A Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night

Let me say up front, that Istanbul is one of the most amazing places that I have ever been in my entire life. I will qualify this statement later, but first I must relay the story of my journey. It is long, it is mostly unpleasant, but it provides great material.
Time- 5:30 am. I wake up to catch an early taxi to the airport. The ride is uneventful for a Cairo taxi (the cab has seatbelts and there are no "near" collisions). However the cab driver charges me not only for time he stopped to get gas, but also the gas itself. It was only $1 approx, but it's the principle of the thing.
Next, I get to the Cairo airport and experience great confusion over where to check-in, and am passed around from ticket booth to ticket booth until someone figures out that the check-in counter I want is not open. So much for getting to the airport early. In true Egyptian fashion, the ticket booth employees arrive only an hour before boarding time.
A side note: I spent about two hours waiting for the check-in counter to open, and was wowed by the cleverness of the flight announcements. Before announcing a flight to France, they would play Edith Piaf, for Italy, Andrea Boccelli, for Spain, matador music, and so on and so forth.

When I get to the gate, I sit down and wait some more and then the power goes out in the airport. Again, typically Egypt.
The seating area is filled with a group of Japanese who amusedly watch overdramatic Egyptian soap operas, and again I think about the strange situations that globalization creates.
When I finally get on the plane, I am seated next to a most temperamental Australian, who rudely yells at the woman behind him for pushing his seat when she is settling her bags underneath. For the rest of the flight, he continues to be unpleasant.
But it doesn't really matter, because I get to see amazing views of the Mediterranean and Turkey. After being deprived of natural beauty for so long, I almost cry when we pass over the blue sea sparkling with the reflection of the sun, and the Anatolian mountains reaching up into the clouds.

I also get to eat one of the most amazing meals (Turkish airplane food) that I have had in the last two months. That's not saying very much for Egyptian cuisine, by the way.
When I arrive in Turkey, I obtain my visa in thirty seconds flat, but have to wait for almost an hour to go through a passport check. Then when I leave customs, I see dozens of people waving signs for passenger pick-up, but I do not see my name. After half an hour I almost give up hope, and ask a tourist information desk worker about alternate routes to my hotel. He suggests the subway, and I politely decline, and decide to wait a little longer for my hotel shuttle. Fortunately, my persistance pays off.

(now I'm going to switch to past tense, because I'm tipsy, and I'm not sure I can handle present tense any longer . . . too confusing!)
Good thing I waited, because I was able to enjoy the company of a Swiss woman and her teenage son who are vacationing at my hotel and had just arrived from Zurich for their week long getaway.
The ride was a long one despite the fifteen kilometer distance, and I was able to see Istanbul in the way only a long car ride can give. The city is very modern, very European, and (with Egypt as my reference point) very very clean. As for the people, we passed school girls, men in business suits, Aeropostle-clad teenagers, light-skinned mothers wearing hijab hurrying their blond children down the street, and women wearing short skirts and tight shirts. At the risk of sounding like an Orientalist, it really seems like a place where East meets West. Fitting for a city that straddles two continents and was once the focal point of an empire that stretched across three.
How do I describe Istanbul? Or, specifically the area around my hotel, that encompasses the "old city?" I would have to say, for those of you who have been to Georgetown, or another quaint cobblestone colonial (i.e. 17th, 18th century) neighborhood or city on a body of water; just imagine it with some Islamic architecture, and you pretty much have the general picture. In other words, it is adorable.

To end my day, I decided to treat myself to a celebratory dinner at a ethnic fusion restaurant right down the street from my hotel. The place was as nice as one of the trendiest restaurants in Manhattan, and the decor was very contemporary.

I ordered myself a nice glass of white wine, and a kebab platter with rice which was amazing, making it the second meal today that ranks on the top four meals I have eaten in the last two months.
For those of you interested, here's the list:
1) Marriot Hotel-Zamalek, Cairo
2) Mrs. Keshk's house- Maadi, Cairo
3) Dubb ethnic cuisine- Istanbul
4) Turkish airlines food- 40,000 feet above sea level.

Afterward, emboldened by a little bit of alcohol, I decided to walk the area around my hotel and found a Turkish bazaar. It was just what I would expect from a bazaar: oriental rugs, lanterns, scarves, statuettes, and plates. Though, it wasn't tacky . . .
It was truly enjoyable despite the fact that I got catcalls from Turkish men, who are not quite as hostile or aggressive in their pursuit of women ( a generalization, I know) as Egyptian men seem to be, but still a bit annoying. I got calls of "sweetheart, are you lost?" or just men calling from cafes saying "hello, hello, salud" or any other greeting in as many languages as they knew in order to get my attention. This, I find, is the unavoidable experience of being a single woman traveler.
Anyway, I can sum up my day as "exhausting", and my brief time in Istanbul as "amazing".

