Living in Egypt

An Arab Citizen Speaks On Gaining Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:08:00 +0000

Ten years ago I began writing this blog in response to all the questions friends abroad (meaning outside Egypt, for me) kept writing to me wondering how I could live in this terrible country that they were seeing portrayed in the media, a country of hate-filled terrorists and violent people. Obviously, to me at least, there was something seriously wrong with the information available to the world if this was what my friends were seeing. I searched the internet for information that wasn't just dry facts and figures, something to show that Egyptians were, in essence, just like everyone else in the world, people with hopes, dreams, fears, problems, and solutions. I didn't really find much so in an act of utter hubris I began writing this myself.

In 2003, I was a recent widow, the lost wife of one of Egypt's more important (albeit by family plan lesser known) business figures, who was coping with a monstrous job of sorting out my late husband's estate and businesses that were in a pretty godawful state partly through the monumental incompetence of Egyptian banking and partly through his amazing ability to surround himself with people he considered friends who were, in fact, anything but. Mubarak was in power still and we were quite used to the fact that our phones were, and always had been, tapped. As a non-citizen, I was very careful not to discuss politics. In the first place, I felt that this was not my place and that the young bloggers who were appearing rapidly could do a much better job than I could. And more importantly, talking about Egypt's political problems, which were many, was not my goal. Letting the outside world see that Egyptians were "just folks like us" was my goal. So my blog was very much a special niche.

As time has gone on and changes have happened in Egypt, I have become more political just as virtually every other person in Egypt has. I'm less likely to hide my political feelings these days, but I must admit to a lethargy when it comes to posting to my blog. So much is happening here now, that many times I simply feel overwhelmed and I'm trying to find a way to deal with this as far as my blog goes. One of the things that I want to do with my blog is to take the opportunity to let my readers meet some of the wonderful young people who are doing much to try to create a new Egypt, and to this end I will occasionally present links to their blogs. I heartily recommend that you take the time to read these posts.

Bassem Sabry is one of my favourite bloggers/journalists in Egypt. His writing on the political scene here is excellent, but the post that I want to share is more personal. Last fall he turned 30 and wrote a meditative post on what it felt like to pass this milestone and what he'd felt he'd learned in his life so far.

A few of the thoughts from his post:

"I have learned that every human being must think well before taking a decision, but that too much thinking could paralyse a human being as well, and that it is at times wiser to leap into the waters and attempt - in a magnitude of panic - to learn how to swim."

"I realised that it is not the right of any human being to exercise control over a fellow human being except in what prevents the harm of others, and that we are much stronger than the conditions we find ourselves in - more than I had imagined. I realised that no one has the right to silence someone, or control what he reads and knows, for he is nothing but another human being like he is, and he is no way better than another to control him had the roles been reversed."

copyright 2013 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Not A Lynch Mob

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:39:00 +0000

A recent report of rural justice has seized the imaginations of news organisations all over the world, most of whom are carrying on about "vigilantes in Egypt" and lynch mobs. This is rubbish to be quite short about it, and I really wish that people who write articles about us would bother to find out something about the situation as it really is.

The hard fact of the matter is that the "rural" areas of Egypt are full of so-called "villages" of anywhere from 5 to 100 thousand or more inhabitants and these "villages" have no legal municipal governments, no local authorities, no services from the central government...basically little or no support from the central government, who generally knows about as much about them as do the idiotic writers of these ill-informed articles. Most urban Egyptians harbour a secret fear of the rural Egyptians and are hesitant to venture out into the wilds of the countryside. As I have found living in this amazingly misunderstood environment, the facts of life out here are simply different from city life but no less civilised...in fact, I believe they are in many respects more so.

The incident in Samanod, a "village" in the Delta about 90 km north of Cairo that has so captured the imagination of the world press and led (naturally) to a vivid portrayal of Egypt as collapsing into gang warfare and vigilantes was that a couple of men were preying on tuktuk (motorised rickshaws) drivers, stealing the tuktuks, abducting school girls and so on. These men from a neighbouring village (as is generally the case since one doesn't foul one's own nest) were captured by the villagers where the actions were taking place, were beaten severely and then hung by their feet. They subsequently died from the beatings.

To speak from my own experience, when a thief is caught in one of the villages here it is in fact customary to hang him by his feet at his front door to allow his neighbours to witness his shame and identification as a thief. If a beating accompanies this punishment, it is rarely sufficient even to cause a doctor's attention. The punishment is the public shaming and it tends to be quite efficient, especially as it alerts everyone to who the thieves among them is. I haven't heard of women being punished in this fashion. In the city, if a theft occurs the victim is lucky to get a response of any kind from the police (who aren't even present in the first place in rural areas) and if the thief is caught and can't buy his way out of trouble, he will likely be beaten, spend some time in jail awaiting trial, and if found guilty spend more time in jail afterwards. Egyptian jails being what they are, I would think that an hour or so spent hanging upside down being embarrassed in front of one's neighbours is the far more attractive option.

My area is between the edge of Giza at Nazlit Semman, that unsavoury neighbourhood next to the Sphinx, and the next so-called "village" of Abu Sir that houses roughly 40 thousand souls. Our local authority is a highly respected older man who is one of my neighbours, a gentleman in his 60's with white hair and bright blue eyes, who in a Harris tweed could pass for an Irish farmer. Haj Abdou is quite a character. When I had an issue with a housekeeper who decided to liberate some money from me, I consulted with him and he called a meeting with me, the housekeeper and her mother which resulted in the prompt return of my funds. 1000% better service than any of the urban police and no one was beaten or hung upside down. Shortly after the revolution a gang from Abu Sir was stealing electronics from shops on Pyramids Road in Giza, sending in one member to case the place, another to steal a jeep from somewhere and they would hit the store at night loading the jeep with their goodies and heading back to Abu Sir through the desert from the area at the end of the Moneeb. One night the army was moving tanks through the desert so they dodged out onto the asphalt road just north of us only to be stopped by one of the security patrols watching traffic by a campfire at night, as was the custom during those confusing days. As they were unknown and unwilling to identify themselves or their reason for being in the area, the car was searched, the loot discovered and they spent the day tied up next to the wall of the omda's home next to their stolen jeep waiting for someone from the army to come to pick them up. Compared to the treatment of my saddlemaker who found himself in a military prison for asking for a death certificate for his brother than included the gunshot wound (courtesy of the military/CSF) that he actually died of rather than the accidental death listed, this was a pretty good deal.

Last night a visitor and I were driving home from a neighbour's place after dinner about 9 pm and I noticed that the areas of the roads that were not immediately lit and inhabited were completely empty. This was not the case a few years ago. Rural settlements are in small clumps in many parts and the people are used to visiting after dark, since they are working in fields during the day, but not any more. They will walk to the homes of friends or family or use a tuktuk if the distance is very far. My staff tell me of gangs who are abducting women from tuktuks (the usual mode of transport in the countryside being cheap and plentiful), of tuktuk drivers being beaten or murdered for possession of their vehicle (current value new about LE 20 thou), and other problems in the darkened isolated areas away from the main villages. Many don't venture out after dark at all and they all resent this enormously. When I announced that I was going out to my neighbours for a 6 pm dinner to arrive home about 9 pm, they wanted me to bring my Great Dane to protect me on the road. Since the neighbours are cat people and Mindy isn't the best with cats, I pointed out that it wasn't a great idea and that it wasn't so far, but they were not pleased.

While in an optimal world incidents such as that in Samanod wouldn't happen at all, the fact that the villagers took their justice themselves isn't that remarkable. The fact that they would have to is sad...but that has been the way in rural Egypt for millenia. Most issues are decided by the elders and omdas, and the solutions are generally just registered with the police for public record. Perhaps when the rural areas of Egypt are really considered part of the country and not a foreign environment things will change a bit.

copyright 2013 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Don't Mess With Egyptian Women!

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 07:06:00 +0000

I have time for a quick Christmas present from the women of Abu Sir to the rest of us before I scamper to get my Christmas lunch organised. Yesterday I was out for a ride with a friend and stopped by one of my neighbour farms just to say hello and chat briefly. He had a story that almost had me falling off my horse in laughter. The women of my area have my deep and abiding respect. They care for farms, families and homes in pretty tough conditions but never fail to have a smile, a greeting and to lend a hand to others. They are the steel of their families. While this is a very traditional part of the country and one of strong religious conviction, these women are also very accepting and friendly and have always been a source of laughter and joy for me, a very nontraditional aging Canadian. I've been hearing from many of my neighbours that they are very unhappy with the mismanagement from the Muslim Brotherhood and the meddling ways of the Salafis for some time. One neighbour told me how when buses came to shuttle protesters into Heliopolis for the demonstration at the presidential palace that turned so bloody a couple of weeks ago, quite a few of the mothers around me informed their sons that if anyone wanted to take the bus into town, they were welcome to do so but not to bother to come back.

So apparently a group of Takfir wal Higra moved into our area to help our local population behave in a more "proper" manner. They were seen walking along the roads in their short galabeyas and had taken a mosque for preaching and an office in Abu Sir for organising. A week or so ago, eight of the men went into the main souq of Abu Sir and as they were entering noticed one woman sitting by her produce with a little bit of leg showing from her galabeya. Very rudely kicking at her leg, they told her to cover up and be decent. This was a monumental mistake. As it happened, this woman was the head woman for the souq and a member of a very populous clan in the area that number in the thousands. She and the other women in the market attacked the eight men and beat them so severely that they had to go to the hospital. When the men tried to file a report with the police about the attack, the police refused to take the report, saying that they weren't going against these women as well...were the men crazy? So now the youth of Abu Sir are using the office as a tea room and the mosque is no longer being used for their fundamentalist sermons and no one has seen the Takfir group for some time.

If anyone is wondering who to support to get rid of Islamists in Egypt, here is your answer. The women of Egypt are some of the strongest women I've ever seen.

Shaken Not Stirred

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 13:53:00 +0000

What's it like living in a country that is still in the middle of a revolution? It's actually a lot like living in a lot of countries these days, just a bit more dramatic. Almost everywhere I look I see change occurring at a phenomenal rate, partly brought along by the changes in communication that this blog exemplifies. When I began blogging in 2003, people were much more reliant on the main stream media for information about events whether at home or abroad. In the almost ten years since then, events have taken on an immediacy never anticipated through media such as Twitter, Facebook and Storify. Where once I felt I was happy to be able to go online to read commentary on events from a wide-ranging collection of news sources via the internet, now I go online and check the comment on Twitter from their correspondents in our ever-boiling part of the world to see what happened overnight before it even appears in the media. One of the results of this increase in media availability has been an increased sense in the instability of our world. I'm not sure how more unstable it is, but I am sure that we are more aware of it. I also am very aware of the fact that I am one small cog in this huge global information machine.

When the Egyptian revolution started in January 2011, my children in the US contacted me to see if I wanted to go visit them for the duration...but they weren't terribly surprised to hear that it wasn't in my plans. I chose the location of my farm with care, knowing my neighbours and the social structure into which I wanted to fit. It is probably as safe for an older woman who lives alone with an unholy amount of dogs as anywhere can be. Once they'd assured themselves that I was still the stubborn old lady that they knew and loved, they did lay down some ground rules. With the outcome of the revolution very much in the air, I was NOT to post anything at all on my blogs. The few times I did, I was the recipient of immediate angry feedback from my offspring. But it's really hard for someone who naturally resorts to writing not to write, especially when the country around her is almost literally boiling. So we came to a compromise. I was allowed to post other people's articles about events in Egypt on my Facebook page which became a defacto news service. Writing by proxy saved my sanity. I've tried to keep a fairly balanced viewpoint about events, although clearly my feelings could not be denied. Over the past couple of years, my Facebook page has become less a personal account of my activities and more a forum for my friends all over the world to read news, blogs, and snippets from Twitter and to comment on or argue over them among themselves. I've likened it to the old fashioned literary salons of the 19th century at times. I love watching the discussions although often I don't take part in them if a couple of people are really into a topic. When life gets REALLY interesting in our neighbourhood, like it is now, I find that I really have to make the time to sit and write my own words because there is so much out there that others are saying. So far worries about retribution for what ideas we are putting out on the internet are relatively small, since to worry about a little old lady on a farm in Giza who never shows up on TV or at a protest would appear to be a waste of time when half of Egypt is online complaining about one thing or another.

So, what is Egypt like in the middle of a revolution? Because that is where we are, in the middle, in a process that no one knows the ending of. I think everyone in Egypt has been anxious in the past few weeks with many people going down to Tahrir and gathering in other squares in other cities to protest the actions of our fairly recently elected president and with the knowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood and the supporters of said president were planning to have their own protest in support of the president. One of the main, not always unspoken, fears was that somehow the two groups would simply explode if put in contact, like a match to a stick of dynamite. A while back the Ikhwan bussed in supporters from outside of Cairo to come to Cairo University to support Morsi as he prepared to announce the acceptance of a draft constitution for a public referendum. The fact that the committee drafting the constitution did not contain any constitutional experts in any general sense was extremely worrying to many people. After all, a constitution of a nation isn't exactly a set of rules for a children's backyard club. It is supposed to protect the rights of all the members of the nation and with limited representation by minority groups and women, there has been an enormous amount of concern with what the output would be. On Thursday an Arabic version of the draft was released, which has been the topic of enormous amounts of discussion. I've printed up copies of it for my staff to read and think about. An English translation of it was published by Egypt Independent which I have been reading as well. Late in the evening yesterday, Morsi announced that this would be either approved or disapproved in a referendum on December 15, giving voters only two weeks to consider the issues. I'm not sure that more time would necessarily lead to more clarity of thought on the subject, but it's fairly sure that only having two weeks to find, read, and discuss the draft does make it harder for people to object to it. Most referendums in Egypt have ended in a "yes" vote out of inertia. And in the end, this referendum was no different.

Does this signal the end of the process? By no means, and not the least of the reasons is Morsi himself. He's put people who even many Muslims and revolutionary types can't approve of on the Shura Council (the upper house of parliament) like generals and members of the Islamic Jihad. There is such a thing as appropriate, really Dr. Morsi. Virtually everything he has done, while he may have words to say that it has been expedient or for the good of the country, simply screams authoritarian Islam. And this is wildly offensive to Egyptians of all varieties who were thrilled to get rid of Mubarak. We are nowhere near the end of the tunnel and no one is sure what those dancing lights are. They could be Salafi cigarettes (soon to be taxed at much higher rates!), the steam engine of economic collapse, fireflies, fairies, or, heaven forbid, the end of the tunnel. My personal bet at this time is not the last, but the fairies or fireflies sound good to me.

