Living Among the Dead

According to al-Jazeera's story, there are thousands of homeless in Cairo, and "Many in fact are being forced to live among the dead." One would think that this is a new phenomenon from the story - in fact, Egyptians have been living in these very large cemeteries for centuries. Some parts have electricity, running water and sewers. Those interviewed in the story show a lack of uneasiness about living where they do and this is presented as a shocking testament their plight. The truth is that Egyptians are just not particularly put off by this. At least the Muslims aren't - no one lives in the large Christian cemeteries in Cairo's Coptic neighbourhood. These places are poor, no doubt, but they are not the poorest or the last resort of the homeless. There are many impressive tombs (such as Sultan Qaitbey's mosque - depicted on the one pound note)) in the Northern cemetery and these cemeteries are well-worth visiting.



UPDATE: Here is a more recent article which says that Egyptians are now being forced to live in cemeteries - despite interviewing people who have lived there for 30 years. According to the article, the government is now trying to stop tourists from entering and taking pictures of the inhabitants. They've also closed Qaitbay's mosque. Below is a picture of the mosque (hard to photograph in the close quarters) with a four storey apartment building beside it - with air conditioning. Although it is true that Cairo is constantly expanding, the cemeteries are not the last resort of the poor - the city is expaning outward into the valley's farmland ([picture below) and the desert.

Reading Mein Kampf in Cairo

My article in the Jerusalem Post can be found here. The Introduction to Mein Kampf is here.

The October War Panorama

I visited the October War Panorama in Cairo, which celebrates the October War (or the Yom Kippur War of 1973). This was a large building designed by North Koreans after a suggestion to Mubarak by Kim Jong Il. There were several groups of school kids and families with their children there and there was a festive atmosphere. People were selling ice cream and toys outside and inside there was a place to have one's picture taken with cut outs of Nasser, Sadat and various Egyptian movie stars. A couple of times people came up to me and pointed to the various Egyptian tanks, jets and statues of soldiers in heroic poses n display and give the thumbs up sign and say things like "Egypt number one!"

There were three presentations - two dioramas and a movie. For the first I was escorted in and placed in the first row. I wa surrounded by a group of seven or eight year-old girls. The room filled with the soothing voice of Phil Collins:

All of my life, I've been searching
for the words to say how I feel...

Maybe it was a mistake, I'm not sure. After this was a rousing military song to which all the girls sang. Then the presentation began. The diorama was a depiction of the Sinai with little radar dishes rotating and planes flying across on wires and flashing lights.

The narrator explained that what had been taken by force could only be regained by force. The war was proclaimed "the greatest victory in modern times." The guns opened fire at 2:05 on October 6, and the air force started its bombing runs. There were such an astonishing success that the second round of bombings that had been planned were canceled. Then the feared Israeli air force tried to strike back but, "one by one the Israeli planes with their blue stars of David were brought down by our heroic armed forces...The glorious hours passed quickly," until, a few days later, the Israeli prisoners of war bowed their heads as the Egyptian flag was raised high all over Sinai. Everyone in the room began clapping and we moved on to the next presentation in which a similar account was given.

My ticket had a description of the war which concludes that, "The epic witnessed the greatest firepower preparation since the Second World War, the greatest tank battles in the modern history, and the crossing of the most difficult water barrier in the world. Thanks to our strong belief in God and our just cause, we achieved a decisive victory which lead to the liberation of Sinai on the 25th of April 1982, from the banks of the Canal to the international borders and in March 1989, restoring the last inch of the motherland when the Egyptian flag was hoisted over Tabu [sic]."

Chris McClure

Egyptian Election Poster

This is an example of an Egyptian election poster (I saw it at the bus stop in the Baharyia oasis). There is a lot of information contained in a simple picture and name such as this. It says "Al Haj / Abd Al Tawab Abu Faraj. Your candidate for membership in the Shoura Council. 'Haj' (Hag in Egyptian dialect) means that he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The callous on his forehead from repeated contact with the prayer mat implies piety, while the mustache without a full beard means that he is likely not an Islamist. 'Abu Faraj' means that he is the father of Faraj (the same way 'Abu Mazen' means 'father of Mazen') and is thus a family man.

