I have many an update and the beginning of an explanation for the bloglessness, but first:

You would think that after living in Egypt for 10 months that naqab (the usually black veil that covers a woman’s face exposing only her eyes) would no longer phase me but it seems my time here has only mystified the idea of Islamic modesty and made my views on the whole concept more convoluted.

The rise of the Islamic chic – women who wear the veil with western clothing, or dawn multi-colored haute couture style veils with varying layers and textures – the concept of hijab alone is one that it changing and complex. Why women weae the veil for me has always been a personal decision, but living in Egypt I realize this is hardly the case in the Arab world… For some women it is a family decision or even a family requirement, for others it is simply a product of habit (“I wear the veil, because... I’ve always worn the veil…just because that’s…what we do”) for others it’s a sense of protection – without the veil they are exposed to the criticism and comments of unfamiliar men. But this last reason doesn’t sit well with me. My former flatmate made a wicked interesting comment: It seemed that she received more catcalls and undesirable comments on the streets when she was – not veiled, of course – but covered up and more or less dressed modestly than the days when she seemed straight off the streets of Brooklyn during June. She attributed this to the “normality” factor of Cairo streets, as if when she appeared like a local, she was therefore game for the harassment, but appearance as a foreigner made her, somewhat unappealing for harassers. Another friend covered street harassment from an anthropological view and noticed several shades of street harassment ranging from complementary to perverted, but in his case he noticed no difference in the women being harassed and their wearing the veild, dressing modestly, or dressing “western”. Personally, having worn a pseuo-veil since I arrived, I can’t find the science of the street folks judgment either.

The most disconcerting observation I’ve made abroad is the image of young girls, maybe seven - sometimes five, running around with finely tucked hijabs. Qur’an and the sunna of Prophet Mohammed suggests that girls wear the hijab after puberty, never earlier than the age of 9. So why? Why - I ask myself - are these small girls wearing the veil when they should be wearing play clothes, running around with their hair in the warm springtime wind being little girls, playing with other little girls and little boys? Some of these girls might not even know how to read yet, let alone understand the religious implications of the attire they are porting from the Qur’an itself. I know women who take the veil after highschool as a personal choice, and that seems to me so much worthwhile, so much more meaningful. I know others who refuse the veil on the basis that it doesn’t fit their understanding of Islam, or at least isn’t essential to it.

It is usually ground-shattering news to my male Egyptian friends when they hear that hijab is actually not required of Muslim women by Islam. It is even more ground-shattering, even to myself, to know that hijab need not even be worn in a mosque unless the wearer intends to pray. Which leads my to another disconcerting observation!

So commonly people criticize people who wear both the veil and make-up as if it is some sort of contradiction. This used to bother me…who cares if a girl wants to wear a veil and some lipstick? But the true contradiction of hijab and make-up as become more apparent to me now. We all know there is a difference between make-up and well… a LOT of make-up. I see veiled women downtown wearing a LOT of make-up: thick concealer, fake eyelashes, layers of lipstick, finely outlined eye brows, and several tones of eye shadow. Let’s take a moment and think about this: Ideally, the reason women wear the veil is so that they are dressed to pray throughout the day (since a woman is only required to cover her hair and other body parts while praying), and before Muslims pray they perform a ritual cleansing called wudu which requires the washing of the face, hands, and feet with water. Are these women washing their faces and reapplying all that make-up several times a day? I can’t believe that …but I won’t jump to conclusions. The point is, I now agree that copious amounts of make-up and the veil is indeed a contradiction. How modest is half an inch of CoverGirl?

Every woman I see wearing a veil, regardless of style, shade, or fashion, is a caricature of a misunderstood faith and an object of complete mystery to me.

Well, it seems that I forsook my blog for a while… I can’t actually explain why, but after a completely uninvited, but nevertheless appreciated, link to my blog from the AU honors newsletter, I figured I should pick up where I left. So here I am again, and I think we were still in early January...

Teachout Trio fi Masr.

Seeing Ancient Rome was pretty cool. Laying over in Athens with the suggestion of ancient Greece not too far away was also cool. But the juxtaposition of seeing Ancient Rome, passing by Ancient Greece, and then touring Ancient Egypt was simply TOO cool. Literally minutes after arriving back to Cairo, I was waiting for a flight to Aswan, happily reunited with my parents. They had spent the last few days soaking up some much needed relaxation (don’t ask me how here in Cairo, perhaps because they hardly wandered outside the Hilton…) and partaking in some classic Cairene tourism. Below is a photo of my mum at the Great Pyramids at Giza. Apparently my mum enjoyed the day trip a bit more than my dad, as she had a camel of her own while he shared his camel with the guide, who as you can imagine was less “freshly-scented” than poor pops would have liked.

