“It’s like trying to drink through a fire hose,” said a particularly insightful member of my program.

Every day in each class, we scribble hundreds of new vocabulary words. (Remembering them is another issue.) Two days a week, we have a 12-hour turnaround time between classes - 12 hours which may or may not comprise of a 10-page homework packet, and informational sheets (entirely in Arabic) given to us as an OPPORTUNITY to prepare for all-Arabic lecture the following day. Then there are life necessities. We find places to do laundry, and schlep our laundry there. We secure meals – maybe two a day, or one if swimming upstream through the streets of people seems particularly exhausting. Homework and keeping up with our classroom topics could easily comprise 50% of our non-class hours. And occasionally, our families like to hear from us.

A fire hose, or intellectual boot camp. Analogies make the stress more comprehensible.

*

We met the most interesting people at our favorite hang-out-and-eat spot in Alex last week. Because we go there about three times a week, we noticed that this western-looking couple had also graced the large wooden booths three times that week. As they headed for the door, I offered a pleasant salutation. We wound up talking for a half hour.

She is half Egyptian, half Greek, and pregnant. He is half Egyptian, half Argentinean, and owns a hotel. I spoke for that half hour with the woman, and my roommate spoke with the man. We had wildly differing conversations, and came together after the four of us parted ways to share notes. All in all, it was hugely insightful to meet these two and hear their experiences being both insiders to Egyptian life and culture and language, and members of other ingroups.

She told me about growing up in Greece and visiting Egypt as a child. She told me about the visit she thought would be her last, which happened to be the visit on which she met her now-husband. She told me about how her experience has been as a woman in Egypt, married to a businessman. If she attends a meeting with her husband and wishes to express an opinion, she tells her husband first and he then relates it to his partners, so that she doesn’t “hurt his honor.” That’s not the wish of her husband; rather, after a lifetime living on two sides of a culture, she’s determined it’s the most effective way for her thoughts to be entertained.

He told my roommate about the lack of accountability among business owners in Egypt. “If I want to buy a box of 100 pens, and I pick out ‘that pen please,’ I may get back a box of 50 ballpoint pens and 50 fountain pens. Or maybe 50 pens and 50 pencils. The shop owner asks me, ‘What’s the problem? They all serve the same purpose,’ but I answer, ‘It’s not what I want!’” He told her about a serious problem with lack of foresight when planning new buildings or construction projects – an area will be identified, cleared and prepared. A building will be designed. But no thought goes in to the sewage line that must reach the building, or how electricity will reach every room, or where its visitors and patrons will park. Granted, it’s not as bad as some recent structural mishaps, and it’s also worth noting that this was one person’s opinion that I heard second-hand. Regardless, I find that his concerns fit with some curious sights I’ve seen in Egypt so far. The best example thus far: in Siwa – the oasis in western Egypt we visited a couple weeks ago - an entire Olympic sports complex sits on the edge of town, surviving the sun and the wind and only occasionally used by the military base. As far as I know, there are NO SCHEDULED OLYMPIC GAMES in the works for Egypt.

*

If you have not had the pleasure of conversing with an Egyptian, you might notice that your future conversation partner finds a lot of what you say to be questionable. Example:

You: “Hey man. You want to see a movie tonight?”

Friend: “Uh.”

You: “Er, okay. Instead, maybe we could go grab a bite to eat. Do you like pizza?”

Friend: “Uh.”

This is not to say that Egyptians don’t have a lot to say, but I’ve finally picked up on a crucial cultural nuance to conversation here. “Uh” accompanied by falling affectation (similar to the way a person in the U.S. might indicate uncertainty or doubt, though not held for quite as long as a full “Uhhhhhh…”) indicates “yes,” or a more analogous “uh-huh.”

Five weeks down. And I just learned how to say “uh-huh” to an Egyptian. *sigh*

*

There’s a newspaper kiosk on a busy corner by our school. This is one of those intersections with traffic lights – a somewhat rare occurrence at intersections. However, as I mentioned a few posts ago, drivers take stoplights as indicators of how MANY people will be coming from the other direction when they drive speedily through the intersection, rather than indications that they should stop. Hence, traffic police are found at almost every controlled intersection.

A few days ago I stood on this corner, next to the newspaper kiosk, with a few classmates as we waited for a gap in the traffic that would allow us to dart through. The man selling newspapers greeted us warmly – he knows our schedule by now. A car approached his kiosk from the street I faced, and the woman inside honked her horn with increasing urgency. This struck me immediately, for the majority of the times a car approaches me honking, it’s a taxi offering a ride or a man indicating that he has spotted someone foreign and female who interests him. (Egypt and Kentucky have that tendency in common.) The man selling newspapers heard this fervent raucous and turned just as the woman’s car approached the kiosk. She leaned out her window and sputtered the name of a newspaper. As she crawled slowly around the corner at the pace of prevailing traffic, the newspaper seller hurriedly snatched up the appropriate paper and handed it to her through the driver’s side window, as she handed him the payment she had prepared.

Huh. Egyptian drive-through.

*

One of the fusHa teachers has taken it upon herself to direct a play. Specifically, a passage from the Quran that she has assigned to several suckers – er, volunteers – in the form of a play. From what I’ve been told, this is the passage from which Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was derived.

On the first day of play practice, I was secretly relieved to have been cast as the BEST part of any play – the chorus. Two classmates and I sat on the floor and, for three lines, cackle over our imaginary breadmaking in response to Joseph’s (Yusuf’s) ironic misfortunes. On this day of play practice, we mostly followed the direction of the fusHa teacher, for Arabic plays, from what I can tell, seem to violate the U.S. standard of placing its dialogue AND ONLY ITS DIALOGUE after a colon. Hence, we Arabic learners are often confused. The text (which I’m feigning in English here) looks something like this:

JOSEPH TAKES A SEAT AT THE TABLE AND IS PROPOSITIONED BY HIS MASTER’S WIFE. HE LOOKS TO HER.

Joseph: In a voice quiet as the crumbs under his grandmother’s armoire, looks around nervously I am not sure we should be doing this, m’am.

Chorus: They stir their brew and exchange glances Boy oh boy is he going to get it!

Hence, my classmates and I, having come to the part that said “Chorus,” went ahead with our lines as they read after the colon. We didn't understand why the fusHa teacher was waving her arms and pleading with us to stop until we were informed that we had just read “They stir their brew and exchanging glances Boy oh boy…”

I’ve strayed from my point. Here it is: Halfway through play practice, one of my chorus-mates picked up her iPhone and reported back what it was we would be saying in our upcoming lines. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that she had DOWNLOADED A QURAN APPLICATION and had brought up the EXACT SURA WE WERE PERFORMING, complete with full voweling (so that we knew how to pronounce all the words) and the ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

For the first time since their creation, I kind of, sort of wanted an iPhone.

But I hopped online and read this, and was cured of that desire. Instantly.

*

I’ll end this update with a brief admonition about this fair country I spend these days imbibing like sweet, soft okra imbibes and becomes saturated with its olive-oil-tomato- stew: Take every fact you know about modern Egyptian culture and life with a grain of salt. This includes facts like arrival and departure times of varying forms of public transportation and ingredients of restaurant items. Today I actually had this exchange (in Arabic) with a gentleman caterer standing by a table of food I was about to choose from and consume:

Me: Is this vegetable dish bidoon lahma (without meat)?

Gentleman: Oh yes.

Me: Oh good! So it’s vegetarian, then?

Gentleman: Whoa whoa whoa, vegetarian? No, no. *Looks at me like I'm crazy.*

*sigh*