swiss club practica, cairo, egypt

This is the (empty) bar at the Swiss Club in Cairo.  Looks very Swiss, no?  And so very NOT Cairo.  If you're ever in Egypt any time soon and want to dance some tango, "The Swiss Club Practica" is held every Tuesday night at 19h00 in the "bowling room" by the back garden.  When I was there, you could dance a bit, the room is very small, and then go outside to chat or watch, sitting on wicker chairs and surrounded by tiny palm trees.  Like a little oasis.

There aren't many dancers, but some are wonderfully good, and all of them are very nice people.  Egyptians (and there aren't just Egyptians dancing, some expats and foreign people like me who stop by) are excellent conversationalists, so the energy is pretty positive.

ana misreya aktar min il misreen

I'm alive!  I'm in Cairo!  I'm going to a practica on Tuesday!  I will take pictures (insha'allah)!  I am sunburnt!


Right now I am in Arabica, one of my favourite cafes, and I just ate a wrap with bresaola and rocket (very Egyptian, yea).  Tomorrow I'm finally going to the Coptic Museum to see the Nag Hammadi texts, which I'm currently reading for a course.


Spent a day at ain sokhna, lounging with friends on the beach and having an adventure in a raft that drifted too far out to sea ("we're all going to be eaten by stingrays!!!") - let me tell you, Egypt is a crazy place, and Cairo is its old crazy self.  Because of my adventures at the beach I missed my favourite Saturday night milonga, but I was relaxing on a terrace, eating great food with great company, and devouring chocolate cake, wine, and mint tea.  I've been craving this type of evening forever, that exhausted feeling you have after spending the day in the sun, swimming, putting your clothes back on and having a meal, watching the sunset, the sea quiet in the background.  What could be nicer?  It's a damn good life.


Not so much other news, apart from finding strangely that my Arabic is better than it was in December.  I guess I've spent the last three months in a bored/meditative state, everyone says I seem more relaxed, less worried, but I think it's because in the states you don't have to worry about getting hit by a car every time you walk on the street, or jump over thousands of obstacles from broken sidewalks to weirdly-placed palm trees to cats.  


Here is something someone said to me the other day: "America is like a gourmet meal without any flavour.  In Egypt, the meal is not so fancy, but it sets your tongue on fire."  There are good and bad things about this statement (for instance, you could get terrible food poisoning - literally AND metaphorically) - but in general I agree with it.  On the other hand, one of the only benefits I've gotten in the states these last few months is super-clean laundry.  


So is the choice between "exciting life with food poisoning" and "boring life with clean clothes"??  Hm.  Maybe a little of both is necessary to keep one's feet on the ground. 

j.a.

rescued by egyptians

Bad tango night = worse night, every time.


Do you ever get claustrophobic at a milonga?  I don't mean because of the crowds of people blocking you on the floor, maneuvering as best they can because the place is so packed with tango dancers...  Tonight, after about two hours, all I wanted to do was dance, but the last thing on earth I wanted was for someone to look at me, approach me, and ask me to dance.  I was almost panicked, and that doesn't make for good dancing.  Even the idea of having a pleasant conversation with someone at one of the tables was horrifying.  I wanted to dance, but I wanted to disappear even more (but no, not like that scene in Flashdance).


So, knowing nothing good could come out of this emotional state, I put on my street shoes and called a taxi.  My whole being put up a sign: don't approach, see?  I even put on my street shoes to keep you away from me while I wait for my taxi.  A Russian came up to me and said, "That's it?"  The milonga was supposed to go to 3am.  I tried to convince myself that I wasn't feeling well, that was why I was leaving, and I suppose I really wasn't feeling well.  God, if tango brings me a whole new set of neuroses, I won't know what to do...


I left, and when the taxi let me off I stopped into a local café (ha, starbucks) to drown my sorrows.  I thought about how I was too poor to buy a bottle of wine (it's the end of the month and my money flew away on tango classes, practicas, and milongas) and I felt worse.


Then, like a sign from heaven, I sit down with my hot chocolate (very self-destructive, I know, I need to stop drinking) and there are two men speaking Arabic on the couch behind me.  I know, like it's in my blood, that by the way they are talking, they are Egyptian.  Mish maA'oul, yani, ba'oulak eie, mafeesh wa'at; ah, yani, helwa kidda, and all of that.  I am suddenly at Pastroudis again.  Or Arabica.  Or Om Kolthoum.  Or Stiletto.  Or anywhere in that dusty, insane place that I call home.

