This weekend we are heading out to the white and black deserts west of Cairo. The drive out there is long, a few hours speeding along the flat stretch of pavement that connects the sprawling city on the Nile to the remote desert oasis where we’ll find our guide. In places the wind has pulled the sandy edges of dunes onto the pavement as if sleepily pulling a blanket over her shoulder, and we swerve around and back to our straight and outstretched drive. As morning conversation dozes into the stillness of the vast scenery surrounding us, I pull out my iPod and listen to a lecture series about mindfulness that has been sitting for months in the digital equivalent of a stack of books on my desk. Eventually, having met our guide and driven off in his 4×4 with days of supplies we were unleashed into the desert ocean that knows no pavement, rumbling over its dunes and getting caught in its slippery sand.

There is something immensely spiritual about the desert. To stand atop a dune and see the vast expanse of the sandy waves, and then to gaze up from my sleeping bag at the nighttime galaxy of suns beyond suns, I feel like a grain of sand to be swept onward by morning’s wind. To wake as dawn’s light warms the sky and find the tiny footprints of small desert jackals and jack rabbits all around our camp, I am reminded that this seemingly barren expanse is in fact teeming with life tucked away just below its surface. We found sea shells – sea shells – and I imagine how the sand in between my toes was once the expansive bottom of an ocean floor. I consider the humbleness of my breaths on earth, how this wrinkled and timeworn desert barely smiles at me before my time is gone and then welcomes new epochs and civilizations that pass just as the shooting stars that paint its skies at night.

These desert mountains have been solid for the blink of human existence. And yet during our comparatively brief period here we are so concerned nearly every moment of our life with the things that have passed and those that are to come that we don’t even experience the moment we are in. We are constantly striving, always imagining how wonderful the future will be when we are older, when we graduate, when we are working that job and so on, that we forget that we are in the future now. We are in the moment we have always been waiting for. The lecturer laughingly suggests that we should be called human doings rather than human beings, because we rarely just be. But when we can be and truly experience life as it presents itself, the doing that emerges from that being is infinitely more mindful and intentioned.

Scaling the sand mountains and nestling into their valleys, the traveler enters the Valley of Wonderment. “Now is he struck dumb with the beauty of the All-Glorious… At every moment he beholdeth a wondrous world, a new creation, and goeth from astonishment to astonishment, and is lost in awe at the works of the Lord of Oneness.” Indeed, Bahá’u’lláh writes, “if we ponder each created thing, we shall witness a myriad perfect wisdoms and learn a myriad new and wondrous truths.” Sitting with open palms atop the sandy wave of the bones and shells and rocks of millennia I too greet the prayer “increase my astonishment at Thee!” I gaze to the right and to the left as if awaiting the mercy of the All-Merciful. The sands that once greeted the steps of caravans of pilgrims advancing across the sun beaten expanse now kiss my forehead, warmed by the rising sun.

Though a grain of sand I may be amidst this vast expanse, each grain, like the desert itself, has likewise folded within it a myriad mysteries and wonders…

Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form

when within thee the universe is folded?

Our material belongings are spread across two continents, and in four major cities of the world (NYC, Cairo, Nairobi, Jinja) while we ourselves are in Jinja, Uganda. We do not know if we will be able to return to Egypt on Luke’s Fulbright, as the commission is delaying making a decision on whether to reinstate or conclude the grants in light of the unrest continuing in Cairo. Will we be in Colorado for the summer instead? We are waiting to hear back concerning graduate school for the fall. Will I have to find a job, or will I be in school? We have no idea what next month will bring, where we will be living for the summer, or which life path I will embark on this fall.

It is quite timely that this very uncertain moment for us falls during the Bahá’í Fast. For the 19 days of the Bahá’í month of “Loftiness,” Bahá’ís all over the world abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset in an effort to detach our souls from undue dependence on material reality, to practice and wax confident that it is our spirit that guides the physical aspects of our being as the rider guides the mare, and to make necessary changes in our inner life and daily habits. What a glorious time! Every hour of these days, one of the fasting prayers says, is endowed with a special virtue! ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes that “this physical fast is a symbol of the spiritual fast,” and any slight hunger pangs throughout the day become gentle reminders of this loftier purpose.

The Fast is of course not meant to by physically harmful, as we use our discretion with regards to the usual exemptions (illness, traveling, etc), but ultimately liberating. I am surprised each year at the ease with which I can control my appetite – me, who grumbles about even a late lunch throughout the year! And the added time during the day allows added space for prayer and meditation, that daily nourishment for the spirit that is no less vital than the physical nourishment we so easily focus on. “Make Thy beauty to be my food,” reads one prayer, “and Thy presence my drink…”

On the first day of the Fast, considering our decidedly open schedule having been evacuated from Egypt, we decided to stroll through Karura Park in Nairobi to refresh ourselves amongst nature and reflect on personal goals for this bountiful month. I was inspired by a quotation that I recently found and wrote in my prayer journal.

O thou handmaid of God! In this day, to thank God for His bounties consisteth in possessing a radiant heart, and a soul open to the promptings of the spirit. This is the essence of thanksgiving.

As for offering thanks by speaking out or writing, although this is indeed acceptable, yet when compared with that other thanksgiving, it is only a semblance and unreal; for the essential thing is these intimations of the spirit, these emanations from the deep recess of the heart. It is my hope that thou wilt be favoured therewith. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The essence of thanksgiving is to possess a radiant heart and a soul open to the promptings of the spirit. I’ve spent the last few weeks reflecting on what this means. To be thankful is to be open, it is to rely on our spirit as our guide. It is to listen, and be patient. It is to turn the mirror of our hearts to the Sun and reflect the splendor of that Light to those around us, to be constantly aware of our role as givers of light to the world. To be thankful is to be connected. It is to remember that, while sometimes it seems that we are the ones in control of all of the elements of our lives and that our path is simply a reflection of our own input, we are in fact but navigators of the continual bounties we receive from the earth and heavens, as that loving Hand places things in our path for our training and development. “…with the clay of My command I made thee to appear,” reads Bahá’u’lláh’s Hidden Words, “and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things.”