Turkey: It's not just a bird

Does anyone object to my writing about Turkey in a blog called "Ari in Egypt"? If you don't mind, that's exactly what I will be doing in less than a week. :)

After finding out that I actually have a five day weekend for Egyptian armed forces day, I spontaneously planned an entire trip to Istanbul (not Constantinople) by myself. YES, by myself. Everyone should calm down, though, because my hotel has arranged for my airport pickup, and I will be touring the old city and going on a four-hour cruise on the Black Sea with a tour group. I will also be going to a Turkish bath (sounds sketchy, I know) to sit in a hot tub the day after I arrive. Getting away from Egypt and experiencing another culture will improve my morale and bolster my ability to get by for the next two and a half months in Egypt. Hopefully I will get there and back with no problems (worries which plague my restless mind).

Planning this escape was the highlight of my week, and now the complaining will commence:

The reason that I have not written a blog entry for a few days is that there have been rolling blackouts across the city. Somehow, the outages screwed up the server so that I was not able to get online until a few hours after the power went back on. Even the entire AUC campus was blacked out for two hours, which made it very difficult for me to retrieve an essay that I sent to myself by e-mail. Thus, I barely made the deadline. (The teacher for that class is a psycho, and she most likely would not have considered the blackouts an excuse.)

Lack of sleep has also been a problem for me, because I barely got to rest last weekend, and I have been subsisting on five to six hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. I literally felt like I was going to pass out in class on Wednesday. Therefore, I made the decision to opt out of an excursion to Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine's monastery. I learned that we would be leaving Thursday night on an overnight bus trip that would then drop us off at St. Catherine's, and later at 2:00 am we would start the two to three hour hike up the mountain to see the sunrise. I was really looking forward to this trip. However, my health is most important to me, and I thought about the sleep that I have already lost, plus the two nights I probably would not sleep on that trip, plus the two days of school that would follow, and then add on the four days in Istanbul. Also, for those of you who know me, I am not a hiker and I was not ready to re-enact my own private version of Troop Beverly Hills in the middle of the night in the Egyptian desert. All of these factors were part of my decision, and I don't regret it. The timing was just not right, though it is disappointing that I couldn't go.

Other complaints that I will keep brief:

1) No hot water for the last week and half. Though this problem is undermined by the fact that the temperature continues to be in the upper 90's.

2) I ordered a lunch that I thought would be a platter of falafel, ful (refried beans), eggs, and french fries only to discover that the meal was all of those items squished into a pita. It was truly revolting.

3) My bus driver didn't feel like running the 2:00p.m. route from school, so I had to wait another hour to go home.

4) The travel office at AUC could not even help me figure out how to arrange transport from my apartment to the Cairo airport for Tuesday.

Highlights that are worth mentioning (to counterbalance the complaints):

1) At the CSA (expat community center) I enjoyed a pasta dinner with WINE on Wednesday. The wine was truly delicious, but then I remembered that I had to walk all the way back to my apartment in the heat. Perhaps it was not the best idea, but it was a little slice of heaven.

2) I am about to sign up for a Thanksgiving trip with the CSA to the Bahariya oasis (a resort area) and the White desert. According to the brochure, the trip includes a bedouin night, swimming, a Thanksgiving party, a safari in the desert, and watching the sunset on a mountain that I don't have to climb. The price is reasonable for a three day trip, so I think that I will sign up.

3) I'm a rockstar in my Arabic class. This is probably because I am one of the only people who does homework, but I feel good about outshining people from better ranked institutions. It just goes to show that it doesn't matter where you go to school, it's what you make of it. Also, it shows that Lawrence is a first class institution of higher education, even if it does not have a widespread reputation.

4) Egypt turns the clocks back for "fall back" on October 1st, so I gained an hour of sleep this weekend.

That's about it for now. I have assuaged my guilt about not keeping up my blog, and now I will go to sleep. Goodnight.

Pyramids to piles of rubble

This post is dedicated to the sad sight of a rock heap that once was one of the first Ancient Egyptian pyramids. Rest in peace.
Yesterday I ventured to Saqqara, which is an Ancient Egyptian necropolis from the Old Kingdom (about 2500 B.C.E). The step pyramid at Saqqara was, in a way, a rough draft for the pyramids at Giza. Yet it is spectacular in its own right, and the overall experience of being there was more enjoyable than Giza, because it was less crowded, and the vendors were not as annoying. There will be pictures soon, but my internet is being temperamental. Check facebook for my album in the meantime.

Surrounding the pyramid are nobles' tombs, which stole the show. These tombs are hidden gems filled with intact carvings of daily life scenes including fishing, court dancing, and farming. Some carvings still had their color, but unfortunately the guards forbade me from taking pictures of them.
The best part of my tour (and also the scariest) was the tomb of King Titi (laugh now to get it out of your system . . . there you go). This tomb was not for the faint of heart, and about three people in my group couldn't go in because of their claustrophobia. Imagine trying to climb down a steep ramp into a four foot by four foot shaft going about thirty feet into the ground. Now imagine doing it in in a skirt. :D Then when you get to the very bottom of the shaft, the walkway is like a crawlspace that you have to bend over for about one hundred feet to get to a tomb. The whole experience creeped me out, and I kept thinking of those trapped Chilean miners, and how I didn't want to die in the tomb of a ridiculous king named Titi. In the end, the experience was worth the anxiety, because inside there were magnificent hieroglyphs carved all over the walls. Standing forebodingly in the midst of these carvings was the black granite sarcophogus of the king. Amazing.
I can laugh about it now, but on the way out of the tomb, I hit my head quite hard on the low ceiling of the walkway. I was fine, but as I said on facebook, it would have been the coolest concussion ever, and it would have made a great story. It already has.