So am I packing up for what might be the stability of the US or Canada? Not at all. First, I'm not all that sure of the stability of either state, to be honest. Both are awash in political and religious conservatism themselves, albeit both Canada and the US are so much larger than Egypt physically that the effect is diluted, and both are facing serious domestic political issues. Gun control in the US is vital, although many people are extremely vocal against it. My personal cynical view of the gun issue is that given the US is the world's largest manufacturer and seller of weapons and ammunition, the gun enthusiasm has been created in the same way that other consumer appetites have been and that no one is going to try to control the selling of guns for fear of damaging an important part of the economy, just like all the calls for cutting back on the "aid" for Egypt is going to lead to nothing because that "aid" is actually a government subsidy for the arms industry in the US and the money goes directly to the companies producing weapons and ammunition and to those servicing such weapons. What happens to them later is irrelevant to the US government or those industries, but the sooner they are used or blown up the better because that simply creates a new demand.

Canada, aside from the environmentally wasteful behaviour of the current government, is facing a deeper and perhaps more dangerous domestic issue that could easily splash over the border to the south. Both countries were created by wave after wave of immigrants primarily from Europe over the past three hundred years or so...a brief second compared to the history of Egypt. These immigrants, having now the positions of power in a land that they essentially invaded and confiscated (no wonder that both their governments are fairly staunch supporters of Israel, the most modern European colonial power) are crying now about how new waves of immigration are threatening their life style. Oddly enough, the indigenous peoples of North America, who for the most part live in poverty and on marginal properties to which they were pushed by the immigrants of their times, are getting rather fed up. A movement that started in Canada with a tribal chief Therese Spence, who is on a hunger strike for assistance for her people, Idle No More, is gaining support from other indigenous people's groups worldwide. At some point, the urge for justice that seems so keen in many semi-European countries in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Africa is going to have to thrust itself inwards to examine the morality of how those countries came to be in the first place. This is going to be intensely painful for many people. On the other hand, they could try to ignore it like they have in the past, but with the character of communication in our societies these days, that simply isn't so easy.

All things considered, I'll stick with my Egyptian revolution which for the most part is relatively straightforward even if we haven't the foggiest where the path is taking us tomorrow. I see shudders of change running through countries all over the globe and I don't think that anywhere is going to be immune. All the patterns I see forming are indicating that with information becoming so much more readily available and so much more easily placed in the public eye, many profound changes in human society will be seen in the relatively near future. My analysis is, of course, done very much by eyeballing events and getting a vague sense of movement. There is nothing scientific about it and I'm sure that some of the things I suspect will happen will not come to pass, but of this I am sure: Change is inevitable and will be faster than expected. It will likely make many people unhappy.

copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Little Red Hen Moves To Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 19:35:00 +0000

I have about ten people working for me on my farm, helping to care for the animals, working in the gardens and basically providing a lot of support for me. They've all worked for me for some time...like before the revolution. After the revolution our busy schedules of school visits, equestrian tourism and so on pretty much died. A lot of stables around me unloaded their horse and cut staff right away, but I couldn't do that to families that I was supporting or to the horses that I'd rescued. So we tightened belts and looked for ways to economise. One way was to turn the land between the horse paddocks and the garden into vegetable gardens for the use of all the staff and their families. The deal is that everyone chips in on the work and everyone benefits. So the other day after lunch I took a look at the beds and announced to the grooms and gardeners that everyone needed to put in some weeding time. Not all of them were thrilled so I told them a story, one I'd heard as a child, The Little Red Hen.

My Arabic is functional, not perfect by any means, so the story was somewhat simplified for them. For anyone who doesn't know this story, it is a staple for North American children in their pre-school years. Briefly, a red hen is walking around one day when she finds some wheat on the road. She gathers up the grain and decides to use it to grow more wheat so that she can bake some bread. At various points in the process (planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, milling, and baking) she asks various animal friends (cow, donkey, duck, dog, cat, rooster) to assist her, but each one has a sort of excuse as to why they can't help her....until, of course, the bread was baked and everyone wanted some, but the little red hen tells them that since they were too busy to help, they must be too busy to eat.

The guys all listened politely to the end and then at the end, one of them began to laugh and said, "See? She fooled them!" Another slightly more socially adept groom suggested that it was something else. I laughed and said that yes, if they wanted to eat the bread (or in our case, the vegetables) they needed to be there for the work and announced that I was the red hen. All very simple, you'd think, but the young man who took the story as the hen taking advantage of and then laughing at her neighbours then spent hours trying to figure out who among them was the donkey, the cat, the duck and so on.

Sometimes stories don't travel all that well.

copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Mogamma Game in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 22:31:00 +0000

I went downtown today. I went to the Ministry of Justice on Lazoughly Square to get a paper stamped for a friend. There I was told that I had to take the paper to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When I pointed out that I'd been sent to the Ministry of Justice by the people at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they told me that I had to go to the BIG Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the one on the Corniche next to Maspero. Terrific.

Mohamed drove me over there as we passed through the area of downtown Cairo that has been "in flames", "melting down" and "filled with rioters". Other than the usual Cairo traffic, the trip took no time at all as there were no road blocks, no protesters, no fire bombs, not even very many police. It only took half an hour to find the door. Egypt's foggy bottom tends to be really foggy even in broad daylight and just happens to be across the road from what has to be the world's largest used clothing market.

I found my way in and told them that the people at the Ahmed Orabi Department of Foreign Affairs had sent me to the Department of Justice who had sent me to this Department of Foreign Affairs. "Why?" they asked. "I haven't the slightest idea, but I need this paper stamped." I replied. They looked at the paper and told me that it was dated 1988 and was a marriage contract. I agreed and pointed out that it was stamped by the Consulate in New York. They told me that it should have been stamped by Foreign Affairs and/or the Justice Department over twenty years ago. I pointed out that as the groom on the paper had been dead for about a year and the bride was living in the US, there wasn't much they could do about that, but I was trying to get the inheritance papers sorted out for my friend and that if they woulf be so kind as to help me, I would really appreciate it. A small whispered consultation took place and I was suddenly given a numbered tag and marched over to a tent where apparently the one man in all of Egypt who could sign this paper and stamp it for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in lieu of the Department of Justice was working. This very kind and polite elderly gentleman did so and then directed me to a third Department of Foreign Affairs.

According to the guys at the big Department of Foreign Affairs, this third office was “just behind the Semiramis Hotel near the US embassy”. Wonderful. This was exactly where I had promised my two currently long-distance kids not to go after the excitement of the past few days. Back into the car, a trip through the madness that is Cairo’s roadways near the Ramses Hilton (a place that I absolutely refuse to drive myself) and we found our way to the back of the Semiramis Hotel. Mohamed had to drop me and leave because there were no parking places and no way the police around there were going to allow him to wait around. Once I asked for the building with this office, I was pointed to a spot about two or three blocks south. “Behind” is a very relative term in Egypt. If you are in our foggy bottom looking south, then the other Foreign Affairs IS behind the Semiramis, but it is also behind the Shepheard’s Hotel and behind a couple of other buildings as well. To my untutored mind, I naturally assumed that “behind” required “in front of” being facing the Nile, but obviously to them it meant “in front of” being facing them. Interesting world view.

As I made my way to the hopefully last office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the shortest route was blocked by a four meter wall of enormous concrete blocks recently placed across the road to block protesters from the US embassy, so I had to walk around the Shepheard’s to the Corniche along the Nile, turn left away from the Nile and then zigzag around roads blocked with razor wire and very bored Central Security Forces. A couple of friendly secret police not so secretly gave me directions to the entrance of the ministry, which was guarded by even more bored CSF personnel. The brass plate told me that the office was on the fifth floor but someone obligingly pointed out that it was actually on the first. Naturally. This is an odd office that seems to work only with embassies, which would explain why it was practically next door to the US and British embassies, among others. Again I had to go through the entire sequence of events, was told quite brusquely by a very nasty little man to go sit down outside and dismissed. This wasn’t looking good, especially when the same nasty little man came out and shouted at a couple of the people who were waiting outside for whatever they were waiting for….but, miracle of miracles, after twenty minutes I finally received my properly stamped paper so that the lawyer can work on the statement of heirs for my friends.

Years ago, people used to joke about the Mogamma Game, a sort of sadistic snakes and ladders that would be experienced by people trying to do paperwork in the Mogamma, things like visa renewals. At the time, I had a very conscientious husband who made sure that the most I ever had to do was to show up at the appropriate time and sign something. Since his death I’ve learned how to do things the hard way, like everyone else in Egypt, and luckily most of the time I can keep a sense of humour about it. So I wandered all over melted down Cairo today and except for the fact that a lot of pavement was being held down by snoozy CSF personnel and I had to walk over four blocks out of my way because of yet another unnecessary wall (wish I had the commission on that franchise with all the walls built over the past year). But the good news is that Cairo is alive and the system of bureaucratic torture is very well indeed.

Motoring...Circumnavigation of The Aviary

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 20:06:00 +0000

Learning to walk is an interesting process. The Kid has figured out how to stand up and move around the house and garden while holding on to something. He's delighted to stagger around holding on someone's hand, but hands are not always free to hold small people. They are sometimes busy cleaning houses, preparing meals, or even writing for the net. I'm sure that there are all sorts of fancy high tech toys and things available in Toys 'R Us, but here in the villages most of the toys are homemade. While I was in the US, someone brought an odd wooden sort of tricycle thing to the farm. There is a handle over the two wheels and a third wheel that sticks out in front. I wasn't sure how it worked until recently when The Kid's motor abilities had improved to the extent that he could begin to use it properly. He learned to haul himself up to hold the handle and propel his little machine around the patio. On concrete, it can go pretty fast, but in the garden it slows down.

The grass provides a fair bit of resistance to the wheels which makes using the vehicle (I honestly don't know what to call it) somewhat safer. There are certain problems at this stage, however, steering being the most important one. The Kid hasn't figured out yet how to adjust his direction. Once he's aimed in a direction, he simply continues in a straight line until he comes to a stop and he did when he wedged himself between a palm garden chair and a flower bed. Somehow he had to move the direction to his left and this was a bit too difficult. Right after I took the photo, he asked for help by holding out his hand and guiding my hand to the handle of the push vehicle.

Once we sorted out the steering issue, he continued on his merry way accompanied by one of his faithful companion, Rocky. He ran into a new problem here...sand. Sand provides even more resistance and his tiny legs were really working hard to get the wooden wheels of the vehicle through the fairly deep sand.

But sand doesn't just cause resistance. It is also unevenly resistant and makes a wooden tricycle tip over...albeit very slowly. Rocky watched as The Kid gradually tipped over on his side.

But a tricycle on its side is still a fascinating piece of equipment. The small wheels under the handle spin wonderfully when stroked by a small hand. The hole where it is attached by a nail is just slightly larger than the nail to provide the right amount of spin

Tipped back on the handle, the single wheel that is usually in front can be spun as well, providing a few minutes of intriguing play under Mindy's watchful eye.

But spinning one's wheels gets pretty old pretty fast and it's time again to tip the vehicle over onto the wheels and continue circumnavigating the aviary. The new obstacle was a recently planted area of lawn that is still in clumps as it spreads in front of the aviary. This was a tiring portion of the exploration. The wheels would catch on a clump of grass and then sink into the neighbouring patch of sand.

Having struggled through the newly planted sod, The Kid found himself on some nice smooth grass and headed for the patio in front of the house. Notice his guardian still standing watch. I had to help keep him from knocking over my flower pots full of seedlings.

The patio was a piece of cake and I could hear his chuckles as he motored for the front door. Our ranking baladi dog, Ganja, oversaw this portion of his trip.

He managed to wake up Groucho, one of the older terriers as he blew through the living room on a clear vector for the door to the summer garden near where we'd started this journey...but this portion of his trip was fraught with danger. Immediately in front of him were three steps and going down them could be quite painful. I pointed out the advisability of using the ramp just to the right of the stairs that had been installed for some of our creakier elderly dogs and people.

I couldn't take a picture of him going down the ramp because I was too busy holding the vehicle back to a toddler speed as he descended followed by Demon, another terrier.

Back in the garden it was deep sand again to head back to the front patio and the nice flat patio. This portion of his trip took the longest and it was a very tired little boy who pushed his wooden tricycle up to the front of the house and asked to be picked up. He laid his head on my shoulder and just rested waiting for his mother to finish dressing to take him home. Someone is definitely sleeping well tonight.

Recognising Catastrophe

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:06:00 +0000

These days the news from Egypt is pretty depressing for just about everyone. Voters are expected to choose soon between two candidates who are not the first choices of most of the voters, and who are fairly diametrically opposed. There is Dr. Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who terrifies all the voters who worry about Egypt turning into another Iran, while opposing him is Hosny Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, who claims that everything will be different if he is elected president, but most people sort of doubt that. Faced with two miserable choices, everyone is seeing disaster everywhere they look.

Some of us make a habit of seeing disaster in everything and I'm one of those people, oddly enough. "Catastrophizing" is a psychological term for the act of seeing the worst case scenario in every situation, and when I was a grad student it was something that I would be reprimanded for by my clinician friends as being maladaptive. I had no idea it had a name because it was just how I dealt with things. I've catastrophized all my life. As a child I would lie awake at night and wonder how I would manage if I were to wake up in the morning and not find my parents there to care for me. Whenever I attempted something new, applying to university for example, I would spend hours imagining that I would not be accepted and think of what it would mean to my life, how would I manage to make a living, and so on. Of course, I did get accepted, but life was always coming up with new challenges to give me something to worry about.

It was when I was in grad school that one of my friends called me on my habit, gave it a name, and told me that it was a really bad thing to do. To be quite honest, I wasn't really convinced. I'd been looking at worst case scenarios all my life and a habit like that is hard to change. But when I looked up the pattern, I noticed that catastrophizing was something that was supposed to lead to a sense of inability, worthlessness and so on. But in my experience my assumption of catastrophe in every situation had led me to explore all the possibilities of what could go wrong and as many of the possible solutions as I might be able to imagine. Rather than paralyzing me, it pushed me to explore the possible futures that I might face and to try to figure out how I would deal with them.