When we are thankful, our gaze is raised upwards and our hands rest open on our laps, joyfully content with what we have been given and confident of tomorrow’s yield. As I focus on thankfulness during this fast, my mind is calmed from its frantic gaze toward the future as it searches the upcoming bend in my path for clues of what I cannot see. I am waiting patiently for doors to open, and have even knocked on a few. But ultimately I know that one will open, and that is where I should be.

Far be it from us to despair at any time of the incalculable favours of God, for if it were His wish He could cause a mere atom to be transformed into a sun and a single drop into an ocean. He unlocketh thousands of doors, while man is incapable of conceiving even a single one. Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh

On the Qasr An-Nil bridge near Tahrir Square

The Friday call to prayer has never struck fear into my heart. But today I listen, and feel the anticipation and fear of thousands upon thousands of souls who are listening with me. Although the garbled words of the loud-speaker’s sermon are unintelligible from here, today simply its presence is a call to action, and a call to the unknown.

Following the protests in Tunisia, which forced the long time dictator from power earlier this month, the air has been electric. Each day has brought new stories of yet another individual who set himself on fire in front of parliament – imitating the unemployed and fed-up young man in Tunisia whose self-immolation sparked the wave of riots. They were hoping that with their kerosene and matches they could spark something in Egypt, that they could turn up the heat on the already near-boiling society angered from mass unemployment, police brutality and official torture, rising prices of food and rent for an already underpaid and overworked society.

The average monthly salary for a government worker here is about $85, which if you are lucky might just cover rent in an impoverished neighborhood. So you work another job, driving a taxi and breathing only your most exhausted sighs at home. Schools are so over-crowded and poor that the entire education system is built on extra-curricular tutors, such that those who can afford to pay have tutor upon tutor after school. We recently heard of a (clearly wealthy) student who attends school only for the tests, and otherwise simply stays at home with a private tutor for each subject. And what for those who can’t afford it? It is draining as an Arabic-speaking foreigner to ride in the taxis here, as we have the same conversations over and over again. He wants to tell us of his life here, of the governmental corruption, of the poverty he is forced into, of the inability to get married because of unemployment and lack of funds, of his duties to provide for his wife and children on the pittance he is paid. He asks us again and again, how am I supposed to live like this?

Khaled Said facebook page calls for Jan 25 protests

Perhaps our ears are privy to story upon story like this because there is no sanctioned outlet to voice complaint. Complaint is criticism, which attracts the attention of an erratic and prideful “security” force that loves to “teach lessons” to those who dare scratch the official sovereign apparatus. Two cases insinuate themselves above the rest. One, of a young man whose well-connected neighbors called the police on him because of a fight over a girl, and when he talked back to the police he was brought into custody and kept for an extra day to teach him to be submissive to authority, despite that all charges were dropped. That extra day was his last. Another, the famous Khaled Sa’id, who posted a video on his blog of police officers divvying up the booty from a drug bust, and who was dragged from an internet café by the “security” and publicly beaten to death. Anger over this second case planted the seeds for this week’s riots, as the protest page on facebook about his death was the one to call for demonstrations on January 25, national Police Day in Egypt.

What a curious holiday – Police Day – as it seems that every day here is police day considering their heavy-handed power afforded by the 29-year emergency law in Egypt. The call to the streets on this holiday was launched on the internet, chiefly on the Khaled Sa’id facebook group and further on a google document passed virally from email to email. “This is the beginning of the end – the end of silence,” the document says, as “Egypt is passing through one of the worst states in its history on all accounts, despite the reports that the Egyptian government mentions in order to beautify its image.” It catalogs a bleak scene: widespread depression and poverty, systematic corruption, more than 30% unemployment among youth, high infant mortality and number of those suffering with Hepatitis C and anemia, and lastly, the number of deaths from torture and imprisonment due to the emergency laws and the blatant fraud in the recent parliamentary elections.

The police were ready at the four areas specifically mentioned in the documents, yet as the protests were to start the actual locations were blasted via social media, leaving the police to scramble. All of the demonstrations moved towards and eventually converged on Tahrir Square – Liberation Square – in downtown Cairo.

Prayer during protests

The call-and-response chanting so well practiced during Cairo’s soccer matches now waxed political: “Down, down with Hosni Mubarak! Down, down with Hosni Mubarak!” Riot police tried to prevent rioters from entering the square, clasping hands and standing in a line as if they were playing Red Rover, as a friend described. The chanting only paused as the adhan sounded prayer time, and later in the day with the resort to tear gas and rubber bullets. In addition to reports of the familiar police brutality, some protesters were rounded up and carted off for hours into the desert and left there deserted.

Al-Ahram speaks of chocolate and flowers

What is striking is the official fiction spouted out by the state apparatus. Khaled Sa’id died not from the beating,but from the marijuana that he swallowed of which he was supposedly in possession. Those men lit themselves on fire in front of parliament not because of discontent with the current state of affairs but because a woman hit him in the street, or he was mentally disturbed. And Police Day, according to government-run headlines the following day, was spent by the exchange of flowers and chocolates between civilians and the police to show their gratitude and appreciation.

While Wednesday and Thursday brought smaller protests, the call was raised for Anger Friday, with protests to begin after Friday prayers when people are already gathered in the mosques. The facebook page got tens of thousands of members within 24 hours, despite the official blocking of facebook and twitter, as information on proxies was disseminated widely. We woke up this morning to find that the internet has been shut off, and when I tried to make a call from my cell phone it went blank, saying: “Emergency calls only!” If there were not already enough announcements toward today’s protests, the disabling of all cell phone carriers is the final and most comprehensive: When? Today. Where? Everywhere.

I’ve been quick to tell my friends and family at home that we are far from the action, as quiet Maadi is at least a 20 minute metro ride to downtown. But as I am writing this I am drawn to my window by chanting. We run to the balcony to see thousands of people marching. They are chanting: “Ash-sha’ab yureed isqat an-nitham!” (The people want the fall of the regime!), “Yasqut yasqut Hosni Mubarak!” (Fall, fall Hosni Mubarak), and “Allahu akbar!” (God is most Great!). There must have been many of us watching from our balconies, as they turned to look up at us, chanting “Inzil, inzil, inzil!” (Come down, come down).

