!ابوقير

The pearl of Egypt, Abu Qir (pronounce [abu'ir] in Egyptian dialect –> map and history here). I went to this place because it was mentioned in the dear Lonely Planet that there was a great Greek restaurant (Zephyrion), and I thought that it could make a nice lunch stop before the drive to Port Said. It’s a very short drive from Alexandria, so I wasn’t hungry when I arrived and I hesitated whether to stop or not.

However, as soon as I arrived in the small streets of this tiny village I received such a warm welcome that I decided the place was worth to walk around until I was hungry because people were just so nice. As I pulled off to park someone else arrived and helped me orientate and park safely without even asking for money! Unbelievable. In Cairo there is ALWAYS someone charging you for parking, cops included, as it has become part of the informal economy.

As I was walking around I kept meeting people who waved at me, threw out some “welcome!” as people did in Syria. I talked to these two gentlemen:

After a while I finaly headed to this Zephyrion Greek restaurant, which revealed itself to be fantastic. They even served beer. There were a few Coptic families having lunch also, and after spotting some unveiled girls (in shorts!!!) around I made the assumption that there must be lots of Copts in the region. After all, Abu Qir was the name of a Copt martyr.

Overall, the stop was extremely pleasant. I was already looking at some of the abandoned beautiful buildings and wondering how much would that be. As much as Cairo can be dehumanizing, Abu Qir is full of humanity, simplicity, and friendliness. I’ll be back.

Click HERE for the slideshow with more pictures.

Cairo! I don’t really know where to start, for this place is just so… much! It’s enormous (26 millions inhabitants according to the last population sensus), and it’s far too ultra-über-overcrowded. It’s polluted. The traffic is just insane. It’s dirty also, as there is a garbage problem that is going on since the government decided to hire ineffective European companies (FCF, Urbaser and AMA) over the Zabbaleen, or garbage people (زبالين) that used to collect and recycle informally the trash in Cairo. Some call this immensity of a city dehumanizing also. But hey, it’s the Paris of the Nile!

It’s also the Mother of the World, capital of the Arab world. Walking through the streets, observing the architecture, the subway system, one cannot not imagine the past glory of this city.

It’s cosmopolitan also. Living downtown I felt like I was living in Manhattan, although I’ve never been to New York. But Cairo is so big that I feel like anyone can assimilate himself into this immense thing that Cairo is. Overall, I must say it was a fantastic experience. Tiring, exhausting sometimes, but I would definitely do it again, and I will probably be back before long. It is frustrating to live there without speaking arabic properly, for the people of Cairo are much better appreciated if known and talked to; else one tend to experience only rip-offs…

Because Cairo can also be extremely annoying and/or discouraging. First of all there is the omnipotent Islam and its double standards. People would yell at you for showing affection in public to someone of the opposite sex, but they would also be the first to grob a girl’s bottom or give the dirtiest look conceivable.

There is also the overreaching bureaucracy and it’s mighty empire of functionaries that the government is buying off buy employing people to do nothing - literally nothing. But as a result to do anything that has to do with a permit of something alike one requires a lot of patience. A tremendous amount of patience. And money.

Just under, on the left, is the portrait of my bowab (doorman) Abdul; and on the right is the Egyptian parliament, Orwell’s 1984 looking, behind the smog and the jammed traffic on Tahrir Square, downtown Cairo.

Well well, where to start? Like too often I have been quite inactive for some time on this blog, and I still haven’t written anything on Egypt. So I’ll start with a post on AUC, because this is why I came here, and what shaped my experience of Egypt during these four months.

When I signed up for the exchange back home in Montreal at the Concordia International office I was told that AUC was “the Harvard of the Middle East”. Well, let’s go straight to the point: it’s a joke!!! After a few month of fulminating against this AUC I finally got the irony of it all; and it is actually hilarious!

To start with, I heard that the people in charge were originally planning to have a ‘environmentally sustainable’ campus. This is maybe the funniest joke of them all. There are water fountains fountaining everywhere on campus, which is in the middle of the desert (it doesn’t require much brain power to realize that a water fountain in the sahara desert is not very natural…). There are also fields of flowers, and [very] green grass all over the place, and it’s all growing on sand dunes…

Complain #2: The campus is FAR! I spent two hours everyday commuting around Cairo in these Family Transport buses whose drivers are all enrolled in an intense competition at who’s-the-most-insane-when-it-comes-to-driving. This literally ruined my experience as I was sticked most of the time in traffic. And this leads me to another complain #2 bis: transport back and forth this joke of a University is expensive as hell! 300$ for the semester’s bus pass, when it should be free!

