Egypt, Mubarak and Me

Me, in Egypt, in 2005. That's the Sphinx in the background, not a larger-than-life statue of Mubarak.

This is a cross-listed post from Boom State, my blog from work. With some edits it ran as a column on the opinion page of today’s Casper Star-Tribune.

 

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My cell phone bleeped Friday morning, as I got into my car on my way to work.

One word, written by a friend I first got to know while living in Egypt:

“Finally.”

Hosni Mubarak had fallen, resigned as president of Egypt. It’s an end to a 30-year dictatorship that mired Egypt in poverty, unemployment and waning international power.

For some reason, I’m always in transit when important things happen.

I was driving a work dump truck when I heard my wife was on her way to hospital to give birth to our daughter, Alaina. I was driving to a college class when I heard about the jet hitting the second World Trade Center tower on 9/11.

I can’t explain why this happens to me. But I can explain why Mubarak’s fall matters to me, and why it should matter to you.

I last visited Egypt in August of last year, on my way home from a summer in Yemen. I had stopped there again earlier last summer and loved the chance to visit old friends and break out the Arabic words I had polished for years while I was away.

I lived in Egypt for a year between 2005 and 2006, studying political science, Arabic and Egyptology at the American University of Cairo. Many of my classmates were Egyptian elite or foreign students such as myself, so it could be said many of us were untouched by Egypt’s suffering and repression.

But it was hard to miss the yearning for change, for a chance to make a better life, that permeated that place.

Taxi drivers I would meet had advanced degrees, but little hope of employment or the expensive proposition of marriage. Classmates I got to know hailed from wealthy Egyptian families and could spend their lives enjoying trips abroad and other trappings of the good life.

Yet even they discussed political reform and advocated on behalf of their fellow Egyptians and bemoaned the stink of corruption and lack of freedom.

Egypt’s future is still unclear, and it worries me that the military has replaced Mubarak as the leader of Egypt. Many are still concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood, who are certainly conservative but are absolutely not the Egyptian version of the Taliban.

Ideally, free, fair and transparent elections will come soon, and the people of Egypt will finally chart their own path of peace and power.

Why should any of this matter to you? It should matter because what just occurred in Egypt embodies the very essence of values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and ones you should hold dear: the right to peaceably assemble, the right to petition the government, the right to speak freely.

The Egyptians, young and old, men and women, conservative and secular, took to the streets and held Tahrir Square in Cairo to demand a government which answers to them and represents them.

They did so at a bloody cost but in a largely peaceful way, holding aloft signs of protest, not weapons of hate. It took them a mere 17 days of courage and perseverance to topple a regime.

Now the future is in their hands. I think we can all appreciate the freedom they’ve just earned.

Friday afternoon, I texted an Egyptian friend a note of congratulations.

“Has to be a whole new feeling to be Egyptian,” I wrote.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“I’m free.”

What’s next: Wyoming, my new home

In the words of “Man of Constant Sorrow“:

I am the man of constant sorrow/
I’ve seen trouble all my days/
I bid farewell to ol’ Kentucky/
The place where I was born and raised.

Okay, I wasn’t born and raised here, but you get the point. I’m leaving Kentucky.

I’m Wyoming-bound.

I’ve accepted a job as the energy reporter at the Casper Star-Tribune. This is no small job. Despite the cowboy imagery, Wyoming is first and foremost an energy state. Wyoming is the number one US coal-producing state, producing 40 percent of US coal.  It’s a top producer of natural gas and ahead of many other states in wind energy production. A Russian firm is mining uranium there and an Israeli firm is breaking new ground on geothermal energy.

It’s also home to the highest rates of workplace fatalities in the nation. And, as you can imagine, the energy firm and interests in the state exert a powerful influence on the affairs of the state.

This is a recipe for a difficult and challenging beat. I’ll be writing stories of both international, national, and hyper-local interest. Those stories are highly unlikely to make everyone happy. That’s not unusual in journalism, but as the sole energy reporter in a state where energy is life, this job is going to be craaazy.

Yet that’s why I took this job. I intend to show up, listen a lot, talk to a lot of people, see as much as I can, and then crank out some damn fine journalism.

As the old cowboy ballad goes:

Whoop-ee-ti-yi-o get along little doggies,
It’s your misfortune and not of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-o get along little doggies,
You know that Wyoming will be your new home.

Picking A Team: Why Nomads Can’t Be Sports Fans

Throw a dart, pick a team?

It’s hard to be a fan.

Hey, it’s easy, you say. Pick the team your family loves.