View from our Window

Even quiet Maadi. There were easily a couple thousand people, heading in the direction of downtown, and will beyond doubt pick up thousands more in the overpopulated poverty-stricken neighborhood of Dar Es-Salaam just next door. And an old woman, trickling by at the end of the masses and followed by what is probably her family, leads the chanting and stops to yell to those who are just standing on the corner, perhaps waiting for the bus: What are you doing! Come and walk with us!!

If this commotion is here, I can only imagine what is downtown.

***

Saturday January 29, 2011

NDP ablaze

I felt with my own hand the heat blazing from the burning headquarters of the National Democratic Party,the party of Hosni Mubarak.

Last night we drove out with Nima and Tash to meet some friends for dinner just outside of Cairo proper. As we drove we saw a barricade up on the other side of the road, preventing people from entering the city – and us from going back. As we got to dinner though, and gave our birthday present to our friend, the curfew was announced on the state television that was playing in the restaurant. We decided to spend the night with our friends who lived very close-by, especially as they were the only people we knew who had internet (they are subscribed to the only tiny service provider who did not shut it off) and satellite TV to watch the international news as the local news showed only a small portion of what was going on.

The pantry was unprepared, but Luke and I brainstormed and pulled together a good dinner for all, and then we watched the TV – all night: Hilary Clinton’s speech, the looting and burning of the NDP building, the rotation of four Al-Jazeera international correspondents, that Fox news was blaming this on al-Qaeda (??), the toppling and burning of police vehicles, the retreat of the police and the welcomed entrance of the army, and Mubarak’s laughable speech. Then we pulled out the mattresses and camped out for the night.

This morning we drove back home through downtown, the roads there scattered with burned police vehicles and crowds gathered at points such as next to Carrefour, the biggest supermarket. We saw the smoke coming from the buildings ablaze, the army tanks and APC’s

"Down with Mubarak" on the side of the burning NDP

perched on the main roads, and the graffiti (down with Mubarak!) scrawled on statues and bridges. One of the most striking moments was when we realized that we were sitting in traffic, and it was completely quiet. No honking, no yelling – just quiet.

We hurried home as fresh protests were starting again, to find that our area had had major protests that evening while we were gone. A rock had been thrown through the glass door to our building, as apparently shots were being fired and people tried to take refuge. We live one block from the Dar Es-Salaam police department, which was known for the torture so characteristic of the police regime here. It was burned down, along with the other main police and NDP buildings throughout the city. On the way back from the Metro supermarket, which probably did a month’s worth of business that morning alone, a friend stopped us saying, “The government is not anywhere in Maadi. Stay home, don’t go outside!” We walked to the outdoor vegetable and fruit market on the other side of the police department, and saw the dark soot blackening the walls, the air-conditioning units falling from windows, and the graffiti: “The department of the government.” Six armored personnel carriers along with arms-carrying soldiers were guarding the station, and hundreds of people were standing and watching at them. We bought some potatoes and strawberries from our usual sellers, and walking back I overheard a woman scornfully say, “Look at these foreigners come to gawk on our…” At home, we packed up some food and clothing and made it over to Nima and Tash’s high rise down the street in time for the 4:00 PM curfew. What will this evening bring?

Our Apt building is the one above the gun in the background!

Gathered in front of burned Police Station

***

Sunday January 30, 2011

I am sitting in a brightly sun-lit room on the 24^th floor of Nima and Tash’s building. The morning is so quiet, and the day is clear: I can see the Giza pyramids from out their window. The quietness and calm is stark considering the confusion and fear of last night, remnanced by the couch and chair jammed up against the front door.

With the vegetables that we brought over, we made musaqa’a for dinner, and without television we relied on the constant phone calls from friends to know what was going on: Mubarak appointing a vice president (the head of intelligence!! There could be no better symbol of his police state), the prisoners 2 km away escaping from prison, someone shot in Garden City, the Carrefour that we saw earlier completely looted and burned down, some of the antiquities in the museum destroyed as protesters and the army try to protect it, and armed robbery and rape in Maadi and 6^th of October City. We are in Maadi. Fearful of intruders, we shoved the couch and chair up against the door.

Doorman's makeshift weapons

The story was the same for each of those we spoke to: the men and youth of the building have made weapons and camped out in front of the entrance to try to deter any with bad intention. Watching from their window, we saw neighbors dragging huge rocks into the driveway to block any cars and pulling fallen trees and anything else they could find to block the main road. With nothing else to do, we prayed.

From 11 pm until 1 am, we said 500 Remover of Difficulties prayers from the Bahá’í Writings: Is there any Remover of Difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants and all abide by His bidding. We prayed for the safety of our loved ones and Egypt in general and for a positive change for Egyptians. Afterward I felt that the fear had been taken from my heart, that in letting go of the need to be in control of things I cannot control, I found that I felt more powerful.

We went to sleep with the sound of barking dogs, gunshots, and shouts and screams below – but I slept, and awoke to a quiet morning.

***

Later that day

We’ve been starved for internet and televised news.

We made a run for Alfa Market this morning to buy a few hundred dollars worth of food to hold us over for the next few days. We were thankful that it had not been overrun during the night, and so were the hundreds of others standing in line with cartfuls of food. The frozen food section was already bare.

We also bought a $20 satellite as ambitious Nima was going to try and set it up out of their window to bring us televised news. Luke and Nima sat for an hour toying with the satellite, which came without installation directions. A call came from our friends (who have internet and TV) inviting us for the evening, and after a quick consultation we were in the car with ten bags of food supplies and two small suitcases (much more prepared than last time). On the way we passed the presidential palace, surrounded by the only police that we have seen since the army entered town. So that’s where they are all hiding.

