The AC Revolution

Just a month after graduating from Tufts, I am now back in the midst of academia. Classes have picked up, and I took a weekend trip to Alexandria last weekend that prevented me from posting anything new on the blog. Today, however, is the closest thing we will ever have to a snow day this year. Clashes occurred between protesters and the police in Tahrir Square last night and this morning, and the program has canceled classes today due to ongoing uncertainty about the situation there. I would recommend logging on to Al-Jazeera or BBC to follow the situation, and for those of you who use twitter the best hashtags are #tahrir and #jun28.

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Speaking of revolutions, I was involved in a mini-uprising last weekend on the train from Cairo to Alexandria. While many aspects of Egyptian public transportation either don’t work or are very uncomfortable for anyone with long legs, the train between Cairo and Alex is a clear exception. Roomy, air-conditioned, and fast, it is by far the easiest and most comfortable way to travel between the two cities.

Last Friday, however, the train service fell short of my high expectations. After leaving 30 minutes behind schedule (no explanation given), I and my fellow passengers soon realized that the air-conditioning in our car did not work. While a broken air-conditioner would not have been an issue in the winter, riding a train in the early afternoon on a summer day without air-conditioning is not very fun.

Ordinarily, this would have been what I call a “Maalesh” moment. Maalesh is a staple of Egyptian dialect, which means, in this context, “oh well, there’s a problem but it’s not going to get fixed and we’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

One woman, however, decided that she was not going to surrender her right to air-conditioning without a fight. She looked to be about 50 or 60 years old, from the middle or upper class, and spoke both English and Arabic. She began to complain right when the train left the station, and she continued to do so until the ticket-taker walked down the aisle in our car about five minutes later. “Where’s the AC?” she demanded to know. The ticket-taker shrugged and was about to continue his journey down the train when the woman piped up again, “How is it that the AC always work on these trains during the winter, but it breaks during the summer?! Go bring the maintenance man and fix this, please!”

The exasperated ticket-taker sighed and asked her to please calm down. That was a mistake. “Calm down?! The AC is broken and you refuse to do anything about it! This is not right!” The woman then turned to the rest of the passengers in the train car, who, up until this point, had been quietly listening to her exchange with the ticket-taker. “Nobody should be silent right now!” she said. “We cannot accept this sort of second-class treatment. We have to demand our rights as passengers!”

“Demanding rights” was one of the trademark phrases of the January revolution, and it effectively stirred up feelings of indignation amongst the other passengers on the train. Amidst a chorus of calls demanding that he bring the maintenance man, the ticket-taker retreated from the train car and muttered that he would be back soon.

After the ticket-taker had left, everyone on the train worked themselves into a frenzy. A woman in a niqab (a full-face covering with a small slit for the eyes) stood up in the aisle and encouraged everyone to get off together and demand a refund when we arrive Alexandria. Several riders used newspapers to fan themselves as the temperature continued to rise. A few men joined with the woman in the niqab in calling for everyone to work together in order to secure a refund in Alexandria.

A few minutes later, the ticket-taker just came back to tell us that the AC was broken and that neither he nor the maintenance man could fix it while the train was running. Before the entire car erupted in fury, he assured us that we could get a partial refund in Alexandria. "How can we be sure that is going to happen?!" simultaneously cried the woman in the niqab, the father of two young girls sitting next to me, and the middle-aged woman who started the whole issue. “Don’t worry,” the ticket-taker said, “everyone who has a ticket showing that they rode in train car number five can bring it to the ticket office and they will give you a refund.”

About twenty minutes later, with the temperature continuing to rise and perspiration visible on everyone’s foreheads, the maintenance man came back into the car and tried to improve the situation by opening up the four small windows in the front and back of the train car. The plan backfired. Upon opening the first window, a cloud of dust blew into the train, further agitating the riders in the front of the train car. Then, as he went to open a window at the back of the car, an old man began to yell at the maintenance man that he didn't want that window to be opened. The maintenance man claimed that it wasn't the man's choice, the whole train needed air, which only made the old man angrier. As the maintenance man left the car, the man continued to yell at him, screaming “kalb!” (dog!), which is considered a serious insult in Arabic.