But what if they don’t? What if they don’t really care?

Go back to where you’re from, you say.

I was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Should I support the Packers or the Lions? I’ve lived for a substantial amount of time in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Washington and Kentucky. Timberwolves? Seahawks? Bengals? Twins? The formerly Minnesotan Dallas Stars?

You build up love for a team over time, you say.

Yet I never really cared about basketball. Baseball is another story. I remember staying awake, listening to the Minnesota Twins Radio Network on a radio in bed in 1991 as the Twins push through to the World Series. I got the family to watch it on TV and suddenly the players in my head were real on the screen.

Less than a year later I convinced my parents (for the low, low price of no commercials) to let me watch the 1992 Super Bowl between the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills. I knew nothing about football or NFL teams, but it felt like it was something I needed to do.

I was a Vikings fan, for a time. I married one in 1999, and it seemed like the right thing to do. After we got divorced in 2003, I didn’t want to be a Vikings fan anymore.

I fell in love with the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 World Series — the year of Yankees defeat, pine tar helmets, Boston anthems and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock. It felt natural to hate the Yankees. Then all the players I loved left the team, and the Red Sox cap I bought seemed false. I have it still, and it’s been to a dozen countries, but does that make me a Red Sox fan?

Just pick one, you say.

I finally just picked the Green Bay Packers. where I was born in Michigan’s UP is a solid sector of Packers Nation, and I liked their out-in-the-woods, cold weather quality. There’s something about the Northwoods that feels home to me, whether it’s in Minnesota, Michigan or Wisconsin. I’ve been a fan for four years.

By that thinking, I also picked the Minnesota Twins as my baseball team, right? They’re from Minnesota, I listened to them as a boy, and I like their workmanlike attitude. I’ve  been a fan for less than a year.

But what kind of fan does that make me?

Kentucky, For a Moment

Keeneland . . . around the bend, on to the end.

Last year I planned to do Kentucky right. I knew I was going to be in the state for a year-and-a-half (a whole year-and-a-half!), and I planned to see all the sites, to smell the smells and visit the restaurants and hit up all the cultural events. I had until next December, right? I had plenty of time.

Now, here I am, two months from the day I’ll leave Kentucky. Have a I done it right?

I’ve hiked Red River Gorge, wandered around Henry Clay’s estate of Ashland, gone to the Keeneland racing track/social event, wandered around downtown during the equestrian games, cheered myself hoarse at a Wildcat basketball game, bought Mad Mushroom pizza and ate it while I walked down Broadway to my home.

So much, yet so little.

Just one more stop on the whistlestop tour that is my life, destination: unknown.

Egypt taught me to not say goodbye or act as if I would never be back. Instead, I’ve learned to touch and remember, to smell and remember, to hear and see and tuck those memories away.

I could still tell you how that handmade vase in Yemen felt, I could still describe the smell of the narrow street just to the west of Cairo’s Bab al Louk market. I could tell you how the Dead Sea tastes and describe the flap of pigeon wings in front of a statute of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan.

Soon I must take my sensory memories of this place and tuck them away for later, when its time to tell stories of the past.

But for now, I prepare for the next stop.

Idioms? You Betcha

These are weapons of understanding. Do not underestimate them.

The old lady at the Fargo, North Dakota, thrift store counter looked like a grandma. She wore her glasses with a chain like a grandma, and tucked in her nice white blouse into her tan pants like a grandma.

She quietly folded the shirts I was buying and started to tuck them into a plastic bag, only for it to slide away from her on the counter.

No big deal, right?

Then I realized: I speak her language, fluently.

To me, words are the notes of music in three dimensions. They’re shapes that waver and morph and clinch together again in arcs that dip and soar with the flow of a sentence.

This is why I hate to learn languages. Mind you, I love to use languages. I just hate to learn them, to be a linguistic cripple, to use basic words to ask for inexact things.

I’ve spent more than two-thirds of my life in the north-central US. I was raised on the quirks and twitches of the English used here. I know the accents and phrases and word usages — the flourishes of language that show you’re not a stranger, the little things that speak to hearts and makes locals react almost instinctively.

I didn’t realize how much I missed that knowledge.

Now I’m back. No, really, I’m BACK. I’m swinging idioms left and right, breaking out the clichés and laying down the accent — flattening down consonants, squelching final syllables, and rounding vowels.

The thrift store grandma grabbed for the plastic bag before it fell over the counter’s edge.

Go time.

“We’ll, that’s sure being squirrelly, isn’t it,” I said.

She laughed.

