@ sixes & sevens

Another reason why I live here

The number before I thought to pull out my camera was "Carol of the Bells", which was lovelier than "Deck the Halls." But it gets the holiday message across anyway.

Atlantic Antic Festival

I headed out to Atlantic Avenue on Sunday to take in the 2007 Atlantic Antic Festival. I'll admit it was the Transit Authority's Bus Festival (left) that drew me out there in the first place. But that was clearly only the lure. As it happened, the AA festival was a kick too.

So I brought my camera to record the buses, some candids from the festival, and whatever else caught my eye. I couldn't find a good shot from among the buses -- maybe I was just too nostalgically overwhelmed -- but the Brazilian-inspired drumming ensemble Maracatu NY certainly was photogenic. I whipped out my camera and started an extended video of their performance. Not long after I started videoing, the camera went 'Click!' and the exhausted battery message came up. Sorry, folks! I guess the upside is that I wasn't obsessed with finding the perfect shot for the entire rest of the afternoon.

A little beer, a burrito with EVERYTHING, and the street stroll was off and running. I found some great original (not out of a crate from overseas) jewelry from wabi sabi (no pictures, cuz some it's destined for Kiki's birthday), some dishtowels for MPOW and our two households, and even got suckered into browsing artəz'n (again, a blackout until after this weekend). It must have been the beer that made the geezer rock group Windsor Terrors (@MySpace) sound so good. (And all the ol' guys around me equally blown away by the lead guitarist must have been drinking the same stuff.)

Whoever it is who's talked up the festival every year for the last couple of years, until this year on totally deaf ears, thanks!

Cairo finale: out with the old and in with the oud

My brain may finally have caught up with my body yesterday, but it didn't guarantee a good night's sleep. No, it wasn't the muezzin call at whatever god awful hour that takes place: that I slept through. No, it wasn't the cat throwing up (that was the first night). It was the extra hard mattress that makes me sore after only about six hours on it. After what must have been ninety restive minutes of tossing and turning, I eventually decamped to the living room sofa, where I could luxuriate in its overstuffed cushiness. Dawn (or at least our scheduled hour of rising) came too soon today.

Dinner at Taboula was a nice way to unwind. Next time maybe I'll order the 'lamb cubes' that Kiki got. We sat next to a table of AUC students -- juniors? seniors? -- and I was swiftly reminded of my college days. Two women and three men made up the group, most of them sucking on their shishas -- that last feature, I hasten to point out, wasn't part of my college days. No, it was the posturing of the male of the species before the females of same. They must have been Arabic Studies or PoliSci students, judging from their fascination with Middle Eastern geopolitics. One gassy male in particular (he wore his NY baseball cap throughout the evening) was particularly sure of himself, delivering pearls about this Arab state and that one, using the word 'hegemon' three times in one very long sentence (if you don't stop with a period, you don't risk being interrupted).

For a while the women were game, challenging the most flagrant oversimplifications. One was evidently Iranian-American, which not gave her special credibility but also made her the go-to person to field unanswerable questions about the future direction of Iran. Before long the women tired of the men's conversation and spoke mostly to each other. The men continued to spread their feathers before a more appreciative audience, themselves. I leaned over to Kiki and whispered what frightened me most was that these guys were probably going to be making U.S. foreign policy in twenty years or so.

Like clockwork the packers arrived at eight-thirty this morning and took away the boxes they had packed a few days before. It barely interrupted our breakfast. Now we simply have to hope that it's as smooth on the other end of the shipment, although we have been assured and reassured of this. But that's only one of the day's tasks. We schlepped the last remaining books signed out to Kiki back to the Library, only to learn that there's one stray not accounted for; We're hoping it didn't get packed in the shipment. And then the postponed shopping trip to Zamalek for groceries; home for lunch; and then out to 'Attaba Square to buy that oud.

I've got to hand it to Kiki: she doesn't let the fact that she hasn't a clue how to play an oud stop her from going out and buying one. It's what she wants, and that's that. After three phone calls to Lufthansa talking to as many people there, she finally got from them an admission that she could take the oud on board with her, no problem. The web site had suggested special treatment for musical instruments. It turned out that meant buying a seat just for the instrument. Then they assured her it was too big to go in the cabin, it would have to be checked. And then that it most likely would be too large for 'excess baggage'. It was looking more and more like it would have to be added to the AUC shipment.

But buoyed by this good news, we went back to the store with the instrument Kiki liked best and began the purchase. By great good luck we were joined in the store by a delightful South African on a quest for strings for his twelve-string guitar. It was his third country on this search, and he figured if he couldn't find them in Cairo he was sunk. (Of course, the other two were Kenya and Morocco.) We struck up a conversation with him -- after all, he spoke English and knew far more about stringed instruments than we did. He found his strings, we got a lesson in stringing the oud, and after we all left the store we decided to go have a coffee together and get acquainted.

Karabo it turns out works for the SABC (South African Broadcasting Company) as an analyst and advanced researcher for national elections. He's based out of Kenya but working out of Cote d'Ivoire mostly, with responsibility for covering the continent (outside of RSA, presumably). This was his holiday and the first time to Cairo. Needless to say, he's otherwise widely traveled, and that promised lots of stories and observations. For having been in Cairo only a few days he'd picked up quickly on a lot of the contradictions of Egypt, social and economic. In some respects I think this must have felt like 'civilization' to him, although he assured me that the 'controlled chaos' of street life in Cairo was the same across the continent. He has a perfectly delightful laugh, which he delivers freely and frequently: quite infectious. We've invited him for the farewell party next week and we hope he can join us.

Tonight it's another dinner out (lah-dee-dah), this time with Kiki's colleague Hatsuki at a restaurant that I'm assured has great food even if the decor is over the top. (Of course, I don't know the name, but you can expect a report in the next post.)