Kool senna wenta tayib

This sentence means something like “may you be well all the year.” You use it to say happy new year, happy birthday, and “here, take this tip/bribe.” I just got to use it for the first time and I am pretty excited about it.

My little old garbage man who comes by once a month for the $1.80 I pay him to take out my garbage for the month was counting out my change and in Arabic, I stopped him when he’d given me back all but three times as much as his usual monthly fee and said “thank you, happy new year.” He is always very polite and friendly when he sees me but I scored an even bigger than usual smile this time.

I am going to be using this sentence a lot in the next couple weeks before my trip home in September. Ramadan is supposed to be a time for charity, self-deprivation, and introspection. Since I’m not Muslim, I don’t actually have any charitable obligations but since I’m not fasting, I’m not really doing much self-depriving or introspecting these days so I’ve chosen to focus on charity in the spirit of the season. It is traditional to give gifts (think big tips) to the people who work for you so their families can eat meat a few times during the months.

Usually, the idea that I would have people who work for me would be ridiculous but I seem to have amassed quite the staff in the last few months. In addition to my doorman, who does absolutely nothing (a doorman’s job is to provide security so strangers can’t get into the building, run errands for residents, and keep the common stairwell and landings lit and clean…and my doorman does none of these things and on top of that is totally incomprehensible when he speaks to me and I have to rely on his 12 year old son as communications liaison), I have a dog walker who comes every weekday to take care of Whiskey, and a cleaner who comes once a week.

It is also traditional to buy customary Ramadan sweets for one’s employees. The favorites are basboosa, a sort of cake-like dessert made of semolina (so it is flatter, denser and a little grainier than cake) and then soaked in a floral syrup, and konaffa, which is the texture and appearance of shredded wheat but with a light, crispy pastry taste wound into the shape of a bird’s nest and topped with honey and either pistachios or peanuts. Love konaffa, hate basboosa but basboosa is significantly more popular with Egyptians. When I ask Egyptians what they think of when they think of Ramadan, they smile and their eyes roll back in pleasure and they purr “basboosa!” I think it is because after fasting all day any food tastes way more amazing.

I will be back in Oregon for the feast that marks the end of Ramadan in mid-September so I won’t be around to buy anybody sweets but I might leave some cash with my office mates to get some for the office attendants who are in charge of keeping the lunch room stocked with yogurt, coffee, etc., paying for lunch orders, making copies, getting office supplies, etc. as they are all really diligent about their work and are always very polite and patient with my clumsy Arabic.

The schedule and pace of life has shifted significantly since Ramadan started on Wednesday. I thought it was hard to get my handyman to come to fix something before Ramadan, now I can’t even get him to answer the phone. Apparently the first week of fasting is the most difficult for everyone and everyone works very little or stops altogether until they adjust to the lack of food, water, cigarettes and sex between the hours of dawn and dusk. It is August and extremely hot, and as if abstaining from these necessities (excluding smoking) weren’t hard enough everyone must still venture out into the heat three times during daylight hours for prayers, and endure (I mean enjoy?) an EXTRA hour of prayers specific to Ramadan in the evening after the normal evening prayer.

The time zone itself shifted back one hour to winter time. Daylight savings is canceled for the month of Ramadan so that everyone can sleep in an extra hour before work and thus shorten, in a way, the amount of time one has to be awake feeling hungry and thirsty from the fasting. The clocks will jump ahead again for the three weeks starting at Eid el Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, and October first, when it officially “falls back” to winter time again.

The pace of work and reliability of service, always questionable at best in Egypt, has slogged to a near-halt this first week of fasting (veteran expats say it gets better next week) meaning I cannot get my air conditioning fixed to save my life (it has been two weeks) or get the pair of pants the tailor is supposedly making for me any time soon (he said it would take a week but it has actually been SIX weeks! They’d better be pants made of gold when I pick them up). There are certain times of the day (during prayers, any time before noon when people are trying to sleep as long as possible so they don’t have to feel how much fasting sucks, and during Iftar and the special Ramadan prayers which, together, last until around 9:30pm) when everything is closed and no one answers the phone or shows up to work, even if work is sitting on the broken sofa on the street outside my apartment.