“It sure is,” she said, with a smile.

Squirrelly.

It felt good.

The Telescoped Life

The metal-encased time capsule in my parents' driveway.

It was like a time capsule, this car.

My old Buick, ready and waiting, sat parked outside my parent’s house all summer. Inside was the detritus of somebody’s hurried departure. Mine.

Here were the new-looking receipts for things I had used, well, for three months. Those well-worn things now had well-preserved receipts. Here’s a bag for the clothes I bought back in April. I left those clothes in Yemen, victims of a weight loss massacre.

I was the last to touch this stuff, but I can’t remember it happening. What was I thinking at the exact moment I slammed this plastic bag into the back seat?

This stuff is mine. This car is mine. This seat is my seat, and it’s adjusted for a body, my body.

Yet it’s all so new — all this stuff is the middle part of my telescoped life. I have a bed and a few totes hidden in a friend’s apartment in Kentucky. I have the rest of my worldly belongings in this car. A few items fill the bags I took to Yemen and back.

Here I am, collapsing the telescope, reassembling my life of items.

Maybe soon they’ll feel like mine.

Dutch, Americans, and a Familiar Taxi Driver

The full-body scanner. Yes, it feels about as ridiculous as it looks. (Source: AP)

“Interesting,” said the Dutch security man, fingering my passport and flipping through the papers I had handed him moments before.

“Interesting,” he muttered again as he looked at the receipt for my stay at the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. I thought perhaps the American part of the name would balance out the Yemeni part. I guessed wrong. Apparently the Dutch use the word “interesting” like the rest of us use the words “highly suspicious.”

The Dutch man and I had been talking for about five minutes about who I was, what I was doing in Yemen, and who paid for it.

“Please wait here a moment,” he said, and stepped away to confirm with a more senior security man.

As they conferred, I tried to figure out what to do with my eyes, and finally just watched the passport scanner screen as passenger after passenger was checked in.

The scan of one man’s passport brought up a blinking display on the screen: “This person may be a selectee!” It said, as if he had just won an award.

Then I noticed both security men looking at me looking at the screen, and I looked away. The more senior man stepped up and round 2 of questions began.

How did I pay for the place I stayed? “By getting my own money out of the ATM?” I answered helplessly. His mouth twitched and I’m not sure if he was smiling or frowning.

Did I have anything in my bags that ran on batteries. Um, sure, laptop, camera, cell phone. Wow, I’m an idiot, I thought. They’ll detain me just because of my stupid answers.

Stupid answers, but good enough for him to finally wish me a nice flight and usher me into the full-body scanner prior to boarding the plane.

I was sure I was going to get detained upon arrival in the US. Everyone said so. I watched as the “selectee” from the Amsterdam boarding got a keen eye from the chubby US customs official, who called over the intercom — an invitation for a beefy uniformed man to stride over and ask the “selectee to follow him, sir.

I’m screwed, I thought.

The official looks at my passport, looks at me, then picks up the stamp and drives it home against the customs document.

“Welcome back,” he said.

Leave-leave-walk-now-before-you-say-something-stupid, my brain rattled.

In Fargo, North Dakota, USA, I stumbled off the plane, jet lag blurry, into the arms of family members who had waited an extra hour due to my plane being delayed. They had smiles, and hugs, and welcome home signs.

On the way out of the airport, at the bottom of the last escalator, stood one of my brothers-in-law, holding a sign with my name misspelled.

“Taxi? You need taxi?”

Yeah, I did.

Home, please, and step on it.

Watching And Getting There

He was short with a sharp, shiny black beard, and he was leaning against a souvenir counter, looking at me through the glass airport terminal wall.

He wasn’t staring, just looking casual, watching me out of the corner of his eye, almost a smirk on his lips. He looked American, I thought, as I sat in the immigration section of the Sana’a, Yemen, airport. It’s in his stance, his beard — somewhere between ironic and sincere. In the confusion, I felt America.

My papers weren’t acceptable. The immigration officer motioned for me to sit down, then made a phone call. I watched as another officer approached, talked to the first man, then made a call on his cell phone, the first man slowly lighting a cigarette. Another man walked in. Another small conference, heads bent over my passport and papers, a flip of the pages, a shake of a head.The second man walked into an office with my documents.

The bearded American looked on, then turned in his sandals and sauntered away, his heels sticking out past the end of his footwear. Odd, I thought. Too-small sandals on a man wearing a fitted collared shirt and dress slacks.