I’m now sitting in front of Al Jazeera International watching opposition leader and Nobel laureate Mohamed Al-Baradei speak via loudspeaker at the protests in Tahir square, and drinking ginger lemon tea. It is heartening to know what is going on, and to be able to communicate with my family. With the internet, we’ve been emailing friends and enjoying the parody tweets from #HosniMobarak.

While this is all bringing out the dregs of human inhumanity, including the looting and violence, it is also bringing out the heroism of the local population. Our host has just left again with his scarf and policeman’s long flashlight to join the neighborhood watch below. And a friend called from Alexandria last night who had just caught some looters with some friends, and who had to hang up the phone as they were about to catch another! In the absence of a viable justice system, people are doing what they can: in the impoverished neighborhood of Shubra, they hung up two looters by their clothes in trees! Some say that the complete withdraw of the police is a move to try and make the people call for them back after protesting their brutality and torture.

There is anticipation about tomorrow, some expecting much violence and others hopeful for greater change. But it is not only ordinary Egyptians who are anxious – in the meantime, other regimes try to censor news of Egypt in hopes they don’t meet a similar fate.

***

Monday January 31, 2011 (updated later)

10:55 PM

They just shut down our internet.

I can’t believe it! They were probably trying desperately to find the small leak, as others were using it to get information out. And we just heard that they might soon shut down our mobile phone service again, so I desperately called a friend in the states to give our landline number and spread the word that we are out of contact. This is all in preparation for tomorrow’s planned Million Man March that threatens to storm the presidential palace that we drove past on our way here.

I am watching Al Jazeera International (at least we still have satellite TV to know what is going on!), and I feel a sense of powerlessness. They can speak at me, can tell me what is going on around me, but I can’t respond! I cannot tell you what is happening. I cannot tell you our experience. This post will have to wait again for… not sure when.

Today at our friends’ home we pooled our money together to venture out to buy more food supplies – we are feeding nine, three couples and three kids. The Metro supermarket was bustling, and shelves were becoming more and more bare. The “Freshly Baked Bread” section was full of empty baskets, and there was absolutely no sugar. On our way to the local vegetable market, we saw a conspicuous line outside of an ATM – does it really work?? The banks have all closed, and every ATM we’ve seen has said “Temporarily Out of Order.” We must have waited 30 minutes in the line, for a meager 500 LE ($85) withdraw limit, but luckily we had multiple cards for our account in the US.

We bought fresh vegetables, and then returned home to have a picnic and games outside to try and create a sense of normalcy for the kids. Will the electricity and water be cut soon? Everyone is taking showers now just in case.

The police are back in the streets, amidst mixed responses. Here, they told everyone to stay inside including our local neighborhood watch. “But we’ve been doing this for the past two nights!” they responded. My host tells me that people are going out now simply to provoke them.

Our host is particularly upset about the lack of internet. “What are you all doing on your computers still, there is no internet!” Luke responds that I am writing a blog post, that I cannot post. “A blog no-post,” he responds.

We were out trekking in the vast desert surrounding Siwa Oasis, a sizable stretch of green in the dry pale desert near Libya that is home to 23 thousand people and famed for its dates and olives. With the thirty or so other students, we made up a caravan of 4x4s flying up and down the sandy sea, periodically circling up to not to lose anyone, and getting stuck in soft sand or at the top of a dune – all four wheels spinning uselessly in the air. We drove out to one of the oldest found human footprints, an alcove in the sand where sand dollars and seashells belie an underwater history, a random salt lake, a fresh water spring and a natural hot spring all hidden within the creases of the desert. We concluded the day’s traveling by reclining comfortably on a mountainous dune and watching what might have been a beautiful sunset, had the sky been clear.

The night picked up with the arrival of a local band, after a dinner on low tables spread out over thick rugs. Drums, tambourines, and wind instruments circled up near the fire. And the music began.

I had been expecting and was enjoying the festivity, yet my mind was drawn to a conversation the evening before with the English teacher from a local high school. Emphasizing the Salafi religious conservatism of the secluded community, he responded to a question about television and radio in Siwa. “The people of Siwa don’t really listen to music,” he said, “or watch television except for the Islamic channels. Perhaps Qur’anic recitation, or sermons.” Yet here we were—dancing, singing and clapping along to the traditional music with local Siwans—but barra, outside of town.

Taking a break from the joy and excitement, I decided to take advantage of the cool desert evening and walk alone, barefoot in the expansive sand under the moonlight. As I retreated farther and farther away from the joyful gathering I could feel the sand become progressively firmer, until reaching the cool hard ridges on a nearby dune—it had not been walked on in recent times. As I slowly mounted the dune, the music faded like a scratchy radio tune turned down to a buzz.

Standing at the peek, I looked out to my right: the mountainous desert, grey under the moonlight and extending until far beyond my ken. I felt as though gazing on eternity, the weight of all that is pressing down from the clouds hugging the earth, with the breath that is me simply ruffling some sand here during these moments. My footprints will be washed over and the sand will become hard again with time. In the distance in front of me I could see the faint glow of the oasis, and to my left below the gathering of friends circled together on rugs near the burning fire. Being faced with this endlessness left me feeling both exposed and overwhelmed by its majesty and beauty.

I was lost in my gaze, looking out into the eternity, but I could not help but feel that the place to be is right there among friends, joyful and light. We are meant to contemplate eternity, to be awed by the vast stretches of time and being beyond ourselves, and reminded that we too will become dust after our own brief visit here. But we are also meant to be joyful, to laugh, to be light! I am reminded of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, that peaceful soul Who had been imprisoned from childhood until grey hair, approaching so many with His face wreathed in smiles, asking simply: “Are you happy?” When our gaze is fixed on the eternal, the joyful things of this world are not distractions from our path but signs of the Beloved directing us onward.

The joyful din gave way to the clinks and clanks of packing up the evening, signaling an immanent departure, and I descended from the dune. We boarded the trucks and made way for the oasis. Two of the musicians had crammed into the back with some instruments, and we began talking with them and sounding some beats on the Dumbek and Tar drums. Knowing the answer, I asked, “How is your work here as a musician? Is playing music enough, or do you have another job?” They work on date and olive farms, they said. “Do you ever play in town, or just out in the desert like tonight?” Yes, they said, but only for tourists, at hotels and the oasis’ cultural house.

