Backyard? 

The Klevens go to Egypt

The Family: Victoria, Christopher, Elisabeth, Kathy, Nathan, Laura, Terry, Robert

So, in my mother's words (sometimes edited by me):

Jan 6, 2005:
We arrived late last night and Nathan saw his first donkey cart with oranges today. A friend set us up with sheets and food and took us around today to find groceries, so we're settling in. Our place is big and cool (one needs a jacket inside, not out) and there is room for all.

Jan 9, 2005:
Today dad is off to Cairo to find the ARCe office. We shop every day for bread and groceries. We live in a very Arab area, where I am the only woman without a head covering and we really stand out. I need to read Arab numerals in the stores (it's getting easier) and few speak English. We pass a richer area on the way to church and see guards outside some homes - I guess there are lots of diplomats around there.

Jan 11, 2005:
We're still not over jet lag and keep waking up in the middle of the night and lying awake until the muzzin calls at 5 am before drifting off again. We are right across the street from a mosque, so the loudpeaker is loud.

The country is colder than I had expected. We have a lovely little yard with palm trees (and a swing set without swings) but by the time I get laundry done in my tiny Italian machine the sun is gone and I can hang things all day and they are still wet at bedtime so I have drying clothes draped all over the chairs inside at night. That is a bit embarrassing as we got a new landlord (who is wonderful and generous and ready to make everything right) but after he took the carpenter, and various repairmen through the house I realised that my undies were dangling in the midst of their paths. Agh! They are so polite and so respectful of women. One worker stood at one end of the hall today and called for Terry before venturing down the hall, for it would be disrespectful for him to enter that part of the house without a man.

The worst thing is that the house has stone floors and great accoustics so everyone seems very loud - Nathan and Chris and Rob can get quite a racket going! Maybe they'll learn to speak more quietly?

Jan 14, 2005:
We went to church today and Elisabeth seems to be finding some friends there. She and Robert went back to church this evening for a youth group activity and I am a bit worried as they said at church this morning that a British woman was murdered in Maadi last night. The roads don't have great street lights. On our way to the internet cafe tonight we passed a butcher shop and there was a truck of sheep pulling up in front. Apparently next weekend is a big Muslim feast and families will buy a live sheep, tether it in front of the house until Friday when they will be sacrificed remembering Abraham's sacrifice of Ishmael and God providing a lamb. (A different story than we were taught...) Our doorman says he has 9 sheep to sacrifice for people in our building. Nathan is dismayed.

Jan 19, 2005:
We went to the pyramids yesterday and were really disappointed in the changes they have made since we were last there. They have enclosed the whole complex with a wall and everyone needs to be frisked for explosives - well, not women it seems; we got a separate entrance. (Women seem to have lots of priviledges here - they just go to the front of the queue at banks and they get the first three or four metro carriages reserved just for women.) But back to the pyramids.....They now have a paved road that runs right up the hill between the two biggest pyramids and a big parking lot for buses up there. We couldn't enjoy looking at the pyramids because so many hawkers of plastic pyramids and other junk kept hounding us if we stood still. Rob got pulled to the side of a policeman and the policeman indicated that Terry should take a photo of them together and another guard lept into the picture - and then they both wanted "backsheesh" = money. A man gave us "gifts" and then told Terry he owed him a Euro. There were policemen who are supposed to protect tourists from overzealous salesmen and we did see one hawker run very quickly towards his camel, jump on, and try to get away before the policeman on another camel could get him - by the time the camel stood up the policeman was whacking his camel with a whip, but he still got away. The policemen didn't do enough, though, and we felt awfully harrassed. We got there at 1:30 to learn that the Great Pyramid had just closed for the day, so we could only go in one pyramid. We did find another tomb - that was free! - and it was more interesting and we could go down through a passage and see the granite sarcophagus there.

We took the metro to downtown Cairo and tried to follow our guidebook to get a minibus to Giza, but we were so inundated with insistent taxi drivers that we gave up and started to walk to the Hilton to see if we could find a bus there. Enroute we found a taxi driver who dropped his price in half and drove us to Giza. That's quite an experience, driving in Cairo! We drove along the Nile and it was beautiful with palm trees all the way. Then we crossed the bridge in Giza and it was so poor. There were people living in apartment buildings without glass windows (and it gets cool here at night.) Some lived in apartments with walls but so roofs, just a sheet for a roof. Garbage is everywhere (apparently it is no one's responsiblity). We could tell we were in the Nile Delta as there were lots of green fields of vegetables.

It was cool, almost cold and started to rain a bit as we were ready to go home. (It has rained here four days in the 2 weeks we have been here - I didn't know it rained so much in the desert!) We had to take a bus to the Giza metro which was a challenge as Egyptian buses tend to have people hanging out of them. They hardly stop to take on passengers and we had to get all eight of us on as fast as possible. In all our travels we had to stand and hang on - and it took us almost two hours to get home. We were tired and dirty!

The Egyptian women were very kind to our littlest ones, taking them on their laps on the metro if they had seats and chucking them under the chin, touching their hair. Nathan coped well. We met a fellow who is Egyptian but teaches English literature at the Egyptian university who also lives in Maadi near us and he helped us find the connections to get home on the metro.