Complain #3: Classes are preposterously useless! I should specify that this complain goes mostly for the lower level classes (200 and 300 level). I took two seminars/grad-classes and they were pretty good. But the other ones… what a joke! When my teacher of Cultural Anthropology found out that some student were plagiarizing he just said that he was unhappy about that and that he would take some points off… One of the exam questions was “explain what is cultural relativism to a friend in a small paragraph”! Even in high school teachers had higher expectations from us!

Complain #4: students are ultra-spoiled kids who are completely disconnected from reality! They are all so rich that they think the American exchange students are cheap because they don’t eat at McDonalds everyday (which is almost 10x the price of a falafel). Of course not everyone is dum; I made some very good Egyptian friends. But the majority are just spending their life wondering about which Louis Vuitton bag to wear…

Complain #5: it’s impossible to work at the library because the AUC kids are swarming the place and it all looks like a playground or something like that. Sometimes it’s so loud that I can’t hear my own ipod music…

+++: But the good thing about this place is that I am done so I don’t ever have to go there again!!!

p.s: Maybe I should call this post “AUC hate mail”. I’ll try to calm down before my next post.

The sky is on fire over the Holy Land

So I decided to go over to the Other Side. I had a friend that I met in Dunhuang last summer who lives in Tel Aviv, so I took the opportunity to visit him. I also have a cousin – or the cousin of my father – who lives next to Tel Aviv, in Erzliya (a rich upscale neighborhood). It would have been sad to not see both sides of a conflict.

My first impression about Tel Aviv was “where are the old people?” It’s actually amazing: there is almost no one over 35 years old!!! That city is incredibly cool, actually! There are thousands of nice trendy cafes where I had great food, organic stuff, cappuccinos, glass of nice wine and etc… Actually now that I’m writing I remember some guys I met in Ramallah who swore only by Tel Aviv for the party scene. That city has a really great vibe! It’s quite strange to arrive there coming not only from the Middle East, but also just coming from Jerusalem with its cops and guns and security fences everywhere. Once you pass the bus terminal’s last checkpoint, and you actually get in Tel Aviv, it’s just another world!

This led me to another thought: it’s like a bubble! People here enjoy themselves while doing their best to ignore The Other! And actually it’s even worse than that, because when they stop ignoring The Other it’s only to build up their prejudiced preconceptions! It struck me when I visited my extended family. We went to a dinner organized by another uncle, and the discussion kept coming back on the conclusion that “they don’t want peace, over there.” That particular idea struck me because interestingly enough I heard the same in Ramallah in Cafe La Vie when I was discussing for the zillion time the conflict: “they don’t want peace, bla bla bla, bla bla, bla bla bla…” How funny, isn’t it?

Anyways, then I went back to Jerusalem because I learned that I had a friend studying there. After spending a couple of days I realized one thing: how can people can live like that? Everyone live in constant fear, with a constant threat, and are constantly surrounded with machine guns and military people running around. It’s a fucked up country, that’s what it is! And that led me to another [brilliant] thought: how can people be so stuck ed up with their issues! Ok, the good old “stop war, make love” thingee is maybe a bit cliche, but I think that still ought of be applied a little bit more to people’s lifelong deep philosophy! It’s a crazy world, that is. STOP THE WAR!!!!!!

I had one little epiphany one night, though. We went to Lifta (لفتا‎, מי נפתוח),  this abandoned Palestinian village in Jerusalem where people were chased out during the 1948 war and no one came back. There was this party organized, so we stayed up making barbecue and drinking beer around the fire until early morning, mostly with students in masters studies in Middle East, so we had plenty of discussions. But then, at around 03h37 a.m. came those two orthodox Jews who just settled down in the same terrace as where we were and started to play flamenco/orthodox amazing guitar music! They played on for hours this slow yet captivating melody, singing about love and all different things in life. Then I had the very elaborated thought: wowowiwow!

That night my hope for human race went up a little bit.

Well well, it has been quite a while since I wrote on this damn blog. Last time was about Damascus, in Syria; and since then nothing. Total blackout. Sometimes we feel uninspired, us – human. So today I decided to be active again, and write about the last part of my Middle East trip that ended in Cairo.

