully DHS is reading this and bumps me up on the list.

Any thoughts?

[Update: This made the Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me news quiz this weekend. 12. July 2008]

Eleven score and twelve years ago brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

After that, some things went terribly wrong. But really, is it the first time that we had tried and failed a little. No. We got through most of the worst bits and things seemed to work out alright.

Today we’re still limping along, economy in shambles, war-torn, demoralized. No matter! Behold our pluck! We still celebrate the advent of this great nation by hurling explosives skyward, searing the flesh of animals, and drinking vast oceans of beer until the urge to lie down and groan with bloated discomfiture takes us. That, after all, is the American way.

Keep hurling Americans. Happy Independence Day.

This sci-fi is fortified with extra “fi” and low in “sci”

I read this article on Slashdot and started thinking.

Never good.

The idea is that climate changes on Mars happened more recently than we previously thought. Maybe our Sun used to really kick out the jams and Mars was warmer. As the Sun lost some steam over 3 or 4 billion years, Mars cooled, glaciers form, then recede. Canals and trenches, etc are created in the process. Atmosphere changes. Suddenly, nothing more than a frozen little rock floating around the Sun.

In the mean time, the very, very hot Earth next door has also started to cool and settle down. Volcanic activity is down, rainfall is up. It is becoming more habitable.

In the mean time, Venus next door is still rocking and rolling with the greenhouse gases. Hot and smoky: no fun for a vacation.

Let us introduce a race of intelligent beings into the mix. They are hanging out on the homeland, doing their thing. Then there occurs what is called an Extinction Level Event. This may have been caused by a weapon of some kind which the folks decided to test or use against one another some sunny afternoon, or an meteor. Who can say? It kicks up the dust. The planet cools, the Sun is cooling anyway, freezing, glaciers, we’ve heard it all before.

These guys have very little time to get out of Dodge, but they have the technology. They gather together a group, lie to the rest—who are, by all accounts, totally screwed—by telling them that they will come back for them, and blast off.

They head for the nearest safe-looking haven and land on, that’s right, Earth.

Perhaps that is where we are now. We’re the Martians. Our new digs aren’t so new anymore. We’re approaching critical population mass, Earth is warming up.

Do we need to think about calling up Two-Men-and-a-Spaceship and heading for Venus? If so, be sure to make your reservations early.

There are so few good ones left.

To celebrate my recent return to the land of my birth, I have compiled a list of American heroes. Now, these are not your typical heroes—firefighters/police/soldiers have all had their day in the sun. Nor are they the fictitious heroes of my comic book youth with their super-powers, good-intentions, and very efficient spandex pants. No, these are the little guys.

The American Editor

This guy is going around with a felt-tip and actually making edits to poorly spelled, worded, and punctuated signs and t-shirts. I want a correctly-spelled and punctuated t-shirt with his emblem on it. Screw Superman.

Here is his website: www.apostropheabuse.com

Revivers of the Classics

Americans who get out those dusty volumes of Vergil, Catullus, Cicero, et al. and breathe new life into the stories are heroic. It takes years to learn to read Latin or Greek, and since there is no purpose for it other than having done it—I have a BA in Latin, I know something about this feeling—every act they commit is an act of love. Bless them and their yellowed, dog-eared pages; their prose and verse.

Wow. I almost got choked up over that. Weird.

Nerds

Nerds of all variety, shape and size are inestimably heroic. Without them we wouldn’t have; math, computers, zombies, physics, blogging, comic books, Facebook, science fiction, Mystery Science Theater, science or Dungeons and Dragons. They contribute so positively to the world and go always unrewarded—Nay! Punished!—for their nerdery.

Keep nerding guys and girls. Don’t be put off by the nay-saying of others.

I know that you might be thinking: “But nerds don’t have to be American, do they?” No, of course not. But we have amenities that pave the way for such advanced nerdery that it cannot be found elsewhere: free and ready access to internet, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly (for unending sessions of Dungeons and Dragons), coffee, and beer—depending on the time of day. So, there is a great deal of incentive for being a nerd in the States.

Anyway, those are my heroes this week. I’m sure there are more that I am forgetting, but mostly I am just glad to be back home. Not because I hated where I have been, but because of what living in Egypt has taught me about where I am from.