As the journey continued, the train car remained abuzz with chatter. People declared that they were tired of things not working, we planned our group march to the ticket office to secure a refund, and others inveighed against the employees of the train company. There was an army officer on the train, too, and as the chatter continued one of the riders asked him to speak up: "Are you not a citizen just like us?!" The woman in the niqab led the charge, standing up next to her seat in the front of the car and exhorting the rest of the riders to be sure to stay together when the train arrives in Alex and march together to the ticket counter to get our refunds. "We won't accept this kind of second-rate treatment from the train company!" she asserted.

Train trips are usually solitary adventures. While I sometimes strike up a short conversation with the person sitting next to me, I often spend the two and half hours between Cairo and Alexandria reading, sleeping, or gazing at the scenery outside the train car. On this journey, however, everyone in the car became the best of friends. I spent a few minutes talking to the woman in the niqab (the first time that I had ever spoken directly to a woman wearing one), and I schmoozed with the other passengers for the remainder of the journey as well.

As the train pulled into Alexandria, I hurried out and onto the platform because I had to buy a ticket for my return journey and I didn’t want to get caught up in the mass of humanity that surely had the same idea. I reached the ticket office before the rest of my compatriots from train car number five. After a few minutes of standing in line, a group of the train revolutionaries suddenly appeared inside the ticket office and instantly recognized me (probably because I was the only tall blond in the building). I waved them over to my line, and was planning to wait with them until it was our turn to talk to the ticket agent. The woman who started the AC revolution, however, was not as patient. She forced her way to the front of the line and rapped on the glass with her wedding ring, instantly gaining the attention of the bewildered ticket agent. “Refund! Refund!” she demanded. The ticket agent, after consulting his colleagues for a minute, returned and proceeded to disburse the refunds. Each of us received 6.50 Egyptian pounds (a little more than $1), which was 20% of the original ticket price.

The middle-aged female revolutionary received her money first. As she turned to walk away, I congratulated her on a job well done. She turned to me with a mischievous gleam in her eyes and said: "Nobody messes with Egyptian women! We get what we want!"

While maalesh moments still happen quite often in post-revolution Egypt, I do not think that this AC Revolution would have happened last year. It would never have begun without the middle-aged, upper-class female revolutionary, but when she began to speak up everyone soon joined in. This type of mini-social movement is easily exportable to other aspects of daily life in Egypt. When one person speaks out against injustice or mistreatment, frames it in the context of "demanding our rights," and manages to attract supporters to the cause, things can change for the better. Here's to the continuation and escalation of the AC Revolution!

Taking the Long View in Egypt

One of the nicest things about being in Egypt this year is that I have been able to see many of my friends from Alexandria University again. I had the pleasure of hosting Omar (pictured above), one of my best friends last year, last night at my apartment in Cairo. He is in Cairo this weekend because he is being honored at a ceremony today as the top student in Egypt! After being named the top student at the Alexandria University Medical School, he went through a series of interviews and tests on the national level and emerged in first place. Omar was quite modest about his achievement (I didn’t realize that he had won the top spot until we were about to go to bed last night and I asked him about the specific details of today’s ceremony), but, from what I can tell, this is the real deal! The award is well-deserved.

As is usually the case with conversations these days, we talked primarily about politics and the changes that have occurred since the January revolution. I was impressed by Omar’s ability to articulate what exactly the revolution meant to him and what type of effect it will have on the country as a whole, so I will share some of his thoughts here:

1) On Mubarak – Omar recalled a friend of his posting a question on Facebook after the fall of Mubarak along the lines of “if you could say one thing to Mubarak right now, what would it be?” Omar wrote that he would ask Mubarak how he felt when he saw the outburst of patriotism that emerged during the revolution. “What do you think,” he wanted to ask Mubarak, “when you see people so inspired and optimistic about their future, waving Egyptian flags, chanting inspiring slogans and writing about and drawing their hopes and dreams for a better Egypt in all of these public spaces? Does that not make you feel that your 30 years in power did more harm than good?”