When I was only about twelve I read about the epidemics that swept through Europe decimating the population in the Middle Ages. I became fascinated with the Black Death, probably to a certain level of concern from my parents. But I learned about the causes, the cures, the effects on the political systems and economies of Europe along the way. When we decided to move to Egypt, I took an entire series of first aid and CPR courses from St. John's Ambulance in Toronto and threw myself (quite literally) into a Bronze level lifesaving course at the neighbourhood pool. I had an idea from my travels here about the general level of first aid in Egypt in the late 80's (like nonexistent) and was going to be prepared for the worst case scenario, which in this case was needing this knowledge. And I did need it. A month after we moved here, with my training I was able to recognise and deal with my husband's heart attack. We got him to a cardiologist and into ICU immediately, postponing my widowhood by a good twelve years. I don't want to think about all the times that the first aid training came in handy: broken arms, choking victims, a visiting child who had a crowbar fall on his head from a neighbouring construction site...you name it, it happened at our house. People used to joke that the catastrophes happened around me because I knew how to deal with them and how to get people the care that they needed to survive them.

As I've grown older, my catastrophizing has become a good and faithful friend. When the bird flu broke out and began spreading, I was worried for my African Grey parrots so I learned all I could about the vectors, the signs, the problems...and I learned that parrots don't get it. By examining the catastrophe I realised that it wasn't really a catastrophe, no matter what the press said. I did have to slaughter my chickens when bird flu broke out at a chicken farm near me, but no people got sick at all and we were well provided with chicken soup for some time. Some research on swine flu also reassured me that I was highly unlikely to perish from that as well. When life turned interesting in Egypt during January 2011, I assured my children that I would be fine where I was, and although events were at times very frightening, albeit more for the people in the center of the city than for us out in the villages, I had no intention of evacuating. Instead I threw myself into finding out as much as possible about what was going on, what possible risks might be, what possible outcomes might be...in other words, what were the worst possible scenarios.

I've continued my preoccupation with trying to prepare for catastrophe for the past year and a half. I have no input into what might happen in Egypt. Due to a wonderfully weird bureaucratic glitch, I don't have my Egyptian citizenship despite having been married to an Egyptian, being mother to two Egyptians, and having lived here for almost 25 years, and I can't even vote. It's pretty frustrating although the thought of having to choose between two totally unwanted alternatives is not terribly appetising. I wish I could really say that I've gained some understanding of what is happening in Egypt right now, of what we can expect, but I can't. I'm watching bemused like everyone else, wondering how on earth we got here. I have my own ideas of what would be the greater catastrophe for Egypt: Morsi for president or Shafik...but even that has variables that I can't predict. I don't know how invested the military is in seeing that Shafik win the election, what they will do to ensure that, how they would respond if Morsi won, or what the reaction would be if Shafik wins and people feel that the elections are a total sham.

There are times when imagining the worst case scenarios just can't really do justice to reality. Do I feel incapacitated, frozen, unable to make decisions or act? Not really. I am frustrated, worried, and do feel that way too much is hanging in the balance. Am I about to take off and leave? No. None of my worst case scenarios include my leaving Egypt. I love my farm, my neighbours, my animals and my life here. I'd say that my absolute worst case scenario involves me not being able to move around Egypt freely and being stuck out here...and as far as I'm concerned that isn't a bad scenario at all.

As I was thinking about all of this, quite serendipitously one of my children's friends posted a link to an excellent New Yorker article on the internet. Entitled Failure And Rescue, this article suggests that life is unpredictable, but that how we face our catastrophes determines how much we succeed. He uses the story of surgery that almost went terribly wrong but ended up in success because people were aware of the possibilities of problems, recognised the signs and were able to deal with them. Sometimes catastrophizing is an adaptive trait.

copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, But Do Watch This Video

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:55:00 +0000

There is a video that I think everyone who has an interest in the Egyptian political scene in either the short run or in the long run should spend an hour and a half to watch. Mahmoud Salem, a blogger also known as Sandmonkey (see his blog at http://www.sandmonkey.org), spoke at the Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Affairs a few days ago. Aside from being an extremely astute and acute observer of our political scene, Mahmoud is a highly entertaining speaker. His description of Am Moussa as "that sandwich that you find in your fridge at 3:30 AM when you are hungry but you can't remember where it came from or what it's made from; but you eat it anyway" is priceless. This is one young man who, in my opinion, is a national treasure and should be watched closely. Please click on the link to see the YouTube video. It's worth every minute. copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Importance of "No"

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:02:00 +0000

The word "No" carries a lot of interesting baggage in Egyptian life. One of the things that I often tell newcomers to Egypt is to remember that in a strange way telling someone "no" or giving unpleasant information is almost considered rude. There are millions of apophrycal tales of asking directions in Egypt that detail how the askers ended up traveling many miles in strange places at the direction of well-meaning people who simply don't want to disappoint the askers by telling them that they have no idea how to get somewhere. We have a custom that I call the Egyptian No, wherein someone simply never quite gives an answer to a request rather than to deny it. An Egyptian No can stretch out for weeks if the person making the request doesn't catch on, but it is a lovely way to avoid a confrontation by simply saying something can't be done. The fascinating corollary of this reluctance to say no is the tendency of most Egyptian males in positions of authority to answer any request or suggestion in the negative the first time that the request or suggestion might be made. One of the pieces of advice given to me by Egyptian women friends was to expect this behaviour from my husband, and to be patient in my maneuvers. Initially, he would tell me that virtually anything would be impossible to do, so I should wait and approach the idea again after a while at which point he would have had time to think about it and would be more likely to be positive in his response. No, it would appear, is the perogative of power in Egypt. After all, in my experience, it has been the first response of any government official. As my late husband used to say, "Egypt is a country where everything is prohibited, and anything is possible." My consideration of "no" in Egypt was partly stimulated by my mother in law's attitude towards childrearing, which was very much at odds with my own, especially during my children's early years when we were often staying with my in laws in Cairo. I was of the opinion that it was never too early to start laying down boundaries and instilling cooperation and obedience in my children with the ideal that as they grew up they would be able to make their decisions independently. This was not the way that most children in Egypt were raised some 25 years ago, and very much the same is true today. First, there is little conversation with children in Egyptian families. I've had supposedly very well educated doctors assure me that there was no point in talking to children because they couldn't understand anything said to them until they were about four years old. As far as I was concerned (as someone who had done graduate work in social and developmental psychology) a four year old child is starting to solidify and is no longer as teachable as an infant. Additionally, by not encouraging speech and conversation, the children are getting a bad start in communication, speech, and literacy...things that will be enormously important later in life. And specifically, children are not told "No, you can't play with the remote control.", "No, you may not have cookies before dinner." or "No, this is an unacceptable type of behaviour.". Instead they are responded to with a noise, a toy, or some other means of distraction...and certainly not with an explanation of why they can't do something or why it might be a bad idea. This provides little basis for later occasions when decisions as to do or not do something might be necessary. What are the fallouts from this kind of upbringing? First, it becomes clear that "No" is the tool of someone in power and when mothers don't use "No" they are obviously not the people in power. This cuts away at the issues of respect for women in general. Another aspect of this upbringing is the fact that chldren never learn that "No" can be a final answer. Friends of mine who are teachers in private schools tell me that both parents and students are almost completely incapable comprehending that "No" actually means something simply isn't going to happen. For them, "No" is a response that may change over time, that can be negotiated, while in real life it may really mean "this simply isn't possible; now think of another solution." Sometimes, the only way to deal with a final "No" is to say that the decider will think about it and let them know later, although both parties know that the answer won't change. Time spent having a year old toddler in my home these days have brought theses issues back to the fore lately. I began telling The Child "No" when he first discovered that it was interesting to pound his tiny hand on the glass doors to my cabinets at about 6 or 7 months of age. He was quite shocked at first, but I generally only have to repeat my "No" once or twice and he gets the idea. These days, like most boys, he is utterly fascinated by anything with buttons such as phones and remotes, but these are off limits to little boys. At first, he would cry when told "No", but my complete disconcern with his distress at being denied an immediate pleasure would quickly make it clear that tactic wasn't going to work. Even his mother finds it rather pleasant to deal with an infant she can talk to. To be totally fair, not hearing the word "No" enough is not strictly an Egyptian trait anymore. I've seen "No"less children from many cultures, societies, and social classes. I'm probably a hopeless curmudgeon but I think that they are all much poorer for the lack. copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Exploring The Nile in The Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:50:00 +0000

I'm no longer young by any means, although I am very active, especially on horseback. My own children are in their late twenties and early thirties now. No grandchildren so far, and perhaps there never will be. I was one of those odd people who really, truly wanted to have children. There were other things that I wanted to do, of course, but many of them were compatible with being a mom. Not everyone feels that way, has a really deep desire to be a mother, and probably it should be a requirement for being a mother, because it is, without any doubt at all, the most difficult of the many jobs I've done in my life so far. But for me, it was, also without any doubt at all, the most rewarding.

My housekeeper never really had a choice about having children, and she has about seven of them to my two. She's barely the age I was when I had my daughter twenty eight years ago and her oldest son is in his twenties. She must have barely been slightly more than a child when he was born. Her youngest is barely a year old now and has been coming to work with her since he was two weeks old. He's now crawling and walking with the help of chairs, walls, and tables. Luckily, he takes a nice nap every afternoon that lets Magda get some work done, but when he's up we all take turns keeping an eye on him. And these days it does take some watching to keep up with him.

Today the gardeners were pumping water from our well to water the garden while we were sitting out in the afternoon sun. One of the larger dogs decided to stand majestically on the grass between the crawling one and me, and when he moved, the crawling one was nowhere to be seen. I immediately rose from my chair to search for him and found him happily sitting in a running stream of water. Since he was already wet and muddy, I decided that the best thing to do under the circumstances was probably just to get my camera.

This young man is a complete treat to watch these days. He's fascinated by just about everything. The running water entranced him and he practiced putting his hand in and out of it, running his fingers through the sand/mud. He found an old piece of bamboo and twisted it around until it broke off in a manageable length.

Then an odd sound caught his attention and I followed his gaze upwards to some wind chimes hanging from the aviary. The wind was causing the bamboo tubes to chime gently. It isn't a sound that one would expect to hear in an Egyptian village.

The musical accompaniment identified, he now turned his attention to the excavation of his stream bed for a while, but our diesel pump had been turned off and it seemed time to do more exploration down stream since the water level upstream was dropping.

When my own children were this age, I was so caught up in trying to care for a husband and my home and my sanity that just enjoying time spent watching them exploring their world was pretty much out of the question. In a sense, Magda's son gives me the pleasures of a grandchild without the responsibilities. His mother is finding joy in a baby who is happy, well-fed, and is developing a real intelligence with the advantage of supervised play and a safe place to explore. I remember examining stones and flowers when I was young enough to find them enormous. Watching an new person discovering the same sorts of things reminds me now in my older years of the wonder of the young.

Looking For Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:01:00 +0000

When I moved to Egypt, in many ways it seemed to be country frozen in time. That changed irrevocably in January 2011, and since then I've seen friends complaining that they feel they've aged about 10 years in a few months. It is really hard to keep track of where Egypt seems to be going and how it's going to get there. I read the news from a million sources religiously and find that most of the mainstream media get a pretty limited view. News seems to come from statements from people and institutions which can tell you what they want you to know, but not necessarily what it means or feels like. So I troll through half a million tweets from activists and journalists looking for somewhat more obscure but well-written articles and blog posts that can fill in the gaps. Twitter is very useful in this respect as it's very interesting to listen in on discussions between journalists covering the same region (most of mine are, quite naturally, based in the Middle East) as they debate the relevance of news items.

We are sliding into our presidential elections at this point. The turnout for the People's Assembly vote was an amazing 70% and the interpretations of the results went on for weeks. Most of the new members of the Assembly were from either the Muslim Brotherhood or from the Salafis, with a reasonable number from the liberal coalition and some other smaller parties. Most people were concerned that this would signal more emphasis on sharia law and conservative tradition...was Egypt going the way of Saudi Arabia? When my staff, grooms and gardeners who all live in the villages near me, told me that they were going to be voting for these three parties, I was surprised to hear that the liberal coalition was in the list. None of them struck me as the Salafi type, although the Brotherhood was no surprise so I asked what the logic there was and the reply surprised me. They weren't voting for religion. They simply wanted to be sure not to vote for any remnants of the old regime and felt that these three parties were the safest. This was borne out by a discussion of the election results that noted that the percentage of candidates elected who could be traced back to the previous regime was tiny, perhaps 3%. So perhaps what Egyptians were voting for was change more than religion...but then again, perhaps it wasn't. I guess we will find out.

As I've found that most of the news coverage of Egypt has concentrated on only a few aspects of life here, I've been keeping my eye out for broader coverage and would like to recommend a few blogs that will help with this. Zeinobia at Egyptian Chronicles writes political posts for the most part with a very personal perspective. Her latest post looked at the football ultras protest that preceded the announcement of the charging of over 70 people in connection with the tragedy at the Port Said football match. The implication is that the protest pushed the army to lay the charges, but given the number of police and security personnel who have been acquitted by the courts and the willingness of the "government" to release people in prison who are willing to pay a portion of their ill-gotten gains, the likelihood of conviction is small. Zeinobia also is blogging about a trip she's taking to upper Egypt and posting videos.

Mahmoud Salem, aka Sandmonkey, has been blogging since 2006 and is one of my favourite bloggers on the Egyptian political scene. He started blogging anonymously due to family connections to the Mubarak regime's party, the NDP, but came out with his own name after January 2011. His posts are some of the best thought out commentary on Egyptian events available. He ran for the People's Assembly but unfortunately didn't make it...hopefully for us he might manage next time, though it might be unfortunate for him.

Maurice Chammah, who writes Adrift On The Nile, is from the US and studying journalism in Egypt on a Fullbright. His perspective on Egypt is different and his posts are as well. A recent one looked at the very local music scene in Port Said. With his slightly foreign perspective (yes, we do notice things that locals take for granted, just as they see nuance that we often miss), his blog fills out part of a complete picture.