I turn to them and say, "low samaHt, inta min misr?" to one of them ("excuse me, are you from Egypt?").  Ah, min misr! yes! inti misreya? ("yes, from egypt! are you egyptian?") -- no, I am not Egyptian, I explain, I just... am Egyptian.  They couldn't believe I wasn't born in Egypt, or had Egyptian parents, and I spoke with them for a half hour in Arabic about cairo, boston, molokheya, traffic, alexandria.  So I left starbucks feeling happy, a little cold in the winter weather, but still with a smile on my face.  


I tend to be continually pulled by two things in life: Egypt and tango.  When one "life" disappoints me, the other fulfills me.  When I was suffering in Egypt, tango reminded me that there was incredible beauty in the world.  Now it's Egypt's turn to pick me up, but I still have to live with the fact that I will be a foreigner in every country I go.  I will never be truly Egyptian, I will never be truly American, I will never be French even though I speak like a Parisian, never Russian nor Argentinian or... anything, really.  I'm a stateless emigrée.         


"We find a country in these words..." I once wrote.  But now I'm beginning to think we find a country in these embraces, these sad, lonely little bodies that search for a love that lasts 3 minutes.  Sometimes it's beautiful; sometimes it's just awful.  Who ever said any of this is easy...?  Anyhow, I'm sleeping in my AUC sweatshirt tonight.

j.a.

la trattoria

La Trattoria is one of Cairo's best restaurants.  It's on 13 El-Maraashli St., which is right around the corner from 37A Ahmed Heshmat (my old apartment) - lucky me.

Strangely enough, this picture is taken from Omar Sharif's favourite table. You can often see him dining there, and I have had the pleasure of sharing drinks with this wonderful, elegant gentleman numerous times because of mutual friends.  The first time I met him was at the bar in November 2008; and was again introduced to him when I got to know the owners of the restaurant and their friends again in October 2009.  Needless to say, La Trattoria is a relaxing place with good food and a fine selection of "under-the-table" imported wines.

I miss the kind, humorous waiters there, and the elegance that few people know how to preserve in a post-revolution Egypt...

If you love Doctor Zhivago (and Mr. Sharif) as much as I do, watch out for my next post...

classic egyptian cinema

Chéri je t'aime, chéri je t'adore...

Do you enjoy this as much as I do?? Many of my Egyptian friends have always argued that the films that were made in Cairo in the 40s, 50s, and 60s are equal to, if not better than most of the films coming out of Hollywood at the time. How true this is, well - that's a matter of a very biased opinion (of course).

This is from a film called "Il Hob Kida" ("Such is Love"), 1961. The song, "Bahebak ya Moustafa" ("I Love You, Moustafa") speaks for itself in both French and Arabic:

Oh the franco-egyptian glamour!!  The first time I saw "Chit-Chat on the Nile" (the 60s film portraying the "decadence of the Nasr period" and based on a book by Naguib Mahfouz) with a friend, I was literally shocked to see Egyptians smoking hash, having illicit rendez-vous on a houseboat, driving around drunk, and all on screen!  The Cairo cinema today is laughable if not propagandistic for an oppressive government. So these little clips of celebrations, giving us a hint of the glamour of a different world, are like silly gems at the bottom of a very polluted Nile.

Chéri je t'aime, chéri je t'adore...

j.a.

the cavafy house, alexandria

I took this video in the Cavafy House in Alexandria last month.  The sound in the background is the afternoon prayer.  The house is on Rue Lespius downtown.  Old Alexandria...  This, I believe, is one of his best poems.

The City

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”


You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

It has been established in related circles that Constantin P. Cavafy was one of the greatest Greek poets who ever lived, and we were lucky enough to have him narrate a bit of his 20th century for us...  When I read this poem I always think about Cairo and Alexandria, about Egypt, and how I came here to study - not to study - but to be a part of this country which still seems so important to me.  I couldn't tell you why, exactly, because I don't care about the things that most people talk about when they talk about Egypt.  I suppose it's best described by the feeling one can get by a corner in a room with a table, an ashtray, a candle.  A river that goes on forever...  Or an image from a book, a woman waiting by the shores of the Mediterranean, eating an apple and reading a newspaper, or a secret message that was once written on a page that's been torn out. 

...  How can you explain to someone over a coffee that this is Egypt?  Not even the tall minarets or the highways or the look in a poor man's eye, no.  Egypt is a fantasy corrupted by 4,000 years of human tragedy.  Which is why, even in the dirt, I will always call this place home.