Chris McClure

The Yacoubian Building

The Yacoubian Building, a novel by Alaa Al Aswany, recently made into a movie (which I have yet to see), is set in Cairo around 1991 in a building which really exists (pictured below) at 34 Talaat Harb street. Despite the often dark subject matter, the book is never heavy and is hard to put down. The story follows several characters who are connected somehow with the building and who represent various extremes of Egyptian society: corrupt politicians, radical Islamists, pre-revolution pseudo-aristocrats and gay lovers among them. The book, regarded by many Egyptians as too exaggerated to be taken very seriously, attempts to portray a cross-section of society. In this, it is an attempt to follow the same approach by Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, which, despite many critics's comparisons, is a far more subtle and powerful work. Most reviews of The Yacoubian Building take it to be an expose of the violence and corruption of modern Egypt, and an exploration of various taboo subjects. This is not a surprising reaction to the work from Western reviewers given our propensity to focus on these sorts of issues (as I've mentioned before), and the author's tendency to play into this tendency (as in this interview).

The book no doubt is partly about these issues. However, like any book that can be considered a candidate for being a truly good book, this one is really an attempt to understand something fundamental about human nature and how people relate to each other. When people have their hearts broken, their dreams crushed or come to realize their powerlessness in the face of forces they can't control, how do they react? Is it a sign of weakness to become cynical and 'play the game' and a sign of strength to fight against injustice tooth and nail? Or is it in fact the other way around - is it a sign of strength of character to make the best of a bad situation and to remain, perhaps even despite oneself, a good person and a sign of weakness to fall prey to an enchanted world view that leads one to see everything in overly simple terms of good and evil?

Another major theme of the book is the difference between those who go through life trying to manipulate others and act out of complete selfishness and those who retain their compassion and humanity. In a corrupt society it seems impossible to try to manipulate others without being taken advantage of oneself and one's only chance for happiness is finding some shelter and weathering the storm and hopefully finding others who are trying to do the same.

It is worth asking how much a role fate plays in peoples' lives according to the author and what we are to make of the clear moral of the book in light of this.

Overall, this book is worth reading both for its (perhaps exaggerated) look at modern Egyptian society and for the thought provoking moral issues it raises. One thing is sure - you won't ever look the same way at the veiled girls standing outside the many clothing stores in downtown Cairo...

Chris McClure

Leaving Cairo

After several fascinating weeks, I'm leaving Cairo again.

Chris McClure

Introduction to Mein Kampf

Hitler's Mein Kampf is on sale at bookstores and on the street in downtown Cairo. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) it was first published in 1963 in Lebanon and translated by Luis al-Haj. Although there is a partial translation on MEMRI's website, it omits important passages and is therefore misleading. The following is a complete translation of the introduction by Alex Orwin. Images of the Arabic original are below (click to enlarge).

"Adolph Hitler was not just some ordinary man that the passage of time has obscured, but he scattered behind him dust that left its footprints throughout the wide world. Adolph Hitler was not merely the possession of the German people alone, but he was one of the great few who almost stopped the course of history, changed its direction, and altered the face of the world, and he is therefore a possession of history. And if indeed Hitler the soldier has not left behind him anything but legend tarnished by a tragic reality, a tragedy of a state whose dreams have been shattered, a governmental organization whose pillars have collapsed, and a party whose foundations were torn apart by the four corners of the globe, Hitler as an ideologist has left behind him an inexhaustible intellectual heritage, and this intellectual heritage includes politics, society, science, art, and war as a science and art.