The immigration officer approached. There’s a problem, he said. You’ve overstayed your visa. These other papers mean nothing. I know, I said, I’m sorry. I can pay some sort of fine, right? Math, a total, a promise of a receipt. I fished out my cash, counted, saw the American look over. I pretended not to watch as the officer pocketed my cash. Minutes later, I was into the departure area and very relieved. I was actually leaving Yemen.

The American was looking at necklaces. Further into the gift shop, another man bent low at the counter display of watches. He was tall, wore a simple, long black robe, and was trying very hard to grow a full beard. He was of undetermined profiling potential, but his sandals fit.

The American approached him. They shook hands, warmly, like they knew each other, then talked for a few minutes before drifting apart in the shop.

Then the Americans arrived, two of them, one lanky in jeans and a plaid shirt. The other wearing safari pants, a yellow collared shirt, and a ball cap. Loudly, clearly Americans.

They talked to the tall man in the black robe, shook hands, poked through the plastic duty-free bag he was carrying. The bearded American drifted in the vicinity. The Americans and the robed man walked past me. “So, you still play basketball?” The bearded man asked the lanky American, in a friendly American accent. “I used to,” came the reply, friendly but official.

These Americans were from the embassy.

We all stood in line for the flight to Egypt, all except for the bearded American, who sat at a table nearby, facing us. He watched.

The lanky man leaned toward me.

“Are you Jeremy?” He asked, quietly.

Yes. I knew him. I had talked to him last night. He was from the embassy, and the first person who had given me a straight answer about my visa situation. He had advised me not to leave until it was straightened out. Yet here I was.

“I’m glad you made it,” he said.

So was I. I told him so and the conversation died. The black-robed man looked back at his minders.

“So what should I do?” He asked.

“Just follow instructions, do what you’re told,” said the lanky man.

A pause.

“Just get there,” he said.

The two Americans waited, talked together, watched until the robed man was through the security line, the man with the yellow shirt’s laughter piercing the hubbub of the lobby. Then they were gone.

The bearded American still sat at the table, watching.

In the gate lobby bathroom, the black-robed man washed his feet in the sink. one foot at a time, his free sandal sitting on the ground below him. He tried to get on the plane to Ethiopia before being turned away by the gate guard. He smiled in embarrassment as he fought back through the line. He went through a door to a prayer area.

Why was I watching him?

The black-robed man and I got on the bus to the flight to Egypt. He launched into a discussion in English about Islam with two Russian-speaking men.His thin hand clutched a bus pole to steady himself against the sway of the drive.

“Well, it is a philosophy,” he said. The Russians looked friendly. One looked drunk, or sunburned.

On the robed man’s right pinky finger, dull and turned in against the bus pole, was a silver ring with a red stone.

I wonder if that hurts, I thought.

I didn’t see him on the plane. I didn’t look.

I just wanted to get there.

Escape From Yemen

This is the last blog post I’ll write from my humble abode in Yemen. Within the hour I’m off to an iftar dinner, an end to today’s Ramadan fast, then to the airport and, hopefully, a flight home.

I don’t have a visa to be in Yemen and no real permission to leave. According to an US embassy official, I have a “better than not” chance Yemeni officials won’t let me board my flight to Cairo, no matter how much I beg and plead.

That begging and pleading has proved ineffective over the last several weeks of attempting to get a stop-gap visa, an adventure that turned into a tragic comedy of errors.

Snapshot: Me, leaning over a desk, jostling among a dozen Yemenis, Ethiopians and Sudanese, waving our papers in front of a small, impassive immigration police general who sits behind a large, brown desk. He glances at our papers, a brief flicker of interest, then a slow stamp-stamp-stamp of approval as he plays whack-a-mole with our lives. I notice four calendars on his desk, and only one is set to the right year and month.

Best case scenario? I’m waved aboard my flight without so much as a second look.

Worst case scenario? “A night in immigration jail,” said the embassy official. “Neither of us want that.”

Most likely/hopeful scenario? I’ll hem and haw, sweet-talk and yell, call in my favors, wave my papers, and cough up some cash — then get aboard my flight.

I’m betting that I’ll beat the embassy official’s “better than not” chance at not making the flight. I’m loaded with official papers with official signatures and official stamps  proving I lived in a reputable place in Yemen, doing reputable work, and nearly gained a reputable visa.

I have contacts in Yemen who can bully, bluster, cajole, grease wheels and raise hell. I’ve got the emergency number to the US embassy watch officer dialed into my cell phone. I’ve got other numbers for stateside contacts who can make their own phone calls.

But best of all, I’m bringing a wad of Yemeni rials and a tidy stack of $100 bills.  Never underestimate the power of Benjamin Franklin.