Baheyya, an anonymous blogger, has been at work almost as long as I have, since 2005, and I've enjoyed many of her posts enormously. The blog was very quiet for a while, but lately has become more active with a very interesting post on the youngest presidential candidate. The age factor of Egyptian politics and power cannot be underestimated, and I've heard people say that the changes we are going through are as much a matter of generations as ideologies.

The Arabist, which is largely written by Amrani Issandr, a journalist, is a different sort of blog. As a journalist, he works with news stories, presenting Arabic stories in translation to show what is going on in the Arabic press, and often posting the work of other journalists in this area. He doesn't simply look at Egypt but also at the rest of the Middle East.

Global Voices collects blog posts from all over the world and offers them in translation and also often in the native language. They have websites in over a dozen languages and the editors and aggregators are skilled at picking out important posts from the different countries. They should be a frequent stop when anyone is trying to make sense out of the news.

Ahmed Awadalla, who writes Rebel With A Cause, looks at a lot of different issues, most recently the needs of rural women. Even urban Egyptians have little knowledge about life in the villages and they tend to imagine all sorts of odd things.

Lest I totally overwhelm people with a reading list that no one could handle, I will add just one more view point today. Sarah Carr is a mudblood as the post-Potter people call our half Egyptian half Something-Else population. Being the mother of a couple of these and friend to many, many more, I have a special affinity to the interesting, often humorous and sometimes slightly skewed point of view of our less pure Egyptian population. Her posts at Inanities are often extremely funny and always worth a read. If you find her byline on a piece of journalism as well, and you will quite often, it is a cue that this definitely should be read.

When I began blogging about Egypt in 2003, nine years ago now, there really wasn't much out there on the internet to counteract some pretty shoddy reporting in the main stream media. Thankfully, that is no longer the case and Egypt is emerging in the minds of people abroad with a much more rounded personality. We aren't sure where the road we are on is leading us, but we know it won't be backwards to the past. One way or another we move forward to a new definition of one of the world's oldest countries.

The Day of Long Marches

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:16:00 +0000

A thoughtful protester waves a flag exemplifying the hope and worries of us all

I had a lot of reasons to move to Egypt and a lot of reasons to stay here after my husband died. One quite significant reason was the sunshine. I'm one of those solar powered people who do infinitely better when there is bright sunlight, a commodity that is rarely in short supply here. It is mirrored in the smiles of the people of Egypt and just seeps into your soul. But in the days leading up to January 25, sunlight of almost any sort was in short supply. Rainclouds were blowing in from the north coast and temperatures (balmy by Canadian standards)were dipping into fleece jacket levels and people were huddling around space heaters shivering. The internal temperatures were not much better.

Everyone I knew was wondering what lay ahead for Egypt. The parliament was being sworn in, a mass of bearded Islamic mn who were not really reassuring most of my very secular friends. I felt a bit more comfortable having had conversations with my staff out here in the villages about the voting. When I asked them what they were looking for in voting, they told me they would vote for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, and the liberal coalition....what an unlikely menu! My staff are not exactly a bunch of religious fanatics and the addition of the Kotla, the liberal coalition, seemed really intriguing so I asked for the rationale. Oh, it had nothing to do with religion, they told me, but was all about finding people to sit in parliament who were definitely NOT part of the old power machine. But did they worry about strange strict policies that could affect tourism...the base of the living that they make with me. Oh no, they reassured me, and if the new parliament didn't do right by Egypt, now they knew they could get rid of them and find people who would. I suspect that this logic had a lot to do with the election results, but many people who worry about the Islamic State of Egypt are still very concerned.

An Islamic protester who had been chanting against the military

The military did an excellent job of telling everyone that on January 25 the "thugs" (aka, protesters) would run riot throughout Egypt (well, mostly Cairo but as far as they are concerned that is Egypt) so on the 24th there were lines in banks, people stocking up on food supplies, worries about ATM's not functioning...general panic mode in many neighbourhoods. I'd arranged things so that I had no pressing engagements, and I'd promised the offspring as usual to stay at the farm like a good mom. My knees aren't so good for a lot of walking and, should anything get weird, my staff and animals really need me here. The 18 days last year were a round of neighbours helping each other out with animal feed while trucks weren't coming through, loaning money for groceries, and so on. Farms simply don't work without farmers.

I wasn't expecting the Appocalypse but I told Mohamed Said to stay home with his family in Dar el Salam so that he wouldn't be worried all day. Wednesday came with sunshine and cool breezes. Beautiful. Facebook was full of information about the plans for the day. Probably there had been a lot out in Arabic, but much to my sadness, I'm still illiterate in Arabic so I had to wait for English posts. The list of marches setting out to Tahrir was impressive. It was a holiday but it was a Wednesday, and everyone was somewhat anxious. There had been rumours on Twitter of air shows and gift coupons from the military, things that many felt cheapened and subverted the nature of the day. The first day of protests last year had been against police brutality, something that everyone had seen plenty of for the past year. While many Egyptians seem to feel that progress has been made towards a democratic state, many others wonder if any progress at all has been made and if it is going to be made. I set myself up with Twitter to follow my friends who were marching throughout Egypt and watched the day unfold in wonder.

The march in Giza

Most of the people I follow are activists and were not in a celebratory mood, other than perhaps to celebrate that they were still there and available to protest the lack of progress towards democracy. I'm sure that there were people celebrating our unfinished revolution as if it were a fait accompli, but I didn't hear from them. And like almost everyone, I was utterly blown away by the magnificent abundance of people in the streets reminding the military that they had not fulfilled their promises. By about 11 am I was reading that Tahrir was full to bursting with people who had simply gone straight there. Apparently the early morning mood in the square was more celebratory, probaby reassuring the military who wanted that scenario.

One of the amazingly long flags

But the marches started about noon and wound through all parts of Cairo, even coming all the way from Nasr City and Heliopolis and Maadi. Given Cairo traffic, it's probably faster to walk from these places to Tahrir anymore than it is to drive, but this is still not a small walk. By midafternoon, people were wondering what would happen to everyone who was marching to Tahrir. Where could they fit thousands more? A Google Map that appeared on the net today gives a good idea of the amount of people on the streets and where they all were. A friend of mine who joined a march from Maadi ended up walking to Tahrir and then turning around and walking back by a different route. A lot of the marches never did land in Tahrir but ambulated throughout the city chanting and carrying signs. Egypt was full of some very tired citizens at he end of the day. And the army's predictions of chaos? Nowhere to be seen. This morning a few protesters are still occupying Tahrir. January 25th is over and the combined holidays of Police Day and Revolution day (politics DO make for strange bedfellows!) are finished for another year, but I believe that we have another 18 days of interesting activity to look forward to. The Powers That Be were, I'm sure, hoping for a one day event but somehow I kind of doubt that they will get their wish.

The beautiful photos I've used in this post are courtesy of Mostafa el Sheshtawy who can be found on Flickr as msheshtawy.

What a Difference a Year Has Made

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:39:00 +0000

It's the last day of 2011 and I honestly can't say that I'm sorry to see this year go. Last year at this time we were looking forward to a winter of visitors who would be coming to see Egypt and ride with us to get to know the countryside. The weight of the moribund political system here was a familiar feeling...you didn't talk politics, it was easier not to think about them, we just got on with our lives. As we moved into January, there was, however, an odd sense in the air. There were the protests over Khaled Said's murder, very unusual and moving protests with thousands of people lining the river and ocean walkways dressed in black and speaking to no one. Something was happening and none of us really knew what, but given the stagnant quality of life in Egypt, everyone was more curious than fearful. When the protests were announced for Jan 25 last year, I had a feeling that they were likely to be something more than normal. I took a friend from our area into town for supplies on January 24, and we basically stocked up on necessities like rice, sugar, tea, Cheetos, chocolate...you know what I mean. We ran into another friend in the grocery store who said that she'd been thinking of taking some visitors to the Egyptian Museum the next day and I told her that I couldn't really justify my feeling, but I thought maybe that the next day was not going to be the best day for a downtown trip and that they might want to keep an eye on the news. We are still laughing over the warning, but she and her family are being moved back to the US soon as her husband's company is downsizing in Egypt.

Like virtually everyone else in Egypt I was totally blown away by the events of January 25 and the following three weeks. We stayed on the farm glued to Jazeera English, CNN and BBCWorld. Time went into a strange form with calls checking in with my kids in New York twice a day when the phones were working, and manic rage when the internet and phones were cut here. Fear and anxiety for young (and old) friends in Tahrir and other protests in Egypt became the overwhelming emotions as story after story of the horrors being inflicted on prisoners, citizens, and protesters flowed in. After a while, the horrible became disturbingly normal. People I knew from internet connections were arrested and beaten, friends of friends were shot by snipers, and one of my closest young friends was attacked and nearly killed by a mob of thugs near Kasr el Aini hospital when she went to give blood. The local neighbourhood watch committees filled us with pride at the willingness of the Egyptians to care for themselves came to the fore, since it was pretty obviously that the part of our government that was supposed to be a source of order was in fact a source of disorder. I'm old enough to remember where I was when John Kennedy was killed, when the Berlin Wall was built and when it fell, what I was doing on the morning of the Cuban missile crisis, to have gone to classes in university through clouds of tear gas...I've seen plenty of excitement, thank you, in my life, but nothing ever came close to those three weeks.

Like many in Egypt, we wept with delight on February 11 when Mubarak stepped down, thinking also like everyone else that this would mean some real changes. On February 12 we drove down to Beni Suef to buy some new goats for our herd, a maie Google and two females, Twitter and Horreya. And then we began watching events unfold. Oh my, what a year. What disappointment. We did have a few brave visitors who came to see a post-revolutionary Egypt, and most of them were fascinated and delighted. But as summer came on and events became more complicated and less visitor-friendly, fewer and fewer people came to visit Egypt.

This fall has been a time of watching elections, protests, strange responses to protests, and much worry about the future of our country as it isn't clear that the military really have any intentions to follow the work of Jan/Feb to its conclusions. Tonight I understand that a prayer/vigil is planned for Tahrir to commemorate the martyrs of the struggle. Hopefully, it will be peaceful. I'm hoping for an improvement after the elections, but the signs are not so brilliant. We may have another interesting January to find our way through. Guess maybe it's time to stock up on Cheetos.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Parliamentary Surprises

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:22:00 +0000

People have been voting in Giza the past two days in the parliamentary elections. My neighbours went to a school in Abu Sir to vote as they did in the referendum, but in much larger numbers. My grooms asked for time off to vote and I told them that they absolutely had time off to do so. Later in the afternoon, I sat and we chatted about the voting process. I've read all sorts of comments on the voting results, which seem very much to favour the Islamic parties. So many people find this worrying as they are concerned that the Islamic parties might not be friendly to tourism, might insist on women wearing hijab, might not be friendly to other nationalities and so on. Personally, I feel that this is a momentous new experience for Egyptians and that we really have almost no idea what the results mean to most people. I suspect that we are going to have to just wait and see.

My grooms and gardeners were happy to talk about who they'd voted for and why. When they said that many of them had voted for Salafi's I don't mind saying that I was somewhat surprised. These guys don't seem like Salafi people, really. But when I asked them why the Salafi's or the Brotherhood, their answer surprised me. They pointed out that both parties, having been outlawed during Mubarak's years, had been unable to rack up a history of illegal political activities as had the old NDP. They were, in essence, political novices and as such deserved a chance to try to make things better. I asked about the worries that people have about the Islamic parties affecting our country's main industry, tourism, something that is the basis for our work as well. "Well, if they don't do a good job, then we can vote to get rid of them" was the response. So their votes for the Islamic parties were more a way of avoiding voting for any felool (remnants of the old regime) than they were a vote for the Islamic principles of the parties.

Things in Egypt are seriously not what they seem on the surface.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Both Spinning in Space and Standing Still

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:05:00 +0000

I have the serious sense of the world moving both too fast and too slowly these days, and to be frank, it makes me a bit dizzy. An unhappy motherboard on my laptop has left me with an iPad that can post but not photos, for the most part, and I won't really be able to intersperse my ideas with some lightening photos. So bear with me.

Where has our Egypt gone? In some ways it is still the same place and in others it has changed almost beyond recognition. Before the revolution the standard line of the government was that they were the only dike between stability and the chaos of Islamic tides. Governments believed this and so did many people. What we've found since the uprising in Jan/Feb has been that the Muslim Brothers, the Salafis, the Sufis, and many other Islamic groups have more than enough internal disputes that no one group is likely to be taking over from the previous government. What we've realized is that this entire propaganda campaign was a diversion from the reality that since the early 1950's Egypt has been a military dictatorship and that this, in fact, hasn't changed. There are many, myself among them, who have a strongly nagging suspicion that the protesters of winter did the military here a huge favour by insisting on the removal of Mubarak and, more importantly, his sons from the picture. There was a lot of debate about the question of whether the very powerful Egyptian army would accept Gamal Mubarak, who never even served in the armed forces, as a successor to his father, and I believe that we have a resounding "No!" as our answer. The military were delighted not to have to force a confrontation and to appear to do the will of the people. They didn't exactly come down that hard on the Mubaraks, allowing Gamal the freedom to come to Cairo from Sharm el Sheikh for months, and allowing Hosny's chief of staff access to the Presidential palace and all its shredding machines for months. After all, maybe the Mubaraks had the wherewithal to perform a resurgence. It's only been in the past few months when it's obvious that the Mubaraks are truly history that the Supreme Council, a ruling group of generals, have taken even half-hearted steps against the previous regime.