"The main features of the national [wataniyya] socialism which Adolph Hitler proclaimed were explicated in Mein Kampf, and its principles were explained in speeches, both before he assumed the reins of government and during the thirteen years in which he ruled at the head of the German nation. This national socialism did not die with the death of the man who proclaimed it: indeed its seeds grew under every star, and the promoters of radical nationalism [qawmiyya] take it up as a weapon with which to combat Third Internationalism and the principles of Karl Marx. Even those who fought socialism and nationalism [wataniyya], and went to great lengths in cooperating with communism to crush Nazism, began to understand the importance of the principles which Hitler set down, even at a time when he was still struggling politically and of softer disposition, as an effective agent in stopping the extreme leftist tendency, and from their application of these principles arose dictatorships and one-party states, in which the governing party employed force, violence, and Machiavellianism in order to attain its goals.

"Whoever follows today the development of the struggle between the communist and democratic camps senses the confusion of the second camp in opposing the tendency [based] on the principles of Karl Marx, whose dissemination grew after the second world war. And [the democratic camp] has endeavoured to do this sometimes by providing financial, economic, and technical assistance to the nation, and sometimes by developing methods of organization which are parallel to the communist methods but do not imitate them. It is obvious that the efforts of the democratic camp remind us of what Hitler did to oppose the communist tendency in his country, and nevertheless we are not able to understand the true efforts of this man without grasping the principles elaborated in the book Mein Kampf, which the Nazis made the gospel of national socialism.

"The translation of Mein Kampf which we have set down before the reader has never before been presented so faithfully to Arab speakers, since it is taken from the original copy which the author Adolph Hitler composed, that is, the copy to which the hand of censorship has not been extended through editing or omission. We wish to present the opinions of Hitler and his reflections on nationalism, the organization of governments, and races without the slightest alteration, because this in an issue whose poignancy does not diminish, and because we in the Arab world continue to fumble about in the dark in these three areas."



Chris McClure

You Got Veiled, Bravo!

In this month's Campus Magazine, an English language publication based in Heliopolis, several readers voiced their opinions of the following video, "You Got Veiled, Bravo" by Hussam Hag. In it, a teacher, clearly impressed, gives the only veiled girl in class a chocolate bar. Also, an unveiled woman watching music videos is interrupted by a youger, veiled sister, who mutes the TV so she can pray. This prompts the woman to don a veil as well. Her super-model boyfriend, initially appearing sullen at the change, decides to put a ring on her finger as if proposing marriage. The 'ring' is in fact a string pulled from her veil.



Several readers' comments were published in the article - almost all negative. Many felt that the message was insulting to Islam with its suggestion of "commercial religion," which uses the veil as a tool for marriage. As one young woman put it, "All the song did is stereotype the veil and place the veiled girls exactly where they have been initially striving to get themselves out of!! I pity all the girls out there who took ages to think about the veil; how to take the decision and how to face the world, only to discover that it's all about marriage and a bar of chocolate!" Another, who'd been to school in the UK and US and returned without a veil, and who was therefore "...immediately labeled by everyone as a whore..." says, "I am not against the veil in principle, but I am completely against the way it is getting promoted for all the wrong reasons. Unfortunately this applies to Islam as a whole , as part of a disturbing phenomenon that is on the rise in Egypt at alarming levels. I'm starting to fear the day that I get stoned to death in a public square."

The magazine, with ads for BMW and Burger King, is written in English and so excludes most Egyptian readers. 80% of female respondents were unveiled, while a large majority of Egyptian women are veiled. For those who read the article, the issue of whether or not to wear a veil was a personal decision. For many poor women in Egypt, however, the veil is not a matter of personal choice about religion and spirituality. These women do not have the option of telling their families and husbands that the veil does not fit with their own personal convictions and that they have chosen not to wear it. In these cases the veil is a matter of tradition rather than religion (if we understand religion as something in which there can be no compulsion); two issues that are often confused, as those who deny that the veil is required by Islam claim.

