TV and Film

Before Ramadan is completely gone from our minds I need to tell you about the Ramadan moselselaat (TV serials).  There are many TV shows, drama, comedy, reality, that have special runs during Ramadan.  A new episode is played everyday, and it wraps up at Eid.  I think I've seen them playing in every Egyptian home I've been to during Ramadan.  Fun Fact: in some shows, when a foreign language is supposed to be spoken, replaces the language with Modern Standard Arabic (Egyptian is used normally), so they don't have to put translations on the screen.  The most memorable show was "Ramiz the Desert Fox."  This show was utterly repulsing.  It is a prank show gone terribly wrong.  Ramiz pranks famous people, but it's the same elaborate twisted prank every night.  Last year, he trapped is famous friends in an elevator and had the door open and get stuck facing a live full grown tiger.  That's nothing compared to this year.  Ramiz puts his friends on a bus in the desert filled with actors (complete with ditzy blond foreigner to sit next to and distract the famous person), and then Ramiz attacks the moving bus with a band of terrorists with covered faces and huge guns.  I don't know what's worse, watching innocent people literally be terrorized, or watching my friends laugh hysterically as it happens!  Some Egyptians cite a cultural difference in humor, but this show is nothing like the Egyptian humor I have experienced (sarcastic, self-depredating, slapstick).  Others say that since the revolution Egyptians have to push the envelope more to find things to laugh at.  Maybe that makes sense, but seriously?  They put a black bag on the famous people's heads, drag them from the bus, and then fire their guns while the actors scream.  Does your current political situation really make it funny to make someone think there their travel companions were just executed?  I have met plenty of Egyptians who agree the show is terrible and immoral... but they never turned off the show.

As I said before I spent Eid with Hagar.  Hagar had to work, so she went to bed early the second night. I went out to a movie with her sister, niece, and in-laws.  I am always amazing at how things just come to you here if you adopt the Egyptian mentality.  I'm sure good stuff you want just happens everywhere, but here I appreciate it more.  In the US you work your butt off to get the things you want, but here in Egypt, insha'allah, the things you want might (or might not) happen.  I am just so pleasantly surprised when the things I want happen, and otherwise I'm not worrying about it.  When I lived here before, I desperately wanted to go an Egyptian movie in theaters.  It never happened, but just last weekend I was randomly taken to a movie without even asking.  Yay.  I saw "Ba Ba" (Daddy).  It was a romantic comedy about a doctor who works in a fertility clinic, his journey with his wife, trying for a kid, and all that jazz.  For the most part, I could follow the movie, not because of any Arabic ability, but because of the hammy acting.  For some reason, in all of the few Egyptian comedies I have seen, the comedic draw centers around male incompetence.  In the end Hagar's sister and her husband were not impressed with the movie.  I'm not really into romantic comedies, but I enjoyed the experience.  But you know what I didn't enjoy so much?  The large population of one to three-year-olds in the audience.  We went to the movie at one am, for goodness sake!  It’s just cultural differences I guess.

Eid!

And so Ramadan ends with feasts (feast is the translation of eid), three days of feasts to be exact.  Though I have been trying to embrace what is going on around me, I must say I am quite relieved for Ramadan to be over.  I am excited to have something to do during the day.  I am excited for my friends to be available to hang out, and not dead exhausted all the time.  I'm excited to go out to restaurants, get lentil soup (not a Ramadan food), and be able to eat outside.  Ramadan was a cool experience, but doing it during high summer and without a family... well let's just say I'm not in a rush to do it again.

I am spending my Eid in 6 October with my good friend Hagar (who took me to Beni Suef).  For our last iftar we had traditional eid foods which I would describe as dried fish eggs, slimy smoked fish, and slimy rotten fish.  It was a very pungent meal, but it wasn't bad.  I personally couldn't do more than small amounts of each, but the little I had was enjoyable and an experience at very least.

At 5 am this morning I went with Hagar, her mother, and her uncle to morning prayers at Must mosque in Mutamiaz, 6 October (photo to be posted soon).  I believe it is the second largest mosque in 6 Oh.  It drew quite a crowd.  The sprawling lawn in back was set up to accommodate the Holiday rush of worshipers including mats on the grass and a decider between the men and women.  Prayers always start with a call to prayer played from every minaret, but today a special addition was added to the call.  "God is great," was chanted on repeat for perhaps a solid 30 minutes (maybe more) before the actual prayer started.  Then we prayed (I went through the motions in line with them all swaddled up in cloth to hide my seductive female form), and sat and listened to the sermon before Hagar headed off to work.  I went back to her house to sleep.  Now I'm hoping that some friend in 6 Oh will be free to hang out so I can kill sometime until this evening when I take Hagar out to a long awaited birthday dinner.

If  I can swing it, I hope to spend the second day of Eid with Nana before my host aunt and uncle head back to Saudi Arabia.  But after that I am just so excited to (hopefully) see my friends more often!
  

Fasting Part 2

I have decided that I can do better than just avoiding food and drink in public.  Muslim children are trained to fast as they grow up.  They are eased into it at around age 8, and start by fasting for half the day and working their way up. I have heard several stories of children cheating, like taking sips of water when they wash their faces.  As adults every healthy capable Muslim fasts, everyone is expected fast, and everyone has always fasted, so I asked one of my Egyptian friends what they actually gained from fasting.  Though there are many standard answers I was inspired by how genuinely they believed what they were saying.  Setting a goal and accomplishing it by overcoming earthly needs is a powerful thing.  Discipline and then fulfillment.  Fasting is also thought to make someone a better person because the faster can sympathize with those who actually are starving.  As I said, I was inspired.  I am going to try to ease myself into fasting.  I am now fasting from breakfast on.  I wake up, eat a hardy breakfast, and then khalaws until Iftar.  I have had the honor of being invited to several wonderful Iftars, and the nights I don’t have Iftars I often go out to eat with friends anyway, so it isn’t as though I’m not being fed.  Wish me luck with my next level of fasting.  