Nevertheless, we arrived to Aswan where Mahmoud, a taxi driver Sem arranged for us, delivered us to the jetty where we boarded on Nile Cruise. Before disembarking we ventured Aswan for some breakfast. Ofr course, it wasn’t even 10a, and nothing but ful and tamayya was available. So my parents a crash-course in balady style dinning as we squatted at a hole-in-the-wall ful place and laughed over how my obsessively-sanitary sister would react to the situation.
Our first stop en route up the Nile was the Aswan High Dam and Philae Temple. Ironically, the building of the High Dam flooded Philae Temple along with many other Ancient Monuments. In the 1980’s Philae Temple was de-constructed, transported, and reconstructed 550 meters away on a new island safe and sound above water, but water marks from the period when it was submerged will last forever. It was gorgeous. I discovered my two favorite hieroglyphs early on in the trip. The first is Bes. Bes is depicted as a naked, bow-legged dwarf with his tongue sticking out. He is a household deity of sorts as he represents amusement, pleasure, music, and dance and is considered the protector of children. His presence in the reliefs of many birth ceremonies, suggests he is a god of fertility. My tour guide told me he runs around naked with his tongue out to distract and entertain pregnant women with labor pains. I like that. The other is the source of the While Nile. There is the Blue Nile and the smaller White Nile, and the White Nile starts in a cave where the God depicted below smokes from a pipe and blows white steam into the earth’s crevasses.

Rumor has it the next stop at Kom Ombo was simple spectacular at sunset, but the Teachout Trio started an afternoon nap that didn’t finish until well after other temple-faring tourists had returned. The next day was Etna. While the monuments were great, as expected, the true highlight for me was a stop at an Internet Café (read: Internet Closet) where my mum replied to emails while my dad bargained my wedding price in camels with the owner. The final two days we were in Luxor, the true heart of Ancient Egypt. One temple (Karnak or Luxor, I can't remember) typified the various changes of Egyptian cultural history for me:
The temple itself was unique because each King to reign over it simply added to its architecture, rather than redesigning it in his image, so simply walking deeper into the temple you find Old, Middle, and New Kingdom history unravel before your eyes. However, mid-way through the temple, one finds the remains of a mosque suspended above some of the pillars and statues. This mosque was constructed in at the height of the Islamic Empire in Egypt unbeknownst that it was erected upon ancient ruins. In the deepest part of the Temple, one finds the reliefs change to Alexandrian style with incredible Roman influences, and finally Roman Catholic depictions of the flight of the Holy Family painted over the ancient surfaces. The polytheism of the Ancient Egyptians, the deep and turbulent history of Islam, and the imperialist force of Christendom all within meters of one another.

In Luxor, we also visited the Valley of the Kings, the less visited but brilliantly preserved Valley of the Queens, Hatsheput’s Palace, the Mumification Museum, and two of the oldest statues in Egypt (whose names escape me, wow I am ashamed sorry!). January was an ideal time to visit, because the sun was intense even though it was only in 60s and 70s. We flew from Luxor to Sharm where we were greeted my Mohamemd, an old acquaintance and a guy that radiates Beduoin gentility and strength despite the fact he’s not Bedouin. If my body was transformed into a map of Egypt, the Sinai most surely would be found in place of my heart. I love Dahab more than any other any other kilometer of Egypt that I've seen and being there with my family made it all the more pleasant.

The highlight was diving with my dad, who had just completed his SCUBA certification. Woot woot, Pops. With my dad busy in his PADI course and my better-half at work in Cairo, mum and I were cordially escorted by Mohammed around and about Dahab. We spent a morning at the Lagoon and while it was chilly there wasn't a single person in sight and we had the rocky beach to ourselves. Afterwards, we went off-roading into the mountains and saw... to be continued.

The only excuse for my post-lessness is this: Milan, Florence, Pisa, Roma, Paris, Athens, Cairo, Aswan, Etna, Luxor, Dahab, Amsterdam, LA; all the cities that time has fortunately swept me thru during the past month. So, at last, the begining of an update…

