The Way We Get By

Beit-as-Suhaymi -- Cairo, Egypt

Ever since the first few people were hit with a strain of H1N1 Swine Flu, the world's response has been recorded by the media in precise detail.  

I remember sitting in my apartment in Egypt, being simultaneously shocked and amused that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had decided to commission the mass slaughter of all Egyptian swine in late April.  In Mubarak's defense, Egypt was hit hard with the avian flu strain (H5N1), and decided that it was in his country's best interest to kill the 400,000 something pigs that roamed the mostly Coptic Christian neighborhoods of Cairo to calm any impending panic in the populous nation.  However, the pigs are the main source of livelyhood for the Coptics, many of whom live in abject poverty and are Cairo's best means of getting rid of organic waste.  

Mubarak's reactionwhile, certainly severe, was only one of the slew of amusing reactions to the flu.  As more information about the flu has become apparent and we can now safely browse the internet and watch the television without repeatedly hearing the words influenza and pandemic (and more of Iran, Madoff, Michael Jackson) , it seems that swine flu is still making the headlines as world leaders (and others) react to the pandemic.  

In Serbia, the thousands of athletes performing in the World University Games will only be able to participate upon showing health certificate proof of not having swine flu.  According to New Zealand chef de mission Lynne Coleman, the restirictions are 'impractical.' She doesn't believe the impositions in place will work. I'm not sure what's funnier, that New Zealand's upset about Serbia's reaction, or that Serbia's asking students from 140 different countries for the alleged health certificate.  [The New Zealand Herald]

Taking a different approach to a similar stance, Wimbledon has gone out of its way to downplay fears of swine flu, but four ball boys and girls have been asked to stay at home because of flu like symptoms. Wimbledon officials, keeping in their usual classy modus operandi, have claimed that sending the unfortunate boys and girls home was just a precaution and the gathering of some England's most elite in close quarters will not be any more or less dangerous than strolling the streets of busy London.  [The Times Online]

Because younger people and the elderly are more likely to contract the disease, they are being urged to skip out on the upcoming pilgrimage to Mecca.  After a four day long conference in Jiddah, which experts from the CDC and the WHO attended, to examine the Kingdom's measures to prevent the flu's spread. I just want to point out that these concerns were raised post the Egyptian Health Minister's claim that the tens of thousands of Egytian muslims performing hajj this year risked being quarantined upon return.  [The Washington Post]

The swine flu story winner, however goes to the The New York Times.  The article makes it seem as though summer camps in the United States are dealing with the biggest hardship in light of the recent pandemic. (Not Mexico, where the tourism related economy has severely declined). According to the article, the camps have to revisualize their entire way of structuring the seven-eight week camps.  What happens when a child begins exhibiting flu like symptoms? What happens if more than one child at the camp becomes infected? How do they contain the illness?  Well, shucks.  For all the parents wanting to ship their kids of to teach them responsibility while standing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, swine flu may be making a dent (financial and metaphorical) in your plans.   (The article was brought to my attention by Akbar Ahmed).  

The King of Pop in the Information Age

Mosque of Nasr Mohammad ibn Qalawun (Mamluk Period)
Southern Enclosure of the Citadel
Cairo, Egypt

When I was in middle school, someone quoted a line in Pay it Forward, and said that if he could change the world, he'd get everyone in China to jump up and down– literally causing the world to shift on its axis.
The thought, since then, has disturbed me.
Some nights, as I fall asleep, I wonder, who could actually convince all the people of China to do such a thing, and what would the consequences be.

On a somewhat unrelated note, Michael Jackson's death had quite the effect on society – even causing the internet to slow down.

Here's what happened:

When TMZ, the celebrity/entertainment gossip website, broke the news, fans began immediately Twittering.
But that's not unusual as Twitter's citizen journalism accounts have been vital in today's rapid changing, constantly online environment (as in Moldova, the Iran Election Protests 2009, and the Tea Party Protests). I'm sure not very many people were suprised when a fail whale began to appear.

Google, on the other hand, bombarded with searches for "Michael Jackson" responded to requests with a response automated for viruses instead, telling users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application." Big whoops. AOL, CNN, also suffered drawbacks, so it's not as though Google was the only one hit, reported the BBC.

That's not all. This morning, after presumably half the wired (and wire-less) world was already informed of the news, newspapers in Pakistan still had to have raging headlines of the flamboyant musician's contributions to err, music? (Dawn, the leading English daily in Pakistan, had most of us at Newsline doubling over in laughter when we saw that their headline read "Jackson stuns fans again, with sudden death").
Really, though? Remember when Lady Di and Mother Teresa died on the same day, and Mother Teresa, blessed soul, didn't get the worthy media attention she deserved. This was like that, only, somehow worse.