We were trying to hold a light steady beat together, despite sudden ups and downs and turns. As we crossed the unmarked boundary of desert to village, and small houses began to appear, the driver raised his hand to us saying, “Please.” Thinking perhaps he had become tired of the noise, remembering long car rides and parental drivers having enough of back-seat ruckus, I asked playfully, “You’ve had enough?” It wasn’t that, he said. We were entering town.

A taste of Siwan music, thanks to Youtube!

Indeed, I was well aware of the dangers, having spent the first number of attempts clutching onto Luke’s arm and letting loose a nervous high-pitched squeal until reaching the other side. Crossing signals or guards are few and only at the largest intersections. More often than not, crossing the street means stepping right out into multiple lanes of moving traffic.

“My advice to you,” he continued, “is to look for a confident Egyptian, stick to them like their shadow, and you should be alright.”

At first it seemed like suicide. “It’s just because you’re new here,” our Arabic teacher insisted, smiling. “You’ll get used to it.” It is no wonder that one of the first words that we learned in our Egyptian dialect class was zahma – traffic, or crowding.

But it is not quite like crossing the whizzing four lanes of Sixth Avenue in New York City, where taxis are perched at stop lights ready to jump on green regardless of whether or not you’ve made it safely across with your grocery bags. While sometimes there are lines on the wider roads here to mark out lanes, they are rarely followed. Thus, the 4,500,000 cars on the streets of Cairo are crammed into tiny spaces, weaving in and out of the semblances of lanes, and – especially at rush hour – putting along at a steady 20 km/hour, if moving at all.

While sitting still in lunchtime traffic in the back of a taxi one day, we struck up conversation with the driver. “In Cairo, drivers seem to fit 3 or 4 lanes in a two lane road like this!” He smiled and looked up at us in the rear view mirror, “Or 5, or 6!” he laughed. “Do taxi drivers have doctorates in driving?” we teased. ”You all know the exact width of your cars!” He squeezed with an inch to spare past a double-parked car and another inching taxi, amidst a flurry of honking and mouthed obscenities and gesticulations behind closed windows.

Traffic, road rage, and the developed system of signals and honks for all occasions (passing on the right or left, coming upon an intersection, passing dangerously fast, and apparently even for hitting on a pretty pedestrian) mean that life near the streets is quite noisy. There seems to always be a wedding somewhere (imagine “dah, dah, dah dah dah” on repeat). A report that came out two years ago found that the average noise in Cairo from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, a bit louder than a freight train 15 feet away. It is indeed about 7 a.m. that I am woken up every day by honking from the intersection six stories beneath us.

And the cars are not exactly new. Sixty percent of cars here are over ten years old, which no doubt does wonders for the cloud of smog looming over the city. Having spent a month with 15-year-olds coordinating a youth service project in New York over the summer, I was abruptly informed that the seemingly timeless “punch-buggy” game has been retired in preference for yellow cars, as VW Bugs just aren’t on the roads anymore. But here, punch-buggy is all the rage—at least between us—as Luke and I whisper the colors to each other in Arabic (the punching got old rather quickly).

Clearly the root cause of the zahma is not the cars themselves, but the incredible rate at which the city has expanded and grown. As the Aswan Dam controlled the annual flooding of the Nile and Cairo could expand to the land right up against the river (the older Islamic Cairo is located quite a distance east of the river), new buildings and neighborhoods were raised on land that had only sacredly been reserved for farmland. In the past century, the population of the city increased from 600,000 to now over 17 million.

Thus it is not just the streets that are crowded. Forty-five percent of Cairenes live in slum conditions; mosque congregations spill out onto temporarily closed and carpeted streets during prayer times; and the city’s two metro lines tightly pack in over a million passengers daily. Soon after we learned to say zahma in class, we learned how to say the equivalent of “can of sardines,” ‘ilbat salamon.

But there are coping mechanisms for such crowding, and being intimately shoved up against multiple passengers in a hot car (without air conditioning) can bring out the kindness and warmth in people just as it can bring out frustration. One morning on the way to class I was riding in one of the two cars reserved just for women, as I normally do during rush hour to avoid any uncomfortable closeness with strange men. I entered on one side, and had not planned ahead that my exit was on the other side of the train. As we eased into the stop, no amount of pushing could get me to the door in time, and Luke and I waved sadly at each other from opposite sides of the plexi-glass as the train began to move. Seeing my condition, all of the women near me then kindly conspired and cooperated to push me back over to the other side to exit at the next stop and head back. When you are so close, sometimes there is nothing you can do but help each other.

We’ve gotten used to the close quarters now and the crowded streets. Each time we cross now, I imagine if threads were attached to us all we would be weaving one enormous and intricate tapestry as we wind through the various lanes of traffic on the loom of Qasr al-‘Ayni street. We knew we had passed a significant milestone when, after keeping our eyes glued to the left to monitor moving traffic as we crossed, we finally looked right to find a line of Egyptians crossing in our shadow.

We picked a day that was relatively open – a Saturday, our new Sunday as the weekends in Egypt are Friday/Saturday – as it can be a lengthy process: individually picking the leaves off of multiple bunches of cilantro and parsley, blending seemingly endless batches of the mix in our (small) food processor, and letting the mix cool in the fridge for two hours before frying. But the mix can last for quite some time in the freezer, so a morning in the kitchen is well worth the couple of meals.

We also picked that Saturday because the following day we were heading to our second cooking class with Nora, a wonderful French-Egyptian who is nimble in the kitchen and keen to share. For a fair sum, she’s opened up her kitchen to us and a few other eager foreigners and walked us through making Egyptian (and Lebanese) vegetarian cuisine: tahini sauce, falafel, babaghanouj, hummus, fattoush salad, tabbouli, koshary, and the dreamy dessert konafa. We had already made the tahini sauce from our first class (so good!), but wanted to make a more complicated dish before coming back for more.

