A spy in a family home

This is the test. The first time I'm invited into an Egyptian home, and a minefield of faux-pas potentially lays inside. Before leaving the UK I had a few cultural crash courses from an Egyptian family friend. But she was a Copt, and this is a Muslim household. There are differences. Apparently guests should have taken off their shoes at the door.

The village is Kafr Hamam, just north of an equally inconspicuous town called Zagazig. No tourist beats the tracks here, only the donkeys and oxen whose hooves sink deep into the mud, traipsing the road alongside tuk-tuks and pulling behind them carts of gas canisters delivered door-to-door.

امبوبة / امباويب	imbūba (pl. ambawīb)	gas canister
بتاع امبوبة	bitāʕ imbūba	man who delivers gas canisters

Gas supply isn't the only thing these houses lack. Many are occupied only half-built, but where else could the people live? The house I enter is a comfortable one: it has a phone and a small TV. The winter would penetrate its thin brick walls were it not for the small blue باجور | bagūr | primus stove burning away in the corner.

Mr Ashraf, my host, and friend of no more than a few hours, disappears behind a curtain to pray and change into a freshly ironed جلابية | galabiyya | robe. Meanwhile his wife bustles through the front door, making to remove her برقع | burʔuʕ | veil but leaving it as she notices a guest present. I give a few tentative greetings.

As Mr. Ashraf reappears, he strikes up conversation and his wife goes off to prepare food. Before long, a huge platter arrives and is laid onto the floor:

محشى كرمب	maḥši kurumb	stuffed cabbage leaves
فلفل محشى	filfil maḥši	stuffed peppers
سبانخ	sabānix	spinach (stew)

There's a bowl of chicken that can't be avoided too (I'm normally a vegetarian), despite feigning a blood problem and that meat was against doctor's orders.

This is the closest that Egyptian society has allowed me to the traditional side of its spectrum. It would be very forward to address the mother by or even to know her name (this is something kept for her immediate family). Instead the term of address is ام | umm... | mother of... followed by the name of her eldest son, so in this case Umm Mahmoud. (For more terms of address, see this post.)

It's also dangerous to compliment her too much on the cooking, even though it's the best I've tasted in Egypt. It could be interpreted as an expression of envy for her cooking skills - worse, envy for her as a wife. These envious compliments, known as عين الحسود | ʕēn ilḥasūd | the evil eye have the power to bewitch. Safer to utter the formula that thanks God for the situation at hand:

ما شاء الله

mā šāʔ aḷḷāh

God has willed it

My plate is filled and re-filled and there is no sign of this ceasing unless I do something about it. My mind whirs back to a fish restaurant down a alley in Alexandria, by the name of Sha'baan. During a meal I was arguing with a friend about the meaning of the name. He claimed it was a month in the Islamic calendar; I claimed it meant being "full up". I still believe the latter would make more sense for a restaurant, but when we checked, he was right. The confusion arose because both words share the same three principal letters making up its root, but in a different order:

شعبان	šaʕbān	eighth month of the Islamic calendar
شبعان	šabʕān	full (with food), satiated

It seems long-winded way of remembering how to tell the family I'm full, but after several months in this environment this is how my mind works now. This is how it has to work in order to survive in a different language. Words connected to words through association, whether linguistic (in the way that šabʕān is connected to šaʕbān) or contextual (in the way that šaʕbān is connected to the fish restaurant). It's impossible to retain vocabulary without the mind fusing links between it and the network of words that it already holds.

After dinner, I meet Mahmoud's cousins (Mr. Ashraf's nephews) who live just a few houses along. We play a game of guessing each other's ages, until Mr. Ashraf manages to put us in exactly the right order. I ask how he knew my birthday. He reminds me that he'd seen it in my passport.

Earlier in the day, I was detained in a vestibule on a train from Port Said to Zagazig. I had been caught leaning from the train door to snap photos of an impressive bridge over the Suez Canal. The train guards didn't approve. I was made all the more suspect by my skin colour, for no foreigner would visit this area unless they really were an Israeli spy planning a strategic attack from the Sinai.

After an hour convincing them that I was just a study-abroad student who liked bridges, I was reunited with my passport and sent back to my seat, though one of the train guards remained unconvinced and spent the rest of the journey in the seat opposite. As the conversation went on, his interest in me grew friendlier, eventually insisting I became his guest in Zagazig. I took the minibus with him to his village, ate with his family, and there I was, meeting his nephews.

Mahmoud and his cousins take me to explore the fields surrounding their village. They are greener than any place I'd seen in Egypt, being well irrigated by the various Nile tributaries clumped within the Delta. There are orange trees and date palms, but most of all clover fields.

