Potty Language

I find Arabic vocabulary hard, since with few cognates in English, it means a lot of memorization. I’ve tried everything—flash cards, copying lists, chanting aloud. My latest attempt has been to plaster the apartment with post-its. My roommate has asked me to remove the ones in the bathroom though; the letters could spell Allah, and the bathroom is an un-pure place.

American Girl (or Easy Westerner with Loose Morals)

After chatting with my roommate’s boyfriend about how difficult I’m finding learning Arabic, she told me to, “Lay off.” It was a weird confrontation about how horrified she was that I would try to take the love of her life. It caught me off-guard—I’d never found him remotely attractive or thought about him in that way. It’s one of the things that really irks me about Egyptian culture. Egyptian girls here may wear a headscarf, but they also wear LOADS of makeup, high-heals and skinny jeans, and flirt like the most seasoned airhead Valley girl from LA. What you see less of is serious and casual conversation, which I think is why when I talk to a guy for more than a minute I'm accused of being an over-sexed foreigner. There’s something terribly intimate I guess in actually connecting conversationally.

Only in the Arab World

I work for Student Action for Refugees (STAR), an organization that teaches refugees English. Last week was class registration and placement testing. Because the AUC campus has tight security, everyone must show ID cards and go through a metal detector to enter the campus. Last night, a large group of women in nikaabs (face veils) arrived. Because there was no way the guards could check the picture on their UNHCR cards against their faces due to the lack of women security officers, a guard signaled for the veiled women and then me to follow him to a windowless room to check IDs. The women silently filed in, and he closed and locked the door behind us, instructing them to take their veils off for me. The veils came off. Grins emerged, and I said “Samu Aleikum!” The woman in blue nearest to me started giggling, and then we were all laughing. (I think at my accent).

Africa Cup

Egypt won the Africa Cup (for soccer) last night. Driving from Downtown to Zamalek after the victory took almost two hours. We were trapped behind a parade of chanting families—similar to Boston’s First Night. People sported red, white, and black face-paint (Egypt’s flag colors), set off fire crackers in the street, and ignited aerosol cans to create fire sprayers (dangerous, me thinks). I’ve never seen Cairo so proud. One Egyptian friend told me the only way to see a bigger display of Egyptian nationalism would be if something were to happen to the President…