A Most Odd Thanksgiving Meal

Thanksgiving has coincided, coincidentally, with me making some rather unexpected new friends, and receiving an equally unexpected snack with them.
It began yesterday during Arabic class, when I was sent with a stack of copybooks to correct to the classroom next to the English teacher's staff room. The room never seems to be occupied by classes, but remains far from empty. It seems to have been co-opted as an unofficial headquarters by a number of women from the multitude of mid-level school employees. Less prestigious than teachers but higher than kiosk workers and custodians, these are the bus supervisors and hall monitors of the school, who have no official place to be, and, for much of the day, no official work to be doing, and instead wander throughout the school, keeping the discipline, helping out, and entertaining themselves however they see fit. The hierarchy of employees is clear; although they are right next door to the English teachers, the two groups almost never interact or enter each other's space, and when they do it is with a respectful yet cool politeness. Similarly, although cleaning women might wander in and out, wiping down desks and pausing to ask a question, they will never be invited to join the mid-level employees in their activities and socializing. As a student, however, and a foreigner, I occupy an odd place in all of this. The English teachers, naturally, don't wish to have me in their space. Ms. Sherouk, however, the teacher I help to grade papers, took it for granted that my presence would be acceptable in the neighboring classroom, even though it was clearly already occupied by the bus supervisors, and told me to simply go in.
Having greeted the room's occupants with a wave and an awkward part Arabic, part English greeting, I sat down at a desk to start in on my corrections. I was midway through a list of sentences when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned behind me to see two women I was pretty sure I recognized as bus supervisors looking at me. "Ismik eyh?" ("What is your name?"). "Carson," I replied in my best clear voice. I'm finally realizing the trouble children with foreign sounding names go through at school, having to explain to teacher after teacher the proper pronunciation. "Eyh? What is your name?" (this time in English.) "Car-son." "Carson?" "Aiwa."
Thus began a rather stilted three-way conversation in a combination of Arabic and English. Both sides had a habit of speaking in the other's native language--that is, I spoke Arabic and they spoke English--until we came to vocabulary we didn't know, in which case we'd become stuck and substitute the word from our own language. It was, of course, a less than effective strategy, since for the most part if I didn't know the word in Arabic, they didn't know it in English, and vice versa, but I think they more or less figured out that I was an exchange student from Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., which is somewhere near California.
We were interrupted by the entrance of Safie, a constant inhabitant of the school hallways with an undevinable set of responsibilities. I asked a classmate once what her job was, and he replied that she was once a bus supervisor, and then got promoted. What she got promoted to, he didn't know, but she appeared to be pleased with her new job. I knew who she was quite well, because she was in the habit of asking me my name every time she saw me, in both Arabic and English, and telling me hers. I'm not sure if this was an attempt to be friendly by using her English vocabulary, or if she just didn't remember what to call me, because after a few attempts to pronounce "Carson" she inevitably ends up calling me "Christina" or some variation of such by the end of the conversation. (The bus supervisors apparently heard about me from Fatma, my bus supervisor, and call me variations of "coo-coo." I'm not sure if the nickname came to her from my host mother or she created it independently, but at least it's consistent and doesn't have me turning around every time anyone says something that begins with a "k.")
At the moment, she was carrying a black plastic bag tucked under her arm, and, after hastily shutting the door, furtively opened it to reveal a large casserole dish filled with a type of Egyptian dessert made of a crust with white custard-like filling and matted strings of crisp sweets on top. She pulled out a knife and began to quickly cut off large hunks to pass out to her companions, and one she handed to me. "Bsora! Quickly!" she said, glancing at the door, and the moment I had finished my first piece, cut off another rather large hunk, considered it, tore off one end and ate it herself, and handed me the rest.
Once everyone had eaten seconds, the remainder was quickly piled into a tupperware and stowed away in one of the women's substantial purses. Food complete, everyone was ready to relax, passing around a bottle of water. Eyeing my sticky hands, one of the bus supervisors pulled out a tissue for me, which was intercepted by Safie, who proceeded to brush me down, pour water over my hands, and scrub my face with a wet tissue. "The food--secret," she said. "Mishi? Secret." I nodded my agreement. She turned to the bus supervisors and conversed briefly with them.
"Bokra-tomorrow-bring, ismu eyh, bananas."
"Bananas?" I asked.
"No, apples."
"Apples?"
"Yes, apples, apples. Bring apples." She then asked to borrow my red correction pen and rushed out the door.
Ms. Fatma, one of the bus supervisors (coincidentally the same name as my bus supervisor) gestured after Safie. "She's crazy." I nodded and grinned. The other bus supervisor gestured for me to wait, and began to rummage through her purse, pulling out an extraordinary array of items: tissues, a tomato, some green leafy vegetable, a bottle of water, and so forth. Finally, she pulled out a plastic bag of what appeared to be a sort of legume. It resembled a fava bean in size and shape but was canary yellow and apparently meant to be snack food. She poured a pile of them out for me on a piece of paper and showed me how to eat them, biting the edge to crack through the outer skin and squeezing the inside out into your mouth. After a few attempts I succeeded, and was rewarded with a slightly crunchy yet soft salty, pea-like inside, that tasted a bit like a softened peanut.
When the bell rang for the end of the session, I returned to Ms. Sherouk with an unimpressively small pile of completed booklets, and much too happy to care about her disapproving look.
The next day, I showed up in the same classroom as the day before with three apples and another stack of exercise books. Within moments of my entrance, Safie appeared in the doorway.
"Where are the apples?" I pulled them out of my bag and handed them to her. She took them and exclaimed something in Arabic, passing around the bag so the other two bus supervisors could take theirs. They talked excitedly for a few minutes, pausing occasionally to say to me, "Very good." One of the bus supervisors pulled a knife out of her purse and used it to start cutting them up to eat. Safie returned to me.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. Not quite sure of the proper response, I answered with the truth: yes, I was, having skipped breakfast in favor of trying to find the bag of apples which I was sure had been in the refrigrator the night before.
"One moment." Safie disappeared, and I started correcting grammar errors in students' practice sentences. A few minutes later, she reappeared through the door, staggering beneath a gigantic cardboard box on her shoulder. The other supervisors cracked up (apparently they hadn't been expecting this performance either) as she stumbled to a desk and set the box down with a thunk. From its depths came the most unique Thanksgiving meals I have ever eaten (this from someone whose mother cooked a turkey in a pit in the yard). First came a mostly eaten container of cold maccaroni, fork still sitting in it, then a plate with a bit of soft cheese on it and a cucumber, which one of the supervisors took over to the garbage can to peel with her knife. Two olives and a single slice of tomato followed, and a piece of brown Egyptian flatbread was dredged up from the bottom of the container.
Thus began my acquaintance with three bus supervisors, all of whom speak only Arabic. Communication is rather limited, because of my limited language skills; even when I do say something correctly in Arabic, my words are doubted because of all the times I've said something incorrectly, and vice versa, so very little actually gets across. However, visiting with them has become one of the highlights of my school day (besides, of course, break), and given me a fascinating look into the daily work (and lack thereof) of the these three women and all of their friends who they take me to meet during my free sessions.