So, I will leave you with a question—one that my roommate left me with a few weeks ago: What did you do to be privileged enough to be born an American? And, how are you utilizing or taking advantage of that privilege in your life and what you do?

Okay, that did choke me up.

Nightmare night

Since you last heard from me, I have been lost in the bellies of various airplanes and then was delivered into the hungry maw of homeland security.extra It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Our flight out of Heathrow was delayed, which I somehow knew instinctively. Something always has to go wrong at Heathrow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Heathrow. What I wasn’t banking on, though, was “scheduled maintenance” which would delay us for 3 and a half hours.

Now, I would think that if you were going to schedule maintenance on a plane, you would schedule it for a time when said plane wasn’t about to taxi. This is not how it is done, however. Once we all boarded the flight, it was really quite pleasant. There was really no one on the plane: it was mostly empty, which meant that each passenger got at least two seats and loads of leg-room. Sweet. The crew was funny too. They didn’t give a shit since there were so few of us, so it was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep finally.

When we arrived at Dulles, however, it was a different story entirely.

We were first ushered onto the weird Dulles airport shuttle thing. It’s like a really uncomfortable waiting room, with tightly packed seats, except that the whole thing moves and changes levels depending on where it is and where it needs to go. It is a creepy prelude to the nightmare that Homeland Security/Customs and Border Patrol will then inflict.

You can imagine that I was really looking forward to the body cavity searches that I would be receiving, having just lived in North Africa for 8 months. I have to say, they took it easy on me. I think that the guy who questioned me was a rookie though, he didn’t really know what to ask and just seemed kind of nervous.

I did get extra-special service though—not the ultra-special, wait in a room for hours and hours and then be body-cavity searched version though. They just wrote in huge letters all over my form and then sent me off to a special line with all of the Latinos, Arabs, and anyone else who was brown. I was the only white guy. It was nice. Made me feel at home again, like in Cairo.

So I get to the front of the line finally and the guy that got stuck with me was alright. He was a little green, but friendly—and thorough. He aksed me question after question about my program, my teachers, how I met my tutors. My favorite was when he caught a glance of the load of Quranic studies books and asked me if any of my studies were of a religious. He was, of course, hoping that I would slip up and admit to having been drafted into the ranks of some extremist group.

I haven’t, by the way.

I said “Yes, I’m a religionist by training, so I study the religious texts as well.”

Then finally, after having decided that I was not going to be a threat to our great nation. I was allowed through, back onto American soil.

Thankfully it was really late, so my plans were shot, and I decided to just wait for my flight to come up in wee hours—now swiftly approaching.

I tried to find someone to take my bags off me again, but no one was at any of the desks for Northwest Airlines, so I had to schlep around the airport with 60 kg of luggage, desperate for a coffee.

I thought that was bad, until the time came when I could check in for the connecting flight to Detroit and woman decided to charge me for my bags. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently,even though I had just come 10,000 miles with these heavy bags, now I had to pay $50 to get them another 500 miles home. She said she couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t been charged in the first place as she had never heard of an airline with a 30 kg weight limit before (both Virgin and British Airways have a 30 kg weight limit, FYI). Bastards. It’s just an example of a sinking American carrier scheme to get a few more nickels and dimes.

It’s amazing how I didn’t have any troubles with airline employees until I landed in the United States. Surprise, surprise.

But I’m better now, I just found Vitamin Water in the airport while waiting for the flight. It went well with the rest of my Xanax. I’ll have a nice relaxing nap on the plane.

1 down, 2 to go

I am sitting here at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to the States. There is no free internet in airports anymore, and since I figured that it would be nice to have access while I was in the airports today, I purchased some time on some hotspot service that will work Stateside as well.

And so, we have our first ever blog post from the airport. Nice.

Cairo was great this morning. It was nice to drive through the city just after dawn. There was no traffic and the city is really pretty at that time in the morning. I was also in a pretty decent mood because, for the first time in my life, I packed several days in advance—rather than several hours. That was a great idea. Usually I wait until about five minutes before I am supposed to leave to panic and jam stuff into cases. I have loads of books, though, that I am returning to the States with and I wanted to ensure in advance that they would all fit. They did, perfectly. I had two bags that were exactly the max weight limit. Sweet.

The flight this morning was alright. I got some sleep: a blessing since I didn’t sleep at all last night because I had to leave so early.

