I Heart Cairo.

For the Restless Academics

2009-10-11T21:26:00.003+02:00

Two links that have proven to be indispensable for academic resources, readings, analysis, discussion, video and audio. A.aaaarg.org particularly grabs my attention because it has a huge library of PDFs academic resources--from books, articles, interivews, author collections--that are really helpful and up to date.http://discoursenotebook.com/http://a.aaaarg.org/

Surfacing's Second Issue is Out

2009-10-11T21:21:00.003+02:00

I don't mean for the title to sound like an advertisment. I guess its a fancier advertisment...a press release if you will. Surfacing is an interdisciplinary journal for gender in the global South published by the Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the American University

Experiments from a God-awful Kitchen

2009-03-13T18:26:00.002+02:00

It's been two months almost that I've been living as a grad student in NYC. So cooking your own meal is one of the things I've been coming more to grips with. Cooking has always been enjoyable for me, but I've never considered myself to "know" how to cook. (As you'll find out when you read this recipe). This really isn't to say that my kitchen is awful but to say that my experiments are based

Look out for Rania Malky @ The Daily Star

2008-12-28T15:33:00.002+02:00

Rania Malky, "Chief Editor" at the Daily Star (an English daily that comes out in Egypt) writes weekly editorials for the newspaper. Her own articles plus the large focus of her newspaper coverage is sensitive to human rights interest stories and is followed-up on quite diligently. Rania (no I don't know her personally, but I'm not going to say Malky says...) wrote an editorial on Islam Badr,

The Search for the Better Sheikh...

2008-12-25T12:29:00.002+02:00

My search for the best sheikh in Cairo, after four years of almost-always (I never get out of bed when I'm out of Cairo to go to the prayers) going to Friday prayers, is now being refocused to my move to New York (yes I'm moving to NYC mid-January). There are several reasons I go to the Friday sermons in the mosque next to our house, of which I won't really delve into. I just wanted to write a

My Dear Country

2008-12-17T12:28:00.002+02:00

Thought these lyrics are fascinating. It's "My Dear Country" by Norah Jones, I've been entranced by the song for over a year now. Just thought I'd share it."My Dear Country" 'Twas Halloween and the ghosts were out,And everywhere they'd go, they shout,And though I covered my eyes I knew,They'd go away. But fear's the only thing I saw,And three days later 'twas clear to all,That nothing is as

Waiting for the other shoe to fall...

2008-12-17T10:55:00.001+02:00

I think this is funny. It's from the "Letters to the Editor" in Int'l Herald Tribune's December 17th issue.Throwing Shoes at Bush Regarding the article "Shoe insult to Bush resounds in Arab World": As suprprising as the fact that an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush was his ability to duck them. If Ronald Reagan was the "teflon" president and Bill Clinton was "Slick Willy",

If you can't stand the cheese, move over...

2008-12-02T08:41:00.002+02:00

I find myself struggling from day to day to determine if I'm content with the way my life's going. I say "content" cos I don't necessarily think I have to be happy or satisfied but alert and decisive about where my life is going. And below is the conclusion I get from these daily convoluted thought struggles...I still have faith in the good around me. Friends, family, random guys at the

Oscar Buzz: What's the Buzz Mean?

2008-12-01T11:44:00.002+02:00

Feel like when we talk about Oscar Buzz its usually the gossip, reviews, general brouhaha that occurs around the Oscar. But there are at least two others kinds of Buzz I can think of honesty:1. Buzz--did you know that the general consumption of alchohol and drugs at even pre-during-and-post the Oscars is estimated to be close to the GDP of Somalia? No, I made that up, but chances are it might

The White Album Turns 40

2008-11-25T10:33:00.002+02:00

From one of my favorite "Culture Blogs"--Open Culture. (www.oculture.com )The Beatles: Podcasts From YesterdayPodcasts often have a nice way of bringing the past back to life. Beatles fans will undoubtedly appreciate several audio files dedicated to the Fab Four. Let’s start with a particularly good one. Rolling Stone Magazine, as part of a web feature called Lennon Lives Foreover, has released a

All of us do this: Extremist Rhetoric

2008-11-20T09:56:00.003+02:00

Why are so many people drawn to white hot rhetoric like white moths to a flame? In looking at this phenomenon in what I call “extremist rhetoric” in public discourse, I want to consider three politically relevant questions. I’m looking at extremist rhetoric in public discourse in the context of a (shall we say) burgeoning democracy. What makes it alluring at all? How can it imperil democratic

Genocide according to the UN makes alot of things around us genocide!