Team Sokar&Shai take on Italia and then some.
Several months ago two imaginative little kids dreamed up an incredible 2-year, round-the-world trek. While international gallivanting is still on the back-burner, Team Sokar and Shai started their stroll around the globe with Italia. When we arrived in Milan I was bombarded with miniskirts and lovely blonde-haired bombshells. I had forgotten just how fashionable people can be! We didn’t stay in Milan for the night, just long enough to catch a glimpse of the Duomo (a requisite for every Italian town, I would discovered a few days later) and enjoy the holiday cheer along the streets. It was exciting to upgrade from the one lame, crooked Christmas tree on the corner of Falaki to a whole country decked out in yuleday jubilee. While walking around by the Duomo there were lots of brightly-colored doors adored with mistletoe set up in the streets with beautiful Italian women clutching Polaroid cameras nearby. We inquired and were gaily informed that kissing in front of doors brings good luck for the New Year and insisted they snap a photo of our smooching. Surprisingly I don’t think we suffered culture shock, but it was interesting to go from walking streets where hand-holding is semi-scandalous to streets where french-kissing is endorsed with holiday cheer. Mini-skirts are to Italy what tea is to Egypt: simple but delicious, and essential to any and every occasion. When we boarded our train to Florence (somewhat miraculously since we missed the train we actually had tickets for) we sat next to this odd, odd Italian guy who was fascinated by English “hanging verbs” (or something like that, he meant verbs like “hang out”, “hold on”, “freak out”, “get over”, etc.) and insisted that every place outside Italia overcooked their pasta. Sem managed to sleep thru this dude’s incessant rambling, but I tired to wake him up for the pasta part, a bit that brought me much pride after months of bagging on soggy macaroni in Cairo.
Next stop was Florence and it is hands-down the most beautiful place I have ever been. It was freezing when we arrived and the streets were almost empty. We snagged an older Italian couple - toasted and cheery, probably heading home from a holiday party – to direct us to our hostel and I was happily reminded that no matter what country, no matter what language, men and women will discuss directions in the same fashion and tone. Hilarious. After a falafel sandwich at some over-priced Turkish deli, a breath-taking glimpse of Duomo #2, and a frigid walk down Via Cavour we found ourselves at San Marco an adorable little hostel where the staff has an average age of about 50 and they speak only a few incomprehensible phrases of English. It was simply perfect. We spent the days sleeping-in (since NOTHING was open over Christmas) and then walking from one picturesque place to the next.
Pisa, a day trip, was much smaller than we imagined but charming nevertheless. It’s ironic that Bonanno Pisano’s architectural mistake has raised thousands of Euros in tourism, but watching every tourist dorkily try to take their photos “holding up” the learning tower (us included) was pretty priceless. While eating lunch at a cute café in Pisa we found ourselves seated next to an old, quirky, absolutely adorable Egyptian couple.
The best way to explain Italia is by what we ate, and in retrospect, I think all we did in Roma was eat. San Peitro was our first official stop in Roma and it was an oddly powerful experience for me. Sometimes I think the Middle East takes religion a bit too seriously, but being pushed around and cut-off by other sightseers in line at San Pietro and watching men grab their scantly clad girlfriends’ asses as they “appreciated the architecture” at the seat of the Papacy made me feel a bit more reverent about religion in the Middle East, at least obsession comprises respect. I thought church after cathedral after basilica would get boring but each one we visited had a certain splendor about it that it never became mundane. Our favorite was…
More impressive than the Trevi Fountain was the massive crowd of people who were visiting the Trevi Fountain! I think the best night of the whole trip might have been the surprise of Piazza Navona. We wandered into what was literally a carnival between old Baroque palaces with street performers, game booths, and puppet shows, and wandered out several kilograms of sweets, two titanic spools of cotton candy, and a huge sugar-covered doughnut later, sugar-high and contented with tears of laughter.
Ancient Rome was cool, too, but I couldn’t fathom what it must have been like during the height of the Roman Empire. I still feel that not having seen Gladiator is a small sin on my part. We spent the day wandering around the Forum and then caught the Colosseum and Pantheon while illuminated at night.
I had imagined Paris would be the most romantic, most ideal place to ring in the New Year but I was very, very mislead. Paris was cold, crowded, and costly. Luckily the company was still good and there were a few beautiful things to check out here and there, heh. More pleasant than anything else was simply being able to understand and be understood, since I’d been existing on an island of mediocre ESL and Arabic for the past few months... One highlight was visiting Disneyland Paris! Disneyland Paris has started a slight compulsion to visit alllll the Disneylands in the world, and Tokyo Disney will without a doubt be on the itinerary for the aforementioned round-the-world tour. Dinseyland Paris was …

After a metro ride to a motor coach to the airport in Paris to Bergamo to a motor coach to Milan, we and our bank accounts were ready to bid Europe adieu, except our flight (a friends’ cargo plane with a pretty price tag and completely unreliable departure information) was detained in Lagos due to severe rain (who knew). After a night sleeping on airport chairs and my parents waiting for me in Cairo (Hi Mom… nope, not quite there yet… ) my tear ducts were on the verge of Niagara Falls-style water works….until a 6 hour lay-over in Athens presented itself and Sokar and Shai added one more local to their first European adventure. :p

We arrived at the New Airport approximately an hour before my parents and mine departure at the Old Airport to Aswan. Our flight arrived at the same time a flight from Jeddah arrived, so at customs, the instinct to pass time in line by holding hands or hugging was brought to a swift halt by the ocean of galabiyya and veils (and the more conservative social views that usually come with them). at the baggage claim.

I gave Sem an impromptu introduction to my parents and said good bye before we dashed off into the airport to catch our flight to Aswan...