May 8th, 2009

May 8, 2009 happens to be a Friday and Fridays in Cairo are the best day. The vast majority of people are off work and spend their mornings sleeping only to wake up and go to services. The streets are quite, you can cross them almost without looking and life always seems calm, a rarity. Like every Friday at one in the afternoon the call to prayer is going off, a sound I resent and find fascinating at the same time. On Fridays the services are broadcast out loud, forcing you to listen to the Muslim version of a Sunday service. As a complete nonbeliever it is hard not to want to shut the windows and block out the babble, but you can’t really. I catch the few words I understand, “why,” “God,” “thanks be to God,” “easy,” and “what is this?” The whole thing is forced upon everyone within earshot, making the service and devotion feel contrived in my mind. But, I am wrong. People here have genuine faith and use religion as a real guide for social and spiritual order.

So, I am sitting on our balcony, trying to block out services with Bob Marley and am struck by a strong desire for the most familiar things. I want my friends here with magazines and coffee, I want the smell of Seattle spring time, I want rain and clouds interspersed with sun, I want the sounds of birds instead of services, I want books instead of bad movies on TV, I want to be able to walk around in a tank top and short skirt, and I want to be able to find mountains peeking out between rows of houses. My wants are especially conflicted as our school year comes to a close, my roommates are all getting ready to leave by the end of the month, and my lack planning for life past July becomes more obvious. Yet, at the exact same time I could not be more happy and excited about still being in this very unfamiliar place and getting to know it more. I am still happy figuring out how to adapt to the lack of short skirts and walking paths, the lack of used bookstores and small boutiques with carefully selected spring fashions on the racks, and best friends and family within a ten minutes drive.

I guess the point of going to another place is to figure out how to bring the essentials of your familiar life to a non-familiar place, how to adjust to the conflicted feelings. Maybe Nescafe on the balcony instead of Americanos in the kitchen, and Bob Marley rivaling prayers instead of KEXP’s Positive Vibrations rivaling NPR next door is my way of bringing my familiars to this totally unfamiliar place.

The coffee is different, the music is not as varied, there are no other women within site, and the screeching of this priest is driving me nuts, but the idea of a Saturday morning is present and that makes me happy. It is good to be happy in such a strange place. It is good to be happy in any place.