2) On the country’s future – “When I look at Egypt right now, I a country that is poor but that has hope. People wanted instantaneous change after the revolution, but we have to realize that we are looking at a country that needs 15, 20, 25 years to get where we want it to be. The most important effect of this revolution is that we have finally have a chance to put ourselves on the right course. All the focus on the upcoming elections is well-warranted, but people should not think of them as a make-or-break. The Egyptian people have said with certainty that they no longer want a strong man like Mubarak to stay in power for 30 years, and I am sure that peaceful turnover of power from party-to-party or president-to-president will occur no matter who wins the first round of elections. This country is too diverse for a single party to rule for a long time (assuming that that party plays by the rules, instead of changing them or applying them selectively).

3) On what the revolution meant to him – I have never been more proud than I was during the 18 days of protests that brought down Mubarak. I don’t think that this revolution will have much of an effect on my career – I was already in good position to earn my medical degree before it happened, and I would have been able to live a perfectly comfortable life despite Mubarak or his son being in power. Still, I was constantly frustrated during the Mubarak era by the idea that I, a medical student on the verge of becoming a full-fledged doctor, would walk down the street and be afraid that I might fall victim to a policeman exercising his authority arbitrarily. Why was my country like this? We have such a wealth of resources here – both human and natural – and yet we had a government that was so visibly wasting them. The most important thing to me in the new Egypt is that each person receives his just rewards. If you work hard, you deserve to succeed. It shouldn’t be like the past, when personal connections and a few well-placed payments were the key to getting a job. This revolution was about Egyptians standing up and saying “enough!” to that old system. Judge me on the basis of my talents, as opposed to who I know or how much money my family has.



I think Omar’s observations are spot on. It is easy to get caught up in the electoral politics right now in the country. All sides seem to be accusing their opponents of having anti-democratic intentions, and there is a fear-mongering all around. Nevertheless, I agree with Omar that Egypt is generally headed in the right direction and that we should make sure to maintain a long-term view even when engaging in these short-term debates. Much as I think that this year is one of the most exciting times ever to be in Egypt, we won’t know the real impact of Mubarak’s overthrow until 15 or 20 years down the road.

A Rooftop Oasis

It’s Friday, which means that I have just finished up the second week of summer classes. It’s also 1:00 PM here, which means that I am currently writing this post in the midst of the single calmest hour of the week. Friday prayers usually start around noon and run for one or two hours, and during that time everything else in the city comes to a halt. Cairo’s streets, which are normally home to all sorts of dowsha (an Egyptian Arabic word that can be loosely translated as “an inordinately large amount of general noise”) and zahma (another Egyptian Arabic word, which means “congestion”), are nearly empty and devoid of sound.

For the rest of the week, the dowsha and zahma continue unceasingly. Whether riding in a car or walking on the side of the road, car horns, vendors hawking their wares, the chatter of the street, and more car horns are simply a fact of daily life. Sidewalks, which should ideally provide at least some shelter from various noise and congestion on the street, are effectively impassable because of various obstacles and the pervasive risk of falling victim to an “Egyptian shower” (as a result of water dripping from a leaky air conditioner or someone dumping water out of their window). This daily dose of dowsha and zahma used to irk me, especially if I was in a bad mood or in a hurry to get somewhere. At this point, however, I don’t think about it too much on a daily basis.

That being said, maintaining my personal sanity for the year hinges upon finding places that are removed from the constant clatter of daily life. Luckily, our new apartment is on the top floor of our building, which means that the dowsha that floats up to my window from the street is quite muted. The best part about having the top floor apartment, however, is that we have access to the roof. The roof of our building at 40 Mesaha Street in Doqqi, Cairo, is a true urban oasis. As the pictures shows, we have a view of the Nile and downtown Cairo. While it’s hard to spend time on the roof during the day because of the lack of shade, it is perfect for dusk and nighttime relaxation.

