Long due photos...
1) From a restaurant in Luxor, overlooking the Luxor temple.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/d6256015.jpg
2) Luxor temple lit up.
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3) Luxor again.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/1b96001c.jpg
4) Inside a tomb, in the Valley of Kings. The pics here were beautiful. So not allowed to take pics...actually got into a bit of trouble. The stuff Ancient Egyptians did is mind-blowing. Very pretty.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/192dba7b.jpg
5) Inside a Pharoahs actual grave...i.e. where the casket used to be. So not allowed to do that but the guard suggested it with a little something in return!
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6) On our way to the Valley of the Kings.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/d3154731.jpg
7) Karnak Temple. The coolest thing on the planet. It has 134 GIANT columns in it along with some other pretty kewl stuff. My favorite historical site.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/b0fa248b.jpg
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8) Kitchener's Island in Aswan. The whole island is a big botanical garden.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/22b276fe.jpg
9) Looking onto the Nile from Kitchener's Island.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/1e3e8f3e.jpg
10) Nubian tombs on the way to Kitchener's Island. Also a majority of Nubians were displaced when the Aswan High Dam was built. Around 80,000. Its amazing that Nubians have lived as an ethinicity for a gabajillion years.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/7bcab819.jpg
11) Birthday lunch
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12) Midnight on my birthday.
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13) Chocofilo on my birthday. They had like 40 differnt chocolate things on the menue and you could even do chocolate shots..yummmm.
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14) The birthday cake.
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15) Black henna on my hands
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/b3e4a8b8.jpg
16) Omar Khayrat's concert.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/b57b816f.jpg
17) Valentine's day.
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18) A castle/fortress in Alexandria.
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19) Overlooking Alexandria from the fortress.
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20) A Roman theatre in Alex.
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21) From the hotel in Alex.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f307/rgmir/Egypt%20Spring%2006/e3d63666.jpg
Torture
Reading up on refugee issues and conditions before that force a person into fleeing their country. Pretty disturbing. Here is a little piece of what I was just reading…. and these aren’t even the worse of it all. Every time I read another one I’m like…things can’t go worse than this and then I’m shocked again.
A woman in the Middle East:
I was home the day the soldiers came to our house. I was afraid and crept under the table and I saw how my mother talked to the soldiers, and my little sister- she played and laughed. The soldiers asked my mother, “Where is your brother?” My mother became frightened and didn’t answer. “I don’t know,” she answered finally. “What do you mean, you don’t know?” said the soldiers, and they shot my mother and my little sister. My mother lay there, and I cried and ran and told my uncle about it. He cried and tore at his hair and hit himself on the head. “Come with me,” I said. And we saw that my mother was dead. That was very common in my country. I was 14 when it happened.
And to remind us of slightly older struggle….Part of a testimony of a political prisoner after the military coup in 1973:
Ceaser C. was 27 years old political community leader with some high school education; he was married and had three children. He was arrested seven times between 1973 and 1977, each time with great violence. He was subjected to a series of tortures: being beaten all over his body for four hours at a time; simulated executions; deprivation of sleep for 48 hours; humiliation and harassment; broken teeth caused by stones put into his mouth and then hammered; witnessing his brother’s torture with electric prods; and other forms of violence and humiliation. Cesar has electric shock applied to his genitals for 12 hours at a time, losing consciousness several times, and was hung by the neck; metallic objects of different sizes simulating a penis were introduced through his anus and then electric shock applied; he was partially suffocated with plastic bags and his head forced into pails of water or urine and excrement. He was forced to witness the raping of women by soldiers and trained dogs. Torture inflicted upon him resulted in brainwashing and sever disintegration, which led him to betray two of his closest clandestine political contracts. Subsequently, his having informed on his friends constituted the core of his disturbance. (Testimony taken in April 1979).
Something like this is probably happening in some part of the world as I write this….
Me gusto Luxor
Was traveling to Upper Egypt (i.e. southern Egypt…..confusing eh?) for the weekend. We’re talking about a 13 hours train ride here. Went to Luxor and Aswan with some friends. Apart from being almost continuously hassled by people trying to sell us stuff for ridiculous prices Luxor was pretty nice. My favorite part was the Karnak Temple. Apart from the fact that it is HUGE and was buried under sand for a 1000 years before some archeologists found it….that place is mind boggling. It has 134 GIANT columns. All prettied up with intricate carvings and drawings. I have absolutely no idea how folks 1000s of years ago made this thing. The temple for me along with the Valley of Kings for me is even more amazing than they pyramids. Will try to post up pics soon.
Aswan….went to a nice little island there called Kitchener’s Island. It is basically a big garden. So the stereo-type in the north about people in the south is that they are very conservative. Didn’t like Aswan that much. People weren’t as helpful and hassling was taken to a whole new level along with this idiot who was being extremely rude.