So why are so many women returning to religion or tradition? As I understand it, the veil has become increasingly popular since the 70s and especially since the first Gulf war and this popularity has followed a general rise in religiosity in the region. How much of this is a reaction against the West and Western materialism? And why does the suggestion that women should wear the veil for the material benefits this will confer hit such a nerve? According to one male respondent, "...you have to admit that a considerable majority of girls in Egypt do have nothing on their minds but marriage..." - implying that many women will adopt the veil if they believe it will increase their chances of getting married. And another woman observes, "The majority of Egyptian women are veiled, but let's look closely at the 'veil'; brightly colored long, multi-layered, multi-hued scarves flying in the wind, tight tops and jeans, short pants, full makeup, and heavy musky perfume...I'm sorry, but I do not see how that is more modest than a girl who's simply not covering her hair."

So, do women who have a choice in the matter don the veil because of broad social trends, as a means to a worldly end, or as the result of deep meditation on religious matters? Certainly the reasons defy easy explanation. What strikes me though, as a non-expert in Islam, is the preoccupation with physical appearances in spiritual matters - especially when these matters are supposed to be a counterweight to materialism. Less surprising is that it seems to be a preoccupation focused exclusively on the appearance of women - something shared by many cultures and epochs. My favorite response was the following: "Are there any videos promoting men to grow their beards and wear pantacours?!?"

Chris McClure

Egypt's New Laws

In this month's Community Times, a Cairo-based English language magazine, there is an article announcing that Egypt has now banned the sale of cigarettes to those under 18 as well as smoking in many indoor areas. On the same page, they announce that the practice of female circumcision has also been banned (in the past it had been allowed in 'exceptional circumstances,' whatever that means). Hopefully the police will be as aggressive when enforcing these laws as they are when taking down dissident bloggers...



Chris McClure

Foreign Movies?

While walking downtown yesterday I found a copy of the movie "Nasser 56" on sale on the street for only 2$. I'd only seen this movie once before as part of a class on Middle Eastern history. When I got it home, it didn't work on my laptop. I found out that this was not a DVD, but a Video CD, something that doesn't exist in the US or Canada. Eventually I figured out how to get it to work, but it had none of the subtitles promised by the guy who sold it.

The movie itself was very popular in Egypt, breaking all box-office records when it was released in 1996. Highly patriotic and not necessarily historically accurate, the film portrays a brief moment in Egyptian history when things looked brighter than they had for some time, or would again for the foreseeable future. This movie is now available on amazon.com (on VHS, only 4 copies left as of today), but I've never seen it in a rental store (it's not on Netflix either). Nor have I ever seen "al-Ard," which many say is the best Egyptian movie ever made.

So why is it so hard to find these movies outside the Arab world? I thought we liked foreign films in North America. We might shed some light on this by first asking another question - just how foreign are the movies we get from the Middle East? Let's look at a few recent examples:

"Osama", number one on Amazon's "Best of Middle Eastern Cinema" was filmed in Afghanistan (maybe not quite the Middle East, but close enough) and written and directed by Siddiq Barmak. From the list of countries involved, though, it seems that the film received funding from the Netherlands, Ireland, Japan and Iran. Similarly, "Secret Ballot" was first released in Italy and IMDB lists it as an Iranian/Italian/Canadian/Swiss movie. This is the story of a well-meaning woman who comes face to face with a harsh reality - rural Iran isn't ready for Western style democratic elections - Take that Bush! Also recall the famous Algerian/Italian movie "The Battle of Algiers." In fact, very few of these movies are entirely domestic. This makes sense for many reasons - less affluent nations can't necessarily devote much money to supporting movie production, and there are obvious political reasons why some of these movies may need outside funding. A recent review makes this point about European support for Palestinian film.