Later in the day, I went to dinner at the home of a lovely Egyptian woman named Mrs. Keshk with whom I was put in contact by a cousin of mine (thanks Naomi!)
I arrived in style in the car that she ordered to pick me up (she, like many upper class Egyptians has a driver). Her two-story apartment was beautifully decorated with French antique furniture in the living room, and a Chinese table inlaid with irradescent mosaic pieces in the shape of fish in the dining room. Did I mention the apartment has a view of the Nile? The place was exquisite, which reflected the character of the woman herself. She was so sweet to me, and like a grandmother, urged me to eat more food than I could possibly eat in two or three days. After dinner, I was treated to chocolates from Saudi Arabic, tea, and cookies. Then she, her maid, and I watched Turkish soap operas dubbed in Arabic for the rest of the evening. We were all shocked when an unfortunate bride-to-be found her fiancee in bed with another woman on their wedding day. It was among the most fun visits I've had in Egypt, and I will definitely be going back.

Stay Tuned

Tomorrow there will be an in-depth blogpost. Now I need to go to bed after an epic day!

The Weirdest Thing I've Ever Eaten

Well, the title is not entirely true, but I had to get your attention somehow. Today I ventured into the realm of Egyptian cuisine at the AUC foodcourt. The dish that I tried, khoushary, has been on my radar since I heard it was a staple in the Egyptian kitchen. What is it, you ask? Well, its a hodgepodge of starches including rice, macaroni, spaghetti, lentils, crispy onions, and chickpeas in a tomato/olive oil sauce. To be honest, it looked really weird, and I thought, "here we go . . . " since I heard Egypt is the Middle Eastern culinary equivalent of England.
After trying khoushary, I actually enjoyed it. I'm not saying it's as good as Italian, Indian, Lebanese, Japanese, French, Moroccan, American, Mexican, Greek, or Chinese food, but it wasn't bad.
The best part is that it's completely vegetarian.
Other items on the menu at the Egyptian restaurant, el Omda, were similar to other ethnic foods that I have eaten. Fried eggplant, a recipe from my grandmother's Italian family, was available, as well as falafel, and rice pudding.
The weirdest thing I have ever eaten (and this was unknowingly) was when I was eleven and I ate foie gras in France. But this is a close second.
I guess I'm lucky that foie gras is the weirdest thing I've ever eaten, because Anthony Bourdain, my favorite culinary travel show host, ate a boar's anus cooked in dirt in the African bush. I will count my blessings that there are no boars in Egypt.

The anti-Barbie

Just a warning: this post is random.
Since last week I have been on the hunt for the Muslim Barbie doll named Fulla. *I really want to buy her!* She's going to be my personal souvenir from my trip to Egypt as soon as I can locate a toy shop in my neighborhood.
Let me tell you a little about Fulla, because I find her fascinating on many levels. Fulla was marketed to Muslim countries starting in the 90's as a backlash against Western values, and as a way to promote modest dress and behavior. Some say it was part of a larger movement to get more young women to wear headscarves. Among her warddrobe items is a full length hijab, and shorter veils. Her life also revolves more around the home and family, and she loves to pray.
Besides these obvious differences from Barbie, she is represented in many careers (doctor Fulla, teacher Fulla), and likes shopping, cars, and being with friends. There is no Ken equivalent, because dating is forbidden, but I think she is better off without him anyway.
If I can't find Fulla, I will buy Jamila, another doll that embodies the same values and is Fulla's rival.

When I locate her, I will let all of you know.

The Citadel

For the most part, I will let the pictures speak for themselves, because they are numerous and self-explanatory. A brief background: yesterday I went to the citadel, a 12th century fortress built on a bluff overlooking Cairo. Centuries of rulers used the citadel as living quarters, building multiple palaces, as well as a religious center with about five mosques, and a military base.
Now for the pictures.



Above is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, a 19th century ruler of Egypt. The mosque was his way of sticking it to his former bosses, the Ottomans. By defying them in building more than three minarets, and (in his mind) replicating the splendor of the Blue Mosque, he showed them that he was not going to be their docile follower. Needless to say, the Ottomans were not happy with this turn of events.
The next few pictures are of a secondary mosque.



The Egyptian military museum at the citadel was interesting to me because of its propagandist agenda. The prime examples being the glorification of Nasser, and the Egyptian government's spin on battles with Israel that didn't end in their victory. Don't misunderstand me, I'm sure there is an equally propagandist museum in Israel (or the United States), which I would be just as amused to see. That's the kind of cynic that I am. On the propaganda scale, the Egyptian military museum rates far below North Korean state television but slightly above a fourth of July parade.