Instead, they have adopted the old ways of creating dissonance among Egyptians by ambushing Christian protesters and then claiming in the government controlled media that they were being attacked. This story has only worked among those who only read, listen to or watch only the government controlled media as everyone else has been broadcasting videos and eyewitness accounts of the reality of the situation. Unfortunately one of the aspects of the old Egypt that hasn't changed is the large number of people who do rely on the state media for information, an unsettling thought to say the least. The "government's" inability to handle the issues of seeing Egypt through this period have been publicly on show and privately indicated. The prime minister has attempted to resign many times and has been told, probably very forcefully, that his resignation will, on no account, be accepted. This is likely because the military know that it is the only facade that gives them the slightest shred of legitimacy and they can't afford to lose this. But it seems pretty clear to everyone that the main concern of the military council is the maintenance of their freedom of action without the inconvenience of civilian oversight. They get about $1 billion in military aid yearly from the US and one of their primary concerns is not threatening this lucrative source of income. There has been significantly less concern with reassuring the world that Egypt is still a safe tourism destination (which it is, by the way, unless you are unlucky enough to find yourself in front of a tank...which is an occurrence of very low probability), to look to the reorganization of our schools (which have basically been holding pens for the young and have utterly failed at education), to provide a reasonable standard of living for employees of the state like teachers and doctors (they could share out some of that military largesse?), or to provide any security for the citizens of Egypt who have been living since last January without any traffic or parking police for the most part. It's okay, we can live without the Central Security Forces, who unfortunately seem to have no problem working...usually NOT for us.

One of the things that has changed is the willingness to discuss our situation among people in general, and this is definitely a Good Thing. You hear discussions and arguments over current events in Egypt everywhere now, whereas before January they were generally carried out in low voices in closed rooms among close friends. As an Arabic speaking foreigner, I can hardly buy a coffee without discussing something. People are now willing to talk about, and go on strike for, things that they have long been vexed by. While the strikes are truly inconvenient for most of us (though we saw a nice decrease in traffic during the transit strike...no buses and fewer minibuses) it's totally understandable. Everyone was gagged for so many years with repression and the inability to speak out. The Maspero incident in which the army attacked the the Christian AND Muslim protesters left real scars and worried Christians here in Egypt. Rumours abounded immediately afterwards about army checkpoints that were stopping cars and rounding up Copts. I've found no confirmation of them, but the damage that they do to the national psyche is obvious. Out here in the villages, religion is still not an issue and we have Copts and Muslims living and working side by side. The idea of conflict over this is still considered ludicrous.

The list of things that haven't changed, however, is staggering. Whatever is passing for an Egyptian government is still almost utterly disengaged from the concerns and needs of the people. Election dates are postponed and changed at random, procedures for elections are totally unclear and are changed at random. This is enormously confusing and is leading to a real sense that nothing really has happened to change the essence of the Egyptian government. The schools have been a cause for serious concern for years, with crowded classrooms taught by untrained teachers who rely on rote learning turning out citizens with only rudimentary skills at the basics and virtually no ability to analyze a situation and make an informed decision. Essentially, they've been factories for an ignorant and compliant populace.

An additional serious problem that I have only really become aware of in the past 6 months is the issue of the education of families in maternal, prenatal, and postnatal nutrition. My housekeeper had a baby and returned to work after two weeks bringing the baby with her. While this may seem way too early, it's worth noting that she probably works much less in my home than in her own, she has a number of adults available to help with care for her son, and she has decent food here. I've had meals with farm families and noticed that the men generally eat first, with the children next and the women last. These means that women who are pregnant and nursing don't necessarily get the nutrition they need. Magda has had more children that she needs (let's not even open the topic of her husband who doesn't help to support the family and stands in the way of birth control in a really secure fashion.) Now she's on pills having tried a number of other unsuccessful forms of birth control but she has always been too tired and improperly fed to be able to nurse her babies properly. When this last son was born, I began buying the formula to supplement as one can is about 40 LE. To feed this child properly would take over half her monthly income...and she has more kids at home to feed. So basically we have taken on the job of feeding this baby, who is now beginning to eat and gets homemade baby food while he is here almost every day. I've begun noticing the other infants around me and most of them are small, thin, rather unresponsive, the victims of postnatal malnutrition. Their mothers are often exhausted working hard around the house...housework in the villages is no joke. Food is prepared absolutely from scratch, keeping a house clean next to the desert is a full time job, and there is little time to put one's feet up. Additionally there is almost no knowledge of proper nutrition or even the need of a nursing mother to drink sufficient fluids. We find ourselves raising children here who due to improper nutrition have a bad start in life and then compound it with the schools. While I'm definitely not an advocate of cradle to grave imposition of lifestyle, it is absolutely the role of government to provide education to its population whether children or adults. The government here really hasn't tried much.

One of the senses that many of us have these days is the sense of there being simply so much to do to put Egypt to rights. How is this going to be done? Will we get a government that responds to the needs of the people? Will we just get another one that milks the country for wealth? Every question is still in the air.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Hard Lesson

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:07:00 +0000

Living in a country during a revolution changes you whether you like or expect it or not. One of the changes that I've seen in myself is the extent to which I am interested in social and political trends in Egypt and other parts of the world. Sure, I was interested in them before to a certain extent but that interest has been honed and given new tools since the revolution. Before revolution I prided myself on the fact that I read the news from a wide variety of sources, having come to the conclusion fairly early in my life, around the time of the Viet Nam war, that no one source could be trusted implicitly. During January and February, I promised my kids to stay safe on the farm so I picked up a Twitter account that I'd opened in curiosity a year or so earlier and decided to see how it worked.

And did it ever work! From a few friends that I knew through blogging I gradually expanded my circle of informants to most of the activists tweeting in English, and from there to the frontline journalists who actually went out into the field to report on events in Egypt. Gradually the list expanded to include journalists and activists throughout the Middle East, North Africa, other parts of Africa and lately into Europe. Activists talk about what they want to do, plan to do, hope to do, and about what went wrong or right with what they've already done. It's quite enlightening and humanising to listen to their worries, fears, and dreams. The journalists tend to post a link to an article as it's published so I get a jump start on reading rather than waiting for a wire service or newspaper to pick up the article. They also post links to many of the more obscure but incredibly interesting and useful blogs, reviews, and online papers. Additionally, once you collect a reasonable amount of journalists on your Twitter feed, you get to eavesdrop on their debates, discussions and jokes that never, ever make it to a written page. This is both enlightening and highly entertaining.

On Friday evening I opened Twitter to find references to Norway's catastrophe and immediately turned on Al Jazeera English. This is my first choice for the news, again a change since the revolution when we saw here the amount of time and investment of interest and personnel that they put into their coverage of events in Egypt. Additionally, their lack of advertising is a huge comfort. This time, however, I was appalled to see them interviewing one Justin Crump, apparently some kind of security analyst from the UK, about his ideas about the bombing in Oslo. The horrific details of the shooting on the island had not come out on the news yet. Despite the interviewer's insertion of "but, but", Mr Crump quite comfortably declared that this was likely an Al Qaeda action or the action of some other Muslim terrorist, and proceeded to list all the reasons that this might be so. Disgusted to see this yet again (the broadcasts of 9/11 will live in my memory forever with their seamless condemnation of the Arab perpretrators...something that totally astonished me at the time), I turned to Twitter. There was discussion as to who might have been involved in the action and, as journalists contacted friends in Norway, suggestions of people to follow on Twitter who were in place as witnesses or who had immediate access to the ongoing investigations. I followed the breaking news and discussions avidly through the evening.

At one point, a security analyst who specialises in following the jihadist bulletin boards online tweeted that someone on one board had claimed the bombing for the Friends of the Islamic Jihad, a group that no one had ever heard of. Subsequent tweets mentioned that the claimant was not the best of sources and suggested caution, but caution was not on the agenda of the New York Times and later the BBC, who quoted the New York Times as a source. They came out with the news that it was the work of Arab terrorists and many people followed their stories as the gospel...I mean, after all, the BBC AND the New York Times couldn't be wrong? Could they ever be! Yesterday there was a day long discussion on Twitter as to whether Will McCant, the source for the bulletin board tweet was irresponsible in tweeting his information if idiots were going to pick up the information and run with it as the Word of the Almighty. I don't know that anyone ever came to any conclusions in the discussion other than the fact that no one liked what had happened and everyone was uncomfortable with the fact that once again, the ubiquitous "Arab terrorist" was going to be blamed for something, causing innumerable problems for any of us connected with the Middle East. My personal opinion is that the problem was caused by the general assumption that something seen on Twitter, or the internet in general, is by definition true, an assumption that is utterly wrong. Twitter posts and internet posts are not necessarily fact-checked or verified. They are opinion, information that could be either right or wrong, that is passed on, and they must, as such, be subject to fact-checking and verification. This did not happen on Friday night.

When the Norwegian police announced that the gunman who had been massacring young people at a political summer camp on an island near Oslo and who appeared to be responsible for the car bombing of the building in downtown Oslo was most definitely Norwegian, some of the speculation by news papers online changed to whether or not he had been trained by Muslim terrorists, not much of an improvement by my standards, and on Saturday morning many news sites still had not changed their stances in the face of the facts. The reaction by the mainstream media (often abreviated to MSM on Twitter) to the events of Friday was, on the whole, fairly ghastly. An article in The Atlantic has a very good discussion of the sudden about face that the media had to make in the light of the fact that this was in fact the act of a homegrown right wing Christian xenophobic Norwegian terrorist.

Interestingly enough, the fact that he was a Christian Norwegian suddenly seemed to change the man from a terrorist (something that is foreign, fearful and incomprehensible) to a madman (which somehow is understandable). I don't find it understandable at all myself. There is some level of derangement in anyone who can comfortably contemplate the destruction of other people to "enlighten" others or to change history. But then the natural progression of my logic is that the sanity of most military organisations is called into question and I'm sure that many people really don't want to go there. But I would most certainly state that this individual is definitely a terrorist and, in terrorism terms, a very successful one at that. Considering the difference in population between the US and Norway, he managed to kill a larger percentage of Norway's people in his bombing and shooting than the percentage killed in the attacks of 9/11. And he seems to hold the record for the most number of people killed single handedly in a single incident.

I'm hoping (ever the optimist!) that there is a lesson learned from the past two days. One would imagine that the Oklahoma City bombing would have clued in the US that they have to watch their local non-Muslim terrorists, although the main change seemed to have been a toughening of policy against foreigners. Europe has definite issues with governments banning the wearing of niqab and taking action against halal and kosher slaughter. A Dutch friend of mine told me that this was initiated as an animal welfare bill that called for the anaesthetising of animals before slaughter so that they wouldn't be in any pain. My understanding of anaesthetics and euthanasia of animals is that drugs are prohibited in animals used for food for a very good reason, the fact that the residues are harmful to humans, so I have to first question the logic of the initial push and then wonder why it became ethnic/religious.

My thoughts and prayers are with the families in Norway who were devastated by the past few days, but I also pray to see some understanding in the world that xenophobia and extremism breed terrorists, and that terrorists come from any and every background.

2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Love And Hope Spring Eternal

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:09:00 +0000

I've been writing this blog for about eight years now and right from Day One I've been getting emails, mostly from women, about moving to Egypt to pursue a relationship with someone. Many of these inquiries stem from holiday romances, some from people met at univerisity abroad, some from internet romances that someone wants to pursue. Our revolution hasn't changed the incoming traffic one bit, other than my correspondents report even more nervousness from their friends and relatives who worry that a move to Egypt will automatically end in disaster. I finally decided that it was time to put out a list of things to think about before marrying into Egypt.

I spent 25 very interesting years married to an Egyptian man whom I met in Canada while in grad school. We married and had our kids in Canada but we were visiting Egypt very regularly before we moved to Egypt. Some years while the kids were still very young, I spent a month or two staying with my in-laws while my husband would travel back and forth between Cairo, Khartoum and Toronto. When I finally moved to Egypt, I'd been visiting it since 1976 and had spent a fair bit of time exploring and learning my rudimentary Arabic. I had decided that I loved Egypt's chaos, its happy loopiness and randomness, and it was actually my idea to move here against all of my husband's objections. We had a good life, our children had a varied and rich childhood, and while there were some ups and downs, I wouldn't have missed a minute. I did NOT move here cold without having visited quite a bit, nor without knowing some Arabic (enough to do daily tasks fairly independent), and I knew (or at least thought that I did) my husband's family quite well. In other words, I probably made the transition from Canada to Egypt under the best of circumstances. I'm not sure that most other people will be so blessed. So here is my open letter:

Dear Whoever is thinking of moving to Egypt for a partner,

I really should have a sort of form letter for this because I don't know how many emails I've sent to people who are thinking of following a friend to Egypt. First, the reality of life here is not seen anywhere in the western media. Life here is nothing like what they show on the news or in magazines. It is not especially dangerous, but it is not a life for someone who is unaware of his/her surroundings. Tell all your friends and relatives that you are not moving to the moon or to the 2nd circle of hell. That said, there are some serious questions that you need to ask and answer for yourself before making any kind of permanent or even semi-permanent commitments to a life here.

1. Do you like living in Egypt? Is this a country that fits well with your lifestyle and personality?

This must be decided for you and you alone. Life is impermanent and people come and go in it. So if you think about living in Egypt, it's important to know that you would like living here with or without your partner. I suggest coming on a visit to see if you can cope with the life in Egypt, whether it is in the pollution, crowding, and excitement of Cairo or in the much slower life of the villages or smaller cities. Don't just visit the pyramids and museums. Go everywhere. Check out shopping centers and souqs. Talk to other people living here. Go grocery shopping. Try cooking. Look for a job ...if only to see if you would be happy working here.

2. Are you willing to learn Arabic?

It is possible in some places to live in Egypt without knowing Arabic, but to be honest, you will be missing out on most of the life here if you can't simply carry on a conversation with the people around you. Even a simple task like grocery shopping can be much more effective and interesting if you can ask what new foods are and how to prepare them. Getting lost is less of an issue and Surprise! many of the things that people say around you are not cause for concern. Written Arabic and spoken Arabic are almost different languages, but there are many language schools here in Egypt and abroad that will help you to learn the language.

3. Do you know what you are getting into? Relationships are complicated and more so across cultures.

If you are considering an alliance with an Egyptian partner, you need to meet his/her family. You never marry a person, no matter where you live, you always marry his/her family and their history. This is true of marriage within your culture and religion and even more true if you are moving outside of your culture or religion. Your partner's unconscious assumptions about the role of wife and mother or husband and father are determined largely by what existed within his/her family, just as yours have, and it's a very good idea to meet the role models, to say the least. As well, although it is totall unPC to say anything about social class or anything like that, if your family backgrounds are too different, the adjustment can be very difficult. With a new geography, new culture, and new language, why make things harder than necessary? The more you know, the better you are prepared.

4. Do you realise that every country has a different family law? What you are accustomed to is not necessarily what is going to be what you have to deal with here.