Of Fuhl and Fatma

The aspect of Egyptian culture that has stood out to me the most since I arrived here--and made me wish there was a bit more of it in American culture--is the friendly, open generosity that people display. At school, for example, no one eats anything alone. If you have a sandwich, you tear it in half and offer a piece to your friend. Bags of chips and bottles of water are more or less communal property, and even individual pieces of chocolate can be broken into smaller and smaller pieces to make sure that all your friends get a chance to try it. One of the people who exemplifies this generosity most, along with the friendly openness of Egyptian culture, is Fatma, my bus director.

Bus director is a job that has no equivalent in America. It is an exclusively female position, whereas bus drivers here are all men. As far as I can tell, the director's task is to keep the discipline on the bus and make sure that every student gets to and from school safely each day, and also to provide assistance to the driver in finding new students' homes and creating the most logical route. This can be executed in a number of different ways. The director of the bus I take to Arabic class if constantly in a bad mood, and sits slouched in her front row seat, texting on her blackberry and occasionally looking up to yell at any student who's become too loud, or offer the driver advice, which he ignores. Entirely on the opposite side of the spectrum, there is Fatma, who makes the ride to and from school one of the best parts of the day.

I suppose she's technically Ms. Fatma, but no one actually calls her that; she seems too close to the students for much formality. Every morning, she uses her own mobile to call each and every student on the route five minutes before she reaches their building, to tell them to come down, so they don't have to stand waiting for fifteen minutes on the street for the bus to arrive, or to keep things moving if she's early. Unlike other buses, which leave students behind if they aren't waiting on the street, I don't think Fatma has ever left anyone behind, although we've all been late to school a few times because of it. She is constantly in the center of students' conversation, laughing and teasing along with them, although she is always ready to keep the discipline with her long fingernails that dig into troublesome students' wrists until they repent and plead for mercy. She also knows how to throw a school bus party like no other.