Iftar, or the daily breaking of the fast occurs around 6:40 every day and is traditionally dates and sugared tea (every beverage is heavily sugared in Egypt) followed by heavier foods with family and friends. Each day’s iftar is an event and Egyptians hop from invitation to invitation with various relatives, groups of friends, and colleagues such that Ramadan, despite the stress and difficulty of fasting during the day, made extra cruel by the fast that each year it moves earlier and earlier into the summer and thus gets longer and hotter, is a time many look forward to for the spirit of love, friendship, and community similar to what Americans feel leading up to Christmas.

The single beer distributor is closed during Ramadan and many places that serve very cheap food have closed or stopped delivery services during the day because the volume of orders drops so significantly that turning out buckets of koshery, for example, a mix of small tube shaped macaroni, chopped up spaghetti, lentils, rice, fried onions, tomato sauce, spicy sauce, and garlic isn’t a sustainable business this month. Technically no one can legally be served alcohol during Ramadan, even in restaurants and bars, but some of the older places either have grandfathered exceptions allowing them to serve to foreigners (you actually have to show your passport to order a drink if you look Egyptian to prove you have a foreign nationality) or else they are paying off the cops. Places that don’t get enough expat business to justify paying those bribes (kool senna wenta tayib, officer!) use the month to remodel. The rule against serving Egyptians is particularly unfair to the Copts, who are Egyptian and thus have no foreign passport but who obviously don’t observe Ramadan and have no religious prohibitions against drinking alcohol. They can’t get alcohol this month and thus, like many expats, stock up on beer, etc. the week before and just drink at home or in the homes of friends more than usual this time of year.

I walk the dog exactly at Iftar time now, as the streets are completely empty, no traffic, and no groups of young men sitting around the front doors of buildings drinking tea and smoking to distract the job from his central task of putting one foot in front of the other (it is soooo easy to distract a puppy!). I haven’t changed my clothing habits yet but I will dress a little more conservatively if I start getting harassed. Apparently Egyptian men who are abstaining from sex and supposedly masturbation during the day and who are supposed to be purifying themselves through this self-deprivation blame women who dress too provocatively (skirts or shorts above the knees, tops that are too low-cut, showing too much upper arm, etc. for “tempting” them to think the very thoughts they are supposed to banish. Like drinking ice water or eating a juicy burger in front of a melting, sweating fast-er, walking around in my Capri pants and short-sleeved shirt might be viewed as a betrayal of religious ideals this time of year and could get me into trouble. It is freaking hot, though, so I’m still walking around in my knee-length shorts and short-sleeved shirts until someone yells at me.

I’m sure I’ll come across more examples of Ramadan-induced chaos as the month wears on but those are the basics for now. It feels a bit like accidentally falling through a black hole into another reality where all the rules I’ve learned so far get tossed out the window and I have to learn a whole new set of cultural norms. Actually stepping into a new time zone doesn’t help counter the surreal feeling very much and, in another unexpected turn, the entire city ran out of fruit yogurt, my primary staple food, all at once yesterday, leading me to believe I am actually dreaming a terrible anxiety dream. Pinch me!

This one's not about immigration, I swear

For those of you with an excess of prayers, positive energy, compassion, and a few minutes on your hands, can I suggest aiming whatever you’ve got at Russia and Pakistan for a moment or two? Pakistan is suffering the deadliest flooding in eighty years and Russia is plagued by forest fires. As if forest fires spreading across the country weren’t frightening enough, consider what those fires are spreading toward. Apparently, Chernobyl could burn. If the fires reach Chernobyl, all the nuclear material that has been absorbed into the surrounding woods will be turned into smoke and blown around Russia and the world.

Why would I ask you to think and pray for those suffering in far off parts of the world rather than demanding your positive thoughts for myself? Well, I am awesome that way, but also, I am significantly less miserable this week. I got assigned to a new case! It is sure to cause some friction with my office mate this week as she has been increasingly depressed by having spent the last two years on this same construction case I’ve been on since I started, and it has been an unspoken rule in my department that we won’t be assigned to new cases until we finish the statement of claim for the case we’re working on.

So what changed? How’d I get lucky? This spring, I told UW’s Career Services office that my firm was hiring and around 20 people applied. When applicants asked to Skype with me about life at the firm and in Cairo, I gave up a couple hours of my weekends to do so and when asked by HR or senior associates about different quirks of American writing samples, cover letters, etc. I shared what I knew. It wasn’t really that much of a time sacrifice on my part and I was happy to give other UW grads a shot at gainful employment in a still-crappy job market and maybe help out the firm in the process if someone actually worked out.