I'm not a film expert, but it seems to me that there is often an important difference between domestically made Middle Eastern movies and those that attract European funding. The latter often focus on the most negative aspects of Middle Eastern countries, have a specifically Western political bent and thus mirror Western concerns and assumptions - anyone who would be interested in watching "The Circle" probably already knows that Iranian women are oppressed. Domestically made movies, by contrast, while often critical politically (and frequently banned - see "The Lizard" - if you can find it), approach their subject matter in a refreshingly non-Western way. Nasser 56, for example, with its praise of a strong autocratic leader, is driven by intense national pride at standing up to the West both politically and militarily. There is a deep loathing for England, France, the US and the World Bank - from the music we hear when the crooked English politicians at 10 Downing street are shown, we might expect Darth Vader to appear on the screen. Nasser's children show him absolute respect and his wife knows her place is standing behind her man. So, although many of these European-backed movies are very good, it's important to keep in mind that they might not be the sources of deep cultural insight many take them for.

Chris McClure

More Pictures

Now that's a shawarma!


Who's Black Label?



Chris McClure

An Antique Land

I went to the Mummy Room at the Egyptian Museum today. Photography was not allowed in the room of course, ‘out of respect for the dead.’ Anwar Sadat thought the whole concept of displaying dead royalty was blasphemous and closed to room for many years. But we are people of science, and know that the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians were just so much silly superstition. So, in the name of science and curiosity about the dead (are these related?), the mummy room is again open to the public. It’s a good thing the religion of these Egyptians has died out, and that science has taught us the truth about these things, or else we might have to respect their beliefs and leave these people in their graves. Just for the record, I am also, despite my agnosticism, a ‘man of science’ in this regard. We should be aware, however, that our so-called respect for diversity and other religions and ‘value systems’ is done from a standpoint of what we believe to be certain knowledge about the truth of these claims and beliefs.

It was still quite early when I left the mummies so I headed to the Tutankhamen room, where it struck me that the works of the human mind are far more impressive than the remains of the human mind…This reminds me of Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias,” which was in fact inspired by a statue of Ramses II (whose mummy I had just seen):

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Among the many things going on in this poem is the fact that the work of the artist has outlived everything else - even though it too seems destined to perish. So who was greater? Ozymandias who ruled the kingdom and perhaps made it possible for the sculptor to work, or the artist, without whom not even this meager trace of the kingdom would exist? And why should we despair? Clearly this was meant as a warning to potential enemies while the king lived, but is now a warning against the futility of striving to make anything lasting on earth (compare Ecclesiastes 1:11). Part of what distinguishes human beings from other creatures is the awareness of our own mortality, and, more importantly, our reaction to this knowledge. The striving for eternity is what drives poets and artists and what, at the beginning of human civilization, built the pyramids. No wonder so many people are fascinated by mummies.

Chris McClure

Urban Decay

In my last post I said there was something to the argument that poorer areas in places like Cairo are somehow more ‘authentic.’ So why exactly do some people (like me) find these sorts of places so interesting? There is something about the winding alleys and cramped spaces that gives a neighborhood more character than the efficient, modern grid-based system of many North American cities. The accumulated wear of countless lives lived out walking up the same stairs, opening the same doors and being confined to the same dark rooms makes these places seem, if not exactly more natural, at least more ‘real.’ People who live here have to make the most of what little they’ve got and have very little choice in how they will live their lives. The more affluent are insulated against these necessities. It seems to me that part of what is impressive about these places is that life persists in them in the face of such adverse conditions – we like to see ‘how they live.’ As I’ve mentioned before, I think this is intriguing for Westerners because of a sort of Romantic attraction for whatever seems more rooted in the earth and closer to necessity. However, much the way some Italians might be irritated when someone identifies the real Italy and real Italians with the backwards and corrupt parts of Sicily rather than with Rome or Milan, this attitude can be quite annoying to people who live in these countries (Egypt in this case). It’s difficult for them to understand why so many people from the West focus on poverty rather than on their country’s achievements and their ore beautiful aspects.

On the other hand, it is important to try to understand where these notions come from since they may point to something we lack in modern life. Perhaps a certain lack of awareness of necessity? Perhaps a lack of enchantment?