We had soaked the dried fava beans overnight and gone to the local market, the baladi souq, to buy the remaining ingredients.  The souq is tucked next to the metro stop just after ours, and it winds back along a covered path as sellers display the fruits and vegetables from local farms, along with bananas from the Philippines, apples from Syria, and kiwis from who-knows-where. For those who are so inclined, you’ll also find live chickens, the occasional baby goat, and drawers up drawers of loose spices. For about $4 we bought 6 bunches each of cilantro and parsley, pulled straight from the ground and tied together with palm fronds, onion, garlic, and a quarter kilo of local lemons which are about the size of a spinning quarter. Don’t be fooled, however. They are bursting with juice.

Then we got to work: chopping the onion and garlic, washing and de-leafing the greens, and blending them with the beans and puffs of spices while adding flour, water, and fresh-squeezed lemon juice. After a few hours in the fridge, we shaped the falafel balls in our hands and covered them with sesame seeds. We tested the hot sunflower oil with a spurting drop of water, and then put them to fry. Viola!

Our lunch was so tasty that Luke began encroaching on my last falafel after garbling up all of his…

The Recipe

500 grams of dried fava beans (or substitute with chick peas, soaked and boiled for about an hour, or canned)

2 medium onions

1 large bunch parsley

1 large bunch coriander

4 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons of flour

Salt & pepper

Coriander

½ cup water

Cumin

paprika

Sesame seeds

Wash and soak the fava beans overnight. Wash parsley and cilantro and remove the stems. Layer all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend, adding water alternately. Keep it for 2 hours in the fridge. Shape the falafel balls and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Fry in sunflower oil at 160 degree for 4 minutes on each side (they must be crunchy on the outside and tender in the middle). Serve hot with the tahina sauce!

Over the years my Arabic has only really been useful in Arabic class. Most conversations outside only went so far, one ending in “man, why you got to be so formal?” after only a sentence or two, and others just sounding preposterous, as if you walked in on a conversation over coffee in Shakespearean English.  I could listen to contemporary songs but not understand them, and watch contemporary films only with subtitles. Perhaps I could read and write poetry. I could understand the news or short stories, and write my thoughts about them. But to explain my spiritual life to my Moroccan host mother, or to tell her four-year-old daughter to stop running after me with the ruler?

It has been wonderful diving into the Egyptian dialect these past few weeks since moving to Cairo. We began our classes on our second day here, while we were still living in a hotel and looking at apartments after class. Having listened to lectures on linguistics over the summer, stepping into class and learning from those around us has been like fast-forwarding a language to after a thousand years of use, an experience in linguistic change. FuS-Ha, the “most eloquent” language, was standardized with the revelation of the Qur’án and then spread throughout the region along with the Islamic community. The Egyptian “aamiyyah” (“general” language), like the others is its child, reared by both this formal and eloquent tongue and the expediency of daily use. Softer sounds tend to harden over time, especially “th,” and prefixes and suffixes drop away. Thus the masculine and feminine words for “this,” hatha and hathihi, have become da and di in Egypt. The hard Q sound in fuS-Ha softens to the glottal stop ‘a (except for very important words such as the Qur’án and Cairo/al-Qahirah), and nearly all variations of “th” (such as those in “thank” and “the”) have disappeared into s’s, z’s or t’s. All of the kinks in phonetics and grammar have been smoothed over like on a river stone by years upon years of daily use.

Now I finally feel like I can speak with people: with Zainab, the sweet young woman who came to clean our apartment and who wouldn’t let me help move furniture because I “might be pregnant” (after all, I’ve been married for over a year now); with ‘Aadil, the owner of a kitchen wares shop near the local market who shared a scrapbook of all of his publications in newspapers and magazines and his nine year old son’s poetry; and of course Manar, our wonderfully deft twenty-three year old ‘aamiyyah teacher who laughs at our stories and dutifully corrects us when we slip back into fuS-Ha (it’s “min ghayr” not “bidoun”!).

I’m enjoying soaking up this spoken tongue, and finally learning all of the common and practical words that one should know in a language: stovetop, ripe, coriander, parsley, electrical plug, to pout, hiccup, light bulb, juicer, doorbell, cockroach (thank goodness not from seeing one at home…). In my course of studying Arabic I learned how to say “through the framework of bilateral relations” before I learned how to say “to shave.” Most of these common words do have their equivalents in fuS-Ha, but the arenas in which the language is used mean that you are more likely to learn how to say that something is controversial but well received than how to ask someone to pass you the dish towel.

FuS-Ha is a beautiful language. It is brilliantly logical, so crisp and ordered, and true to its name, amazingly eloquent. However, while some may lament the loss of the “j” to a “g” sound, or the absence of the incredible specificity that exists in fuS-Ha, the ‘aamiyyah is beautiful because people and the connections between them are.  It may not be the grammarian’s language as fuS-Ha is, but it is the language of connection and daily life.

Perhaps now if I were to visit my Moroccan host family again, I could share a bit more with my mother about our lives and perspectives, and ask the now ten year old if she remembers how she used to barge into my room when I was doing my homework, breaking the already flimsy lock on the door. It was clearly time to play.

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Many seeking to understand the causes of Darfur’s rebellion look to the Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in Sudan, which was clandestinely published in 2000 by individuals who would later form Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), as representing the seeds of the rebellion. It was the ideological articulation of Darfurian opposition to the regime that preceded armed rebellion. With its meticulous tables, anecdotal evidence, and theorizing on Islamic rule, it claimed to expose the deep-seated ethnic imbalance from all of Sudan’s post-independence governments, but its critical gaze was especially focused on the hypocrisy and inequality under the “Salvation” (ingaz) Islamist regime, which took control in a military coup in 1989 led by current President Omar al-Bashir.

While existing scholarship on the Black Book emphasizes its importance in modern Sudanese history, it does not analyze its critiques or highlight their implications for actual political change in Sudan. Closely examining the Black Book and its critique of the Sudanese government reveals important and neglected aspects of the agenda of the Darfur rebellion, and especially that of the Justice and Equality Movement.

