9 Highlights of 2011

by zora on January 9, 2012

A belated wrap-up of the year. I almost didn’t post this, because everything went so well this year that it seemed too boring. Ten items seemed like a stretch–here’s the Top 9:

1. I spent five weeks in Egypt and did not get sick. Absolutely astounding. I can’t really take credit. It’s like my stomach bacteria are a separate force from me. Thank you, thank you, stomach bacteria.

2. Bookdealbookdealbookdeal. OMG!!! For realz! 2 legit 2 quit!! Oh hai I can be real awthor? Oh, right–they gave me money to write in full sentences and spell things right. I’d better keep in practice.

3. I was on a boat! I was on a boat! Peter and I took the Queen Mary 2, and even dined with the Commodore Himself.

4. I really felt like this Internet thing is going to work out. This isn’t specific to this year exactly, but I’ve met so many fantastic people through the Internet, from the fabulous Kate Payne of The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking to Christina of A Thinking Stomach to Medo, who just happened by my blog and wound up driving me around Cairo and convincing his incredibly generous mom to make me a home-cooked meal.

It's not even all fitting in the picture!

In real life, I probably would’ve met Medo’s mother first–she’s only a few years older than me. But this is what happens on the Internet. (Get your pedophile jokes lined right up. I can take it.)

Medo can manage a smile even after being stuck in Cairo traffic for an hour.

5. I made some jokes in Arabic. I can’t remember them now, but I remember when people laughed. And when the family who shared their picnic lunch with me at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo said, “She’s like us! She’s got the Egyptian spirit!” (I am wildly translating andaha damm khafeef–she has light blood.)

This matters because it was the small goal I set for myself while taking Arabic classes in Cairo. All other forms of fluency in Arabic have eluded me. And nothing gets you so far with so little in Egypt as making a good joke. It made up for my total failure to use the various polite phrases at the right times.

6. I made peace with my hometown. This happened to be via an article I wrote for the New York Times, which is also very exciting. But in the big picture, it’s amazing to me that the place I said sucked so hard for so long is now cool enough to make me want to advocate for it.

Or…could it be…that I’ve changed too? No, that’s just silly!

7. I got into good work habits, with other people’s help. Early in 2011, I realized: all those people who take their computers to coffee shops are on to something. In fact, all those people who go to offices to work are also on to something. You get more done with other people around (up to a point). So I put the call out for people to come over and work at the extra desk in my office. I called it the Queens Writers Fellowship, and it brought some excellent people over. When I’m back and writing this year, I hope to do it again.

8. I started Astoria Ugly. I’ve been meaning to do this for years. Finally Tumblr came along and provided a pared-down enough format that just posting a heinous-architecture photo a day made sense. See how great the Internet is now that we’ve lost all of our attention span? Admirably, David, who’s been babysitting Astoria Ugly while I’m away, has more energy to write things for it. I’ll be back at the helm shortly.

9. People called me ‘teacher.’ In the spring and early summer, I taught several classes on blogging, based on my expertise derived from…this very blog, I suppose. I may not be monetizing or SEO-optimizing or attracting those feverish commenters who fight to be the first, but gosh darn it, I’ve been in this game for (holy crap) eight years now, and tried every random blog thing on for size. It was fun to consolidate all that knowledge–and get up to speed on new developments. And hear all my students’ new ideas and points of view.

It also gave this blog a little kick in the pants. To be honest, I was about to bail. Sometimes it’s more fun to write tweets and snarky Facebook comments. But, yeah, you can’t quit your blog while you’re teaching about blogging. So I buckled down and followed my own advice: I set a posting schedule (and occasionally messed it up–for ex, with this now-dated post), and brainstormed ideas, and wrote in batches. (This is why the blog gets kind of far behind my actual travel timeline–but you don’t mind too much, do you?)

Thanks a million for reading all this time. Greatest respec’ to all the real teachers in the world.

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Egypt: The Frickin’ Pyramids, and How to Help

by zora on December 26, 2011

Ah, the Pyramids. Last remaining wonder of the ancient world. Monumental tombs for the pharaohs. Engineering mystery.

And pain in my ass.

I’m not the only one to think this. Every tourist I’ve ever met in Egypt has looked shell-shocked when they mention their trip to the Pyramids.

It shouldn’t be this way. Egypt’s second source of income after foreign aid is tourism, and the Pyramids are the number-one tourist attraction by far. They’ve been grossly mismanaged, probably because Zahi Hawass, ex minister of antiquities, was too busy wearing his silly hat on National Geographic specials to care.

