The Cairo Gyro

Assalaamu `alaykum everyone,

I just wanted to drop a line and let you know I have been taking lots of pictures. Every time I go to either attach them to an e-mail or load them into a blog post it just takes forever to load and in the end I give up and close it. I’m really not sure why this is happening because the wireless net I’ve been picking up is full strength masha’Allah and very fast. So I don’t see a reason for this annoyance. I’ll try to load the pictures some other way, they’re all on my computer just not loaded to the net quite yet.

So please bear with me as I solve this problem. In the meantime my posts will have to be unadorned but I promise, bi ithnillah (by the permission of Allah) to go back and insert pictures into related posts.

Thanks for your patience. After all…I am in Africa! lol

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Sammer and I have been getting really excited about the fresh fruits here. Every time we pass a fruit merchant we look with eager eyes and inhale the yummy fruity scents. Currently watermelon, pears, guava, grapes, mangos, figs, pomegranate, and bananas are in season (there may be more I don’t know about yet). The guavas are light green on the outside and soft and white on the inside, very different than the guavas I’m used to in my dad’s country which are usually dark green on the outside and pink on the inside. I prefer this white guava more because there seems to be more fruity flesh to eat and less seeds compared to the pink kind.

The juice bars are here are also definitely worth stopping at. They sell at only a pound or two for a cup (or a plastic bag with a straw in it depending on what they have at the time). They make fresh juices by pureeing fruits on the spot and serving it cold. My favorite so far is the watermelon juice. They mix a zing of ginger and a hint of lime to it and blend it up. It’s deliciously refreshing and light compared to the mango juice which is much too thick for my taste -they really should water it down instead of just serving the mango pulp as a drink. Seriously. Sammer on the other hand took a fancy to the sugar cane juice, which was also pretty good, alhamdulillah.

I really can’t stand the soda in this country (so far all the soda I’ve tried is too sweet). So alhamdulillah we have fresh juice we can either buy in cartons at the supermarket or sip from cups at the juice bar. And on top of everything else, the best thirst quencher is water. Living in the desert really does make you appreciate water, subhanAllah.

Those red fruits on the side are fresh dates straight off the tree! 

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I think Arabic is one of the most polite languages on this earth. Don’t get me wrong it can also be very harsh when it wants to be. But I’ll save our stories of rough encounters for another post insha’Allah. For now let me tell you about the nice people…

Incident #1: We’re riding in a taxi with an elderly cab driver and as he’s driving us we’re all speaking in English in the back. Then my friend tries to tell the driver to stop so she says, “3aleh gammeh” and he corrects her with a light chuckle and says very slowly, “3ala Gamb”. He picked up that we were Arabic Students so he patiently taught us the correct way to say it. Then when we got out of the cab and my friend handed him the money he says in Arabic to leave it, like he wasn’t going to accept payment from us. So she insisted and he kept refusing to take it until finally he accepted it. I found this to a very polite gesture because from what I’ve heard and seen so far, most Egyptians are all about money, but masha’Allah he was different.

Incident #2: One of my roommates and I took a taxi to the airport today because she wanted to say goodbye to a sister she knows who was leaving back to England. When we finished and we went outside to take a taxi home my roommate goes up to a cab driver and tells him where we want to go and asks if he’ll take us for 15 guinneh (Egyptian pounds). He appeared to be very practicing taxi driver, according to his dress..and so he says no to 15 guinneh. We thought he was being a typical Egyptian taxi driver and that he was trying to demand more fare. So imagine our surprise when he says, “3ashara!” (ten!). My friend looks at him like she heard wrong and repeats the number 15 to him but he insists to take us for less and says, “3ashara!”. Masha’Allah for once we got a cab driver who didn’t rip us off. We ended up paying him 20 at the end of our ride, just because of that.