I had my last HR-related meeting on Tuesday night and on Wednesday afternoon, I was told I would be going to a client meeting the next morning with a senior associate and the principal partner. I was absolutely terrified but my friend told me I’d be surprised after having worked on this very complicated construction case for eight months how much I’d understand. It turned out to be true and I really did get everything that was talked about at the meeting. I hope I get to stay on the case because it is so refreshingly straightforward compared to my usual day to day work and because it is a big honor to be put on something different before my current task wraps up.

So I am pretty excited. I’ve started looking forward to work now that it has shifted from doc review to actual drafting and the addition of a new case, if they do indeed keep me on it, can only boost my confidence and further convince me I’m capable of doing legal work.

In other news, Whisky is now all caught up on his shots. After 2.5 hours of waiting and 5 minutes in the doctor’s clutches, he has his rabies vaccine. He is also proving to be quite the guy magnet. In addition to attracting every child within barking distance while out on our walks, he also gets the attention of several groups of Egyptian men, hanging out outside buildings and in parking lots either for work or recreation. Today his unbearable cuteness pulled over a really good looking real-estate broker (in Egypt this usually just means a guy with a cell phone who knows other guys with cell phones who call each other when they know of an open apartment and exchange favors and commission fees and bilk foreigners out of a full month’s rent in exchange for finding something one could find by walking around the neighborhood). This guy was well-built, had nice green eyes, which is unusual here, was well-dressed, obviously not lazy as I ran into him out in the heat at 10am, spoke English, and was good with the dog.

I had already been out in the mucky August air and the muddy (air conditioning drip plus street dirt), garbage strewn street (the garbage men who clean the streets and scoop up the piles of trash people leave on the corners of sidewalks don’t work on Friday so Saturday morning is the grossest time to be outside) and was sweaty, hair pulled back but falling out of my ponytail in humidity-compelled frizzy chunks, drips of sweat literally sliding down from my temples to my jaw, and dirty-footed in my flip flops that my wet, grimy dog keeps stepping and sitting on when he wants to take a break. I was in shorts long enough to cover my knees but not quite long enough to be stylish capris, a dirty tank top because today was set to be laundry day, and a collared short-sleeve shirt somewhere between green and grey. And did I mention I was sweaty?

When good looking guys stop me on the street to ask me out I am suspicious. When good looking guys stop me on the street in my dog walking clothes before my shower after infrequent dipping in mud and trash I am very suspicious. I need to talk about this more with my Egyptian friends but either he asked me out because he wants to have sex and in the minds of Egyptian men, foreign women = sex, Egyptian women = marriage, or he asked me out to try to sell me real estate. Either way, if you yourself are good looking, educated and employed, you don’t ask someone out who looks as gross as I did this morning within 10 seconds of meeting them because you liked their personality when you saw them dragging their unwilling dog out of a puddle of air conditioning slime. You do it because you want something.

Maybe I am judging this guy (and all Egyptian guys I’ve met so far) and myself, too harshly, but it is definitely one of the pitfalls of living in a culture where gender relationships and sex are viewed so completely differently than in my own. Getting hit on by a polite, good looking guy should be flattering but instead I am left a bit bitter, thinking he is more likely a creep who watches too much imported porn and thinks all American women are (or aspire to be) Lisa Sparxxx.

Sorry for the two blog posts today. I am stuck at home waiting for the guy to come fix my air conditioning…which means I am stuck in my UN-air conditioned home waiting for the guy to come fix my air conditioning. Watching a lot of TV, playing fetch for 30 seconds at a time since the dog can’t make more than one or two trips to catch the toy until he is too hot and has to lie down, and trying to clean my apartment with my mind. Going about as well as you’d expect.

Dear Lindsey Graham, Lou Dobbs is making you look like a Dbag.

After watching Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert all weekend, I was delighted to learn Elena Kagan has been confirmed, Prop 8 overturned in California in a 138 page ruling making fun of the pro-Prop 8 so-called “experts” who got their "information" from the internet and discussions with like-minded friends, and Naomi Campbell actually testified against Charles Taylor in the Hague (c’mon, who really thought she’d show?!).

I was also honestly quite shocked to discover that the kind of idea that SHOULD by all rights be isolated to the far right wing of the far right wing of the Republican party is getting some play among Senators who I have previously considered to be somewhat reasonable. I am talking about the “anchor babies” craziness sweeping the conservative airways. And I am talking about Sen. Lindsey Graham, of S. Carolina who is usually not given to quite that level of craziness.