2008-11-11T23:07:00.000+02:00

Does the legal definition of genocide, a definition that so many of us knowingly use to argue what is and what is not genocide, a definition that precludes the possibility of calling the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, or what's happening in Palestine now, genocide?Can we all take the time to look up the UN definition properly and understand that all the acts that were questionably genocide

Old Folds for a Musically-Challenged Generation

2008-11-11T23:04:00.003+02:00

I like to make CDs. Sometimes, at work, when no one is around, I'll take an empty CD (I said take, not steal) and just spend 10-20 minutes making a CD for friend. Recently, the habit's developed into creating my own "Greatest Hits" 15 CD compilation. Which obviously makes me insane. But who isn't today? Here's a suggested compilation for Oldies Fans. I recommend, particularly for those who're

So you think you can 'end violence against women?'

2008-11-11T22:57:00.003+02:00

Ban Ki Moon, the new sparsely talked about Secertary General has an online campaign to rally signatures to end Violence Against Women. In one year, he wanted a million signatures (if you're interested go to www.unifem.org to sign their signatures book) and I think he's about 400,000 signatures in and he's got until the end of this month (November 25th to be specefic). Here's my suggestion:

Our Public Transcript on Gender

2008-11-11T22:52:00.002+02:00

I said in an earlier post that Egypt scores, in the World Value Survey, highly on: religion on top (97%), idea of women staying at home because housework is gratifying more than paid work (97%), and the 70% of the youth said they would fight for their country.So a friend of mine said that men in Egypt would fight a religious war to keep women at home. Our public ideas on gender is less sensitive

Sexual Harassment as Classed

2008-11-11T22:37:00.000+02:00

Just a quick thought on sexual harassment (although I don't want to add to the craze developing around this important issue): Why is it that the forms of violence against women that we focus on are ones that are narrated only by one of the several social classes in Egypt? Why is it that we give importance to this form of gendered violence specifically and not think of the other multi-faceted

Direction, Direction: The Night of Election

2008-11-05T16:27:00.002+02:00

A good friend of mine did something that when people our age get to do it, I'm very interested to help out. She got in touch with al Jazeera International to send them video feeds from her mobile camera phone by taping some Egyptians impressions of the elections. So she send a group of us an email inviting us first to breakfast to discuss our opinions and then last night hosted us (actually her

Sexual Harassment Case

2008-11-04T10:17:00.004+02:00

When I first heard that Noha Roushy had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the man who harassed her, I thought to myself "this is good news." Regardless of how I feel that sexual harassment as a topic has turned into a national debate with its own scary obsession, sexual harassment as a phenemenon does need to be addressed and finally someone has managed to have the patience and

Sexual Harassment Court Case

2008-10-23T11:24:00.002+02:00

Talks about the recent case of Noha Rushdie, who finally managed to raise a lawsuit against a harasser. The text below is the press release circulated by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights--good read and gives some background. PS: It was also on the front page of Al Ahram a couple of days ago (displayed proudly of course). Court Sentence Restores Women's Confidence in the Law (Cairo,

Good PR Strategy

2008-10-23T11:16:00.000+02:00

Got this from Open Culture--A RSS Feed I subscribe to. Until November 24, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, based in the Netherlands, is offering 10 symphonies as free downloads. You have to register, but once you do, you can download high quality performances of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, and more.