I had the misfortune of being seated in front of the two loudest and most boring wankers on the plane, though. They were a young Brit and a middle-aged American attempting to trump each other’s traveling stories. Boring. They were both the types who have sort-of been everywhere, but they have never drank local water anywhere. These are people who refuse to use squat toilets—unless there isn’t another one for a 100 miles; never eat vegetables or fruit—because they may have been washed in local water; make even their tea and coffee with bottled water—idiots; and generally follow all of the information they find in guide-books as gospel. I call them: misguided tourists, on account of the fact that they are perfect fodder for (mis)guided tour companies.

Oh yah, and the American was a proper racist, which is always nice. There was an Egyptian woman sitting next to who displayed the same wincing patterns as I did when this dude excreted such gems as: “Well, Arabs are generally easily excitable, sort of infantile, really” and “The best experience I had in London was riding the regular train early in the morning and seeing all of the street kids. It gave me a real sense of London and the culture.” I’m sure it did, buddy.

Thankfully after about an hour of saying these loud things for an hour or two, they both shut their mouths and slept, until the end, when it was right back into the swing. Unpleasant bastards. Thankfully they exist all over the world. I just don’t like being captive at 10,000m with them.

I was a little sad leaving Cairo this morning. It’s dirty, polluted, crazed, busy, sometimes scary—but fun. Everyone talks to everyone as well. I don’t get that at home so much. It was weird leaving the flat as well. It is like I am just going to be back there next week, a temporary thing. Which, really, is the case, since we are going back in the fall. It is starting to feel homey.

I woke up the other night from a nightmare that this has all be a weird dream. I was panicked to realize—in the dream—that I had fallen asleep while taxiing down the runway in Washington, DC and it was still last September. I am not sure it the panic came more from realizing that I had to do all of this over again and not wanting to, or that it would have meant that I wouldn’t be able to parse what was real and what was not about my experiences.

Thankfully, I then realized that I was dreaming, and woke myself up. Still, though, scary.

So, now here I am. Not a dream-me, not a hologram—at least I don’t think so: the jury is out on this theory still—real-John, John of the real-world, sitting in an airport, blogging.

And now real-John is a bit hungry, and would perhaps like a beer with his lunch. Ciao for now. See you tonight, America.

[Update: I just finished a vegetarian English breakfast—complete with FAKEN—and a Guinness. I have consumed neither meat-replacement technologies or Guinness for nearly 9 months. They tasted like ambrosia.]

But not for a pig.

I’m on my way to the souq today one last time before leaving the country for the summer. I used to hate going there, but that was before I discovered the real souq. Khan al-Khalili is the very tourist-oriented mess of tiny pyramids and sphinxes made of alabaster and various other trinkets and shiny things. The real souq is the whole area around it to the north and west.

It is excellent.

You can get anything there. Anything. My favorite is the spices market, though. I can’t take it very long before I start sneezing, but that goes for a lot of my favorite places in the city. It’s a dusty, smelly, glorious place.

There is a whole part devoted just to shoes. Another for clothing of various kinds. Fabrics. It seems sort of counter-intuitive that you would have a hundred shops selling the same things all in very close proximity, but for some reason it works. Shopkeeper monger and compete with each other. There is always a throng of people moving through the little streets and alleys like a river of humanity.

The best part is that there are no cars. There wouldn’t be any room for them. Everyone gets merchandise into the alleys on these little hand-carts. In a city with millions of people and millions of cars everywhere, it is not a surprise that a market thronged with people would be a relaxing alternative to a streets thronged with honking, noisy, smelly cars and trucks. Because of the lack of cars in the souq, the air is also a great deal cleaner, which is not even the case in most of the gardens in the city.

I never really go there intending to buy anything, but I always find something cool or interesting, or monstrously strange.

Today, though, I am actually looking for some things:

1. An Egyptian flag. Big, not too big.
2. A piece of jewelry from a baladi-dancing pro shop for a friend back home
3. Some prayer beads
4. And an inflatable baby

The inflatable babies are always out around the holidays. Today is Coptic Easter and this week was Shem al-Nasim as well, so I should be able to find one. They are these creepy, inflated, cartoon looking babies. Ghastly, but I have a friend who I haven’t bought a creepy, inflated object for a while, and he will be thrilled by this one.