Getting Back to Cairo

May 8, 2006

When you visit a place for a week, you get right out and sight see.. when you will be there for three months, your first few days are spent getting living and working arrangements settled.. and that is what we have been doing. Upon arrival we were able to stay at the Maadi apartment of a friend from Emory who is here with her husband and finishing up her year in CASA. This afternoon we decided to rent a fancily furnished apartment, also in Maadi. Tomorrow it will be cleaned and we will move in.

What a difference a few dollars make. When I was here for CASA in the 2002-2003 school year I had to live on a stipend that came to 325 USD. Certain restaurants I bypassed because of the cost; my living arrangements were decidedly grad-student appropriate. When I traveled I tended to do so by public transportation or hired a private taxi after ruthless bargaining for a decent price. With the ARCE stipend the heat is off with respect to the cost of living.. come June I may even have a television on which I can watch World Cup games! And this is part of a personal goal this time around.. not to get close to a Hilton or Sheraton, but to allow myself (and Emily) some leisure and comfort as we see Egypt and work on our projects.

The above two pictures were taken during our taxi ride from downtown Cairo back to the suburb of Maadi. It is fun to be back in the throng of people. If there is anything it is easy to underestimate about Egypt in general—and Cairo in particular—it is the crush of people everywhere.. waiting for the service or bus.. walking along the sidewalks.. sitting in traffic in their cars. You can go for miles and everywhere there are people. There is not one place in Cairo where you can experience the blissful emptiness of a quiet American neighborhood.. Maadi is as close as one can get to that—and it is a long ways away.

For me the real treat this time is the presence of Emily. We walked onto the urban campus of the American University in Cairo, set on Midan Tahrir, and I got to point out the places I remember.. the "garden" where I played Nadav at chess, the building where I sat for Arabic classes most every week day of the 2002-2003 school year, the bookstore where I purchased novels to keep me going. It is a part of my life which I have often talked about with Emily, but which now she gets to see at first hand. And since it is all new for Emily, it is as if I get to experience Cairo again for the first time.. although naturally with more attention to gender issues. Emily has a way of making everything new.