I was exhausted last night from a long week of class, and so my roommates and I decided to stay in and take the night off. I dusted off an old chair that was up on the roof and spent a few hours reading up there, surrounded by a beautiful, panoramic view of Cairo at night. The dowsha and zahma on Cairo’s streets remain just as bad at night, but the roof is completely insulated from all of it. As a matter of fact, the muffled sounds of car horns and other aspects of city life at night were almost mildly pleasing.

Not Your Average First Day of School...

Ever since I started pre-school, my mom always took photos of me in front of our house as I prepared to go to the first day of school. Usually I posed for these photos complacently, although there were a few years in high school when I had a distinct scowl on my face (clearly too cool for school). I was always in front of the house, and, while I looked a little different in each one (taller, new clothes, new hairdo, etc.), there was not much to distinguish one year from another. When school began last Tuesday, however, I decided to carry on this tradition, albeit in a slightly different setting.



I am standing in Tahrir Square, in front of one of the walls of the American University in Cairo, and the Arabic writing behind me reads "Live the Revolution."

While I often feel like this country is pretty much the same as the Egypt that I experienced in 2010, there are times when the magnitude of what happened between January 25 (the start of the protests) and February 11 (Mubarak's ouster) really hits home. Every morning on the taxi ride to school, we drive past the burned out headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Ironically, that shell of a building sits right next to the Ritz-Carlton, which is also a shell of a building because it is in the midst of a giant renovation. Walking around downtown Cairo, nearly every available wall facing the street has turned into a a space for public art commemorating the revolution, calling for national unity, and urging Egyptians to take pride in their country. In class this week, the revolution came up in nearly every discussion. And every day dozens of people gather around newsstands in the morning to read the latest headlines about political and economic developments.

Anybody who claims to know how all of this political, social, and economic upheaval will play out is simply lying. But while there is a great deal of uncertainty about this country's future, there is also a distinct sense of accomplishment and optimism that the forces that led to Mubarak's downfall can be channeled to build the new Egypt, too.

A Trip to Fantasyland

Yesterday was my first and only “true” day of summer. The sun was shining, I swam a few laps in a pristine, Olympic-sized pool, and spent the rest of the day reading and lounging poolside with a few friends. All in all, a very pleasant experience.

Step back for a second. I am in Egypt right now, a developing country in which the provision of clean water to the citizenry is still a major issue. I would venture to guess that less than one percent of the population has ever seen a swimming pool, much less swam in one. While I technically was still in Egypt yesterday, I spent the day in “New Cairo,” a sheltered, phantasmagorical development on the outskirts of Cairo that resembles an upscale suburb of Los Angeles. New Cairo is home, appropriately, to the American University of Cairo’s “New Campus.” AUC’s new home is beautiful. The campus is spacious, the buildings are built in a modern Islamic style that is reminiscent of both the alleyways of Damascus and adobe brick buildings in the American Southwest, and the campus has just about every resource that an American college student is used to (a huge library, beautiful sports complex, WiFi-equipped classrooms, etc.)

The fact that this beautiful campus is in Egypt, though, is decidedly weird. That is not to say that Egypt is not worthy of such a place. Indeed, I’m sure that any Egyptian student would be happy to attend AUC over other Egyptian universities (which tend to lack even the most basic facilities and services and are often just as corrupt as other institutions in the country were under Mubarak). But AUC in general is not composed of Egyptians from all walks of life. It has a reputation for being an exclusive, country-club like university for the children of Egypt’s elite. Classes are primarily in English, there is an “Americana” food court, and it costs $4 just to ride the bus from the center of Cairo to the new campus (a significant fee for all but the richest in this society).