Thus, leaving Damascus after Christmas, I put myself on the road again and went straight to Jerusalem, via Amman. Small advice here: for people who want to enter Israel or the West Bank without getting the compromising Israeli stamp on the passport, the solution is to enter via the King Hussein bridge (or in Arabic جسر الملك حسين‎, Jisr al-Malek Hussein, or again in Hebrew גשר אלנבי‎, Gesher Alenbi) sometimes called Allenbi bridge. It’s all quite an easy process, apart maybe from the fact that the Israeli custom people (mostly 18 year old girls who would rather flirt with other soldiers than do anything) have the instruction to block as many trouble makers as they can. And by trouble makers I mean human right activists, not “terrorists”. So, since I had a Syrian, a Tajik, a Kyrgyz and other crazy stamps they naturally looked at me suspiciously. So it took me 7h to go through this damn check point. Interrogation sessions, waiting for ever without any information about when it would end… Not very nice. So it took my all day to do the 90km or so between Amman and Jerusalem. Some made it faster, but not me; and some were still stuck when I left the place.

So I started my Palestinian experience with Ramallah (رام الله) because I met a crazy Iranian woman who had been traveling for two years; and she had a deal with a hotel. Now, this may sound non-politically correct (and anyways I hate politically correct), but life really isn’t so bad over there. One of my thought was “why do they complain so much?” There are coffee chains like Stars and Bucks, or Costa Cafe where I had great ice capuccino. In the night I went to trendy cafes to enjoy amazing grilled chicken ceasar salad with a  glass of very good Palestinian wine… I would never have expected that over there.

Of course Ramallah is the economic capital of the West Bank, but even when I went to poorer Nablus my impressions were the same: life isn’t so bad! In Syria I though people were much poorer (see my Nablus flickr set here).

But again, this is without considering the fact that in hilly Palestine almost every single hilltop is home to a Jewish settlement, which is guarded by military, which create check points where Palestinians have to queue when taking the road home from work. This clearly must be enraging. It felt like what I imagined to the Crusaders’ times, where they would control and dominate the region from a few fortified strongholds that were on top of the strategic hill – like the Crack des Chevaliers.

And then there is the Qalandia (قلنديا‎) checkpoint, which one must pass through when going to Jerusalem. If someone needs a visa to go abroad he must go to the embassy of that country, which is always in Jerusalem. But without a special ID no one can enter Jerusalem. But even if you are lucky enough to have that special ID, there are more of those 18 year old chicks who are going to decide if you can pass or not. It must be quite enraging to have your fate being decided by a kid. And I’m not even mentioning the fences and barbwire and cameras and guns – guns everywhere – that make one feel like cattle being transported from A to B…

The “City of Jasmin” (in arabic: مدينة الياسمين).

A boy playing with pigeons in front of the Umayyad Mosque

According to historians, the name Dimashq is mentioned as early as 2000 BEFORE Christ, but there are signs that the place was inhabited as early as 9000 BC. That could well explain why Mark Twain said “No recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive news of it … There was always a Damascus.”

These are cliché words but anyone who has been there can only but feel the age of Damascus. It literally feels ancient – much more than most European cities, or Jerusalem for that sake. Of there are other place in the world with old building, but there is definitely something about these houses that makes one feel like he’s living in the middle ages… It is really fantastic. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that there are no tourist hordes wandering about the tiny beautiful streets (the way they do in Jerusalem, but I’ll come to that in a later post, inch’allah). Or maybe it is also the proper gentlemen/shop-owners in the souq that speak French and address ladies by a formal Mademoiselle… Quite different than the image of angry Arabs we usually get from the western mainstream media!

Just the place we stayed, Hotel Al Rabie (الربيع), is a 600 years old building, with a magnificent courtiard with tiles on the walls and a fountain that makes a nice background sound when reading a Naguib Mahfouz (نجيب محفوظ) book.

And of course there is the magnificent Umayyad Mosque… supposedly one of the most beautiful in the world!

The Umayyad Mosque

But Damascus is also the capital of Syria, one of the most oppressive state in the world, with a Soviet style crumbling administration; and the greyness of the new city did not fail to remind me of this fact. The best example was the huge square building that was built in the 50s – or rather that was never finished. So there is this enormous block of concrete right in the middle of the city center, next to the beautiful old city.

A Soviet style unfinished building...

What to say about Syria? It’s enigmatic, obscure, and fascinating. For a start, the Assad ultra-strict regime – where for a while the President had 30 secret agencies that he was playing against each other – closed the country to mainstream tourism. Then, after 9/11 Mr. Bush got the brilliant idea to add Syria to the list of “Axis of Evil” countries, and this killed the little tourism industry that was developing.