Jan 22, 2005:
Today was the first day that I felt I could lie in and read instead of feel compelled to get something done.

It is very quiet today and many shops are closed. It is the biggest holiday of the Muslim year and many Egyptians are away on vacation. It is the Eid when they remember the ram that God provided for Abraham when he was about to sacrifice his son, Ismail (they think the Jews were wrong to suppose it Issac :)

Our building tenants bought at least ten rams and had them in the garage below the building for a week, but they said they asked for clean animals as there were foreigners in the building (us) and they didn't want us bothered with the smell. On Thursday morning we were wakened at 5 am as usual for the morning call to prayer which only lasts 5 or ten minutes, but at 6:45 prayers began and lasted for over an hour over the loudspeaker. Mohammed's name was all I recognised. then the slaughter began, one ram at a time until 4 pm. They took them up the stairs inside the building into a small courtyard just outside our kitchen window. It gave new meaning to a lamb led to the slaughter that opens not its mouth. We heard not a sound from the sheep. They were put on their sides, the head of the house slit the throat and someone sat on the legs until they stopped kicking (as Nathan related) Laura watched every one and no one had nightmares. They were skinned, gutted, hung up by their hind legs to drain and then butchered on the spot, each household taking what they wanted. A few sheep were butchered in the garage, for 1/3 of the meat is to be given to the poor and we saw a guard placed out front of our building and the gates to the garage were locked. Then we heard a great hubbub as poor people pleaded for their share of the meat whish was handed out through the grills of the gate.

Terry stayed out in the hall outside our door and met all the neighbours as they came for their meat. They all seem to be very educated Arabs - professors of medicine, engineers, English profs and they all were kind and spoke English well. Karim who lives above us presented us with two dishes of ram - a roast on rice and ground meat between pastry halves. Delicious!

Jan 24, 2005:
We are finally getting into routines here. This evening the doorbell rang and two men who knew no English were there, smiling, with a phone for us. We had to call our landlord to come help as we didn't know what to do next. They never did find the connection outside so will come again in daylight to try to find where to connect things for us. I am so tired of workmen coming when I have underwear splung over the furniture! Things just don't dry here in a day, so I have to bring it all inside and drape it over furniture in hopes it will dry over night. (It doesn't, but it helps. It means every load in our tiny washer takes two days to dry.)

Anyways, we should have a home phone tomorrow. Hopefully that means we can use the internet at home too; right now we're at a wireless internet cafe drinking the strongest cocoa I have ever tasted.

The sidewalks here are a challenge and Nathan has already gone throught the knees of two of four pairs of pants from falling. Dad wishes he had brought more warm clothes. It is not all what we had expected.

Our tiny oven is not meant for 8 people, so it is a challenge to feed us all. For example, last night we had pizza - 6 rounds and I could cook one at a time - first to cook the bottoms, then again to broil the tops. that took a while!

I think Elisabeth is enjoying herself. She has found a buddy who is a kindred spirit and they seem to enjoy each other. Jean (friend) got sick, unfortunately, as they had planned to spend Sat afternoon at a Sisters of Charity orphanage feeding babies.

Jan 26, 2005:
After standing in line today at the bank I was told that I couldn't take money out until my husband signed for me, so we are moneyless after a long weekend. We ordered bank cards, but they seem to take many weeks to be made. Dad is in Cairo today so we have to wait for another day. Banks close at 2 pm here.

Feb 8, 2005:
I hope it warms up a bit. We have all the heaters running (well, when they don't throw breakers...) and wear sweaters and jackets. I know it'll be too hot sometime, but a little warmth wouldn't hurt!

We went to the citadel of Saladin (remember, he also built the walls of Jerusalem to defend against the Crusaders) and Nathan loved the castle-like walls, the boys loved the 1973 war memorablia - tanks and planes, Elisabeth loved the terrible spelling mistakes engraved in front of monuments, Victoria loved being noticed by Egyptian school girls on a field trip who asked if they could have a photo with her, Laura coped with having her hair stroked by the same girls, and Nathan stood aside and said, "Yech, they kissed her." And then three women descended on him, asked his name, tweeked his cheeks and kissed him. He coped.

I waited outside the Military Museum as we would have to pay to take the camera inside, and I had no desire to see the museum anyways. I waited outside, but it started to sprinkle and I was getting chilled, so I moved just in the door to wait. "Madam, your camera." I told him I wasn't going any further, just waiting. A few minutes later, "Madam, your shoes." By this time I was feeling irritated, We had to take off shoes to go in mosques, but a museum? "I don't understand, "I replied. "Your shoes. They are beautiful. Where did you get them?" Oh brother! These Arab men will try all kinds of lines!

Dad says his (intensive Arabic) course starts March 1 and runs for 3 months, but they want him and another fellow to start two weeks early and go six days a week for the first two weeks, five hours a day, to get caught up. I hope there's not too much homework on top of that or he'll never get any reading and writing done! And we'll never get to see anything!!