Incident #3: Another taxi story (sorry but a lot of our day is spent riding in taxis, that’ll soon change though once we move next week insha’Allah). We were riding home from somewhere and it was really hot out, so the cab driver got his water bottle out and took a swig. Before closing the lid though he offered his water to the rest of us (we politely refused of course). That’s when one of the sisters whose lived here for a while said that it’s customary for the drivers to offer you their water if they drink it in front of you. Masha’Allah! I love it when practices from the Sunnah are embedded into the everyday customs of the people.

Incident #4: After receiving a job offer to teach at a school here, two of my friends accepted it and I was left with the choice to either join them in accepting the offer or turning down the offer. After consulting with my wise mother (may Allah give her Jannah) I decided to turn down the job offer for fear that it might take away from my energy and objective to study full time here. Yesterday morning I called the administrator to tell her I wouldn’t be coming in that day to sign the contract because I’d decided not to take the job. To my surprise she was very sweet to me and she said, “Alia, we are friends now and I want you to know I wish you were joining our staff at the school but even though you’re not, I wish you the best. I’m here for you and if you ever need anything during your stay in Egypt please call my mobile any time!” Masha’Allah! I was very impressed at her hospitality considering I’d only met her once.

In general the people here have a very charming way of speaking. Egyptian dialect is very light hearted and I find that it suits their personalities to the tee. They’re ready to find something to joke about at almost any moment. For the most part I don’t think the men have a staring problem like they do in my dad’s country.

After buying something from a shop, the salesperson says to us, “Mabrook!” to congratulate us on our buy. Almost everyone, including taxi drivers, will always reply to your salaam (which is a big deal for me because in my dad’s country people have abandoned the wajib of replying to salaam).

Alhamdulillah for the above incidents and I hope to experience many more…

Ramadans coming up so let’s hope it brings out the best in our manners insha’Allah.

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Assalaamu `alaykum from Egypt :)

The city of a thousand minarets…*sigh*. There’s so much to take in and so much to learn the moment you first set out to explore Egypt. Taxis, streets, signs, minarets, sounds, smells, people, food, shopping: all of it whizzes past you as you’re on board a typical black Egyptian cab car. Amidst all of the chaos and distractions you suddenly hear something so soothing that brings you right back to reality and echoes from every corner of the city taking your mind through flashbacks of history as you imagine all the people of the past who heard it too. The athaan. Masha’Allah : )

Alhamdulillah we arrived safely in Egypt…but our luggage did not. For two days the airlines has been saying over the phone that they’ll deliver it to us but so far we haven’t received anything. Even when we insisted to them that we’ll just come around to pick them up the guy kept saying, “No, no, we will deliver it.” So that’s it, today in a couple of hours we’re planning to go down to the airport and get our bags ourselves, insha’Allah. 

It was late afternoon when we arrived in Egypt and let me tellllllllll you, we were deceived by the weather. SubhanAllah when we walked out of the airport we were saying, “Wow the weather’s pretty nice, not too hot..” Hah! The sun is scorching hot in the day time. In fact it’s so hot that right now, I was just eating yogurt with a metal spoon and the spoon just bent all the way backward- it must have melted from the heat! We’ve discovered it’s a good idea to carry a bottle of water with us whenever we go out because real mineral water is not always easy to find when you’re thirsty. Why mineral water you ask? The tap water here is loaded with Chlorine, the moment you put on the faucet you smell it. One sip of that stuff and you feel like you just swallowed pool water. 

Cairo certainly is a sight to see. I kept thinking how beautiful it seemed even without the lush greenery I’m used to seeing in Florida. The historical landmarks give the panorama a rich story to contemplate as you look out onto a view of the city. Since we arrived on a Wednesday we had the next two days to rest and sight see since Thursdays and Fridays are considered weekends here. We got a taste of materialistic beauty at City Stars (Egypt’s biggest and nicest mall) and natural beauty at Al-Azhar park. Photos to be uploaded soon, insha’Allah.

Alhamdulillah we’re finally here and loving it!

