Hays Travelogue

This is Mariam all decked out for Mismatch Day. The 7th grade won the “Pound Wars,” a competition between the 6, 7, and 8th grades. The whole middle school raised 14000 LE, about 2500 USD, but the 7th grade raised the most. Their reward was a series of dress-down days, each one goofier than the last. The money is designated for playground equipment for an orphanage the school supports.

Tomorrow, May 4, is Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday. The opposition parties have called for a general strike to protest rising prices. In April, the military quelled a strike. On Thursday, the government promised a 30% raise to employees. Here are some articles about the problems here.

New York Times, January 17

Der Spiegel, April 18

Washington Post, April 21

BBC, April 22

ADN Kronos, May 3

Tomorrow, the Monday after Coptic Easter, is Shamm al-Nisim (Smelling the Breeze), an ancient spring festival that is still celebrated in Egypt. It’s a national holiday that everyone will spend picnicking in the parks and gardens. The traditional foods associated with Shamm al-Nisim are fisikh (salted raw fish), green onions, boiled eggs dyed with onion peel, lettuce, malana (baby chickpeas), and fuul hirati (green field beans). Lest you think that these foods are what drives everyone out of the house and that maybe you don’t want to smell that breeze, here is the symbolism associated with them.

Green onions ward off evil spirits and the evil eye and cure diseases. Fisikh symbolizes preservation from hunger. Eggs mean new life, and colored eggs mean that the life to come will be happy and cheerful. Lettuce, chickpeas, and beans represent fertility. The beans are also considered to be an aid to digestion.

Wherever you are tomorrow, enjoy the breeze.

My friend’s daughter, Lisa Gill, is a talented poet. Lisa was a big help to me when I began to read and write for a wider audience than the tiny one of two friends who sat on my front porch 30 years ago. Here is a video of Lisa reading at UNM for National Poetry Month.

My contribution in the latest issue of Sin Fronteras.

Last weekend, Mike and I scouted out a couple of field trip possibilities for my 7th graders. We also did some souvenir shopping. While we waited for the cartouches  -Debi, Jesi, Jesi, Magi, Sadi, Ali- to be made, we had lunch at this tea shop.

Some of you have noticed the link in the sidebar to Laughing Dove Poems. This is a static page on my blog with no archive and no comment. I’m using it as a place to air out some poems I have written this year while I decide what to do with them. It’s amazing what hanging a poem out in public does for my editing skills. So each week, a different poem has been aired out on the page. Mom suggested keeping all of them available, so I’ve put an archive on another blog, Laughing Dove Archive. You can link to it from the bottom of the Laughing Dove page.

If this is the Pic of the Week, well, it wasn’t much of a week. This is the view from our bedroom with its nice French doors and shutters. We have a narrow balcony, too narrow to sit on, but the clotheslines are here. From this angle, the view is of the apartment building catty-corner from us. That is the best view. The other view, directly next door, looks straight into the neighbors’ balconies and rooms. There is no privacy for any of us, and it is pretty uncomfortable.

Mr. Abu Bakr, our guide in Siwa, is a tall man in his mid to late 40s. In addition to being a guide, he is a member of the Siwa Town Council and curator at The House of Siwa Museum. He is an avid reader and reads any books he can get. His list includes Unamuno, Cela, Dostoyevsky, Alex Haley. Each October 5000 men and children attend a three-day event that is aimed at restoring relations that might have gone amiss during the previous year and preserving peace in the village. We were sitting with Mr. Abu Bakr on a concrete bench on Gebel Dakrur overlooking the campground where the Reconciliation Festival takes place when he told the following story.

“It was an American movie that changed my life. I was a very good student in school, number one in my class, and I was sent to university at Matrouh. This was my first taste of freedom. At this time, there was no paved road between Siwa and Matrouh, so I would not go home for 9 months at a time, only in the summers.  For the first time in my life, I was not an A student. I spent my time playing soccer and watching movies with my friends.

“One night, we watched a movie about people who were trying to cross the border between the United States and Mexico. They wanted a better life, and it looked like a fine adventure. Of course, there were some hard things that happened to them, but it gave me an idea. I wanted to have this adventure, and I came up with a plan to cross the border into Libya to work for the summer. At this time, Libya was wealthy and Egypt was poor. There was more work in Libya. If I came back to Siwa for the summer, I could only work in the garden.

“I convinced one of my friends to go with me. Our plan was to hire a car to drive us to the border, and when we reached the border, we would jump out of the car into Libya. As we approached the border, Egyptian soldiers fired at us, but we used the car as a shield, jumped out and ran into Libya straight into the guns of Libyan soldiers. “I am a Siwa boy!” I said. People from Siwa have a reputation for being honest and hard-working, so the soldiers took us to a nearby town where we both found jobs for the summer.

“Meanwhile, my father heard about what I had done. When I came to Siwa at the end of the summer, he was very angry and threatened to beat me. Here, fathers beat their children by flogging them across the soles of their feet. I asked my grandmother to intercede. My father would have to abide by her wishes, and so I did not receive a beating.

“However, he did not allow me to return to the university. Instead, he insisted that I join the army where I was sent to serve three years on the Egypt-Libya border, exactly where I had crossed the border that summer. So you see, I never finished the university. My life might have been different, but I am happy here. I enjoy working with tourists and explaining our culture and traditions to them. I learn many languages this way. I read and I try to improve my mind, and I work as a volunteer with the Reconciliation Festival.”