Did the leading English daily of Pakistan have to blast a headline that most of Pakistan's elite, English newspaper reading population already knew? And thus subsequently downplay the headline "Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia to act against drugs, terror" a headline, and article which I believe had much more importance and relevance for the Pakistani people.

Well done MJ. I guess you know that's when you've really lived life – when your death not only breaks news hours after it's already been broken, it manages to slow down the internet. As Dawn stated, "Jackson’s death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music’s premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage." (I couldn't have put it better myself).

That's all from me about the King of Pop. Minus the fact that Billie Jean has been playing like a broken record in my head, and hearing people react to his death still amuses me.

Islamic Feminism

When it comes to Arab feminism, I like to point fingers to Hoda Sharaawi, who literally threw her veil off her head when returning from a women's conference in 1923 at a Cairo train station. Others joined in the action, giving the Islamic feminist movement its first first public triumph.
Islamic feminism isn't inherently the veil debate, however.

Today, the death of Neda has become one of the symbols of the protests following the June 12 elections in Iran. All she wanted, said her music teacher, was the proper vote of the people to be counted (The Times).

Ladan Bouramand, the Iranian activist, writes that the regime would not bother to use brutal forms of repression against dissidents unless it feared them deeply. Nobody would have murdered a young woman in blue jeans—a peaceful, unarmed demonstrator—unless her mere presence on the street presented a dire threat.

One thing remains true, in light of the protests making waves across Iran. It is not Twitter, not the end of the Bush administration, nor the beginning of the Obama one, but the women that have caused such a riot.

As Anne Applebaum writes, "the truth is that the high turnout was the result of many years of organizational work carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and, above all, women's groups, working largely unnoticed and without much outside help."

And in the words of Egyptian lawyer, Qasim Amin, women's liberation was a patriotic duty that would serve all Egypt, not just its females. "The evidence of history, confirms and demonstrates that the status of women is inseparably tied to the status of a nation."

4 Things: Islamabad

1. Shah Faisal Masjid- is visible when you go almost anywhere in the city. Named after the Saudi King Faisal, Faisal Masjid is the 4th largest mosque in the world. It's the National Mosque of Pakistan and was completed in 1986, and then used to house the International Islamic University. Famous Pakistan artist Sadequain also decorated the interior.
2. Islamabad was one of the earliest civilizations in Pakistan, located on one of the ends of the Indus Valley Civilizations. In 1958, it was selected to become the new capital of Pakistan and is one of two cities in all of Asia that was planned on paper before being built. As a result, it's a gorgeous example of urban planning.
3. The ancient Gakhar city of Rawalpindi is located adjacent to Islamabad and is connected to it. Benazir Bhutto international airport, located in Rawalpindi serves as the airport for both of them.
4. Islamabad is also home to the Fatima Jinnah Park. One of the largest parks in South East Asia, Fatima Jinna Park stretches the entire f-9 sector of Islamabad, and serves as a wildlife sanctuary.

ICC Twenty20

I don't often get involved in sports.
The occasional Cy-Fair high school football game, I could get excited about.
When the Eagles' Brian Dawkins did something phenomenal, I cheered along with the rest of my household-
But, I don't turn up the radio in my taxi, and scream AHLY, like every Cairene boy when a soccer game is on, and predict that there will be no load shedding in Karachi when Pakistan is playing cricket.

This summer, however, I've found a new respect for the level of patriotism that sports can bring in a country. Shahid Afridi has brought most of Karachi to standstill with his epic catch against New Zealand, and I along with Ammar, was rooted to the edge of my seat watching him.

For those of you, like me, who are not cricket aficionados here is a wikipost. (Ammar, Mashal and I recognized that explaining cricket is one of the most difficult things in life, so I'm out sourcing here).

Recently, I was surprised, when I read a sportblog post on The Guardian in which sports writer, Andy Bull, said that his heart was rooting for Pakistan winning the ICC Twenty20.
My heart's been rooting for Pakistan winning the Twenty20 all along-

International Cricket in Pakistan has suffered a great blow since the Lahore attacks on March 3rd of 2009. Until that point, I'd say that Pakistan had believed that cricket, at least, was exempt from the terror and turmoil of the country. However, when British fast bowler Dominic Cork, in Lahore at the time, uttered the words, “I don’t think international cricket should return to this country. I won’t be coming back here while I’m still living, there is no chance,” I suppose Pakistan knew, cricket in Pakistan would never be the same.

Fact of the matter is, terrorism and cricket have never been mutually exclusive- certainly not in Sri Lanka, or to other members of the international cricket playing community.