And also at Aswan we were trying to get an earlier train back to Cairo and when one of my female friends (who is Egyptian-American) went to the ticket window the dude was pretty snappy and was like “mish makan” (there isn’t any place). So I thought he was bsing so I asked a guy friend to go ask the same thing (even though he doesn’t speak much Arabic) and wolah! we have tickets for an earlier train. The girls were obviously really pissed off.
One more thing about here is that people don't really get that they shouldn't really ask personal questions to people they've just met (actually this happens in many other countries too). You exchange a smile with someone and they ask you if you are Muslim, married, why don't you cover your head, have kids (if you earlier told them that you were married which I often do!), how long you're here for, do I like Egyptian men etc etc. Majority of people think I'm from India and sellers think that its a good idea to attract my attention by saying, "YA India".....grrrrr...
An interesting contrast from Pakistan. I was surprised here to see women working in stores, shops and photocopying centers etc. Places where they won’t work in Pakistan. So my initial reaction was "oh…women here have more liberty than women in Pakistan." And then incidents like the one I mentioned above happen… like women not getting the correct information or plumbers refusing to talk to the women in the house even if there aren’t any men around. Jacked up stuff like that which makes me wanna smack someone on the head.
It is dust storm weather again….EWWW! Really hope we don’t have another dust storm (and that’s like hoping for no snow in MA in November).
Btw check out the cartoons on aljaeera.net. Pretty good.
Some basic info...
Here are some very basic pieces of info about refugees in Egypt (or in general):
1) There are approximately 14 million refugees worldwide. However, keep in mind that the definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Statuf of Refugees, a refugee is someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, memebership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality or habitual residence and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that countr of to return to it." The 14 million therefore, doean't include displaced people within countries.
2)The majority of refugees are from Africa or the Middle East.
3) Almost 25% of the world's refugees are Palestinians.
4) Half of the world's refugees have been "warehoused" in camps for more than 10 years.
5) In Egypt, there are about 22,000 people who have been granted refugee status by UNHCR. The majority of these people are from Sudan and Somalia.
6) Along with the above there are 50,000 to 70,000 Palestinian refugees currently living in Egypt.
7) Less than 1% of the world's refugees are resettled in "Western" countries.
On Ciscoee's request...
Saeead wa saeedat…here is a long due blog update. So where I have been…where should I start.
So I’m teaching English at a couple of places and one of those is a group of Sudanese and Somali refugee women. Learning a lot about refugee issues in general which is interesting…I’ll post some basic hard facts about refugee issues in my next post.
I’m also taking this class on the psychosocial effects of forced migration and in the last class we talked about different forms of torture and sexual abuse/rape. Not a very cheerful topic but makes you think how any human can be capable of doing all of that. Along with that reading and trying to comprehend how much the colonial powers screwed us over. This is further highlighted by some other stuff I read for a class about how screwed up our economic system and how much capitalism is systematically based on the backs of people who are exploited generation after generation and their land and water ripped off all resources. I
Continuing on some politics….Rice was here a week or so ago. And there were protests in regards to that. As you might know Rice was on a tour of the Middle East to convince the Arab leaders to stop supporting Hamas (who has won a lot of seats in the recent Palestinian elections) and to pressurize Iran to stop its nuclear program and open it to inspection. Well, telling Cairo to talk to Tehran is not very smart considering the two countries don’t have good relations between them. Also, there was some criticism/ Western media bias about the Muslim Brotherhood (an orthodox religious party in Egypt) planning to raise money for Hamas in case US imposes economic sanctions.
Now this whole sanction business… does it ever work? Or does it only screw the people over?
Also, went to this talk in which they discussed the effects of “The Wall” or security fence that is being built by Israel around Jerusalem which will also take up a lot of the West Bank . I’ve heard of so many accounts of Palestinians and people who work in that area who say that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are like giant prisons. The mobility of the people living inside there is extremely restricted…so is the amount of food or anything else that is going inside it. In the talk they also discussed the actual results/consequences of the Israeli de-settlement in Gaza. Well Israel still controls the water and the air space and so does it control the main commercial entry point into the West Bank. I don’t have my notes on this on me right now but will definitely be putting them up. Once again, thank the colonial powers (and now the imperial ones) for decades worth of bloodshed and hate.
(To see maps of Israel and Palestine including checkpoints and the wall
http://www.palestinercs.org/reference_maps.htm)
I think one thing that I’m very much reminded of being outside USA is how much the US gets away with. Try to see “Paradise Now” if you can. Not mind blowing but the only movie made on this subject without an extraordinary bias towards the Arabs.
I’m now going to drastically change the tone of this post….
Went to a kick ass concert tonight by Omar Khayrat….one of the most famous composers in Egypt and a brilliant pianist. Beautiful music.
I’m also one tooth less since about a day ago…..long boring and painful story so lets not go into it.
I’m taking Swahili!!!! Well about thirty to forty million people in the world speak it as a second language and about 5 million as their first and the class is being offered for really cheap…I’ll only learn the basics…but hey…why not?