Sorry to be so rancorous about such an important and impressive pile of rocks. They are pretty cool.

Crush, crush.

This photo sums up the problem of visiting the Pyramids. I didn’t want to take this photo. I didn’t even want to be out in the desert where you have to be to take this photo. But some guy with a camel started chatting me up, and because some days it’s easier to smile than it is to snap and draw the line, and that doesn’t even work anyway, I ended up letting him walk with me, and then of course the next thing I know I’m on the damn camel and we’re tromping out to the photo-op spot.

He was a nice guy, this camel guy. He asked me to write a text message to his German ‘girlfriend.’ He tried to get me my Coke for a reasonable price from the guy selling them from a foam cooler. He had lovely eyelashes. And he asked me for a ridiculous amount of money, even though I had never hired him. I knew that would happen the minute he said hello, but like I said, some days it’s easier to smile.

His camel's name is Mickey Mouse. Every camel's name appears to be Mickey Mouse. How did that joke get started?

Anyway, this wasn’t a terrible experience, mostly because I didn’t have much at stake that day and I knew what to expect. By duct-taping my rose-colored glasses to my face, I could still enjoy the guy’s company without getting too peeved about this whole camel deal being forced on me. But most people have far worse problems at the Pyramids–like actual jerks who yell and threaten and fight to get more money out of tourists.

This makes it sound like the camel guys (and there are horse guys too) are the problem, and if they just banned them from the Pyramids area, everything would be fine.

Ah, but…two problems:

1) The Pyramids are spread over a big area, so the horse and camel rides are actually useful.

2) The horse and camel guys are from the village next to the Pyramids, and they have exactly zero other ways to make money. (Well, except for the Mubarak regime hiring them to beat up their compatriots in Tahrir Square. That’s how desperate they are.)

Zahi Hawass et al. knew they couldn’t get rid of these guys completely, but tried to control them by erecting this horrific wall between the village and the Pyramids. It looks like a mini-Palestinian barrier fence, and all it does is make the horse and camel guys move up the road to try to nab tourists before they get to the Pyramids.

Cool tiles at the Giza metro stop

This starts at the Giza metro stop, where seemingly concerned strangers sidle up and tell you which bus to take to the Pyramids. Then of course try to sell you on horse rides while you’re waiting for the bus. Or they jump in your taxi when it’s stopped in traffic. Or, wait, backtrack: they get the guy at your hotel to sell you a “sunrise tour” of the Pyramids, which means you show up two hours before the site opens, and you pass the time by talking to a guy who wants to sell you a horse ride.

It would be funny if it didn’t drive tourists to breakdowns and rages. The day I visited, I must’ve said ‘no’ about 856 times. And if you don’t say ‘no’, it must mean yes. So, yeah, I was basically date-raped by a camel.

The only calm part of the Pyramids is the almost-dust-free zone of the Cheops Boat Museum.

I wish I could just advise people not to go to the Pyramids, as I think they’d be a lot happier with their trip to Egypt. But I know that’s the grumpy outlook. Though Anthony Bourdain didn’t go to them on the Egypt episode of No Reservations.

My friend Hassan is a tour guide, and he happened to be on that episode. He was the one telling Tony all about the Pyramids, so that Tony didn’t have to go.

Hassan has a dream of fixing the Pyramids, of finally solving this problem with the horse and camel guys, who provide a useful service but are the source of so much aggravation. He’d like to help them form a cooperative of some kind, so they’re not all competing with each other, and there’d be set prices. Oooh, and maybe an orderly line! (Sorry–that might just be me getting carried away.)

I’d love to connect Hassan with some people working in tourism in other countries who might advise on how to go about organizing something like this. Or people working in NGOs with this kind of experience. Any ideas? Mexico connections are an obvious choice, as a lot of tourist services in the Yucatan work on this model.

In the meantime, I was heartened at least by how many Egyptians were at the Pyramids when I visited this year. I’ve never seen this before. Then I was disheartened to see them also being hassled endlessly by the horse and camel guys. By the end of the day, they looked as beat as me.

Just chilling out at the Great Pyramid of Cheops. As you do.

Sorting out the camel and horse situation would be as radical and helpful a change as installing meters on Cairo taxis–which has been done successfully. Cairo taxi drivers are now a delight to ride with. And I bet many of the horse and camel guys would also be excellent ambassadors for Egypt, if they weren’t so desperately fighting for the last tourist dollar.

All suggestions welcome. Have you been to a tourist site that was remarkably well managed? Or poorly managed? This isn’t rocket science–places have solved it, and probably not for too much money. Somewhere as great as the Pyramids deserves a lot better.

