127 Egyptian Nights

The opportunities I’ve had to practice Arabic over the past two days have left me feeling dissapointed with myself. Unlike my first couple of days, when my time was occupied with tourist activities (visiting the pyramids, Bedouin Night, and a Nile Cruise), more recent days have brought more opportunities to interact with Egyptians.

On Tuesday, I walked with a friend through Downtown and Islamic Cairo from Tahrir Square (the city center) to Khan el Khalili, Cairo’s oldest bazaar, and spent several hours eating and window shopping with friends in Khan. On Wednesday, I walked around Zamalek and to the El Sawa Cultural Wheel to hear a poetry reading.

This experience produced my first feelings of embarassment and shame for studying in Egypt with virtually no knowledge of Arabic. (more…)

The Office of Residential Life organized a Bedouin Night on Sunday, where those who were willing to pay 100 Egyptian Pounrds (about $17) could enjoy dinner, horseback riding by the pyramids, and a Bedouin dance show. The Bedouin are a predominantly Muslim, desert-dwelling nomadic group, akin in societal stature to the Basque or Native Americans.

While waiting for dinner, the DJ played a partially Arabic-language remix of the 50 cent song “Candy Shop.” If you’re how aware of how sensual the lyrics are, the chorus goes “I’ll take you to the Candy Shop, I’ll let you lick the lollipop, Go ‘head girl don’t you stop, Keep going ’til you hit the spot, whoa.”

I realize that is certainly a trivial observation that might not having any greater purpose than provoking laughter amonst me and my friends (which it absolutely did). Yet at the same time, an Arab-language remix of such a lewd song is indicative of the complexities surroudning the practice of Islam in Egypt. 

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Cairo is an astonishing city in so many ways; therefore, I think it only appropriate to compile some of the oddities that have and will continue to amaze me. Therefore, 127 Egyptian Nights will have a semi-regular feature titled “I Can’t Believe It’s Cairo”, documenting absurdities from my American perspective. These observations will often be accompanied by personal commentary on the situation.  

For dinner Friday night, several study abroad students from Notre Dame and myself walked two blocks from our dormitory in the Zamalek section of Cairo to the Euro Deli — incidentially enough, there are no Euro Deli locations in Europe. While eating there, what came over the restaurant’s loudspeakers but “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry. In case you didn’t know, homosexual acts are a felony in Egypt.