When the Levees Broke

In my American Studies class, I have been showing Spike Lee’s excellent documentary about Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke. If you have seen it, you know that it can be very difficult to watch. It is certainly tough for me, but I do think it is important for people to watch. Although I have seen it a couple times previously, there is something completely new for me about watching it with my students here. It is really hard and painful to remember the tragedy in this way because they are seeing much of it for the first time.

They all know about the flood, but the consensus was that they knew very little about its extent. If this was surprising to me, it is probably because of the expectations I have developed about how much my students here do know. They told me they were shocked to learn that 80% of the entire city of New Orleans was under water. The images in the documentary shook them. I also realized, in part, that many people who have lived most of their lives in Egypt do not really understand rain, let alone hurricanes. One student in the class spoke briefly about visiting New Orleans a few months after the hurricane. (He is Egyptian, and transferred from a university in the US where he did volunteer service project on the Gulf coast.)

I have been very impressed with the students’ responses. They asked lots of good questions about the inter-government power struggles that the film documents. They made connections to some of the debates over local versus federal power that we discussed when we read the Constitution. They talked about how many of the towns surrounding New Orleans prevented hurricane victims from entering, and saw it in terms of the restrictions historically placed on African American mobility, which were discussed in Angela Davis’s book. They wondered, along with the film, about how the allocation of government resources to fight the war in Iraq impacted the ability to respond. They asked questions about government responsibility and the seeming disinterest of many political leaders.

The students asked lots of serious questions, and I found them to be engaged and sympathetic. They were also somber in a way that struck me as remarkably mature for late teenagers/early twentysomethings.

More Arabic lessons

My Arabic teacher, who I have described in the past, is extremely kind. She is also, as she herself will admit, a bit disorganized. She carries an oversized handbag and pulls from it pamphlets, photocopies, printed pages from the internet, and builds our lessons a bit randomly. One of the problems for me is that there are serious differences in how Arabic is written when using Latin or Roman alphabet that we use in English. In other words, when using two sources, the same words may be written in quite different ways. I study visually (by looking at vocabulary lists) so her use of eclectic sources poses some difficulties for me. I am studying the same word, written quite differently, in two different sources.

EXAMPLE: small (adjective, plural)

• suGayyariin (or su3ayyariin), or
  
• usayyarin

As a result, I need to learn multiple systems of phonetic notation, which does not seem like a good use of time. However, on the upside of things, this does push me to concentrate on learning the Arabic alphabet a bit more.

There are other ways that the lessons have been a bit haphazard. For example, I haven’t learned how to discuss the weather, which is great way to practice by making small talk with taxi drivers. Also, I don’t know how to tell time, and had the hardest time arranging for a delivery at 6:30 (not knowing how to say “half past”). But my vocabulary does include words:

• blonde ('aS'ar)
• brunette ('asmar)
• plaid (karohaat)
• fuchsia (fuSiyia): This one got me the most since I already learned pink, as well as light and dark. I don’t think I have ever used the word in any language, and embarrassingly had to be told what it was.

I let my teacher know that this material was a lower priority and she graciously began, at my request, to teach me fruits and vegetables. This material is great since I do go the fruit and vegetable stand and want to know how to ask, specifically, for the local (not imported) bananas that need to be cut from a huge tree branch. Local bananas, which are fresher, sweeter, smaller, and currently in season are moz mahrabi (literally Moroccan bananas) or moz baladi.

The Sound of Music

In my Literature and Human Rights class, we are reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (great novel and widely available btw). In the novel, the film The Sound of Music figures prominently, which implicitly highlights its international popularity (something I have occasionally encountered elsewhere). So I asked my students if they knew it and all of them, except one, had seen it and loved it. Ironically the lone exception is a student who, I just learned, grew up in Vienna. She told our class about how whenever she tells someone that she is from Austria, they ask her about the film. The best example she shared was from this past summer. She was riding a taxi cab in New York City and was chatting with the female driver who asked her where she was from (perhaps trying to reconcile the German-inflected English accent with the young Arab woman in the backseat). When my student replied Austria, not only did the driver bring up The Sound of Music, but she took out her cassette of the soundtrack and put it on the taxi stereo.

Edward Said Was Here!

In my class today, I showed a documentary about Edward Said called Selves and Others, which is essentially a film of interviews shortly before he died of leukemia in 2003. It described his upbringing here in Cairo and discussed his secondary education here prior to going to boarding school in the US. He attended Victoria College which is right at the end of my street, and even showed a picture of his report card! Its wall is probably less than 100 meters from me; I can see it from my balcony.

He said all of the teachers at VC were British (none of the students were). They taught him only European history, and he didn't learn Egyptian history until later. In 1951, he was expelled for being a "troublemaker" and was sent to boarding school in the US. I read more about his experience at VC in an article I found in the London Review of Books. I need to reread his autobiography, Out of Place. VC was quite a place; his classmates included King Hussein of Jordan and Omar Sharif! Under Nasser, Victoria College became Victory College, which remains its name today.

In the Classroom

I have been a less-than-faithful blogger this past week, which I will blame on my job. It is a busy time as we are adjusting to a post-Ramadan schedule (later and longer classes) and I am grading essays and preparing midterms. There is nothing out of the ordinary, but since my classes are occupying much of my time, I might at least tell you something about them.