Indeed, the new AUC campus and its surroundings are emblematic of the huge chasm between Egypt’s ultra-rich and the rest of the population. Although Mubarak’s economic and social policies wreaked havoc on the poor during his 30 years in power, the economic liberalization that he oversaw allowed for the formation of a privileged upper-class. The new AUC Campus (and New Cairo in general) are manifestations of the chasm between Egypt’s ultra-rich and the rest of the population. Whereas the average Egyptian living in an urban area resides in a cramped apartment building, takes public transportation, and buys his food from street vendors, the average resident of New Cairo resides in a villa-like house, has one or more cars, and shops at the local mall.

Many Egyptians will certainly tell you that they aspire to live in a place like New Cairo. The residents of New Cairo all enjoy the amenities of life that we in the West could not dream of living without, and which the international community has focused on promoting in the developing world. But New Cairo, in my opinion, does not represent “development” in any meaningful sense of the word. It is easy to forget the hardships of daily life in Egypt while lounging at the AUC pool. There is a fine line, however, between simply living and working in an wealthy, calm area away from the bustle of the city and isolating yourself to the point where you lose all perspective of the way that the other 99% of the society lives.

House Hunting in Cairo

Unlike my first trip to Egypt in January, 2010, I am not dealing with too much culture shock this time around. I know the city of Cairo pretty well, I can speak the local dialect, I know how much to pay for basic goods and services, and I am used to the idiosyncrasies of daily life here.

Despite all of that, my first few days here have not been a walk in the park. During my semester abroad, we arrived with housing waiting for us. This time, all of us on the program are tasked with finding apartments on our own. Over the past two and a half days, my two future housemates and I visited approximately 15 apartments looking for the perfect match. Some were too big, some were too small, some didn’t allow visitors of the opposite sex, etc…We finally settled, however, on a top-floor apartment with a rooftop view of the Nile that is located about 10 minutes walk from Tahrir Square. It’s currently under renovation, but we should be able to move there in about a week. Phew! It’s good to be able to check that one off the to-do list.

The apartment search, however, did have some upsides. Going from building to building asking the doormen whether there were any available apartments gave us the opportunity to brush up on our Egyptian dialect. We also learned several new words, such as mafroosh (furnished) – it turns out that nearly all apartments for rent come with a complete set of furniture, beds, and household appliances. When you take into account the fact that our apartment is completely furnished with three big bedrooms, a nice kitchen, and a large sitting room, paying $200 a month for rent and utilities seems like nothing!

We also had a chance to do some bargaining with the Egyptian landlords that we met. Haggling over prices is, of course, a facet of daily life here, but it was very interesting to take note of the other topics that came up as we discussed the possibility of living in various apartments. One of the most prominent of those topics was the issue of having visitors of the opposite sex into the apartment. Perhaps unfairly (or perhaps not), young Americans have a reputation here as licentious and disrespectful of cultural norms when it comes to their interactions with each other or with Egyptians.

Whether we actually engage in more “culturally inappropriate” behavior than your average young Egyptian is up for debate (the subject for another blog post). Nevertheless every landlord we spoke to was extremely apprehensive when we asked him or her a question about having friends over. We were careful to phrase the question in as neutral a way as possible, emphasizing that we wanted to have friends over for dinner or to study. About half the landlords that we asked, however, flatly refused. For us, that question was a “make or break” one. We wanted to be able to host friends at our house, and more importantly we didn’t want to have a landlord who was implicitly suspicious of our motives or character.

Luckily, our landlady-to-be was fine with our have friends of both sexes over to our apartment (provided that we not make too much noise). That was fine with us. Having found an apartment, we are now enjoying a relaxing Friday. Noon prayers just ended, and as I was finishing this post a cacophony of sound broke out on the street. As we are currently staying near Tahrir Square, I initially thought that it might be some sort of protest. After Friday prayers, of course, was the prime time for protests during the Egyptian uprising. As I looked down from our balcony, however, I realized that all that noise was actually from a group of food vendors hoping to take advantage of the hundreds of people pouring out of the mosque, drivers honking to get the vendors out of their way, and the multitude of other random noises that characterize daily life on Cairo’s streets. Ah Egypt, it’s good to be back!