For example, April 21, 1987 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a suicide bomber struck a bus station in the city killing more than 100 people when the New Zealand team was in Colombo for a three-Test tour. The three-test tour was reduced to just one Test match and the team returned home. Then again, on November 16, 1992 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, there was a suicide bomb attack by Tamil Tiger rebels outside the very hotel where the New Zealand team was staying. Four people were killed, and five of the players along with the coach decided to go home. More recently, on July 24, 2001, 13 Tamil Tiger suicide bombers strapped explosives on their backs and broke through the airport security in Colombo and detonated themselves on the runway just as a flight from the Maldives landed on the airstrip. At least 14 people were killed and 12 others injured. The New Zealand team continued with their tour amidst tight security.

Granted, none of these terrorist attacks are on the level as the March 3rd attacks- which were abhorrent, terrible, and shocking to the international at large and I'll be the first to agree that the current security state in the country I live in isn't exactly what most Westeners' would regard as safe. However when sports writer Will Buckley decides to write a satirical, almost comical piece about what would happen if the England football team experienced a feat similar to the Sri Lankan cricket team, I was a little shocked. He heralds the Sri Lankan cricket team as the "Team of the Year" for making it to the Twenty20 final after having suffered the March 3rd attack and even goes out of his way to mention that some Pakistanis are also likely to be hoping they triumph.

Pakistan's captain, Younis Khan, explained it well when he said "If we win tomorrow it will be good for our future cricket (and) for the Pakistan nation as well because we've been suffering from a lot of things."
Cricket gives the people of Pakistan- the paan-walla on the side of Tipu Sultan Road, the Pizza-hut delivery guy, the little boy living in a Katchi-Abadi settlement- hope.
Perhaps in the international media their country is regarded as a breeding ground for terrorists and fundamentalists, but here, on the cricket pitch, they can compete with the best of the best, be it West Indies, or South Africa. On the cricket pitch, they can pulverize their sworn enemy, India, without drawback.
These people of Paistan, the jamadaar (sweeper), household plumber, chowkidaar (neighborhood watchman), are never to blame for the March 3rd attack. They deserve to keep that hope.

While Sri Lanka is an excellent team, who has yet to lose any game in the Twenty20 tournament, Buckley's article, was rubbish, in awful taste, and a poorly written piece. Sri Lanka has come a long way since March, and I commend them their cricket-skills. However, to say that they deserve to win more than Pakistan- now that, is way out of line.

Of Mountains and Speeches

I thought that seeing the sun come up between the dangerously ominous peaks surrounding Mt Sinai was exactly the kind of momentous occasion I'd wanted out of my last days in Egypt.
I was wrong. More than wrong in fact.

Highlights from Mt Sinai:

Ben exhausted after our long climb. (Mt Sinai's altitude is 2285m in height, the camel trail which is what I climbed is a 7km trail to the summit).

On our way down from the mountain- the sun's morning rays illuminated everything beautifully.

I shot this photograph while pausing to take a breath halfway down the mountain. "Let's take stock," I told Ben. "There's no way we climbed that thing."

I'm not going to say Mt Sinai was a letdown. I'm still repeating my favorite catchphrase from the event that I got to see a sunrise of "truly biblical proportions" that I may have stolen from LonelyPlanet. But, in the last few days I spent in Cairo, the few glimpses I witnessed of the city that never sleeps, on the eve and morn of Obama's visit were probably the one memory of a city that I love from the bottom of my heart that I'll always hold on to.

It's as though all of Cairo was a abuzz with the news of the president's visit. While most articles I've read on the subject (having returned to a world with internet access), making Cairenes sound bitter about the costs and benefits of the U.S. President's visit, what I witnessed was a sweeter kind of respect, a similar one to that of his win during elections.
These men weren't complaining about the cost of bread, about the amount of money spent on security.
As I stood trying to take some mediocre photographs of a cute man selling little teracotta pots outside my favorite souq on Sheikh Rehan, everyone told me "Bokra Obama," the afternoon before his arrival, as though recognizing the white color of skin of my companions they wanted us to note that they too were enthused.
A cab driver, dropping us back our hotel asked us of our opinion, immediately comparing the charismatic president to Bush, and Musharraf (noting immediately that I was infact a "Muslimah from Bakistan).
On Bein al Qasrayn, on the outskirts of Khan El Khalili market, in front of the mosque of Sultan Barquq, an enterprising vendor (who Jack Shenker seems to have run into as well) held up a white t-shirts with a familiar hieroglyphic rendering of King Tut. Below it the words "Obama, the New King Tutankhamun"
In the Mall of Khan El Khalili, we stop to look at a television screen depicting a stone mosque with three/four layers of tiered muqarnas. "Sultan Hassan?" I ask one of the guys there. "Dilwati, henna. Ba3d 3ain, al Haram" told me the man. Apparently even Obama deemed my favorite mosque worthy of a visit, along with the Pyramids.

Of course finally eating dinner at the Birdcage was pretty pleasant as well, as far as last things in Egypt go.