Henry and Mahmoud

Mahmoud, the extremely computer-literate and movie-savvy 5-year-old son of my literary critic friend Mohamed.
 
We spent a long afternoon at their place the next-to-last Friday in Cairo. Some video games were involved. Henry left the building walking karate-style, like a Ninja Turtle. He dreamed about Ninja Turtles that night. (I'm glad we came over when we did, because the following Friday their apartment on Qasr El Ainy would be inaccessible due to the military's offensive against the protesters doing a sit-in in front of the Cabinet building.)

Upward-facing Henry

In our dowdy Dokki living room, an attempt to follow the Rodney Yee "power yoga" video.


My beautiful Henry!

Note Esti's attempts to keep up in the background. (Ken seems to have given up for the moment.)

Fruit and veg

We took these on the corner in front of our house. This is literally how we bought fruit and vegetables in our neighborhood.
 
Note the new hi-rise construction in the background. Tons of it. You can see the apparent mismatch between the veggie delivery system and the aspiring-to-gentrify neighborhood. But this is only apparent: horse-drawn vegetables are considered more desirable, because more freshly brought in from agricultural districts on the edges of Cairo.
 
We posed the photo for a Q&A my school newspaper did with me. Unfortunately, Ken verbalized some instructions about how we should stand so as to block the horse's penis. At every dinner party thereafter, Esti was sure to inform everyone that "The horsie has a penis. And Daddy and Henry, they have a penis, because they are boys."
 
Fortunately not everyone could understand her pronunciation.
 
"Our" totally awesome fruit stand.
 
These people were there around the clock (one of them would sleep there in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, to guard the fruit); very sweet guys; you could hand your baby out of a cab to them and they would hold her till you paid. Also, they had the best fruit ever.
 
Tangerines! Persimmons! Pomegranates! Grapes!
Sigh.

Goodbye to Mr. Ashraf and Miss Madeline

 
 

Irish School Xmas party

Dec 13. Songs were performed in three languages. Someone's American acquaintance played Santa Claus. The posters etc. are popular slogans from the Jan 25 "revolution," used for singing a song that -- even belted out by schoolkids from elsewhere, including Iraq, Palestine, Poland, and Indonesia -- brought back sadly ironic memories of those heady days. Will post video when I get a chance.


Henry's sign says, "LEAVE means GO, you who can't understand!"

Miss Sally (Egyptian assistant teacher), Mr. Ashraf (Arabic teacher), and the formidable Miss Madeline.

The annoying part of the party: each set of parents was asked to bring in a present, suitably wrapped, to present to their own child: ostensibly from Santa.

Henry didn't pretend to believe in Santa Claus, but took the event in stride.


Henry's friend Mohamed, who is 8. They could be seen playing leapfrog most days after school.

And Mohamed's little sister Farida.

After ten days in Wisconsin, all this seems oceans away and eons ago.

Bye bye, Nile

Oh, and have I mentioned that I am incredibly sad to have left Egypt? But must admit it is very relaxing and peaceful to be back in the US, specifically in Wisconsin. The air is clean here, albeit colder. And the reason I can blog now is because Ann and Roger have taken the kids, suitably bundled, out to the park.
Our last day in Cairo was Saturday. While Ken packed, the kids and I went with their occasional babysitter, a lovely art education student named Aya, on a short boat ride on the Nile. You used to be able to hire a felucca: tiny boat, one guy rowing. Apparently tourist feluccas are hard or impossible to find -- only fishing feluccas are allowed -- so we settled for a larger motorized party boat, on which we got a private ride. Still pretty nice. Bye bye, Cairo!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

At the Pyramids

Our next-to-last day in Cairo, we finally gave in (gotta do it eventually!) and took the kids to the Pyramids. Our friend Walter and his son Jan came too. The kids seemed to enjoy it well enough: it's still pretty undeveloped, so plenty of rocks to climb on, etc. Definitely much more pleasant than the previous times I've visited the Pyramids, which were in the summertime and did not inspire any eagerness to repeat the experience. But we did manage to provoke an argument between two camel men, the first having (uncharacteristically) taken my "Later, inshallah" as a literal promise and become incensed when we instead took a brief ride with the second. So it goes! Not my favorite aspect of Egypt, but at least the photos are nice.