For my Master’s thesis on the topic I first undertook a close translation from the original Arabic, prominently posted on JEM’s website. The commonly available translation serves well for understanding the general meaning but not for undertaking a close textual analysis, as the translator at times added and deleted paragraphs and paraphrased or rewrote difficult sections.

Drawing on my own translation of the Black Book, I show that while the Black Book dutifully documents the failures of the current regime to live up to its slogans of full equality under Islam and thus offers a challenge to the regime, it fails to move beyond the paradigm and structure of the ruling regime in its critique and thus precludes any wider structural change that might bring about the desired justice and equality. By utilizing language that simultaneously blames and apologizes for the political elite and concluding by asking their “brothers to give up a little,” it does not address the foundational structural inequality in Sudan, and hints a desire for a place at the political table.

The challenge of the Black Book to the Sudanese government was a significant one: it exposed the hypocrisy of the regime and cataloged its failures to live up to its slogans touting brotherly equality under the banner of Islam. Its force as a text came from the fact that it provided statistics and evidence documenting a reality that all had known but had not had the proof with which to effectively challenge the regime. And yet its challenge had limits.

It is clear from the perspective of the authors of the Black Book that the problems of Sudan are persistent and deep-rooted in the nation’s structure, as the injustice was “practiced by the successive political regimes upon the country from independence until today, regardless of the regimes’ affiliations or forms: secular or Islamic, allegedly democratic or dictatorial.” Injustice has been made into law (“taqniin al-dhulm”). “Corruption” had “become the state.” The National State Support Fund is called a “state organ to reinforce that disparity.” All governments have followed the same “signposts on the path” that were laid by “sectarianism” and exploitation. Indeed, a perspective emphasizing the structural causes of Sudan’s conflicts, including patterns of exploitative governance between the center and periphery, inequalities of development that persisted after colonialism, and a narrowly based nationalist movement among the northern elite and based on Arab Islamic identity, is widely accepted in scholarship about the conflict in Darfur and political disintegration in Sudan in general.

Despite the authors’ clarity in the Black Book regarding the structural causes of the plethora of problems and instances of injustice enumerated throughout the text, a clarity likewise held by political thinkers and historians, the Black Book does not call for structural change. In contrast to other revolutionary Sudanese thinkers such as John Garang, who called for a “new political Sudanese dispensation” and a “paradigm shift from the old Sudan of exclusivity to the new Sudan of inclusivity,” the authors of the Black Book do not take such a radical stance when they leave the realm of criticism and enter that of recommendation.

The authors of the Black Book conclude by asking their “brothers to give up a little.” After fifty pages of exposing the regime’s hypocrisy, the “deep stupidity, aimless ignorance, paralyzing sickness and poverty” caused by its unjust actions, and the reality of state structures as simply being tools to enforce one region’s hegemony, the authors of the Black Book are content with things as they are—as long as those on top cede a little of their power and wealth. “Stay away from exploitation,” they say, and “be true to the slogans that were raised.” After they suggest that the “hidden desire of these people is to gain mastery over slaves” and that “barefaced injustice” exists within their “inmost selves,” their recourse is to ask them simply to stay away from exploitation. Is this not, to use the phrasing of the Black Book, asking for the straightness of the shadow when they’ve determined the branch to be crooked? Similarly, after the Islamic slogans of the Salvation regime were exposed to be simply tools to get into power, they curiously ask their leaders to be true to what they’ve just determined to be a lie.

As a part of the same discursive community that brought the Salvation regime into power, the authors of the Black Book express that they are deeply invested in the present model of the Sudanese state as an Islamic state: “The Islamic world today has its eyes on Sudan, and it has bound its hopes to the success of the Sudanese experience. The destruction of this model is a grave felony to Islam and Muslims.” As such, while they are clear about the structural decay and the need for change at that level for any of Sudan’s many conflicts and injustices to be ameliorated, the authors of the Black Book are invested in the state as it is—the model and the state structure. In asking their “brothers” to give up a little, they are not reimagining a state that has undergone a revolutionary transformation in its political and economic apparatuses. They are seeking to be included at the table.

The incoherence of the Black Book in its documentation of injustice as compared to its suggestions for change evidences the limits of its critique, mainly that the authors fail to think outside the paradigm and structure of the current regime and thereby abide by its idiom, boundaries, and definitions of state and reality. And yet a further testimony that the authors of the Black Book have not gone beyond the paradigm and structure of the government that they critique is that they themselves mirror that government in terms of rhetoric and action. The lengthy sections of the Black Book that claim to articulate the “original” view of Islamic rule mirror the slogans and rhetorical stance of the Salvation regime in terms of their claim to represent “Islam,” call for the leadership of Islam itself, and their collapsing of multiplicity and subjectivity with regards to religion. Soon after, as the authors of the Black Book began the rebel Justice and Equality Movement upon the stance of exposing rule by elite, the group itself became dominated by a local elite, the clan of its leader. “[B]efore the ink in which these words were written dried up,” write the signatories of a 2006 internal JEM “reformatory memo” that challenges JEM in a similar way that the Black Book challenged the Salvation regime, “those leaders have reneged from the principles of the revolution and resorted to the narrow regionalistic, exclusionary and tribal approach

With an issue such as institutionalized injustice, change does not mean placing a different figure at the top or putting another chair at the political table. If JEM’s goal is to push for power for themselves, they may likely succeed by pursuing the course that they’ve chosen. And while sitting at the table they may be in the position to make some changes. But if their goal is to create lasting change that challenges the structural injustice that has plagued Sudan since it has been an independent state, they will need to pursue an alternate course that starts with internal coherence. They must define and model the change they wish to create.

As the Black Book was quietly passed out in the streets of Khartoum that Friday in 2000 despite the censorship regime of the Salvation government, there seemed a possibility of great change. The regime had been publicly challenged. Its hypocrisy had been meticulously documented and aired to the wind. And yet what followed is that the rebel group based on that document, in fighting the government, has evinced the injustice and inequality, the slogans and political maneuvering, and the desire for power for which they so eloquently criticized the Salvation regime. Ultimately, they have followed the same signposts on that same path on which has walked every leading regime or group in Sudan since its independence in 1956. If they were to pursue revolutionary change rather than simply a reformist critique from within, they would start by diverging from that path.