Iftar

I made Iftar!  While I mostly just threw together whatever I could, the one Egyptian dish I made was shorbit lisan asfoor, or “Bird’s Tongue Soup.”  Don’t worry, there aren’t actually birds’ tongues in it.  It is named after the shape of the noodles, which look like large like flattened grains of rice.   It is a very simple soup.  You fry the noodles to a golden brown, and then add broth and bring to a boil until the noodles swell and soften.  I used some chicken stock I had for broth, but you can also used water and add onions, fired garlic, salt, pepper, and other brothy things to taste.  And then serve!  But beware, the noodles swell A LOT, so you may end up making for more than you intend.  ALSO the noodles will continue to soak up the broth, so you may end up with a big blob of noodles instead of soup.

Fasting

One of the pillars of Islam is to fast from sun up to sun down during the lunar month of Ramadan.  Last time I was in Egypt I was here for the last half of Ramadan.  I tried to make the point of fasting with my family.  It was a great experience, but it wasn’t exactly difficult.  We gorged ourselves at Iftar (breaking of the fast... or breakfast) and continued eating all night until Sahoor were we made sure to eat enough to last the day.  After that, we slept until maybe three in the afternoon, waited for and hour or two until Iftar and started again.  This time around things are different.  I have no family to feed me every night, and I have classes starting at 9 am.  Fasting is always difficult from a self-control perspective, but living without a family makes fasting hard logistical perspective since restaurants close at odd times and you don’t have the support network to help prepare food or get you up for Sahoor.  It’s just really impractical.  My new policy is “public fasting.”  Whenever I am out I try to abstain from water or food.  I am drinking extra before I leave the house, and making sure I have a hardy breakfast, but then as soon as I am in the sight of Egyptians that’s that.  I think it encourages good will from Egyptians, and at very least, I am not aggravating anyone by being THAT foreigner drinking in front of them on the street.  In this heat that is what really gets you: not the hunger, but the thirst.  These people are amazing for living their lives and going to work while fasting in this kind of weather.

Photo of the Week

Ramadan Karim!

Ramadan

Ramadan has officially begun.  After an unrelated Felucca ride, my classmates and I kicked off the Holy Month with a dinner out at the famous “Prince” restaurant in Imbaba Thursday Night.  The traffic was crazy as every scrambled for their last opportunity to eat out.  Prince was fantastic.  It looked as though the establishment was inside out, with a small restaurant in the building, then a bits of kitchen lined the front of the establishment and beyond that tables stretched out far into the street.  There are lots of fast food places to get Egyptian food, but Prince is the kind of Egyptian food that makes up for it if you don’t have an Egyptian mother to cook for you.  It was perfect.  We attacked that food like a pack of wild animals and devoured it in a matter of minutes.

I then stayed up quite late killing time at Borsa (the cool ahwa spot downtown) until Sahoor, which is the pre-fast meal.  At 2 am, I was still quite full from my Prince feast, but it was great to be with Egyptians for a major cultural happening.

The next day I slept in (el hamdoulilah) and then headed off to Islamic Cairo with my American gal friend.  I have never seen Cairo so empty.  Fridays are usually strange and empty because of prayers, but this friday in particular was insane.  The streets were empty, Tahrir (where I got on the metro) was empty, the metro was empty.  Islamic Cairo the location of the famous tourist trap Khan el Khalili bazaar was freakishly barren and many of the shops were closed.  I actually preferred the Khan that way, it gets quite overwhelming.  

After prayers we visited two mosques.  By the time we got to Al-Azhar we were so tired, we didn’t want to move.  We just sat there in the mosque for more than an hour enjoying the space.  While we sat there, and old man came up to us and asked if we wanted a photo, or to climb the minaret.  When we said “no thank you” and he realized he wouldn’t get any money from us, he told us we weren’t allowed sit in the mosque.  “Mish momnoo3” my friend said, meaning “it’s not forbidden.”  I’m not as much of an expert on mosques and Islam as she, but generally it doesn’t make sense that a non-Muslim could visit a mosque, take pictures, and climb a minaret, but not sit where everyone else was sitting.  Eventually,  the man just walked away.  Another nicer man in a galabaya came up to us as we sat.  While the first old man had asked if we wanted photos, this younger man wanted a photo of us... with his baby.  We started to say no, but then we found his adorable six month old baby in our laps.  The baby was still in that round and floppy stage.  We tried to coax him into looking at the camera, but the baby was stupefied.  I can only imagine where that photo will end up.  Maybe on their mantle for all their visitors to see, “Look at this beautiful photo of my son with two random white girls in headscarfs.”  We left just before evening prayers started.

The metro was nearly empty when we got on as the evening prayer began to sound.  It was spooky.  While I think the call to prayer is beautiful, it became quite ominous as it echoed down the dark entrance halls of the metro.  Only every other light in those halls seem to be working.   

After some delicious Egyptian desserts and , the evening ended, of course, with a long sit in Borsa.

Word of the Day

fanoos - Ramadan lantern