The thing that gives me the most confidence is the small laugh I hear within myself when I worry about tonight. It ‘ll be unpredictable, could get messy and there are so many unknowns.  Yet it feels right for me to leave tonight, and I laugh to realize I really do believe everyone feels the same way, even if I’ll have to convince them.

When you hear from me next, I’ll be in Cairo, or Amsterdam, or the US. I won’t be here.

It’s time to go.

A Street Tale: Dubbabs, Miswak Sticks, and Ali’s French Fries

A dubbab, just looking for passengers . . . (via Flickr user fscottgraham)

Nothing happened today.

At least that’s what I tell myself. But I have learned something about living somewhere new and interesting: After a while, even otherwise interesting things seem boring.

A researcher I know here made an interesting observation: Some people stay for a day in Yemen and end up writing a book. Some stay for a week and write an article. Others stay longer, and write nothing.

I have been in Yemen for a month and a half. It’s my half-way point. By his reckoning, I should write nothing. So, let me tell you about my normal daily travels, none of which seems exceptional to me. It’s easy to quickly grow jaded, and then blind.

Here’s the jaded summary: I go to work, then go to Arabic tutoring, and return home.

Here, for your amusement, are the details:

I walk down my alley to the street and say good morning to the wizened old man who sits on that alley corner every morning. I believe he’s a grandfather who lives in one of the houses near me in the alley. Usually he sits quietly and watches the people traffic. Other times friends sit nearby and talk with him, or argue over the newspaper.

I stroll west on Jamal Street, past the painters holding their long paint rollers and waiting for someone to come by and hire them, then cut toward al-Zubaira Street, past the falafel stand, past the fish market, to the corner with the sweet shop and a policeman who never seems to do much other than talk to passers-by and occasionally wave his hand at traffic.

I’m just up the road from the Republican Hospital, a convenient rallying point for taxis and the beat-up, overfilled mini-mini-minivan-style buses (called a “dubbab” here) that zoom all around the city.

I jump aboard a dubbab headed for Asser, the part of the city where I work. The dubbab trips are cheap. The equivalent of 18 cents gets me to the corner where I hop out, pay the driver and walk four blocks to work. I stop at a small shop along the way, and buy a drink or snack for during the day. I bought a small Snickers bar there once, and now the boy who is usually manning the counter has a small Snickers bar ready on the counter the moment I poke my head through the shop’s door. It’s so nice of him, I’ve been eating more Snickers than I ever have before.

I work. Later that day I say goodbye to my coworkers (nearly all female), walk back to al-Zubairi Street, and hop aboard another dubab that drives to 60 Meter Road, a major road that gets its name from its 60 meter width. I jump off and board another dubab, carefully avoiding the open space next to the veiled woman and instead squashing myself between two men in a back row. The dubbab cruises up 60 Meter Road, swerves into a frontage road after a few minutes, and pick up a few more passengers that flag it down. A few minutes later I shout at the driver to pull over and walk a block to my school for Arabic lessons.

After my brain is turned to mush, I walk back down the frontage road, past a few small juice shops, a welding shop, and a car mechanic, to a bridge over 60 Meter Road, which is not exactly pedestrian-friendly.

One this side of the bridge sit a few busy restaurants and outdoor seating, as well as a number of vendors crouched down on the sidewalk selling packets of nuts and other small food items. Beggar camp on the stairs and the bridge itself hosts more vendors selling perfume, passport covers, and miswak sticks , which when whittled a bit serve as Prophet Mohammed-approved tooth-cleaning devices.

The other side of the bridge descends into the entrance of a dusty street and a bustling vegetable market. Here sellers squat by green plastic bags filled with kilos of green peppers or onions. Another man sells bags of apples out of the back of a pickup truck. Another man, with a similar setup, is selling small tomatoes.

The corner also serves as an impromptu taxi, motorcycle taxi and minibus stop. I hop on a minibus here, ride to al-Zubairi Street, take it as far as I want — usually somewhere around the Republican Hospital — and walk toward home.

I take the eastern path this time, cutting through a gravel parking lot that often serves as a soccer field for local kids when cars are few. I walk down a street busy with dubabs and taxis, cut through a honk-heavy three-way intersection and wind my way either through a narrow alley crowded with playing children or through a vegetable market, or souk, back to my street and my alley. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll first stop by Ali’s little stand (will it have shade today from a sun umbrella?) and pick up some fresh-made french fries with pepper powder and hot sauce on them.

Just another day, there and back again.