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Several annoying advertisements, weeks of mentally debating over it, and one pleasant phone call later I sit here now in relief and happiness informing you that I have just become a satisfied Vonage customer.

For just $24.99 a month I wil have unlimited local and long distance. I’ve been assigned a local US phone number which means while I’m in Cairo my friends and family from the States won’t have to think twice about calling me :D. All I do is plug in a phone and a computer into my Vonage router, make sure I have high speed internet 90kbps or higher and………dial tone!
:::Lisa is advertising a free give-away of my number to potential prank-callers!:::

(*Cough* It’s a gimmick. You don’t qualify for eligibility unless you mention her in a blog post.)

Warning to Vonage: If I don’t receive my Vonage device by tomorrow as promised and paid for, then I take back everything I said about being a happy customer.

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Last night I was enjoying the peace and darkness of my room after a long family road trip home from Miami. I had just turned off my laptop and it felt good knowing that I’d finished setting up this blog. Another task crossed off the to-do list, I could finally reward myself with sleep. I picked up my cellphone to check the time and calculate the duration of sleep I’d be getting…when it hit me.

Someone once told me that before going to sleep is the best time to collect your thoughts on the day’s events and remember things you forgot to do. I’ve found this to be true, which is a little frustrating considering you can’t do much about it at that point. You can’t make those urgent phone calls at 1 AM or return that thing you borrowed from that person, so just as fast as you remember you have to get it done, you also have to jot it down somewhere to make sure you get to it first thing in the morning.

So there I was checking the time on my cellphone when I suddenly remembered a bill that was due!
I should have gone with my gut feeling to pay it in full right away rather than wait. With all this going out of town that I’ve been doing, packing for my trip, and family issues to address I didn’t remember that I had until the end of July to take care of it. I felt sick to my stomach going to sleep last night, disappointed in myself and annoyed that it was too late at night to do anything about it.

As part of our Islam, we are taught to be prompt when fulfilling promises and paying off debt. There’s a reason for this. Debt is something you can’t leave behind no matter where you go. If I leave on my travels without paying off a debt I’d return home to find myself facing the consequences for it. And if I didn’t reach home…? Think about it. If you die before fulfilling something you owe there is NO escaping it, you WILL have to pay for it in the next life.

It scares me to think after I leave I might think of something else I was supposed to do or something else I owe and by then it might be too late…

On the bright side, T-Mobile told me I can pause my account for 90 days for a fee of $10. It isn’t much but it means my bill won’t have to be paid for again until November and every little bit helps when you have to pay for something you won’t even use for almost a year.

I really have to make sure I fulfill my duties to others before I go such as replying to e-mails/phone calls and returning or giving them things I owe them. If you’re reading this and I owe you something: please let me know ASAP!

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My study buddy sent her cellphone to Travel Insider to get it unlocked so it would be ready to use overseas. I was under the impression I had to do the same thing until a Google search revealed to me otherwise. Apparently T-Mobile isn’t bad after all. Get this - they unlock your cellphone for FREE. That’s right all I had to do was call customer care and request the code to unlock my cellphone, they said it they’d e-mail it to me within 24 hours along with step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

It’s a huge relief that I don’t have to send it off, pay money unnecessarily, and get it back here in time before I leave in less than two weeks. Alhamdulillah!

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Bismillah,

Sure, everybody has room for improvement. You know the distance between here and the ex-planet Pluto? Yeah, that’s kind of the space my ‘room for improvement’ could take up. I’ve learned sometimes when you want to change your life you need to go somewhere where you can make it happen. Remember the story of the man who killed 100 people and then wanted to repent so he traveled out toward a new village where he hoped his repentance would be accepted? Notice how he left in hopes of improving himself somewhere new and different. Environment undoubtedly has a huge effect on who we allow ourselves to be and I think it’s about time I try a change of environment for a while.

This is the beginning of my journey to Egypt. Let’s hope by the end of it I’ll be a better person. Insha’Allah.

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