برسيم	barsīm	clover (used as animal feed)
لارمج	lāring, nāring	Seville oranges
غيط / غطان	ġīṭ / ġeṭān	field
كشك / كشاك	kušk (pl. kišāk)	small wooden hut

This is the environment these guys grew up in. They have little exposure to the places I come from - their idea of a dream holiday might be up to Alexandria on the coast - although they've heard rumours of what the west is like. Away from the village, they have the chance to ask me the usual questions that have been bugging them: Do I drink beer? Am I allowed a girlfriend? Have I had sex? Do Europeans really have carpet in their bathroom?

It's clear there's a lot we don't have in common. It would be a long time before they ever understood my vegetarianism, or what my home is really like. Likewise I will always feel a little uncomfortable to be doted on by a woman whose very presence I have to address with caution. Nevertheless this is a family who really have time for others, and is happy to welcome them into their home, no matter how strange they are.

I become increasingly aware that there's no escape for tonight; despite my best attempts to return to Zagazig and find a hotel there, the family decide to sleep in one room so that I could have the other to myself. After being shepherded from house to house to have photos taken and to drink salep after salep, I sink into the bed exhausted. Extremely grateful, but exhausted.

Winter warmers

Salep

Fenugreek with milk

Cinnamon with milk

Another haunt of ours is القهوة التجارية | ilʔahwa_ttugariyya (which translates to something like The Commerical Coffeehouse), a bustling institution covering a whole block just down the road from the last one I mentioned. It's been an informal centre of trade for the past ninety-odd years and it was here over a glass of tea that we signed the contract on our latest flat (the third one this year, but that's a story for another post).

A cloud of shisha smoke seems to hold up the high ceiling, and between there and the sawdust-strewn tiled floor echoes a constant clamor of dominoes and backgammon counters.

The waiters pretend they've never heard of Coca-Cola, and seeing as the menus are unwritten, often I can only guess what we're ordering, sometimes still guessing as I get up to pay. The drinks seem to change seasonally and at this cold time of year, we've been presented with various herbal infusions and steaming hot milky drinks, each going for about 3LE.

My favourite is salep, a thick, sweet drink made from the ground, dried roots of the orchid, and topped with crushed nuts, raisins and shredded coconut. Aniseed infusion, meanwhile, has been knowingly prescribed to us on several occasions as a miracle cure for everything from a cold to chronic colitis.

سحلب	saḥlab	salep (see above)
ينسون	yansūn	aniseed infusion
حلبة	ḥilba	fenugreek infusion
قرفة	ʔirfa	cinnamon infusion
نعناع	niʕnāʕ	mint infusion
كركديه	karkadēh	hibiscus infusion

It's common to find some of these drunk with milk too:

باللبن	... bi-llaban	... with milk
بالحليب	... bi-lḥalīb	... with milk

Or even just:

حليب

... ḥalīb

milky ... (i.e. ... with milk)

Arabists reading this post might be interested in knowing that حلبة | ḥilba | fenugreek and حليب | ḥalīb | milk, despite all appearances, aren't from the same root. I hope this coincidence makes you just as a excited as it made me.

Anniversary of the revolution

Today is the second anniversary of the day that the revolution started.

The realisation that citizens could have an impact on politics, and that the haggard, complacent leaders of the previous thirty years were not invincible must have felt seismic.

A large proportion of the population is now happy to see a new leader who seems to represent them. Mohamed Morsi has provincial origins in the Nile Delta. His party, the Freedom and Justice Party, belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of those organisations whose wings were clipped under Mubarak but are now stretching them wide and making its first flights. He is a devout Muslim and has brought his religion into the political realm, and is an advocate of the social implications this entails.

But today's atmosphere on the streets has not necessarily been celebratory. Mohamed Morsi has a sizable opposition to contend with, and they were out in force today, claiming that the path paved by the revolution has been hijacked. The Brotherhood and their Islamist allies are taking an increasing monopoly over political processes, and recently managed to rush through a constitution that represented first and foremost only their own interests.

Further afflicted by the country's deepening economic woes, the national opposition is becoming forlorn at where the revolution has led them. One development they can be proud of, however, is the new-found freedom to make this discontent clear. Protests, political organisation and the voicing of opposition take place in a far freer environment than they ever have done in Egypt. That achievement would not have been reached were it not for the protests that started in cities across the country two years ago today, most famously in Tahrir Square in Cairo, to whom the band CairoKee (featuring Aida El-Ayoubi) produced the following ode.

