Mule

I'm now safely settled in Damascus, and will take an Arabic course in July. As promised, I won't be blogging, but here's a quote from a US Army spokesman which I thought merited posting, for its razor-sharp insightfulness:
"Increasingly, it is the Iraqis who are bearing the burden of this war, even more than Americans."
الله

Mom, Dad, and Amelia are now on their way back to the US, and I'm getting ready to leave for Syria, providing with me a convenient excuse to stop blogging (since I'll be in a repressive Axis of Evil wannabee country, not enjoying the freedom of Mubarak's Egypt).

Yet another article on the CIA's inability to find enough Arabic translators:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08intel.html?hp&ex=1118289600&en=1c86039fbad5bb10&ei=5094&partner=homepage
"There are no panaceas to the fact that there are not enough Arabic speakers, and to lower the standards would result in absolutely certain, surefire disaster, in terms of opening the way for possible penetration by hostile countries or groups."

Amelia, Mom, and Dad are getting into Egypt on Wednesday; the itinerary on which I wasted much time that would have been better spent on the final paper for Literature class I just turned in calls for Wednesday and Thursday in Cairo, Friday and Saturday in the White Desert, Sunday and Monday in Cairo, an overnight sleeper train to Aswan, a four-night cruise from Aswan to Luxor, then a train back to Cairo.
My summer plans are shaping up a bit too. I successfully got a Syrian visa ($115), bought a round-trip ticket from Cairo to Damascus ($270), and am in touch with a tutor who'll give me some lessons but more importantly find a family for me to live with. I was starting to worry cause I hadn't heard back from him in three weeks, but he e-mailed me today:
------------
hi paule
how are you i hope you are fine
about the familly it is small familly with too small child
my mob numbre is --
my hose numbre is --
i hope too see you soon
xxxx

For security considerations I removed his mob number, and I haven't quite figured out yet what the hose number is for exactly, but I might have to give it a call. We'll see how the family works out--he promised to get me non-English speaking folks, but my dwarven is virtually non-existent despite repeated viewings of Lord of the Rings.

Finally, a post not about Vinny. I realized I never put anything up about Turkey, which my parents leave for today. On the 25th, they'll leave Istanbul for two weeks in Egypt. Coming from Cairo, Istanbul seemed very European, and not even remotely related to the stinky, overcrowded metropolis on the Nile. Traffic gridlock was as bad, though, or even worse at times since there's not a modern underground metro covering much of the city like Cairo has.
The most surprising thing in Turkey, was the discovery that its legendary gummy products industry is really fairly modest, to the extent that Joanna had never even heard of it, though that might tell you more about her alleged knowledge of Turkey than anything else.

Here's Vinny's post, replete with unedited grammaticular mistakes (a strong first sentence though). I would however, like to note a few things first: the five-alarm fire in the Khan (half a block from where the bombing was) ended up destroying 120 shops, thanksfully with no lives lost. The response was slow, though--the fire started, with unknown causes, at 7:00am Saturday morning, coincidentally at the exact same time Vinny was passing by, and they were still working on it at 10:00pm that day. After letting the embers cool off for a day, they resumed smothering everything with water on Monday, causing several buildings to collapse.
----------------------------
I seeing as I was within the relative vicinity, I dropped by to see Paul for a few days. The timing was the best he could have hoped for, having returned not 12 hours earlier from a trip to visit Joanna and come before most of his finals, his trip with Amelia and his parents, and his eventual departure for Syria.
I was there for 5 days, enough to get a feel for Cairo and a side trip to Alexandria. I stayed at Paul's new apartment in Gamaliyya, so new that Paul had yet to even sleep there. Gamaliyya is a happening neighborhood, to say the least. A few weeks before I arrived some crazies blew up a bomb at the entrance of the market that frames his neighborhood. More crazies struck two days before I arrived, so the entire place was crammed with cops to protect the ever-important hordes of tourists. The day before I left a 5-alarm fire brought down several buildings not a quarter mile away.
It's a shame that yall didn't get a chance to visit Paul while he was in Cairo. He is an acknowledged arabic master, and I can only assume he knows as much about affairs middle-eastern. I am very pleased to report that (like most of the Swatties I know who travelled to 'developing' countries) he has a 'when in rome' general sort of attitude. Eats the cheap street food, stays in the grubby apartment, makes lots of Egyptian friends, etc.
I got to meet several of his friends (his roommate Walid was tasked with picking me up at the airport, his old roommate Amin was tasked with entertaining me on Wednesday, there was a big old party for the CASA folk + their friends on Thursday).
We tried to go to the opera on Friday night, but got pancussed and spit out for being underdressed.
Most of the rest of the time Paul and I spent spitting out single-entendres and fart-jokes, apparently neither of which are funny in Egypt. Ask about the really hot chick from the film-shoot (at first we thought the guy next to her was a travelling fake-moustache salesman). He took me to Abu Sir where he used to live and I met all those kids he used to blog about. We spent the day there walking around and drinking tea and watching The Land Before Time.
Other than that, not much to report about Paul. I can see that Georgetown or wherever he ends up will be lucky for a student like him.
Cairo itself is ridiculous. Aside from all the ridiculously old buildings, it has a rather ridiculous love-affair with concrete. It is filthy. It is awake until very early in the morning. Everybody smokes. It is gigantic. It is old: They talk funny. It reminds me of Beijing in many many ways.
That's all. You should also probably ask Paul about my first night there at the restaurant when I licked spilt food from off my left hand. Oops.
I'm now in Fontainebleau, south of Paris a bit, where things are fifty degrees colder, but they have such beautiful things as eclairs and bare midriffs.

Vinny's now in Cairo. I'll hold off writing about his experience, since he'll be posting himself on my blog in a couple days.
Today I went by the Syrian Embassy to apply for a visa--I had heard rumors that the visa request only cost LE 250 ($45) for Americans, whereas it's $100 in the States, but discovered to my dismay that it's actually LE 660 ($115) here in Cairo. The worst thing is there's only a fair chance they'll actually give you a visa, since they're fond of keeping the money and rejecting your application. I'll find out Sunday. I don't know if I can afford to apply again if they reject me this time. I haven't been to Occupied Palestine, which helps my chances, but they look for anything suspicious on your passport that suggests you might have been there, and they could look askance at my having gotten this passport only a few days before I went to Egypt, and think that was because I was trying to erase an Israeli visa stamp on a previous passport (which a lot of people do).

Vinny's going to be coming to Cairo from May 3rd to May 8th, right after our spring break ends (which is really late, because there's an Islamic holiday on April 21st this year, Sinai Liberation Day on April 25th, some other holiday on April 28th, and then Shem El-Nessim on May 2nd, in a weird convergence of the Islamic, Coptic, and Western calendars combining to push spring break back a month).
I just got back from the first trip of spring break, which was to Sharm El-Sheikh and Moses' Mountain/the St.Katherine Monastery. AUC organized the trip for about $90 all-inclusive (buses seven hours there and back, three nights in the Movenpick Golf Resort and Hotel with breakfast and dinner). By far the most luxurious experience I've had in Egypt. Sharm El-Sheikh itself was really not very appealing, being very tacky and overpriced, resembling Las Vegas but on the Red Sea with great diving and snorkeling. A ten-minute taxi ride that I'd pay maybe LE4 or LE5 for in Cairo cost LE20 to LE25 in Sharm El-Sheikh -- and that was the fixed price which drivers try to charge twice.