Wishing for enchantment though is tricky business. I would never want to live in these places - although many who do live there would gladly come live where I do. But there is another side to enchantment that is also largely lacking in the West today. Walking through these crowded dusty alleys in Cairo you come across truly extraordinary mosques and other buildings, some of which are over 1000 years old and on a scale that rivals the large churches of Europe (none of which were built recently). These are examples of mankind’s highest achievements and stand in marked contrast to the squalor surrounding them. What exactly have we lost that prevents us from creating such things?



Chris McClure

McArabia

With a name straight from Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmares, the McArabia is available in McDonalds all over the Middle East. It is made with meat patties that taste suspiciously like the breakfast sausages one finds in North America (McDonalds doesn’t do breakfast in this part of the world). It’s also wrapped in ‘Arabic’ bread (since Arabic is a language and not an adjective it’s hard to know what to make of this). This attempt at local cuisine for a local market is amusing but not very authentic. But then, authenticity isn’t very easy to define. The idea of an ‘authentic’ Middle East conjures up visions of simple farmers living in mud brick houses, women in burkas and traditional wedding ceremonies. I’ve been staying in Zamalek, a relatively upscale neighborhood in Cairo, and had a conversation with someone who told me that this wasn’t the ‘real’ Cairo. This real Cairo involves noise, confusion, dirt and poverty. There is something to this point of view – there is an important difference between places with what we could call character and those that have a soulless antiseptic feel. But there’s no doubt that Zamalek has as much character as anywhere else in the country. Saying that this isn’t the real Egypt is like saying that Mobile Alabama is the real America but Manhattan isn’t. So what’s going on here? It seems to me that Westerners have a strange obsession with gawking at poor people in other countries (I’m also guilty of this – see my last post). Perhaps this is the result of a certain line of thought in Western philosophy from Rousseau to Heidegger that is critical of the modern world and which paints a romantic picture of peasant life and its close connection to the earth. Part of this picture is a reaction against progress and a yearning for a time when things didn’t change so much. If there is any truth to this then Osama, in his hatred of the West and praise of the Taliban, might be buying into its thought, or being defined by, it more than he knows. I’m not an expert in Islam but I would be surprised if the religion requires Muslims to be miserably impoverished as those under the Taliban’s regime were. Attempts to stop historical change will always be futile. This does not mean that the whole world must become like the United States though. Japan, which was once highly isolationist, has embraced the modern world, but is no less Japanese for that. The religious and intellectual elite of the Middle East should realize that modernization does not mean that the region will become McArabia.

Chris McClure

Pictures and Pens

Kids in the Egyptian oases love having their pictures taken with digital cameras and seeing themselves on the screen.


For some reason they're also constantly asking for pens...



Chris McClure

The Statue of Liberty?

I wonder how many Americans know this piece of trivia about the famous New York landmark. Everyone knows that the French gave the statue to the United States as a sign of goodwill. But the statue's history is more complicated. Khedive Ismail "The Magnificent," (Egypt's ruler from 1863 to 1879), originally commissioned it to stand at the mouth of the Suez Canal in Port Said. Ismail was on a spending spree after a spike in the price of cotton (which Egypt produced) in the 1860s. This was partly the result of the Confederacy cutting cotton production during the American Civil War in order to increase international pressure to stop the conflict. By the time the canal was completed in 1869, the Civil War was over and Ismail was broke. He couldn't afford to have the statue built and it never made it to Port Said. The plinth it was supposed to stand on (pictured above) was built though. A large statue of Ferdinand Lesseps (who designed the canal) stood on it but was knocked down after Nasser's 1952 Revolution. Now the plinth sits with nothing on it and without even a plaque. This somehow didn't make it into the statueofliberty.org's page on the history of the statue. The statue, after being paid for successfully by the French people has managed to stand for nearly 130 years without being knocked down by civil strife.

Chris McClure