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Cairo Graffiti

by zora on December 19, 2011

I had another collection of funny little items from Cairo scheduled for this week, but it just seems too flip. Instead, here’s a good collection of post-revolutionary graffiti, all from one corner in Zamalek. Fight on, Egyptians.

The colors are the Egyptian flag.

I dig the cassette tape.

Cool black-and-white work.

'7orya' is Arabic-SMS transliteration of 'hutriya' -- freedom. Arabic text says 'The revolution of change'.

No offense, but this one does look a little like what the dude with long hair over his eyes is doodling in his notebook at the back of the class. Except for the hearts. Aw!

The rectangular thing is an Egyptian license plate, redone so it says '25 January'. These are now a souvenir for sale at Midan Tahrir. The Arabic says 'equality' and 'freedom.' Nice placement next to the A/C unit.

The tower with the holes in it on the right I think is meant to be a pigeon coop, sort of a symbol of rural Egypt. The one on the left is the Cairo Tower, a city symbol.

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Egypt: What’s New (to Me)

by zora on December 12, 2011

Not to jinx anything, but I think it now seems a little more appropriate to post my “oh my gosh, I had such a great time in Egypt” pics. Now that people aren’t (at least at this moment) getting tear-gassed and whacked with sticks.

It’s hard to talk about Egypt without mentioning all the political business, of course, but being there was a great reminder of how life goes on, and pretty magnificently. A country can be going through its largest upheaval in 50 years, but people still go to work, shop for vegetables, smoke a sheesha… Traveling there was 95 percent normal.

I did happen to leave just a few days before the November 18 protests got ugly. But I did also happen to be there on October 19, when the military killed 19 Copts. For better or worse, life went on the next morning. Cairo is a very big place.

In no particular order, here’s what caught my eye in Cairo:

Cairo has tuktuks now. Actually, only Giza has tuktuks. They got banned from the east side of the river because it just made the traffic too insane. Small towns have tuktuks too. The vehicles are actually imported from Thailand. Here’s our driver in Wadi Natrun:

Heroooo!

Heroooo!

The best tuktuks have huge sound systems, and our driver was blasting who I later found out was DJ Amr 7a7a (say it ‘Haha’), this tune that I heard many times over the rest of my trip. Sorry–can’t find version with words and his magnificent use of AutoTune. Just imagine 13-year-olds doing gangly dances to that tight bass line in a dusty small-town road, and you’ll get an idea how bad-ass we were rolling in our tuktuk.

Speaking of drivers: Cairo taxis (most of them) have meters. I still am marveling about how the simple addition of meters has transformed Cairo cabbies from some of the worst in the world to some of the best. Now that neither front seat nor back seat has to stress out about the fare, Cairo drivers can turn on their full charm. (Oh, except that one who showed a woman I met pornographic photos on his cell phone. And the one who pulled out a gun–!!!–from under his seat and showed it off to a guy in my class. And the one who, far less nefariously, drove me through the Al-Azhar tunnel for no good reason at all. But all the rest of them are true gentlemen.)

Egypt has a lot of Mubarak to get rid of. Here in Mansoura, he’s been painted out of a mosaic:

Some major young activists come from Mansoura.

In the Cairo metro, Mubarak station (the one at Midan Ramses) has been hastily changed to Al Shohadaa — ‘Martyrs’ — or just blacked out.

For the English sign, they made a proper sticker. For Arabic, they just used a Sharpie.

In Cairo, it seemed like there were a lot more young women out on the street, especially noticeable at night. Though at night I wouldn’t have been able to capture this great look:

On the Nile corniche

Color seems to be used a little more liberally on buildings. At least more than I remember, but in my memory, Cairo is always solid brown. I wonder if we might have the Chinese to thank for the colored paint–I noticed all of it was from there. People rarely have control enough to paint a whole building, but they’ll often paint their balcony a bright color, so it pops out from the rest of the brown building. This isn’t paint, but it gives you an idea of the effect:

That bright orange Bug is also an aberration.

In Islamic Cairo, the stretch of medieval buildings known as Bein al-Qasrein is done with restoration, and it looks beautiful. I was worried it would be too tidy, too fake. But it has aged well, and most important, people seem to hang out here in a way they didn’t before–it’s more of a public space than a thoroughfare. Here’s the inside of one of the buildings:

Unfortunately I only had my iPhone that day.

Elegant, calm, restorative. This is the side of Cairo that’s there, but hard to see–you have to go looking for it, and you certainly won’t read about it in the newspaper.

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