The first time I was introduced to Fatma's bus breakfasts was at the beginning of the year. I showed up on Thursday morning in my usual tired I-should-not-be-awake-before-seven daze, and was awoken from a half-sleep partway through the hour and fifteen minute bus ride to find all the students crowding towards the front of the bus, talking with an excitement rarely seen in the morning, swaying into each other with the movement of the bus. As an exchange student, I was given the honored status of being shoved through the crowd to the front, where I fell unceremoniously into a front row seat as the bus jerked forward. There I found Fatma, seated precariously on the ledge that divided the body of the bus from the driver's cab, with a wooden tray half the width of the bus set on her lap, loaded with a feast. Large plates of fuhl (Egyptian beans) had been layed out next to stacks of tamiya, cold seasoned eggplant, onion, and gergeer. A shopping bag sat next to her, filled with eish balady (badly transliterated; that's Egyptian flatbread, it's not really like anything you can get in America, so I can't give you an English word) that was being passed--and tossed--out to students. 

As we wove through Cairo traffic, Fatma and the tray swayed dangerously back and forth between the two halves of the bus. Whenever we stopped suddenly or she was overcome with laughter, Fatma would throw out both arms to grab a pole on her right and the boy seated to her left, who would grab hold to keep her from toppling over entirely as her entire top half disappeared into the cab behind her, the tray on her lap miracolously managing to stay upright.

I, naturally, was urged to try everything, which I did with relish, and eat, and eat, and eat some more. Fatma offered me something that looked a bit like a piece of onion, and, unsespecting, I took a large bite like everyone else around me was doing, to find that it was, indeed, a large slice of plain raw onion. Not wanting to appear rude by, say, spitting it out and throwing the remainder out the window, I decided I was obligated to finish it, possibly a mistake given that my throat was still burning after my second piece of bread.

When everyone had eaten their fill--or, in many cases, more than their fill--the remainder of the food was carefully covered in plastic and replaced in Fatma's shopping bags and the newspaper gathered from the tray, and out came the second course of any good Egyptian meal: soda. Out came bottles of pepsi with a thin ice crust on top, that had appparently been frozen to keep the September heat from rendering them undrinkable, and two grubby plastic cups of dubious origin, one of which was filled and passed to me, along with half a box of gum that was dumped into my hand as I was trying to show Fatma that I already had some. The other cup was passed to the driver, while the bottles were handed around for the other students to drink from. 

Our driver was so occupied with his soda and the spirited conversations going on behind him that he missed the turn-off to school. With typical Egyptian driving style, he decided to remedy this situation by putting the bus in reverse and backing up down the highway to where we were supposed be, apparently following the logic that he wasn't driving the wrong way so long as the front of the bus was pointed in the same direction as the rest of the traffic. So back we went, with Fatma dangling out the door, acting as the eyes of the bus and a sort of traffic flagger, waving wildly at cars behind us to alert them that we were coming, and they'd better get out of the way if they didn't want to get hit by a bus full of overstuffed teenagers.

We arrived at school in high spirits, long after the bell had rung. The pepsi was returned to its bags, the cups shaken out and stowed away, presumably in preparation for another use, and students went to retrieve their bags, to go attend just another day of school as if the breakfast had never happened.

السلام عليكم ("A-salam-alycoom" or "hello")

Hello all!
I've been living with my host sister Yara, my host mum Basant, and my host dad Bahaa in Heliopolis, Cairo for one week today. This is the view from our kitchen window:

The first thing that struck me about Cairo was the driving. Where there are lanes they seem to be a fluid concept, and I have yet to meet a traffic light. Drivers communicate with a combination of emergency lights, headlights, and horn honking (a short beep is thank you, two is you're welcome, etc.), and pedestrians weave their way across streets while cars swerve around them. It's quite exciting, which helps make up for the fact that the traffic is so bad, it can make a six minute drive into an hour long ordeal. Everyone walks in the street too because the sidewalks are broken up, parked on, and generally less than pleasant.
I've been super busy meeting new people and driving around the city. Yesterday I met my host mum's siblings, their children, her parents, and her grandmother and great aunt at a crowded family breakfast. One of my host cousins (is that a real phrase?) who's eleven gave me an Arabic lesson from my Arabic children's book and told me all about the Egyptian educational system. I've also met a number of Yara's friends. Everything's really confusing because everyone speaks in Arabic and I can't understand any of it, but it's too interesting for it to bother me.
I start school tomorrow. My classes are going to be taught in English but hopefully I'll have a good Arabic class as well. I'm wearing a school uniform for the first time ever, which is gray pants and a blue polo shirt. A school bus takes me there and back home, which should be interesting because school buses in Cairo are notorious for taking forever.
Okay, going to study some Arabic now! Bye-bye. (That's actually how people say goodbye here a lot.)