Learn about family law in Egypt and get a good lawyer to explain and protect your rights if you choose to marry and live within Egypt. Egyptian family law is currently closely tied to the family's religion and this must be understood and taken into account. As we are currently in the process of reworking the constitution and government (hopefully), much of this is still unclear, but most definitely the family law that you are used to wherever you live now is nothing like the family law in Egypt. Family law is the law that determines marriage, divorce and child custody. For example, a woman's rights to divorce and other things can be specified in her marriage contract...a legal document that is the basis of every Muslim marriage, while divorce is forbidden by the Coptic church. Inheritance is so complex under Islamic law, which will be applied to a Muslim family no matter what anyone might wish otherwise, that it almost is a course of study on its own.

These are the main points. You need to see for yourself. That's the main thing. Egypt is safe to visit, so you should. Think carefully and do what is best for you.

Wishing you all the best,
Maryanne

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Wrong People In the Wrong Place

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Tue, 24 May 2011 08:40:00 +0000

Yesterday about 350 bloggers in Egypt wrote posts regarding the role of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. (As a personal aside, I find this propensity for supreme councils to be a bit burdensome...couldn't they have an easier name? Somehow SCAF actually does work better as a name.) Most of these posts were in Arabic, but some were in English, which meant that I could read them. I really wish I'd learned to read Arabic, but at my age, time is a bit short to reach a real level of competency.

Most of the posts were, quite naturally considering the state of affairs in Egypt, not exactly pro-military rule. Everyone is upset over the arbitrary detentions and the fact that frankly nothing much is working properly. It's true that nothing much is working properly, and I believe that the fact that our undear and barely departed fearless leader entrusted the country to the SCAF has a great deal to do with our current problems. One post, written by the son of a military man, points out that the army simply isn't equipped for the job. "And here comes the problem, the army / SCAF may be great at doing their job "protecting the people" but they're certainly not knowledgeable, trained, experienced or ready to do a totally different job: "Leading a country of 85 million people in a pivotal point of its history". It doesn't mean they're bad people, it doesn't mean they're on the "dark side of the force", it's just that you're asking a mechanic to remove your tonsils. Those inflamed, complicated, infected tonsils that have been part of your body for years and that you have to remove now, with a great deal of surgical precision." But we were left with the mechanics to remove our tonsils and to treat our cancers. Not wonderful.

This post hit home to me, being a balanced consideration both of what the SCAF was doing wrong and also a consideration of why this might be happening. I do believe that the top ranks of the military (unfortunately those who do make up SCAF) are part and parcel of the old regime. They make outrageous salaries, have incredible perks, and are basically accustomed to being immune to the normal problems of Egyptian life, living in their bubble world, much like the wealthy businessmen who did so well as long as they could call on the influence of friends in government.

It's worth looking at what the military in Egypt actually do. This is a huge institution that ingests vast quantities of poorly educated young men each year for a two year stint of work and, for much of them, deprivation. I live between two main Army bases, Beni Yusuf and Dahshur, and my farming neighbours and my staff have plenty of stories of their time spent in the military, stories of terrible food, long work hours at tedious jobs of maintenance or sometimes working at the homes or farms of the military commanders. We've all seen groups of conscripts doing basic construction work along roads or such things. One of my neighbours (someone who's moved out of his fancy house at this point) was an officer in the police and used his recruits as drivers, gardeners, handymen and general lift-and-haul personnel at his home. This didn't raise a single eyebrow anywhere as it was standard for someone of his rank. So basically, the largest portion of the army consists of poorly educated conscripts who are enrolled in a two year course of indentured servitude....they may be learning to be soldiers, perhaps will be taught the rudiments (never more than the rudiments) of driving a truck or car, some mechanical skills, or perhaps will simply water a lawn somewhere. The better educated members of society generally get assigned to higher ranks on conscription and can either do a desk job or with the right kind of connections, avoid the entire experience all together. Then you have the lifers who have gone to the military college and dived into the the military pool with the hopes of surfacing as a brigadier general someday. These people have almost nothing in common with the conscripts. When the tank commanders did not fire on the protesters in Tahrir during the revolution, this was the work of the conscripted officers. These were men who were doing their two year obligation and when looking at the protesters could think "There, but for the grace of God, go I". They knew that when their time in the military was up, they could easily be those same protesters. This could never be said of the higher ranks. They are bosses and will always be bosses....at least they hope so.

But what does this huge institution actually DO? Well, it hasn't fought in a war since 1973, so that isn't its job at this point. Theoretically, its job is to be ready to fight in a war and this is the rationale for the massive military aid that the armed forces receive from the US, to use an example. I've known some of the military personnel who have come to do training with the Egyptian military, and without exception, their advice to me has always been "just hope that you never need them". A helicopter pilot noted that his students would do anything to avoid flying...a troubling habit as a pilot relies on practice to be able to do his job. If pilots of any kind don't fly for practice, when they need to do so under stress they are unlikely to be of much use. An engine mechanic had the same sort of comment...so it would appear that the zest for military work in the middle to lower management range is somewhat lacking. But there also seems to be little concern about this from the upper echelons. Perhaps they are concentrating on something else?

As a semi-outsider I have noticed an interesting pattern in the Egyptian business community in that virtually every company of any size had some sort of general or something attached to it. So the military is a business school? I wouldn't call it that as many of these individuals were there for their connections to the old regime rather than for their abilities to actually do anything. Those that I met were, on the whole, extremely rigid, not likely to consider any new practices or ideas, and tended to be happy to work in strict chain-of-command situations. When pushed to release information, or change a business paradigm, or learn something new, they were often shocked into immobility. The military, however, have extensive business enterprises. They do a lot of construction work, they own and run hospitals that, while they are meant for military personnel, are actually used for private patients, and the number of entertainment and vacation properties that are run by and for the military is rather staggering. The Egyptian military have an extraordinary number of business enterprises that go back to an initial concept that the military should be self-supporting, but now go quite beyond that.

But does all of this economic activity make them qualified to run a country? On the contrary, their interests mean that they are more concerned with protecting themselves from any interference from outside the military than they are in integrating with the rest of society. It's known that any system soon aligns itself with whatever it takes to preserve that system...no matter what the pronounced goals of any system might be said to be. Would I be surprised if it somehow is "difficult" or "inconvenient" to hold elections that might see civilian oversight of the military? Absolutely not. Their slowness to deal with old problems, and they are almost without number at this point, is hard not to notice. Out near where I live, farmers are wondering about planting and selling crops in the coming seasons as there used to be some guidance from the ministry of agriculture, guidance that is entirely lacking at this point. They don't know how the market is going to work, whether the government will pay a certain price for needed crops as in the past, or what to expect from life in general. As a result the prices of many agricultural products are rising as the farmers are hesitant to sell something that they might need for themselves. Our Egyptian farmers are wildly underrated, but I've seen them to be industrious, canny individuals who know how to coax the maximum number of food crops out of the valley's soil. They do, however, need some input from the ministry of agriculture and this doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

At this point the SCAF are in the unenviable position of being criticised quite correctly for their mishandling of the daily security issues, their inability to get ordinary police back to work, their detention and abuse of protesters, the lack of information and preparation for democratic elections, the lack of effort on the part of the ministries to assist businesses or the farmers. They were given a job that they were not prepared to do, and that many argue they had no real intention of actually doing properly. If, in fact, they have been working with honorable intentions, perhaps they should be asking for some help to accomplish this task. At the very least, they could arrange that the "bad guys" of the old regime are not appointed to current positions of power. The current policies do leave everyone asking whether they can be trusted to help to run honest elections if and when they decide that they will occur.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Appalling Manipulation

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:02:00 +0000

Last night a group of Salafists came to a church in Imababa looking for a Muslim woman called Abeer who was supposedly being held in the church. Oddly enough, this event occurred very shortly after a television program was broadcast during which a woman called Kamilia Shehata spoke denying that she had changed her faith from Islam to Christianity. Kamilia had been a rallying point for months for Salafists who claimed that she had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Christianity. During the television program Kamelia Shehata announced that she had not converted to Christianity and apologised to everyone for the problems caused. Zeinobia in her blog Chronicles of Egypt provides a timeline and some analysis of this bizarre event, the subsequent attack on an Imbaba church.

I was following the initial reports of the events in Imbaba before I went to bed last night and I turned in thinking that while it looked unpleasant, probably things would be ok in the morning. I couldn't have been more wrong. This morning when I sleepily booted up the laptop and checked Twitter I found that the situation had escalated to a major incident in which over 200 people were injured, about 8 were killed, and almost 200 people were finally arrested. We don't need this and I have to wonder just why this is happening now. I've done a bit of research online to learn more about the Salafis as to be honest I hadn't heard of these people before about March. I can abbreviate some of the considerable information in a couple of places such as Wikipedia and a blog called The Middle Ground. I plan to read more over the next few days.

Salafis are basically to the right of the Wahhabis, the ultra-strict sect of Islam practiced by the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, although according to other sources, they are supposed to be less strict than the Wahhabis. They disapprove of the Wahhabis as being much too liberal and not adhering to a sufficiently strict version of Islam, being a seriously strict fundamentalist group themselves, while according to the other sources previoiusly noted, the Wahhabis feel much the same about the Salafis. Many of the Egyptian Salafis found themselves locked up by the Mubarak regime for involvement in various outlawed Islamic organisations. Quite a few of them were released during the revolution, and the exact fashion in which they were released is in question to a large degree. Since the end of the revolution the Salafis have been identified as being responsible for the destruction of or damage to a number of Sufi tombs and shrines, claiming that they are idolatrous. Sufis are roughly the other wing of Islam and are primarily known for their belief in a personal relationship with God and being fairly relaxed on a social level. Islam is a huge and complicated religion with as many schools of belief as there are versions of Christianity.

Like many people here, however, I find issues of timing and the types of confrontations to be puzzling and suggestive. There aren't that many Salafis in Egypt, but they are taking up a rather large portion of the news coverage (which is still strongly influenced by the old regime) and they are seriously aggressive on many occasions. I can't recall any previous "Salafist" events at all, so this is a change that has happened after the military council took power when Mubarak stepped down. The non-issue of Kamilia Shehata, whose interview was broadcast on a Christian television channel, has been allowed to be blown out of all proportion. I find it fascinating that the mysterious Abeer should suddenly appear as a new "victim" at just the moment Kamilia Shehata retired. Almost as if they needed a new cause to justify their trouble making. And what are they accomplishing with all this? The main thing is to keep everyone off balance and create or magnify sectarian issues. And who would benefit from this action? The only people I can see benefiting from the discord within Egyptian society would be the military, since they have ruled Egypt since the change from a monarchy in the 1950's, and I'm very sure that they are not all that thrilled at the prospect of answering to the public, which could become the situation if there really are free elections in the fall. They plead inexperience in ruling the country, but the fact is the military, in the persons of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, have been ruling Egypt for about seventy years. One of the main problems facing the revolution is the fact that much really has not changed in the running of the country. As I was writing this post, Al Jazeera covered a story from Tunis that noted that Tunisians are extremely worried that the military might take control of the country should an Islamist group win in elections. Gee, that rings a bit of a bell for me at least.

None of us are really clear what happened last night although there are a few eyewitness reports. Sarah Carr, who spent quite a lot of time in Tahrir and is well-acquainted with Egypt's security service staff noted the presence of quite a few on the scene...and they did not seem to be concerned with calming the situation down. There are also other blog posts that acknowledge the lack of personal information but stress the importance of looking at the issues closely to remedy the problems. There have indeed been stressful relationships between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, although it is quite questionable as to what extent these were manufactured or exacerbated by the Mubarak regime. I was pleased to note that a multicultural multireligious event will be held next week in Maadi despite today's events. I'm sure that it's been planned for ages, but they could decide to postpone or simply forget about it.

People often wonder why people in the Middle East seem to be prone to conspiracy theories. If we have learned anything from the revolution this year, it is probably the fact that little here is as it seems. We are well aware that previous regimes have found it easier to run Egypt if the Egyptians are not unified as one people as they were during the revolution, and I suspect that the military council would also find this to be true. I'm quite sure that the army and what is supposed to be national security could protect churches against Salafist groups if they really wanted to. But do they?

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Goodnight, Ali

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:19:00 +0000

I lost an old friend today. Ali, also known as Ali Capone, Alibird, and AliDon'tBiteMyFeet, was found dead in the aviary today. There was no indication of attack, illness or anything to suggest why he would have died. I have to assume a coronary or something. He was about 22 years old, a fairly respectable age for an African Grey parrot. We don't know exactly how old he was but he was a fairly young bird when he came to live with us.

My kids bought Ali for me for Mother's Day when we were living in Alexandria. He was young, frightened, and not at all happy with human beings. I put his cage in the kitchen so that he would see people all the time. We put a bowl of treats (nuts, grapes, and so on) next to the cage. Every time someone came through the kitchen they would take a treat from the bowl and offer it to Ali, usually saying as people do "Here, Ali". Gradually he calmed down among us and got to look forward to the attention. It took months before I was able to touch him without significant blood loss, but in a year or so he would come out of his cage and wander around the house on the floor quite comfortably. African Greys are well known for their speaking ability and Ali was very vocal. With people talking to him all the time and giving him goodies, he began with whistling. When we copied his whistles, it became a game where he would copy any whistle he heard. Soon he began muttering. It was extraordinary to hear long conversations from this little grey bird, but the meaning was just out of reach. Without really thinking, you found yourself hearing this voice coming from the cage and saying "What?". We felt silly responding to a parrot like that but he sounded so real. Then one day in the midst of the mutter a word came out clearly: "What?". Well, of course. The next word he said was "Here", another natural since that was what people said to him when they gave him treats.