Now, as a result, one can explore the fantastic ruins of Palmyra or Apamea alone – with a bit of luck. There are tourists, but so few that they go unnoticed; unless walking around the old parts of Damascus and Aleppo where shop-owners in the souks try their best to sell you scarf’s, spices, carpets, tea cups and others essential things. In simple words: Syria’s history is rich and so accessible that it is one of the only places in the world where one can walk on 2000 years old ruins.

But Syria is also home to one of the most oppressive regimes in the world – or was until not so long ago. When entering by land, the sight of useless and corrupt customs officials is the first indicator. This means that the waiting time to get the visa on the border can vary from 20min to several hours, with the price following the same fluctuations going from US$ 18 to 100. It all depends on the mood of the fat guy working on that day, and on how much baksheesh he gets. Same thing goes for the central post office in Damascus.

Still, people’s warm welcome offsets completely the grayness of the regime. Several people sincerely asked me if I was having a good time in Syria, and took great pleasure to hear that I enjoyed myself. And the fact that this is the cheapest country to travel to in the region – apart form Egypt – makes it a good destination for backpackers.

It has been almost three weeks since Sabrina and I arrived in the Middle East. We have traveled through Syria and Jordan, and tomorrow we should reach the Holy Land for a Holy Week. As I am sitting in the lobby of Palace Hotel in Amman, listening to Telephone (a French 80s band), I thought I should write an entry in the blog of mine.

The Middle East. Since my first experience with travelling in a Muslim country – Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and later Malaysia – I had been looking forward to finally come in this region, where Islam was born.

However, to tell the truth I was slightly anxious. However culture relativistic, informed and open-minded I try to be, the mainstream media has somehow formatted my perceptions; and deep inside I feared Arabs.

Paradoxically, however, I have never felt that safe (apart maybe from China). In the beginning it seemed kind of strange to being shouted at every five seconds; especially when people are not insulting you but are saying “Welcome to Jordan” with a beaming smile on their faces! People are absolutely amazing! Three weeks in the region have only reinforced this feeling.

In addition, ancient-ruins-like Syria is a gem! There are fantastic sites to explore, with the privilege to be almost alone! Indeed, since the great Bush administration has brilliantly added Syria to the list of the fabled “Axis of Evil”, the tourist industry has plummeted. So while it’s sad for the local tourist industry, it is fantastic for those – like me – who despise the sight of tour buses.

Tursun Gul, a local Uighur woman on a crutch, shouts at Chinese armored personnel carriers and soldiers wearing riot gear as a crowd of angry locals confront security forces on a street in the city of Urumqi on July 7, 2009. Click on the image to access more pictures. Warning, some photos are shocking.

I found a testimony on a blog on Le Monde.fr, a French newspaper. Here is an excerpt.

I was in Urumqi on July 5th. The demonstration started at 5 pm. It had been announced on the web the day before. That was mainly students who were asking for justice after what had happened on June 26th at Shaogan. Rebiya Kadeer has nothing to do with that. Around 5 pm we started to gather on the People’s square, in front of the prefecture, with black t-shirts to show our message. I was with my girlfriend. We were around 200, 300 people, mostly students. Then some more came to support us. Ultimately we were more than 3000. Among us were even some Uyghurs officials working for the government.

Please follow the story here.

Georgetown's beautiful houses...

Georgetown! How much did I like that place! Once again, I keep on praising Malaysia, to the point of boredom. But how could I not? The old architecture, the small streets, the big mosque, stuck between Little India and Chinatown… The smiles…

Now that I’m back  in Hong Kong I already miss this tranquility, this cheerful spirit. In contrast, I find Hong Kong dehumanizing, dehumanized, and both at the same time. And it’s even more striking since there are also Chinese in Malaysia, they also speak mandarin – putonghua -, and yet they are so different!

Maybe it has something to do with the developments of the last century in mainland China, or the Mao phenomenon and the craziness that followed: years of mass mobilization campaigns, of maddened collectivism, of insane government programs that cost millions of lives and the sanity of many…

Or is it just the fact that there’s room in Malaysia? Indeed only 20 million people live in this country which isn’t small. That like a drop in China’s population of almost a billion and a half. Maybe, since people can actually breathe (politically and physically) they have, let’s say… ‘cool down’?

Who knows?