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Hear Me, ye mortal birds!  In the Rose Garden of changeless splendor a Flower hath begun to bloom, compared to which every other flower is but a thorn, and before the brightness of Whose glory the very essence of beauty must pale and wither.  Arise, therefore, and, with the whole enthusiasm of your hearts, with all the eagerness of your souls, the full fervor of your will, and the concentrated efforts of your entire being, strive to attain the paradise of His presence, and endeavor to inhale the fragrance of the incorruptible Flower, to breathe the sweet savors of holiness, and to obtain a portion of this perfume of celestial glory.  Whoso followeth this counsel will break his chains asunder, will taste the abandonment of enraptured love, will attain unto his heart’s desire, and will surrender his soul into the hands of his Beloved.  Bursting through his cage, he will, even as the bird of the spirit, wing his flight to his holy and everlasting nest.

Bahá’u’lláh (Gleanings, p 320-321)

It is nearing the rainy season in Dominica, and the skies are baring their chests to empty their treasures upon the earth: countless drops, the water of life, pouring successively upon the grounds and forests of this tropical island nation. If the clouds will it, it will rain multiple times per day – the commas and semicolons to the hours that otherwise speak of nothing but hot, scorching sun.  And sometimes the bounties of the sky will come in pairs. The rain will of a sudden begin pounding on the corrugated tin roof, forming a cool curtain as you look out from the porch onto the palm and mango trees, and yet the sun will not shy away but illumine the scene, reflecting shimmerings of light off of the droplets and drenched leaves. When such an event occurs, you stand still on the porch and simply gaze out, in awe of the dual bounties from heaven.

While here this week visiting Denali and her housemate Roushy, I have basked in many of the bounties of heaven. This week has brought participation in multiple Bahá’í study circles, reflecting on the divine Word and its practical applications in our daily lives. It has brought sung hymns and prayers in Arabic, English and Patwa at multiple devotional gatherings. It has brought basket weaving, passing the shaved “lauma” reeds in and out of each other (one of the traditional crafts of the Carib people of this area). This week I have let the golden juice of mango drip from my chin, laughed deeply and sweetly the laughter of dear friends, deepened daily on divine verses and spiritually oriented texts, and prayed at dawn, watching the sun rise over the ocean and through the coconut trees. I have bathed and washed clothes in the river, swam in the rough waves where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean, and baked on a large rock in the sun (“baked” is appropriate here, considering the color of my skin afterwards).

This week also yielded the bounty of celebrating Denali’s birthday. Each year on the eve of her birthday, Denali recites the beautiful “Remover of Difficulties” prayer one thousand times. Yes, one thousand times. This is based on a passage in Shoghi Effendi’s history of the Bahá’í Faith, God Passes By, where Bahá’u’lláh is quoted:

`Bid them recite: “Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!” Tell them to repeat it five hundred times, nay, a thousand times, by day and by night, sleeping and waking, that haply the Countenance of Glory may be unveiled to their eyes, and tiers of light descend upon them.’ (p 119)

We began well into the evening. You feel the first few hundred, each one of them. You are well aware of time, perhaps counting them all in your head to gauge how far you’ve come along. In the Dhammapada, Buddha says that the mind is like a fish out of water, eager to thrash about and hard to make still. But after a while, time seems to suspend. All that is left is the cool night, the undulating chorus of crickets, and heavenly communion. The words were floating in the clouds, and we were not here nor there, but full of light. Perhaps around 600, the skies decided to reach down to us, as we had reached up to them. Just as we stepped from the porch into the open darkness of the night, the heavens themselves opened. We became drenched in the cool rain, our hair dripping and our hands raised up to receive each drop kissing our palms. What love! What abandon! What reunion!

Breaking our chains, the chains of attachment to our material form and existence, to our personal opinions and conceptions of our limitations, we taste the abandonment of enraptured love. Love is that force which pulls all things to the earth, which holds firmly the planets around the sun and the electrons around the atom’s nucleus. It is that mysterious magnetism, that gravity that binds one soul simultaneously to another and to the source of creation. As the reeds of a basket, we are woven together in bonds of love and are put to good use in the service to humanity. What else but love can motivate one to wake up at 5:30 to bathe and dress the 3 year old daughter of an ill neighboring mother, to ready her for school? What but love can provide the energy and sustenance to allow you to continue on a path that you know is right, but you’ve not yet seen fruit or confirmation? In the words of the most recent message of the Universal House of Justice for Ridvan 2010, “…is it not love for God which burns away all veils of estrangement and division and binds hearts together in perfect unity? Is it not His love that spurs you on in the field of service…?”

There is a story of a drop of rain. It was falling through the clouds and musing about itself, proudly saying, “I am the water of life! Look at me! I am what causes all things to grow and flourish.” But as it passed through the bottom-most clouds, it saw the vast and expansive Ocean. At this sight, it was humbled. “If this exists,” it asked, “then what am I?” As it said this, the Ocean loved it, and welcomed it into its depths. The drop became part of the Ocean.

Both the ocean and the rain are near ubiquitous here this time of year, as the Atlantic is viewable from nearly every point of the Carib Territory and the hot days are punctuated by cool floods of rain. Like the rain drops, we each possess those elements from which life is made, those divine attributes that have been instilled within us. Yet, what are we when we are not bound with that mighty Ocean? With all of the enthusiasm of our hearts, let us strive to attain the paradise of the divine presence! Let us break our chains asunder, and taste the abandonment of enraptured love! That love, that sweet divine love, is the single force of integration in this world.

Let us put aside all thoughts of self; let us close our eyes to all on earth, let us neither make known our sufferings nor complain of our wrongs. Rather let us become oblivious of our own selves, and drinking down the wine of heavenly grace, let us cry out our joy, and lose ourselves in the beauty of the All-Glorious.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p 236)

***Check out Caity’s pictures from her trip to Dominica: Click Here