Remember Lindsey Graham? After giving NOW SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Elena Kagan a little bit of a hard time for having called the judicial confirmation process a “vapid and hollow charade,” in what was one of the funnier moments of her own confirmation hearings (he also gave her the opening for her joke about spending Christmas in a Chinese restaurant), he crossed the aisle to confirm Kagan, just as he had also voted for Sonia Sotomayor. Sounds like a reasonable guy, right?

Well former reasonable guy Lindsey Graham has gone off the rails on the subject of immigration reform (which I thought conservatives didn’t want to talk about going into midterms because they’d lose the Latino vote they need) and, of all things, the Fourteenth Amendment. Now if there is one thing I never thought I’d hear floated by formerly reasonable senators as a purportedly reasonable option, it is repealing the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth is not just any old Amendment: not the one about not having to quarter troops in our homes (because when has that been an issue recently?) or the one prohibiting cruel and usual punishment (because we do that anyway, regardless of the Constitution), not the one creating lame duck sessions of congress (why is this in there again?) or making senators directly elected by the people (you’d think Senators should be more afraid of this one). No, the Fourteenth is the one that protects us from discrimination, defines citizenship (and means we don’t have to file complicated citizenship forms when we have our babies in the US), applies the bill of rights to the states, grants equal protection under the law to ALL PEOPLE in the US, and has always been the ONE THING conservatives point to when they tell women we don’t need our own Equal Rights Amendment because we already have the Fourteenth Amendment to watch our backs. This is the Amendment that demands African American no longer be counted as three-fifths of a person.

And yet it is this BIG FREAKING AMENDMENT that Lindsey Graham called “outdated” this week.

Because of a conservative talk show-fueled rumor that pregnant immigrants are sneaking into the US by the millions either illegally or on tourist visas to have their babies on US soil to use as “anchor babies” to get the rest of their illegal immigrant families the rights and benefits of US citizenship.

First off, immigration doesn’t work like that. Remember all those stories right at the end of Bush’s presidency about how increased immigration enforcement (and decreased common sense) was resulting in US citizen children basically becoming orphans at the hands of the government when ICE sent their parents “home” to Mexico? It isn’t like if a baby born on US soil is some sort of Green Card Midas child that confers citizenship automatically on everyone she touches.

Besides the legal issues involved, there is also a practical smackdown to the truth of these rumors of so-called “birth tourism,” where wealthy pregnant women fly in from Brazil (this is the repeated example but I don’t know why they’re picking on Brazil), have a child, then fly home with a US citizen child. Women are not allowed to fly past their 32 week of pregnancy. After the 29th week they need a certificate from their doctor stating they are still early enough along to fly and the airline reserves the right to have pregnant potential-passengers examined by a doctor if they don’t believe the certificate.

And yet, this totally irrational “anchor babies” rumor was enough to push Lindsey Graham, and a lot of people a lot crazier than Lindsey Graham, right off the Cliffs of Insanity.

Is he really prepared to withdraw all the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment and redefine citizenship such that every child born in the US has to APPLY FOR CITIZENSHIP now? Does he have any idea how much more bureaucracy that will create? To counter an imaginary onslaught of babies with imaginary powers to grant legal status? I mean, I expect this kind of crap from Jon Kyl, but really Senator Graham? REALLY?!

Speaking of people who are usually a lot crazier than Lindsey Graham, Lou Dobbs, yes LOU DOBBS, has earned a shout out from the far left, the left, the middle, and the thoughtful on this subject. He said, ON FOX NEWS (was it ballsy or was it because this is the only audience for Lou Dobbs anymore?):

“The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14th Amendment, I part ways with the senators on that, because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important. We have a law in which they become American citizens for being born here…If you’re going to insist upon the rule of law and order—and I do—I have to insist that we recognize these anchor babies as US citizens.”

LOU DOBBS SAID THAT!

So shame on you, Senator Graham, for siding with racist no-immigration-law-knowing, no-compassion-having thoughtless idiot moron buffoons on this one. And, in fact, leading the charge.

And shame on you Senators Jon Kyl, John McCain (really, man, what happened to you?), Jeff Sessions, and Mitch McConnell (even though you’re backing off your support now, the whole “I thought I read an article about it once” defense doesn’t fly).
Shame.