Literature and Human Rights (300-level)

We recently finished reading William Gardner Smith’s 1963 novel The Stone Face, which the students loved. Smith’s book--about an African American expatriate journalist’s confrontation with the Algerian Independence movement in France--explores issues of migration and diaspora and race and politics in ways that resonate with my students. I hardly needed to talk during our class sessions because they had so much to say about topics like the expatriate’s choice to emigrate, differing forms of activism and definitions of social responsibility, and the role of fiction in representing historical events, in this case the October 1961 Paris Massacre by French police of up to 200 peaceful Algerian protestors. (It is still not as well known as it should be. The supervising police chief and many officers involved have been exposed as nazi collaborators. For a brief overview of the Massacre and links to other resources, you can start with the Wikipedia entry.)

Experiencing Creativity: Texts and Images (100-level)

These students are first years and I am beginning to sense that the shift from high school to college is a bit dramatic here, more so than in the US. I have needed to use some pretty amateur techniques to get their attention so far. When a student’s mobile phone went off earlier, I gave the entire class a pop quiz. Guess what? No more mobiles ringing. (I owe credit to a colleague for this idea.) Last Thursday, we were supposed to discuss Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use.” When we began class discussion, I was initially encouraged because one of my students told me that she read it in high school. But when I realized only 4 people (of nearly 20) had printed it and read it, I sent them home. (I have done this in the US on occasion.) They were a bit unnerved by my dismissal of class and asked if they could stay and read it there. I said no. (Not that they had it to read anyway.) Between the disruptions of the holiday and the new campus, it has been particularly hard for the new students to get themselves together but I think the exam should spark something.

Introduction to American Studies (200-level)

Immediately following my early dismissal from “Experiencing Creativity” on Thursday, I headed to my largest class (28 students), where we had a great discussion about Bessie Smith’s 1928 song, “Poor Man’s Blues” (we have been reading Angela Davis’s book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism). The students launched into a great debate about the relationship between music and protest, and the relationship of Smith’s performance to the lyrics. They were fascinated by the ways that Smith constructs a class-based discourse within a racialized cultural form and the multiple levels on which race and class interact in this song. I am not doing their analyses any sort of justice here, so I will just post Smith’s lyrics here for you to read. This could also be a good chance for me to figure out how to post audio files to my blog, but this link should get you to the song:

Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind
Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind
Give the poor man a chance, help stop these hard, hard times


While you’re livin’ in your mansion you don’t know what hard times means
While you’re livin’ in your mansion you don’t know what hard times means
Poor working man’s wife is starvin’, your wife is livin’ like a queen

Please, listen to my pleading, ‘cause I can’t stand these hard times long
Oh, listen to my pleading, can’t stand these hard times long
They’ll make a honest man do things that you know is wrong

Poor man fought all the battles, poor man would fight again today
Poor man fought all the battles, poor man would fight again today
He would do anything you ask him in the name of the U.S.A.

Now the war is over, poor man must live the same as you
Now the war is over, poor man must live the same as you
If it wasn’t for the poor man, mister rich man what would you do?

Some of what I saw in Istanbul

Random Thoughts from Istanbul

Five days in Turkey! Sorry that I was away from the blog. Jenna and I had a wonderful time with lots of great sites and food. We go great advice from a Turkish friend here in Cairo. Hopefully I’ll get some pictures up soon. And while I will let the photos do most of the speaking for the trip, for now I thought I would share some random thoughts.

MY FAVORITE JUSTINIAN SITE: At the Basilica Cistern in central Istanbul, you descend underground through a small building, which looks like the entrance to a subway station. After you walk downstairs, you are in a huge cistern that is about 1,500 years old. There is still water there and lots of fish. And two Medusa statues in once corner. Apparently it was uncovered about 50 years ago when a visitor to Istanbul noticed people carrying buckets of water and fishing in central Turkey.

DEMOGRAPHIC POINT OF INFORMATION: Istanbul is a city of 16 million people, which makes it larger than any city in the US, and slightly smaller than Cairo.

A LESSON ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: On the first day of our trip, I took 500 new Turkish liras (YTL) out of an ATM machine. My account was charged $409.27 for rate of $1US=0.81YTL. Five days later, I took out the same amount from the same bank and was charged only $384.94 about $1US=0.77YTL. That is a 5% increase in the value of the US dollar versus the Turkish lira in less than a week. I don’t fully understand why foreign currencies (the Euro has been on a similar path) are now dropping against the dollar (which in no way makes up for the precipitous drop which the dollar has seen over the past few years). There are many possible explanations, but perhaps European markets are finally feeling more directly the impact of what is happening in the US…

Speaking of economics, MY BEST NON-EDIBLE PURCHASE OF LESS THAN $10US: For 11 YTL, I bought Yerli Plaka, an LP by Ceza, Turkey’s best-known rapper. Great stuff. If you want a copy, let me know; I will be happy to share it. I don't understand the words at all (though Turkish has some words that are Arabic in origin that I can understand) but I am told he is pretty conscious. Just for kicks, I put the song list into an online translation program and came up with the following poem (lines/tracks 6 and 7 were originally in English, so I translated them into Turkish using the same program. Of course.):

1. Belt Bee
2. Local Number plate of a car
3. Gelsin Life Familiar Similar
4. raid Possibility
5. You Playful Dilber
6. karanlık yer
7. şark caz
8. Blues Without veil
9. Haydi Us Bee
10. Difference There is
11. Day and night Wife
12. Short Absence
13. In front Yourself Bak
14. Again Get hold of Handkerchief
15. Bitter Pepper
16. Line And Regular Absence
17. Not My