Mumtazic (Mumtaaz=excellent/perfect + fantastic)

January 31st, 2008

I just had the EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME. I went galloping across a desert on a pretty awesomely fast horse with the Pyramids of Giza over my shoulder, then watched the sun set over the desert with tea cooking on a campfire, and looked up and saw stars, looked around and saw the sprawl of a very modern city juxtaposed with an ageless landscape. Alright, poetic, but that’s just how it made me feel. just exhilarating.

I got to do it as an orientation activity, for free no less, with some fabulous people that I’ve met over the last week. I could have ridden a camel, but PLEASE, me turn down a horse? I miss riding far too much, and as many Black Stallion books as I read as a kid, it’s time to live it.
Tonight’s experience brought together a lot of Egypt’s many threads (or to be more precise, my understanding, my interpretation of this country). I could simultaneously see the pyramids, the last remaining of the original 7 wonders of the world, but also the urban sprawl of an overdeveloped city struggling with modernity, judging by the light and air pollution blocking the stars. And too even get to the pyramids, we had to pass through some pretty poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Cairo, a reminder that I am so lucky to be able to experience Egypt like this, as a student-tourist. Although we don’t have as much money as all the shopkeepers, taxi drivers and papyrus-sellers think we do, by comparison, we’re too wealthy for our own good.

As a part of orientation today we had a lecture about Egypt, trying to decipher “what is Egypt and who are the Egyptians?” This professor, Dr. Swanson pointed out that the remnants of Ancient Egypt draw tourists, whose money Egypt is dependent upon. But these tourists come to experience a world that no longer exists, hasn’t existed for a few millenia, if it ever existed at all, and for them, modern Egypt “gets in the way,” and they ignore the breathtaking, confusing and fascinating presence of 21st century Egypt. Those who come for the pyramids only ignore the beauty of the minarets, and those whose eyes are fixed on the minarets have come to take the pyramids fro granted It’s a tension, a paradox, it’s Egypt in a nutshell. Trying to be a thousand things at once to a thousand different forces. And it is a thousand different things. I tried to absorb all the sights, sounds and smells: the donkey that stuck its head in the bus to say hello, winding on horseback through narrow streets past people’s front doors, watching children playing in narrow, dirty alleyways, the call to prayer echoing down the streets of the town even as the pyramids come closer and closer, the little boys handling the horses and asking constantly for a little baksheesh, women in the Niqab (black full-face veil), power plants in the distance and the horse I rode home from the campfire, far too skinny to be healthy, enormous camels blocking the bus in as we tried to depart back to campus.

This is Egypt.

(to me, anyway)


Peace be Upon You All,

Laura