Chance encounters; or, the Novelist and the Professor meet in Cairo

On Wednesday last week, a Novelist was visiting campus. About a month earlier, he graciously contacted me about speaking on campus, as visiting writers sometime do, and I put him in touch with a colleague who arranged everything. Unfortunately I was unable to attend his talk, but heard from my colleague afterwards that everything went well.

On Thursday, the following day, I was meeting another campus visitor, a Professor who had some meetings about international exchange programs and was also giving a lecture. I had never met him before, but arranged to meet him downtown so we could ride the bus to New Cairo together from Tahrir. (He was staying in Zamalek.) I took the metro downtown and arrived to meet him at around 9:30. As I was walking the half-block from the subway exit to the corner, I see a familiar face walk by. It was the Novelist! I had never met him, but his picture was on posters that were hanging up in the office, so I knew it was him. Incredible, since my first order of business for that morning was to send him a thank you note. However I can be shy and a bit slow, and by the time I realized it, he was gone.

So I get to the corner and the Professor sees me and asks, since we had never met, “Ira?” We shake hands and start to walk back in the direction from which I had come in order to catch the bus. Toward the end of the block, I see the Novelist again. I excuse myself from the Professor and now that I had spent the past few minutes regretting not introducing myself, I approach. I greet him by name. He then greets me by name. WTF? My picture was not on any posters. How did he know me? The Novelist explains that the Professor, who is standing beside me, saw the Novelist a few minutes before I arrived and thought he was me. Before I arrived, the Professor approached the Novelist and asked “Ira?” The Novelist said, “no,” but then went on to explain that he knew an Ira in Cairo and realized that it was probably the same Ira for whom the Professor was waiting.

Bizarre.

The Professor and I chatted with the Novelist for a few minutes before running off to catch the bus. Encounters like this can make a city of 18 or 20 million people feel like a small village.

Space Ping Pong

Several months ago, we got R the most wonderful bathtub imaginable: "Space Ping Pong." I went to the Sun Ra art exhibit at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia this summer, and her tub would not have been out of place. It is one of the most absurd, surreal, and whimsical things I have ever seen and can't help but smile every time I see it. R likes it though my opinion does not reflect a household consensus.

There is a sci-fi trend emerging. R's favorite song is the Newcomers' "Martian Hop" (Stax) which you can listen to here (though it is much better watching R dance to it).

More from Menoufiya; or How do you say "Ask Your Mama" in Arabic?

Even though I posted about my visit to Menoufiya, I did not really talk much about my talk. And I guess I am not really going to do much of that sort of thing here. Briefly, however, my presentation “Langston Hughes, Patrice Lumumba, and the Black Arts Movement” considered the last decade of Hughes’s career. I tried to situate his work as a sort of prototype of the Black Arts Movement, with the figure of Lumumba being central to my understanding of the political dimensions of Hughes’s poetics. There were some challenges is trying to balance a presentation of material that is accessible to an audience of non-specialists but that still represents some my scholarship. As the second part of the program, we screened an excerpt for Eyes on the Prize called “Ain’t Gonna Shuffle No More” that covered Muhammad Ali’s conversion to Islam, the student movement at Howard University, and the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.
My work is my work, but what made it most interesting for me at Menouifya were the comments and questions I received from colleague and students in attendance. Among the questions I was asked were several about the relationship between African American literature and other ethnic American writing, which is increasingly gaining some attention among Egyptian readers who have, justifiably, tired of the more milquetoast tradition associate with the U. S. One of my colleagues pointed out how often Egyptian scholars are drawn to African American literature, which is a great observation. I met colleagues who have written theses and dissertations on Baldwin, Baraka, Dunbar, etc., and while this is still anecdotal, it is worth contemplating.
There were some questions about shifting racial terminology (i.e. why does this poem use the term “Negro”?) which then ties into questions about hip-hop and other about a directness of the language of the Black Arts movement poetry. One question extended this to Lumumba in a way I found interesting—Lumumba’s independence day speech in front of Baudouin in Kinshasa on June 30, 1960, uses the same directness and “impoliteness” that came to be associated with the Black Arts Movement. Is Lumumba the first Black Arts Movement poet?

After the film, there were lots of questions about Islam in the US, and I tried to give the history of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz’s movement toward Sunni Islam, and offered a longer historical overview of African American Islam (which is an area of research I really need to return to). There was another thoughtful question about Obama’s election, and how that has or has not changed the racial landscape described in these poems. In other words, is his election a representative act or is it more idiosyncratic?
I spent some time talking about Hughes’s masterpiece Ask Your Mama. And I was suddenly aware of my audience. I thought, how can I translate “Ask Your Mama” into Arabic? I did my best to say something about the significance of signifying, and asked the audience. Thankfully some colleagues were able to offer if not a direct translation, then at least an equivalent. But whatever was said did elicit some uncomfortable chuckles from the crowd. I should have written it down.

The Black Arts Movement in the Nile Delta

On Wednesday, I gave a lecture on the Black Arts Movement at Menoufiya University, one of Egypt’s national universities, located in the Delta region. Menoufiya is one of seven national universities in the Delta, the fertile region between Cairo and Alexandria. Menoufiya has 70,000 students, which makes it one of the smaller of these universities, which all seem to have between 70,000 and 100,000. (By contrast, some in Cairo have well over 100,000, with 250,000 at Cairo University! AUC, on the other hand, has perhaps 5,000.) This means there are more than 500,000 university students in the Delta, which I was told is home to more than 50% of Egypt’s 80 million people (which, I believe, includes Alexandria’s 4 million). So let’s say 40 million plus approximately 20 million in Cario and then perhaps 20 million elsewhere in the country.

With a university this size, there are lots of exciting things happening. The English department, for example, has more than a thousand students, and the joke that a colleague made was for them all to be able to attend the program, we would have required the university football stadium. Still, the turnout was great.

In terms of the overall situation in the Delta, last year, the Guardian had a good article on the impact of climate change in the region.
I hope to find some time to share more about the program itself, but I wanted to begin somewhere, as I try to get my blog groove back.

Hooding

Last night, I got to "hood" a graduate student, who earned her M.A. in Comparative Literature. My first time doing it. Pretty cool. And well-deserved. By her. Not me. I was a reader on the committee but nothing more.

People are Friendly

I took baby r for a walk today. A short cab ride. Pay the internet bill. Market. Bookstore. Fruit stand. Nothing exceptional. I noticed how friendly people are to me when I have a baby. Much more so than when I was babyless and empty-handed. I experience public space differently. I found it similar when I was in the US--conversations with strangers in lines at the store or in elevators or parking lots or coffee shops or post offices. There is one difference. Here, what I like is that this means many more chances to practice my Arabic. A daily Cairo outing with r looks like a great way to make progress on my Arabic...

Egypt 1, Ghana 0

This is a basic way to try to get my blog groove back on. Big match tonight with Egypt defending their African Nations Cup crown in Angola. The finals win was almost as big as their humiliation of arch-rival Algeria (who prevented Egypt from qualifying for the World Cup) a few days ago. En route to the title, Egypt beat four World Cup qualifiers: Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, and Ghana. Now, it is after midnight, and I am enjoying cars honking in celebration.

This is a great opportunity to meditate on the meanings of nationalism and the flag, a topic which I can hopefully return to once I am *really* back.

I try to avoid making excuses, but if you feel like you need one, look at my previous posting from about three months ago.

Peace.