Men in Egypt Would Fight a Religious War to Keep Women at Home

2008-10-21T22:51:00.003+02:00

A friend shared in class today her story of this survey, the World Value Survey, which is a survey that takes socio-cultural beliefs, attitudes, and mores and attempts to make statistics out of them based on very elaborate questionnaires. Egypt scores, in the World Value Survey, highly on: religion on top (97%), idea of women staying at home because housework is gratifying more than paid work (

Letters to Amiga Pt. 1

2008-10-19T09:58:00.002+02:00

It's 9:30 in the morning and I have my cup of coffee in my hand and my leg is numb. I'm sitting here thinking of how much I envy/admire/am proud of my friend Janan for being in New York. On my way to work (yes, the driver takes me to work--bourgeois life suits us all don't it?) I was reading this book called "Creative Reckoning" by Jessica Winengar. Excellent book. Very much written in the

Chantal Akerman

2008-09-10T10:53:00.002+02:00

Got this on email and thought it was interesting. My friend Kiri would probably like this but then again if I tell him he might roll his eyes and scoff. You never know with him.This exploration/homage arrives in the form of a lecture/conversation, breaking some conventions, not unlike the object/subject of the event, Chantal Akerman, filmmaker and video artist. Two Akerman experts discuss her

George Orwell opens his blog

2008-08-17T14:17:00.003+03:00

Officially inaugurated on August 9th, 2008 and started on August 9th, 1938, this blog will post regularly George Orwell's blog. Could be good for the coffee in the morning where your mind still isn't working and you can sneak in three minutes of 'revolutionary' ideas before the silencing critics of your mind get to work :)http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/The Daily Telegraph has a good article

Surfacing: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Gender in the Global South

2008-08-17T10:53:00.002+03:00

Surfacing is a journal that just published its 1st issue. Being one of the people who've worked on it, I'm very excited by the refreshing amounts of possible ways this journal can go and the more input we recieve from a community concerned with the discussions, actions, and colloborations on 'gender'--in the broadest sense of the world, should follow this journal. For those really excited by

Work: Institutionally Privileged Spaces

2008-08-11T13:52:00.000+03:00

The press release that we wrote up (at work) in the previous media committee meeting was printed on the back cover page of Al Ahram, the national newspaper. Felt very satisfying at first. In fact, I didn’t go home early the night it came out so I told my mother on the phone that it was published and she said now you know that its editorial content was fitting for al Ahram. But like I said, it

Explode. Think. Create.

2008-08-06T16:06:00.002+03:00

I think I really liked this application from wordle.net that I came up with this preppy title above. The application lets you type in some text or insert text from a website or blog and it'll create this mind chart for you. I obviously submitted this blogs site and it created what you see below you. But it looked cool. Could make for a good t-shirt as well. When I kept focusing on the words,

Are we up to taking "imagination" seriously?

2008-08-06T11:21:00.001+03:00

“It’s a different way of making films and I haven’t invented that. There has to be some space for that in Egypt. It’s about time, I think.So here I am reading an article in Egypt Today’s last month edition (July) and they’re discussing the choice made by the director of the recently released movie, Ein Shams; Ibrahim Batout, to not have an actual script. (http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?

Mediocrity from the Outside

2008-08-05T11:05:00.001+03:00

Dear Editor,I'm an irregular reader of the Daily Star although I can see myself picking it up on a daily basis. But it's articles like the one titled "Moulid Sayeda Zeinab: a birthday to remember" (http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15438) that makes me hesistant about the depth of your stories and focus. Written by Michaela Singer, the article begins by giving me a hazy

Lyrics are making a Comeback

2008-07-08T14:53:00.002+03:00

Jack Johnson said in one of his songs (can't remember which one) "Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die. At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes."For some reason, lyrics has made for a powerful thought in my mind. Tuning into the lyrics, regretabbly, has become harder with the more songs I listen to. Sometimes, closing my eyes does help

"Dealing with the Devil"

2008-06-26T10:57:00.003+03:00

EgyDiva's Post on June 12th, 2008 on Palestine/Israel voiced a concern I think most of us like to voice these days: where to start, what to say, are there sides, are we gravitating towards side and making them seem more fixed than they really are, is that dogmatic attitude at times more harmful than useful?I think a useful strategy with these issues is to start small. If an article is written

On Nazif, the 2nd rate, and Innovation

2008-04-24T15:36:00.000+02:00

BK: Btw, did you hear about Nazif being interrupted at Cairo University while giving a lecture by a student? Google Nazif+Cairo University and I think you should get a blog posting from Arabawy. There's a video too.E: Yeah I heard! And the student was only arrested for a half hour, wasn't tortured, and nothing happened to his family. Impressive.BK: Well, he was apparently detained at Cairo