When we moved to Cairo from Alexandria, Ali came with us and he really came into his own in the new house. By now he was used to being loose in the house much of the day and sleeping in his cage at night. He had a nice perch on the top of his sleeping cage and when I came down to the kitchen I would hear a quiet "Hello Ali" from under the covers. If I didn't take them off and open the door, the greeting would come with greater volume and urgency until I finally did. During the day if I was cooking in the kitchen he would wander around the kitchen floor, pulling on cupboard doors trying to get them open and murmuring "What here Ali?" to himself. His vocabulary was increasing and his use of it was more skilled. He would encourage himself in his activities by saying "Come on Ali", and would be totally delighted if he got the cupboard doors open. He loved to pull all the pots and pans out of the cupboard. The sound of them banging on the floor seemed to give him enormous pleasure. He would follow me out to the living room and climb up my leg to sit on my lap while I read, or cuddle up under my chin when I took a nap on the sofa. Every now and then he would say something so direct, real, and off the wall that it would astonish me. One day when my daughter came home from school to find me making spaghetti sauce in the kitchen. She wandered in asking me what smelled so good. A little voice came from the cage saying "What's it look like, stupid?" We were both dumbstruck and looked over to Ali who merely scratched his head and looked innocent.

Ali didn't like the kitchen cupboards in our next house. They were too heavy for him to pull open, so he turned his talents to other occupations like removing the rubber seal of the refrigerator....like about three times. Expensive hobby. He also proved himself to be incredibly efficient at stripping the toaster cord of its covering while it was still plugged in, and we decided that maybe Ali needed a safer place to live. We built an aviary in the garden and found him a nice African Grey girlfriend Mona to share it with him. He liked the arrangement and after a couple of years he and Mona surprised us with two baby African Greys. They were great parents and took good care of the babies, but when they were fledged we moved the kids into the house to work with them so that they would be comfortable with humans. We didn't think that keeping four Greys was such a good idea. The babies, Pobble and Atilla the Hungry, were female and male respectively, and were so much fun to train. They were being hand fed so we took them with us to our house in Sharm el Sheikh that summer and had to clip their wings when they learned to fly in the living room. We found homes for them with good families. Pobble took after her father and was a real talker but Atilla was like his mother Mona and specialised in whistles.

While the years were passing, we collected other birds in the aviary. At various times we had African Ringnecks (the infamous Killer Kelly and her motorcycle gang) and some Cuban Amazons that I found sick and miserable at a bird seller. A friend brought me a really unhappy Grey who had pulled out all his feathers, but Fritzi recovered well in the company of Ali and Mona. When I finally moved from Maadi to Sakkara, I built a big aviary for the birds so that they would have plenty of room to fly in. Brilliantly, I thought that I might be able to use chicken wire to screen in the rooms inside (three 3 metre x 3 metre rooms joined by a small service room) but Ali, Fritzi and Mona had other ideas. They chewed through the chicken wire to make holes so that they could fly from one room to the other. Life was getting interesting. I bought some chickens to clean up the food that the parrots loved to toss on to the floor, then someone brought us a couple of ducks, a pair of turkeys, a couple of geese, some doves and pigeons and we had a major avian habitat going on.

You might think that a duck, goose or turkey could bully a half pound parrot but that is definitely not the case. Ali and Fritz took over monitoring the terracotta jar where the chickens liked to lay their eggs and we had to coax them away from it to collect them. There was no question....ever....who ran the aviary. Every morning when I'd go out to feed him, I'd hear a cheery "Hello Bird". As far as Ali was concerned we were all birds. If I was late with breakfast the calls of "Here Ali" "Here Bird" would increase with time. And everyone loved playing the whistling game with him. He would copy your whistle and embellish it a little with a sort of competitive streak. He drove the gardeners crazy when they cleaned the aviary because he would waddle along behind them and nip at their feet. They never would wear closed shoes for that work. I knew better.

There is great disturbance in the birdosphere today. A wonderful little grey creature is sleeping under the papaya tree and I will miss him forever. Goodnight, Ali Bird.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Chance For Research/Activism in Hospitals

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:22:00 +0000

I'm typing on top of the world right now. For the past three weeks I've had my right hand in a half cast because I tripped on a piece of wood in my living room and flew through the air hitting my kitchen door with my middle finger, breaking the bone inside my hand. That's right, it was that finger that is so useful in driving through Cairo traffic. I got an xray and went to visit my good friend and orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mostafa, who has already reconstructed my left shoulder for me two years ago and did a double knee replacement for me last summer. He laughs over the fact that I'm the age of his mother but manage to do some pretty creative stuff to my poor old body....calls me his "bad boy"! Today I did a second xray to show that the break is knitting well, was given a brace to protect my hand for a while, and a prescription for some calcium to help the hand finish its work.

Body issues taken care of, Mostafa and I caught up on what's been happening lately. Despite being a very busy orthopedic surgeon here in Cairo, he's lately agreed to help at one of the government hospitals in administration. A government hospital job isn't going to make him rich. Salaries in them are laughable. He's doing it because he realises that someone needs to try to help this hospital improve. The salaries for the staff are too low. Cleaners might make LE 300 a month, a wage that will feed no one, so they don't work too hard and they try to get tips from patients. Who can blame them? Nurses here are not well paid or well trained and they are looked at by most Egyptians as being only slightly more respectable than prostitutes or dancers. Not great. Mostafa told me that in learning more about how the hospital was working...or not working as the case may be... he found that the communications between patients and staff are not good, with patients often being highly suspicious of the staff. We talked about how the Egyptian habit of bringing family members to a hospital to help care for a patient, while still definitely necessary, can often be counterproductive in terms of contagion. This is especially true in cancer wards where chemo patients are taking immune system battering meds while surrounded by possible sources of infection. He shook his head in wonder that he's surprised that the stress of trying to analyse and treat a seriously ill institution is not simply breaking him down. Somehow he's staying calm about the whole thing.

It occurred to me that this could be a chance made in heaven for some serious university students to help him do some research on what was working and not working in the hospital. Anthropology, sociology, medical and urban planning students could find some fascinating data here. As well, there is a major opportunity for community organisers to help to establish something like a hospital auxiliary, perhaps a group for would-be nurses to learn about their chosen field...something like the Candystripers that work as volunteers in hospitals in the US and Canada. I'm going to put word out about this chance for research and/or activism and let's see what happens. The government hospitals have long been disastrous in Egypt and have been the source of much head-shaking and concern, but perhaps the better way to view the problem is to see it as an opportunity for parts of our society to come together to seek solutions. Doing research and setting up programs hasn't been so easy in the "old" Egypt because pretty much everyone had something to hide. Perhaps this is the time to change all of this. If you know of anyone who might be interested in helping in this project, or maybe with another one like it, do contact me and I will put you in touch with my overworked friend.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

How To Kill A Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:57:00 +0000

This following post was passed to me by a friend in Moscow who had spent some happy years here. We traced it to another friend who is Dutch/Egyptian. I have no idea who wrote it but it is perfect. I'm truly concerned that this is absolutely right. If anyone knows who wrote this I really want to know.

This is a note that’s been circulating on Facebook about a conspiracy re. the Egyptian revolution. I have to admit that over the past few years more and more conspiracy theories have been making sense to me. This one does too.

The Coup

Egypt just had what many see as a revolution. Certain demands, including the trying of a strongman, were forcefully made by millions all over Egypt. To give the impression that all that would take place, Mubarak appointed a Supreme Military Council (SMC) and then went on sabbatical to Sharm El Sheikh. At present, the SMC is in full control. The Egyptian people are supposed to put their full trust in the SMC, go to sleep, and, before they know it, all their dreams will come true. Personally, as an Egyptian citizen, I’m having trouble sleeping soundly. So, please indulge me by allowing me to take you on a short hypothetical journey to make my point. Please imagine that I am a high-ranking member of the SMC, the military high command that a deposed president appointed after his resignation. My council has been entrusted with a monumental task. We are required to appear to hand over power in an orderly manner to the people and to arrange for free and fair elections for parliament as well as president. But we have one small problem. We don’t want to go. If we go, it will be as good as signing our death warrants. Who the hell will protect us from all the corruption we’ve been involved in for decades? How will we be able to live with open budgets that could fall under civilian scrutiny? What will happen to our businesses and contracting companies? How will we explain the American FMS money we’ve been living off for so long? What will happen when they start probing into our personal wealth files? Imagine, civilians giving orders to the military; sacrilegious stuff. No, sir! It is not just that we don’t want to go. The clear fact is: we cannot afford to go!

But we now have another problem. For the moment, the people trust us, but some of them are starting to make funny noises about Mubarak; they are demanding he be put on trial. That is crazy. He is the one to whom we owe all this good life. If he is put on trial, many heads will roll, our own being on the frontline. So, we must devise a plan to soothe the masses. We need to play our cards right to be able to fool the people. We shall use our customary methods of intimidation, but not too much before the situation is fully under control. Right now, the situation is too precarious to take the risk of starting another revolution. We are treading on thin ice. Our top priority is to regain control over the public in order to destroy their ability to rise in large numbers again. That is the only weapon we cannot deal with. Actually, we were so relieved on the 11th of February. The numbers were so huge we could easily have been forced to leave with Mubarak. Fortunately, we escaped unscathed, but we must never allow the masses to rally in such numbers again.

Okay, here’s the plan - First, we shall use a few ex-ministers, all civilians of course, as highly-publicised corruption scapegoats to give the gullible public the impression that we are fighting corruption, tooth and nail. They will buy us some time. Next, we shall give the public a tame new cabinet, with a few old ministers we do not want to let go of. This we shall do after much histrionics in clinging to the Mubarak-appointed cabinet. So when the new cabinet takes over, relief among the population will be so high, it will buy us even more time. All along, we shall keep issuing pacifying statements and releasing small numbers of prisoners to keep the charade alive.

Then comes the next phase: splitting the population. To do that, I now need to play the constitution card. Now, everyone is aware that the protesters did not carry a religious message; they wanted secular rule. But we all know that Egypt contains extreme religious factions. What better way to split the nation than to set them up in acrimonious confrontation? We, the SMC, are fully aware that we could have followed the demands of the protesters, given them an elected council to draft a new constitution in line with those demands, held a referendum after several months to give everybody a chance to understand the new document and embark on a serious attempt to make Egypt a prosperous and transparent country, in which the role of religious parties would be roughly proportional to the numbers we saw among the protesting crowds. In that scenario, religion would not be a threat and everybody would be able to live in harmony and religious tolerance. But, we already told you we do not want that. We wish to split the nation and religion is our best chance of doing it. So let’s play with the constitution. We do not want to tamper with the articles that give the president almost omnipotent powers and total immunity from any kind of punitive measures. Such articles might serve us well in future and, at the same time, we must not give the population too much rope; they’ve been reined in quite nicely for the time being. In line with our objective, we shall appoint a ten-man council, all loyal lackeys with heavy religious agendas in order to suggest some meaningless modifications in the 1971 constitution as a temporary means of moving to parliamentary elections thereafter. That way we shall appear to be taking serious legislative action towards open elections within a few months. Once we put these modifications to a referendum and they get the green light, the rest will be easy, because we know that the only political forces capable of contesting any elections, already well organised and in full combat gear, are the remnants of the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood. They are both devoid of scruples and can thus help us drive the scam home quite convincingly. None of the troublesome protesters of the square will have time to mount a serious challenge. Of course, we shall have no problem fixing the referendum results; we’re veterans at that game. With no serious monitoring, we can determine the result beforehand. This time anything over eighty percent will look suspicious, so we’ll have to go down a bit, but not too much lest the margin over fifty percent be too low to account for some election irregularities being sufficient to tip the scale. Let’s go for around 77 percent. After that it will be plain sailing. The population will be split down the middle and the religious parties will gain much ground. Fear of religious domination might even persuade secular elements to insist that we remain in control. Whatever puppet of a president or majority party ‘wins’ the upcoming elections will be putty in our hands. We won’t have to go and everything will be fine. Of course, Mubarak will never be allowed to stand trial.

We realise that what we are doing is tantamount to a coup d’etat against the people, but we have no other way. The coup’s victim was not Mubarak; he was just another participant. The real victim was and still is the poor people of Egypt and what they believed was a revolution.

We, the SMC, all pray for Egypt. God bless Egypt.

copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

When Is Aid Not Aid?

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 09:52:00 +0000

Sometimes having lived a long time and having a good memory is an asset. I never thought much about it and it's only recently that I've realised that I have achieved an age that actually counts as such. Perhaps it's having children hitting their thirties that suddenly makes you realise that you have become one of the "older generation". But many of the experiences I've collected, the thoughts and possibilities I've encountered, seem to be coming together now in a sort of critical mass that is presenting me with ideas I haven't examined much up to this point. I've never been terribly focused in my activities throughout my life. I've studied a variety of things, worked in a wide variety of jobs and from time to time have found myself utterly fascinated by quite an odd collection of things. When I was about 13, I ran across a reference in a book to the fact that in the Middle Ages bubonic plague changed the face of Europe irreparably when it killed off roughly 3/4 of the population in its repeated passes. I went to the library (no internet then) and read everything I could get my hands on about the Black Death and its ramifications. Because of my age, my poor parents had to okay many of the books I wanted to read and they were very understanding, although perhaps a bit bewildered at the rather macabre topic.

Lately, I've been watching the events here in the Middle East with total fascination...hardly surprising since I live here and they have the power to touch my life. I'm following the news outlets and some of the less known reports via Twitter. Much has been written about the power of social media in all the uprisings/revolutions taking place and that in itself is a source of fascination. Twitter is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools I've seen developed for communication. I became interested in it a few years ago when it was used to notify people that protesters had been taken by government forces so that efforts could be made to free them, rather than have them fall into the black hole of detention. I've listened in on debates on Twitter and read alternative witness accounts of activities. Amazing stuff for anyone interested in the social sciences.

However, one thing more than anything else has come to the fore in my search for information and the explanations of the rise and falls of dictators in this region and it, oddly enough, is an old bogeyman from my youth. I grew up in California, went to Berkeley during the late 60's and moved to Canada in protest against US policies in the early 70's. I was in no fear of being drafted, but I felt very strongly that the US was completely wrong in its pursuit of the Viet Nam war. When protests and demonstrations finally seemed to reach the ears of the government, finally began to activate the hands and mouths of the legislators and the government finally acted to stop the war, we all had some hopes that someone somewhere had actually learned something.

Some forty years on as I read account after account of the amount of "aid" given to many of the dictators providing so called "stability" in the Middle East I'm reminded of something that I heard way back when I was still very young. My parents were Eisenhower supporters. My father had served as a non-combatant medical technician in WWII and brought my mother to the US as a war bride. After the war he attended Stanford University and was then hired by the Department of Defense where he did a lot of things for the US Navy that he could never discuss at home. Long after his death we've been putting together the picture of what he did from friend's accounts, journals and so on. One of the things he did, rather incidentally, was to help set up the internet in the Pacific Northwest after his retirement. Another thing was to work on modeling, making sort of prototypical computer games that would analyse tactics and strategies. He didn't like being part of a war machine and his real love was space exploration, for which he bargained with his bosses to be allowed to work. All of this explanation is to say why this statement made by President Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961 has always stuck in my mind.

