Cairo Chronicle, Issue #7, January 16, 2000
Happy New Year to everyone - and we're so happy that the New Year passed by without so much as a blink here. But before we talk about that, we'd better catch up on the rest of December.
On December 7th, we had our Holiday Program at AIS-- almost four weeks after the huge Halloween concert. This made Barbara and Susan Sargent (the other music teacher) scramble for extra practices. Why so soon after Halloween, you ask? Isn't the Christmas program supposed to be close to the 20th or something? Well, Ramadan, the holy month of fasting in the Islamic calendar, started on the 8th. In order to pay respect to the kids' beliefs, we were obliged to deliver some sort of holiday program BEFORE the fasting started. Now, you might think in an Islamic country, Christmas would not be celebrated much. Because AIS is an American-style school, it celebrates ALL the American holidays as well as the Muslim ones. So we had Santa Claus, Christmas trees, presents, you name it. The senior music teacher at the school wished to have a traditional program, with traditional songs in the program. So believe it or not, the kids sang things like "Silent Night" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain," right along side "Up On the Housetop" and "Jingle Bell Rock." Barbara got a little bit of protest from two classes over some issues (Is it "haram" [forbidden] to sing "Jesus Christ is born"? Or "Alleluia"?) Luckily a few Islamic faculty members gave her some arguments to use with those students. It finally came down to "If you can show me in a book that it is forbidden to sing it, I'll excuse you." Not one did. All the same, next year's holiday program will not contain as much "offensive material."
The AIS faculty had a Christmas party that weekend, with lots of food, drink, friends and fun. There was also a talent section. The two of us sang "We Three Kings" with another teacher, Myra Taylor, to a splendid hammer dulcimer/autoharp accompaniment. On the lighter side, we also sang what we called "Here We Go Again - or - A Typical Day at AIS Elementary." Todd, as is his wont, was goofing around when he wrote this song, to the tune of "Pick A Little/Good Night Ladies" from the Music Man. It is about a stern teacher (played by Todd), and a student (played by Barbara) who forgets to bring her yellow discipline form back to school. The audience just howled - must have hit home. Several teachers also sang Christmas carols at the Ramses Hilton, which was also a lot of fun. But both of us REALLY missed the Victorian caroling season with Tempest Productions in Dallas. Not much call for that here.
Now what is this month of Ramadan, anyway? Well, for one month, all Muslims must not put anything into their bodies from sunrise to sunset-- food, water, tobacco smoke, etc. The exception is if someone is sick, though they must make up the lost fasting day some other time during the year. Most Muslims must continue to go to work and school during the fast. Then after the sunset call to prayer, everyone may start eating the evening meal, called Iftar. The Iftar is officially signalled not by the call to prayer, but by a cannon fired off in the desert (viewed on television by many devout Muslims). AIS classes were truncated -- began 15 minutes later and ended about one hour earlier, to allow the students to get home before Iftar. There is good reason for this policy. The roads are JAMMED for two hours before sunset, so that all 16 million Cairenes may get home or to the restaurants before "the cannon goes off." Several teachers described going to a restaurant and watching people sit around full tables of food, waiting for the exact moment. Then people party until about 1-2am for the Sohoor meal. They might get a little sleep before rising at 4:30am to eat just before sunrise, when the fast begins again. Every restaurant, shop and Shisha bar is decorated with Bedouin tent fabric and elaborate lanterns. Even such American standards as McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Popeye's, A&W and KFC were decorated this way. We didn't expect most of the elementary children to participate in the fast, but it seems to be a mark of piety to start as young as 7 years old! Sixteen (of 18) children in Todd's 3rd grade went without eating for at least 2 weeks. We never saw more than 5 kids in a class eat at lunch time, even though the fast is not required until age 12 -- or the beginning of puberty. Many of the kids were too tired and hungry to really think, and discipline problems shot way up. Tempers were also flaring on the streets of the city, as witnessed by an increase in reckless driving. These spats caused untold numbers of traffic flustrations (not a misspelling: flustered-frustrations), as if the traffic wasn't bad enough.
For expats, the experience can be very intimidating. Nothing is open during the day until late morning (11am or noon). Very few restaurants serve lunch (Chili's, which opened at noon only had two customers on Friday afternoon (-:). From about 5pm-7pm, the streets are deserted -- Cairo almost becomes a ghost town. The major supermarkets are open, thank goodness, because heaven forbid you go out later that night! The streets are PACKED, the traffic is terrible, and firecrackers go off non-stop. The smells of Shisha and cigarettes in some places can be overwhelming. But we did brave the traffic several times, even with the headaches, just to get out of the house.
The end of Ramadan is a three-day celebration called the Eid (pronounced EED). People give gifts and go shopping. It was even noisier than Ramadan. One day of the Eid, we rode on the Metro, and could hardly have a conversation over the chanting and clapping boys at the other end of the car. Todd had his camera along on this occasion and quite a gaggle of children on the metro wanted to have their picture taken by an American. He obliged, kindly.
Our Christmas break lasted from Dec. 22 to Jan. 10. During that time, Todd and Barbara sat around the house, slept late, read books and spent enormous amounts of time on a computer game (sometimes even 10 hours at a stretch!) After some friends came back from their vacations, we took turns at various houses and played RISK (Barbara abstaining, of course). So it was pretty lazy. Just the kind of relaxing vacation we needed. There were some days, we are embarrassed to say, we comfortably stayed in our jammies and drank hot coffee.
Hope your holidays were enjoyable. We spent some lovely days with other teachers who didn't leave the city. New Years was spent on the computer, chatting with people from home and watching the world get to 2000 trouble-free.
We miss you all!
Todd and Barbara
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