Pray before you die! (a friendly public service anouncement...)

or for the less morbidly inclined...


this one is ALWAYS playing on TV, and i actually kind of like it...

enjoy!

internet-less

1. Internet access in Egypt (and the rest of the Middle East) has been reduced by 80 percent.
2. An Alexandria schoolteacher is going to trial this week for beating a student to death over missing homework.
3. Riot police dispersed hundreds of protesters in Alexandria this week after a carriage driver lit himself on fire when given a traffic ticket.
I'd post links, but its a miracle i'm able to post at all.

(Abstract expressions of waning hegemony in the passive voice)

Who throws a shoe?
At whom is a shoe thrown?

Three days later, the shoe-throwing incident is still big news in Egypt.
It seems that American coverage of the event has focused primarily on two aspects.
First, there has been the talk of how Muntader al-Zaidi has become a "folk hero" in the Middle East, inspiring rallies in Iraq, and general admiration from Arabs everywhere.
Second, there is the attempt to impress upon the American public the cultural significance of throwing shoes – how this is more than just Austin Powers slapstick comedy – but a grave insult.

But both of these components, while important, seem to miss the broader significance of the event from a Middle Eastern perspective… namely that it somehow symbolically undermines a perception of American credibility, that it intangibly pierces the 4th wall of American hegemony…

I like to do a grammar exercise with my Advanced English classes where we look at a list of Bushisms and attempt to fix the grammar and usage mistakes. It’s a fun exercise, but the initial reaction from students is inevitably one of disbelief; not only that the American President could have a weaker grasp on the English Language than they do, but also that such a compilation of quotes even exists… that the President of The United States would stray from a carefully orchestrated image enough to say such things, and then that these comments would be publicly viewable – and open to public ridicule.

That kind of thing just doesn’t happen here. This is a country where it’s illegal even to speculate on the legal succession of the 80 year old president. Where the biggest scandal of the year – involving a millionaire murdering a famous singer – is banned from state broadcasting.

It’s not so much that it’s unimaginable that someone would throw a shoe at Mubarak: its unimaginable that Mubarak would have a shoe thrown at him. This is not something that happens to a President. This is not something that happens to people with power.

As much as Egyptians might hate the United States government, there is still a firm appreciation that it is the Government, a separate entity detached from the mistakes and embarrassments that might affect the citizenry. Indeed the general warmth shown to regular Americans here is entirely predicated on the notion that, just as their government is completely separate from what they deem humanly Egyptian, so is ours.

I’m trying to decide how obvious of an observation this is… back home we take for granted that Bush is a Lame Duck, a laughable goofball who's days are numbered. The Middle East, still swarming with US troops, doesn't exactly have the luxury to appreciate this viewpoint.

All this is also directly tied to an alternate understanding of Respect in the Middle East. For better or worse, in America humor is an acceptable - and often effective – way to diffuse potentially embarrassing or disrespectful situations. One’s ability to laugh something off, to show that it has not affected him, is seen as a sign of strength. Indeed, humor seems to be the general response from Americans. Yet as I’ve learned the hard way, this doesn’t really fly in Egypt. I won’t go so far as to say that authority is all that Egyptians understand – an idea that strikes of Barbarism, but I will say that in most cases, a perception of toughness is a prerequisite for respect.

But personally, I’m surprised the coverage hasn’t focused more on the Presidents reflexes... he dodged that shoe fast.

hugging the imaginary Sphinx

blood on the tracks...

my shoes got a little bloody...



yeah!!!!!!!!!

... and then there were bones...

christmas trees vs goats (part 1)

Eid al-Adha was yesterday.

It was hard not to think about New York, and all the christmas trees laid out for the slaughter in the weeks before Christmas. only here, the slaughter is literal.

And now the internet won't let me upload any more pictures, so the streets running red with blood will have to wait another day....

CIB involved in unsafe mating practices.

Aside from the fact that the slogan "confidence breeds success" seems more appropriate for a stable than a bank, its hard for me to trust in Confidence's animal husbandry skills when the bank's entire computer system has been down for 2 consecutive days.

This would be the point in the post where i link to an article explaining Confidence's apparent inability to coax Success into fruitful copulation, but that would require a newspaper to consider this an important enough setback to write about.

I mean, shouldn't this be a vaguely big deal? Considering that Egypt is an almost exclusively cash economy - with major transactions literally being conducted with paper money - the inability of the largest private sector bank in Egypt to dole out cash ought to be news. What if i was supposed to buy a house today? I'd be fucked, that's what.

Whatever, i guess if your vision is as concise as "To be the best financial institution in the Middle East and Africa by 2020," you needn't worry too much about the small details of actually being able to give people their money.

nomadic misopaidea

Ugh. I want to write about Egypt, i really do. But there's a problem.

In Korea, i had nothing to lose by fixating on the bizarre and the different. Korea was not my home.

But home intimates normalcy, and if i want to 'live' in Egypt, to actually unpack, (if only for a while) - it means ignoring the differences that before would have intrigued, upset, and infuriated me. i can stay here as an abject foreigner, observant but uncomfortable, or i can try and let a little go, for the sake of actually living somewhere in the present for once.

Basically, its hard for me to justify expressing all the subjectively peculiar things i see without accepting that I'm just a nomadic misopaidean, (a 'hater of cultures', if my Wikipedian Greek serves me correctly) or an accursed nostaphile...

This is, I've realized, why i had such a hard time writing after returning to New York City. It wasn't that i didn't have anything to say, but rather that the admittedly acerbic humors of differentiation began to feel a lot less funny or meaningful as they began to hit closer to 'home.'

Or to put it another way, i began to appreciate the sentiment behind the phrase "don't shit where you sleep."


That being said, i would like to briefly point out that Egyptians seem to sweat a lot...

from their butts.
Maybe everyone does this. Maybe the real story here is that i notice it. Clearly it's irrelevant to anything, and even i can't come up with a good way to make this representative of some broader cultural distinction.

But you know, its been on my mind. And its good to be back.