ياه يا الميدان كنت فين من زمان؟ هديت السور نورت النور لميت حوليك شعب مكسور اتولدنا من جديد واتولد الحلم العنيد بنختلف والنية صافية أوقات الصورة مكنتش واضحة هنصون بلادنا وأولاد ولادنا حق اللي راحوا من شبابنا

yāh yā_lmidān kuntə fēn min zamān haddīt issūr nawwart innūr lammīt ḥawlīk šaʕbə maksūr itwaladnā min gadīd w_itwalad ilḥilm ilʕanīd binixtalif w_inniyya ṣafya awʔāt iṣṣūra ma-kanitšə wadḥa hansūn biladnā wi_wlād wiladnā ḥaʔʔ illi raḥū min šababnā

Oh! Oh, Tahrir Square! Where were you all this time? You brought down the wall, you lighted the light You gathered around you a broken people We were born anew And so was a tenacious dream We've disagreed, but our intentions are pure Sometimes the vision wasn't clear We'll protect our country and our children's children And the rights of the young ones we've lost

The above is the second verse of the song, sung by the 90s star Aida El-Ayoubi. It is one of her first musical appearances after ten years of retirement. My translation is based on that by one of the bloggers on Wil Ya Wil, one of the beacons of Egyptian post-revolutionary social media.

Street art of the revolution

In a country where everyday life has been upheaved in the name of democracy, it is reasonable for citizens to want to do everything they can to feel that their new-found voices are being listened to. Perhaps this is an explanation behind the massive increase in graffiti since the start of the revolution. What better medium can there be for an artist to feel their voice is gaining exposure than to publish it across a large, blank wall?

"Street art ... connotes a decentralized, democratic form in which there is universal access, and the real control over messages comes from the social producers. It is a barometer that registers the spectrum of thinking, especially during democratic openings."

(Lyman G. Chaffe, Political Protest and Street Art)

An article released today by AFP describes how on the walls of Cairo, President Morsi can be found depicted as "a pharaoh, an octopus, a snake, a clown or a hero, depending on which side of the political divide the artist falls".

Specifically, the article reports on one piece of street art in Cairo that succinctly summarises the Egyptian revolution so far. The three sentences of graffiti read: "2011: Down with Mubarak's rule! 2012: Down with military rule! 2013: Down with Brotherhood rule!".

These chants, rather like the الشعب يريد | aššaʕb yurīd chant that I described in my last post, are of a formulaic nature and have been applied to various different leaders in Egypt's post-revolutionary history. In 2011:

يسقط يسقط حسني مبارك

yasquṭ yasquṭ ḥosni mubārak

Down with Hosni Mubarak!

After Mubarak's departure in February 2011, leadership of the country was entrusted to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. But even by April, major protests were occurring again, this time against the new leaders:

يسقط يسقط حكم المشير يسقط يسقط حكم العسكر

yasquṭ yasquṭ ḥakm almušīr yasquṭ yasquṭ ḥakm alʕaskar

Down with the rule of the Field Marshal! Down with military rule!

After more than one turbulent year in power, the leadership of the country was handed over to Mohamed Morsi, who was sworn in in June 2012. The opposition, whose concerns I describe in my next post, once again adapted the chant:

يسقط يسقط حكم المرشد يسقط يسقط حكم الإخوان

yasquṭ yasquṭ ḥakm almuršid yasquṭ yasquṭ ḥakm alʔixwān

Down with the rule of the Supreme Guide (of the Brotherhood)! Down with Brotherhood rule!

Violence outside Alex police trials

Police clashed with demonstrators today along the Corniche after a judge investigating the killing of protesters announced the case would be transferred to another court.

Only a week remains until the second anniversary of the revolution during which, according to Amnesty International, 840 people died. Trials are still ongoing for many of the security officials held responsible for civilian deaths.

One such trial had been taking place this weekend in Alexandria, where around 300 people died in the revolution. Family members of the martyrs gathered alongside other demonstrators outside Alexandria Criminal Court, where two security heads, as well as four other officers have been standing trial.

The judge's announcement that the case would be transferred led to an eruption of anger both within and outside the courthouse. Protesters hurled rocks and fireworks, and the police responded with tear gas and bird-shot. At least two police cars were hijacked and eventually set alight, along with legal documents that were raided from the courtroom.

The following video is footage I took from our rooftop on the Corniche, the promenade that runs around the city's Eastern Harbour.

These events would look out of place on this blog if there wasn't some sort of language learning involved. The chant that can be heard from the ten second mark is one that has swelled up in every Arab country undergoing revolution:

الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام

aššaʔb yurīd ʔisqāṭ anniẓām

The people want to bring down the regime

The phrase originated in Tunisia in the revolution of late 2010, but it's not Tunisian Colloquial Arabic. The young people of Sidi Bouzid, the epicentre of the Tunisian revolution, or perhaps those of the neighbouring towns to which the revolutionary fever spread, must have made a conscious decision to demand the fall of the regime in Modern Standard Arabic. The pan-Arab nature of MSA facilitated its spread to Libya, Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries where upheaval is underway.

Chants like these have become formulaic and can be adapted, depending on what it is exactly that the people want. When the judges announced at Alexandria Criminal Court that they were transferring the case, a feeling of betrayal brought about the following chant from demonstrators:

الشعب يريد تطهير القضاء

aššaʔb yurīd taṭhīr alqaḍāʔ

The people want to purge the judiciary

You'll just have to believe me that these phrases sound more rousing in Arabic than they do in English.