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

My father was part of the military-industrial complex as much as he hated being so, and I was always aware of this conflict within him. When demonstrators were protesting the Viet Nam war, they called attention to the role of Dow Chemical in the development and manufacture of napalm, and to the development and use of Agent Orange, a particularly dangerous form of dioxin by Dow and Monsanto. Over the years, the term military-industrial complex has gone out of style and Noam Chomsky has pointed out that the military aspect was actually just a face of a culture driven by industrial imperatives. Military products are nice to produce because among other things, you can blow them up, necessitating the production of more of them.

It seems wildly obvious to me, however, that the industrial aspects of the western culture have gotten totally out of control. If you read any articles on the aid that has been "given" to many of the Middle Eastern countries, many of whom are currently involved in unrest, revolutions, and protests from unhappy citizenry, it is admitted that the major portion of this aid has been military aid. In countries with massive issues of poverty, environmental issues, poor educational systems, and hunger...they are given military aid. Brilliant. And what does this aid get the country? It gets them the right to buy arms from the aid giver at lower prices, better financing, and sometimes simply takes one government's money, passes it to another government for some quick skimming, and then puts it back in the economy of the first government when the products are "bought".

This is a self-perpetuating cycle. True, it does benefit the originator of the aid in that it helps provide employment for people in the area of the economy that produces arms or the spare parts to repair them or the means to transport them...but the bottom line here is that it's all either destructive or imaginary. No one is actually producing anything that will help someone eat, learn, or become healthier. The best possible outcome is that the arms will simply grow old, like the out-dated tear gas canisters collected by protesters in Cairo. If they are actually used in warfare, they have no beneficial purpose to anyone. So why not simply pay them to build something useful instead, like bridges and dams and new roads, hospitals or schools...or to repair the ones that are falling apart?

Let's face it, aside from a few situations like the Israelis invading Lebanon and the US invading Iraq, invasion has pretty much gone out of style. So do we need to protect against invaders? In Egypt, who is going to invade us? What would seven million Libyans or seven million Israelis do with 80 million Egyptians? We don't need tanks. We can just assign 5 or 6 Egyptians to every Israeli. And running Egypt is no piece of cake as anyone can tell you these days...not exactly a job that any decent invader would aspire to. Even more to the point, the last major military actions have been carried out by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, and EVERYONE can see how well those have gone. Obviously, someone is benefiting from all that activity but it sure as hell isn't the Iraqis or Afghanis or the Americans sitting back home wondering what is going wrong with their schools, banks and economy. Someone once estimated that if the money spent on the Viet Nam war were simply converted to nickels and dropped on the country, every square inch of Viet Nam would have been covered to a depth of 3 or 4 feet. It would have been higher if they'd used something cheaper than metal.

It's time for people to stop listening to the nonsense and do as they recommend in the detective novels. (See? Even trashy novels can add your knowledge.) Follow the money. Before you let your country offer military aid to someone, check how it works. Maybe it will actually save some money just to give it to the people of your own country. Much of the billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains stashed away by autocrats all over the world has been skimmed. Want to help someone? Build some tractors, pay the shipping, and give them to the farmers..and skip the bureaucracy. Or buy books and paper and desks and ship them to needy schools. But then no one would profit except the workers who build and the farmers who need, and as we all have seen, that would never do.

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Thoughts on Recent Events

noreply@blogger.com (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:21:00 +0000

I began this blog about 18 months after 9/11 in an effort to help friends and acquaintances of mine, mostly from the US, understand why I insisted on living in this backward, terrorist-ridden woman-hating country...that was pretty much how Egypt was described in the media back then. I looked online for webpages or information about the joys of living in Egypt (and there are many) but I couldn't find anything. So with all good intentions, I decided to write about living here as a long term resident and lover of Egyptian society and life. In March, my blog will be about eight years old.

From the beginning, I chose to avoid discussions of local politics, partly because I'm not an Egyptian citizen, not for want of trying but because of some utterly inane bureaucratic hitch in the Mogamma that prevents me from being given citizenship even though my husband and children carry it. As someone without formal citizenship I was very aware of my precarious position under a regime that was notoriously touchy about criticism and I had no wish at all to be deported or barred from entering the country that I consider my only home. In addition, I don't read or write Arabic and I really felt that it was rather inappropriate for me to be sounding off about things here that I could only partly understand for lack of complete information...and I was quick to find a group of much younger Egyptian bloggers who were doing an infinitely better job, at great personal cost.

I chose instead to try to talk about aspects of daily life here that could give the country a more human face, things that anyone could relate to in terms of family life, philosophy, those smaller things that keep us going when the larger events threaten to trample our souls and that are universal to all people. Sometimes I feel that maybe I did too good a job as I get a lot of email from people who for various reasons want to come here to live and work. I always have to point out that Egypt has never been without its problems (no country is), that it is essential to learn to speak (at least) Arabic so that there is a possibility of communication, and that this isn't Indiana with pyramids. Egypt has its own culture and way of life and doesn't need to have anyone else's imposed upon it. With my children grown and studying in the US, I had a constant pressure to remember to be tactful as they were not keen on hopping a flight to try to dig their old mother out of one of the Egyptian prisons.

With the January 25 protests and in the days following, I found myself sitting by the television at the farm, following events on Twitter and the net, and biting my tongue almost off. My son and daughter are still in New York studying and working, and they pointed out the wisdom of not being in Tahrir given my citizenship and the knee surgery that I underwent last summer. (I'm not so nimble on the ground although I am still fine on horseback.) I was devastated like everyone when Mubarak unexpectedly did not step down on Thursday night and cheered with most Egyptians when he finally left on Friday. And again, I was constantly asking myself if it would have been right for me to be there or not. A large part of my spirit says "Hell, yes!", while the part that probably keeps me alive, fed and safe, says "Maybe no". In the end, the deciding vote was cast by my work and lifestyle which meant that if I disappeared a group of people who depended on me for their living and a bunch of animals to whom I am terribly attached, would be set adrift with no one to provide for them. In addition, I actually hold my farm in trust for my daughter and I need to protect that trust. So discretion won out, at least for the short term.

Watching the revolution from the safety of the countryside was rather surreal. Out here the main difference in life was that many of us had a very hard time getting hay and feed for our animals. In our area people helped each other out with supplies so that no one would suffer too much. Thankfully, I'd withdrawn a reasonably large amount of cash from the bank before they all closed during the protests, and this helped a lot. I still had staff responsibilities even if the banks were closed, and animals could care less about politics...they simply want to be fed. Out here the neighbourhood watch was quickly instated and extremely efficient. At the height of the problems you had to go through about 6 checkpoints to get near my farm. If the driver and/or passenger wasn't recognised, they had to show ID, declare who they were coming to visit, and they had to call that person to verify the fact. Even now the checkpoints are in place and cars are carefully vetted. We could hear the tanks rolling around in the desert for much of the revolution. I understand that some archaeological warehouses were raided the first night that the police vanished, but things were quiet here other than the odd time the villagers caught people who had been stealing from stores in the Pyramids Road area trying to smuggle their loot through this area.

My staff, like many rural Egyptians, are mostly at the lower end of the educational scale with many of them illiterate. Even those who could read were incredibly confused. They were accustomed to reading the usual newspapers and watching state TV, so when Al Jazeera began showing what was actually happening in the streets, they didn't know what to think as the government newspapers and TV shouted out that A) Nothing was happening at all; B)There were small protests instigated by foreign powers variously and sometimes simultaneously identified as Israeli, Iranian, Hamas or simply "foreign"and C) Al Jazeera was lying about everything just to make Egypt look bad. I guess that the unspoken word there was that Qatar was also trying to bring down the Egyptian state. When the government satellite cut Al Jazeera Arabic, we would let people come to the house to see it in English, as that hadn't been cut. I spent hours talking to them about what was happening, what was hoped and why it was so important to them...and how it might change their lives but that it would not be an easy road.

Family and friends were, naturally, concerned. My children offered me a flight to NYC, but I declined saying that I felt safe and I wouldn't miss this for the world. As long as it was possible we spoke to each other daily. I don't want to think about my long distance bill. When the net returned after being cut off for a bit, reception out here was still a bit dicey and it took days to respond to people who were writing worried about me. And at the end of it all, I felt drained, happy, bewildered, concerned and frustrated. It's taken a week at least to work out all those emotions.

I was drained as many of the young people who were involved in this revolution were those who I'd been following online for many years. After a while they feel like friends, although I'd never met them, and concern for their safety and relief when they were released from custody was enormous. I was delighted with the outcome inasmuch as our unesteemed head of state departed finally with his family. The cronyism, corruption, and violence were never far from anyone's sight, so I was cheering for the revolution from day one. I think everyone in Egypt is a bit bewildered at this point. This is the first time in probably over eight thousand years that Egyptians have had a say in their government. They have gone through any number of systems of monarchy to military dictatorship and now finally have a chance to have the people of the country speak for their needs. In a sense, they have the chance now to reinvent democracy on their terms. There certainly isn't much in the way of baggage to encumber them since everyone acknowledges that what existed here was certainly not any kind of real democracy. Everyone is looking about asking where to go from here, but they are not simply looking. This afternoon a neighbour took Catherine (a friend of my daughter who is staying here and helping me) into Zamalek for a meeting of a group of people who are wanting to help to rebuild Egypt. There are many groups of this sort on Facebook that I know of and quite likely many more being organised offline. People are collecting money and hospital supplies to help the victims of violence during the protests, they are establishing food banks, going out and sweeping and repairing the streets, directing traffic and taking care of neighbourhood security. Many of the police are either on strike (the lower ranks do get appallingly bad wages and working conditions) or in hiding.

While in many respects, the country seems to be quite normal in these post-revolutionary times, in many others it is not. The stock exchange has been closed indefinitely for some time now. I don't understand stock exchanges when everything is terrific, so I have nothing to say about that now. The strikes that are being held are totally understandable in that no one has had the freedom to complain about anything for longer than anyone can remember, but they are definitely inconvenient at times. Banks were closed all last week and we have had no assurance that they will open this week. This is primarily because the employees of the National Bank are on strike. But the strikes are not indefinite, they come and go causing temporary problems. These are growing pains and I remember being inconvenienced plenty of times by strikes in Canada. In Egypt, people simply have not become accustomed to any labour unrest. A group of my neighbours got together on Friday morning to check out the situation for horseback riding in the desert here, something that is important for both our sanity and some of our budgets. On Friday it was fine, but one neighbour reported seeing soldiers jogging in the desert on Thursday morning. No one is quite sure what that means.

My theory is that Egypt works on a special chaos filter and very close to the red line at the best of times, so when things aren't quite normal...they really aren't that far off normal. On February 12, Catherine and I drove down to Beni Suef (with the ever protective Mohamed of course) to buy some goats to improve our flock. We picked up two males (one Alpine/Syrian cross and the other Saanen/Syrian cross) and three females (all Saanen/Syrian cross) to breed with our flock of baladi goats. The males were named Google and Twitter while the females were dubbed Mona, Zeinobia, and Nadia, after three of my favourite Twitter posters during the protests. We saw nothing unusual other than a couple of burned cars on the side of the road, a couple of tanks and a four year old boy in the village where we bought the goats who picked up a stone and brandished it at us shouting "Horreya" (Freedom)...only to be firmly scolded by his mother who told him that was enough. The revolution is over.

But is it over? Not really. The military leaders are the same military leaders who were in power under Mubarak, while the cabinet is largely made up of the same old gang of suspects. There is still an awful lot of housecleaning to do. Much of the frustration I mentioned has to do with the influence of other countries in Egypt's affairs through the use of the aid given, primarily to the military. Most of the US aid was given in the form of credit that could be spent in the US arms industry to buy tanks, planes, guns and tear gas canisters...though oddly enough many of the latter were way beyond their expiration dates apparently. Wonder where the money for the new tear gas went...or are there huge warehouses of the stuff lying about? Basically the aid went to prop up a regime that was everything the US government claims to hate. They've gone into Iraq and Afghanistan to rid the poor citizens there of repressive regimes supposedly...while causing major collateral damage to both countries. When the protests in Egypt began, the leaders of the free world sided with Mubarak, although no one can believe that they were unaware of the real situation here. Maybe they only lead the "free" world and don't really have anything to do with the oppressed world except to sell the governments there arms. At any rate, the Egyptians "freed" themselves and with a much lower cost than we would have had with help from the US military.

During the protests there was much discussion of the "Tunisia" effect referring to the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime only a short while earlier. Of course, there are still issues there as the "interim" government of Tunisia has also kept on entirely too many of the old regime. Within days of February 11, protesters in Bahrain marched to demand reform and more voice in their government, perhaps a constitutional monarchy rather than what currently exists. Like the Egyptians, they marched without weapons, chanting in peace, and when the government soldiers, mercenaries for the most part unlike the Egyptian army, encountered the protesters, they were fired on with tear gas canisters at point blank range. The army's responses to peaceful protest has been so violent in Bahrain as to be termed a massacre at times. And the governmental tactic has been to ban the press, penning them in the airport so that there can be no international oversight...except that there is no such thing as no oversight anymore. Telephones shoot videos and can transmit them abroad. The protesters across North Africa (Libya is fighting a vicious battle with largely foreign troups as well against the citizens) are for the most part following the nonviolent doctrines of Gandhi and the governments opposing them fail to realise that they'd get further by allowing discussion and participation than by reacting with violence. Watching the idiocy of the regimes' responses is wildly frustrating. We all know that they have huge stakes to protect, but the violent approach in the long run simply does not work. Soldiers might be able to shoot 10, 20, 100 people...but can they hold out over 1000 or 1,000,000? What the Egyptians learned early in February is that you are as free as you can imagine, or you are as oppressed as you allow yourself to be, and that lesson seems to be one that is easy to learn.

Photos of Tahrir by Zena Sallam

copyright 2011 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani