No Man Is An Island

Funny things happen to islands in the Nile near Cairo. A couple of years ago residents of Maadi noticed dredging equipment working on a small unoccupied island just off the Military Hospital on the Maadi corniche. Rocks were piled against the banks of the little island, palm trees brought and planted...all very intriguing. Oddly enough, no one could find out who was doing the work or why or to what end. Now as you drive by there is a very manicured island with a picture of the President of Egypt on it. Did he change the island? No one knows. But there was quite a loud fuss made over the process because changing the shape or size of an island changes the way that the river flows and the River Nile is not just an Egyptian river but it is a major world river. When the Aswan dam was constructed and the silt that used to travel down the Nile to the Mediterranean Sea became blocked behind the dam, the farmers of Egypt weren't the only people affected by the change. The sardine industry was devastated because the sardines relied on the nutrients that had been reaching the sea through the Delta...except now their food source had vanished. Changing a river in any way affects much more than the people who are living on its banks.

Not long ago news reports mentioned that another island was having problems of a similar sort, but this was a larger island and one with quite a few people who have been living there for a number of generations. The islanders found some dredges parked alongside their island and some military personnel standing about on the shore. Having both military personnel and dredges is a very awkward situation. The military have fairly remarkable powers in Egypt... one doesn't want them as an enemy.

The situation became quite tense in fairly short order. The inhabitants of the island are, for the most part, farmers and as such very dependent on their land. At the rate that farmland is being developed in Egypt, to have to pull up stakes and move to another plot of land would not be an easy thing at all. Starting over on reclamation land is a massive enterprise in terms of installing infrastructure and building a new life...plus, Egyptians in general really don't like moving. They like living near their families and friends from generations back.

I've been watching the news to see what is happening with this island and for the past week or so there's been no news. The islanders are fighting the incursion of the army in the courts, but in a country where the military have extraordinary powers, that's not an encouraging activity. There's been no indication of who it is who wants the island or who claims to own it and no indication of the intended outcome. Hopefully, at some level of planning in this issue, people will realise that this isn't just a corner lot somewhere that might make a good grocery store. Islands are part of a river and the Nile isn't just any river.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Prayer for a Neighbour

One of the things about living in Egypt is the fact that my neighbours in an international sense are pretty high profile. About ten years ago, right after the end of the long Lebanese war, my husband and I had the opportunity to visit Lebanon for a weeklong conference of millers, mill owners and suppliers where the wives spent four days visiting different parts of the country. Diaa fell into the later category as one of the main suppliers of corn and soybeans in Egypt and I was happy to be a tourist. He'd been to Beirut once long before the war and I'd spent a couple of summers in Cyprus arguing idly with a Danish woman married to a Lebanese pilot who was a refugee with her two kids while various armies shelled the hills around their home above Beirut. Our longterm friendly argument was over which city was more beautiful: Beirut or Vancouver, BC. They have so much in common with the sea, the mountains, skiing, and good living. We never really decided, but Beirut definitely had some problems.

When I finally got to see Lebanon, I could definitely see my friend's side of the argument. Lebanon is one of the most lovely countries on the planet...or at least it was. When we visited the first time the scars of war were very fresh and the rebuilding that the Israelis again so brutally shattered summer before last was just getting started. Our Lebanese friends were very worried however about the generation of Lebanese who were growing up with no experience other than chaos...how can you teach order and care to people who have never known it? This is a central issue in any developing country and a heartbreaking issue for a country that knew order for so long and then lost it for fifteen years.

One of my blog notifications brought up a post about a Lebanese singer Majida el Roumi who is a UN goodwill ambasador and who recently took all of the parties in her country to task for not working together to rebuild Lebanon. She was speaking at a ceremony to remember the slain journalist Gebran Tueni and I think that every leader in the world should take these words into his/her heart:

The English translation of her speech is online at
Now Lebanon

How many hearts have to be broken? How many homes have to be ruined? How many Lebanese have to be given worries as their daily bread? How many young men and women have to leave the country before you decide to meet and put an end to this disastrous situation and this horrible division? How can divisions reach the point of having people tell me, “Do not pray at Pierre’s funeral or say a word in Gebran’s commemoration, or you would be speaking up against the others.” Who are the others? Aren’t you all Lebanese? All those martyrs who have died from the southernmost part of the country in massacres perpetrated by Israel to its northernmost part, in the case of our beloved army martyrs, and all those who died for our youth’s sake, … Aren’t they all – truly and honestly – ours? Didn’t they break our hearts? Aren’t they only guilty of being Lebanese?

We no longer meet to pray for the martyrs’ souls, since we now have “their” martyr and “our” martyr. I reject this painful discrimination. I hereby say that it was an honor to sing for Pierre inasmuch as it is an honor to speak about Gebran. If I am accused of being Lebanese, then I am the lucky one. I no longer care who will be offended by these words. Indeed, I know that some people will be offended, but I no longer care about them because, after 30 years of war, we have come to lose hope. I no longer care to bear witness to anyone on this earth, especially not in politics. I only bear witness to the Lord, and our Lord loves peace. He is against violence and He tells me to bear witness to what is right, to the best of our youth and to the sovereignty and freedom of this land, as any self-respecting citizen with some dignity should do. I bear witness to the tormented, martyred Lebanese people who has close brushes with death everyday and barely hangs on to life. I say: enough is enough…

You say you are entrusted with Lebanon’s sovereignty and our safety… [In reality,] you have torn the country into pieces, and you want to replace it with one that is tailor-made for confessions, parties and power obsessions. However, this country is far greater than that. You are responsible for driving wedges among us and dividing us under a single roof. You have scattered us and linked our case with half of the world’s pending issues… Why should we be a card in everyone’s hand? How can you accept to remain divided for 30 years, and then tell the whole world that you are unable to run the country’s affairs? In the end, this may be the ultimate aim. If so, then why are you doing it? You are entrusted with our freedom, our sovereignty and our independence. I am here to say: [You have done] enough… let us live.

In the name of what is right, in the name of the Lord, who you say you love and according to whose will you claim to be acting, let this state remain a state. Whose interest would be served if this nation remains unsheltered and if the state breaks up into countless component parts? I am here to conjure you up in the name of the Lord to make peace. You are so stifling us that there will be no one left to hear you. I am here for Gebran’s sake to tell him: I have come to pay tribute to you, my dear brother and friend. Our hearts will keep on beating as one as long as you are alive within us. Why is that so? Because we remained oblivious to the worth of the perfect man that you were. If no tribute is paid to you today as a King who left us, who deserves such a tribute then? Do those who have slain us deserve it? We shall not give it to them. Dear Gebran, I see your pictures on billboards, and I am ashamed to tell you that your blood will not have been spilled in vain. In the name of the everlasting God, I tell you with total confidence that there will come a day when your blood will bloom only in the three colors of our national flag. This day of freedom and sovereignty will undoubtedly come no matter how long it takes because no one can grow greater than Lebanon… Nor shall Lebanon ever be diminished. All shall perish and Lebanon shall remain, and you shall always be there, O Gebran, along with the great men who have borne witness to its dignity and its special vocation on this Earth.




copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Season For Horses

As I have been reminded by friends, Christmas is coming, and a trip into Maadi reminded me as well. I drove past a very expensive florist to see real Christmas trees for sale. These trees probably sell for about a thousand pounds....but they do smell right. The usual Christmas tree in Egypt is a cypress or juniper and they don't have the same scent at all. With both kids in the US for grad school this year, it's going to be quiet in some respects around here at Christmas. But not in all respects. I have guests arriving beginning day after tomorrow and staying on until after New Years. The people coming are riders so there's going to be quite a lot of work done over the next couple of weeks.

Winters in Egypt are the stuff of legend, both in the sense that a winter in Egypt was the ultimate in luxury many years ago, and in the sense that unfortunately they are no longer what they once were. Even five years ago we would have weeks of air so clear that the stones on the pyramids of Giza could be seen from Abu Sir. This is no longer the case, unfortunately, because the inversion layer over the Nile Valley is keeping a thick black pall over the city. When there is a strong north wind, the smog is dispersed to the south and we have the lovely clarity that was once so common. When there is no wind, I have to ride out into the desert to find clean air. The wind also sculpts some extraordinary cloud formations that the sunset paints with vivid colours each evening.

We now have another new face on the farm with the birth of Lily's son Rayyan. I was wakened at 5 am on the 12th. I wrapped myself in a shawl and went out to find the most enormous fuzzball on stilts I've ever seen. Lily was a cart horse when friends of mine found her working on the streets. She's probably got some draft horse in her because she is a big, fairly heavy, black mare. She spent some time as a riding horse and was recently retired to my place because of her gentle nature. A sneaky little bay colt got to her and to Shabboura the mother of Shams, giving us two totally different babies to enjoy. Shams still thinks that she's a dog and I have to put a chair in my front doorway to be sure that I won't find her exploring the living room with disastrous effects. At three days, Rayyan is almost the same size as Shams at about 6 weeks. Extraordinary. Her legs have half the bone his do and she must weigh less than he does despite the fact that she stands around eating berseem and drinking roughly 15 litres of milk a day. We still have to wait until April to see what the combination of Wadi and and Anglo-Arab will produce. This next crop, aside from being siblings, is going to be interesting.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Suffer Little Children

I heard from Mohamed today that my neighbour's son Ahmed had been asking why I hadn't been by to visit him. And why was I supposed to visit him? Well, it turned out that the families here circumcise their sons at about the age of four and it was Ahmed's turn to have this done. I was a bit shocked because I simply assumed that male infants would undergo this surgery right after birth, the way that it had been done in Canada. Please pardon the frankness, but I can see a good reason to wait since it is easier to snip off small pieces of skin when they are of a visible size, but then again the trauma to a newborn who may or may not even wake up during the process (and I know a few who slept right through it) is probably much less. However it works out, I was amiss and I snagged a small box of dark chocolate digestive biscuits as a little bribe to my small friend.

Ahmed seemed quite fine for someone who had just gone through a life-changing surgery and was buzzing around the house offering everyone cookies in no time. His older brother Mahmoud, who is in about third grade, was sitting with one of his aunts working on his math homework. When he finished that, he started his English and his aunt asked if I could help him. Sure, why not? When I saw what he was assigned, I was horrified. He was given a small paperback workbook to deal with that could not have been more irrelevant to his life if it had been written in Martian. Mahmoud and I sat together as we sounded out such vital questions as who in his family or neighbourhood played golf.

Golf? I don't think that a child in this area has ever seen a golf club. Mahmoud's aunt explained to him, "You remember that game you saw on television with the men on the grass with the sticks and the little ball?" Mahmoud's smile said volumes. Golf is not exactly a reality here. One series of questions asked about Mahmoud's interest in sport. Does he like to run? Did he play sports today? Did he go swimming today? Is he planning to record a sporting event on television today?...What was he supposed to understand from this? His family doesn't have a video machine, nor does anyone in the neighbourhood. Mahmoud has never seen anyone tape a show in his life. And swimming....just where is a boy from the countryside supposed to swim? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I chatted with Mahmoud's mother and aunt about the work. I had to admit that one of the reasons that we'd never sent our kids to Egyptian schools was the horrific curriculum that is inflicted on the students. I'd been quite aware of the enormous load of homework that these kids have for some time...this on top of the fact that Mahmoud leaves for school at 7 am and gets home at 4 pm...and the fact that the work assigned is often quite inappropriate for the age range of the children. And Mahmoud is going to one of the local private schools as well. They are suppposed to be better than the public. The public schools are much more crowded and the teachers are even less qualified. For now, Mahmoud is going to drop by in the afternoon for some help on his English and I will be explaining golf to him.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Historical Note

One of my internet treats is The Writer's Almanac, published daily by Garrison Keillor and American Public Media. Each day it brings a poem and historical notes about writers and world culture. Today's historical note offered an interesting and thought provoking reflection on the conflicts of today:

"It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.

Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire."

The Egyptians who whom the note refers were those under the leadership of Sallah el Din (Saladin in western history books) who built the Citadel in Cairo and established the city in its current place. One of the buildings of importance in Constantinople was Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine cathedral that was later remodeled with minarets to become the Grand Mosque of Istanbul and the model for the mosque of Mohamed Ali in the 1800's. Now when you visit the Grand Mosque you can see some of the old Christian Byzantine paintings and murals that were once painted over with whitewash, and Mohamed Ali's mosque remains a favoured resting spot for weary tourists schlepping their way through Old Cairo. The past never really leaves us.


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Nice To Feel Appreciated

A couple of days ago I received a note from Vicky Zhou asking if it was all right to include Living In Egypt in her book about useful weblogs. Sounded okay to me, so I wrote right back giving my permission. Always nice to be published, even if it is a bit indirect. Here's some information on the book:

Living in Egypt Included in Book About Top 500 Blogs

In the early days of the internet, if you didn't know how to write
code, you couldn't publish anything on the web. Well, nowadays with
software such as Wordpress, Blogspot, and Myspace, anyone.. yes anyone
can tell the whole world what is on their mind through blogging.

But, there really isn't a robust way to search for the best blogs on
any specific topic. Sure, there's Technorati, but what else? Besides,
much of the world wide web is full of splogs, spam, and
made-for-adsense blogs. And how many times have you read the same
exact post over and over in different blogs?

That is why a project, listing the top blogs by general categories
would prove useful. The book, titled "The Top 500 Blogs" is being
written by Vicky Zhou, an author and writer who offers href="http://www.gotacrush.com/best-online-dating-site.php">online
dating advice. From topics ranging from online dating to
technology, lifestyle, sports, music, health and love, the books aims
to be a comprehensive list of the top 500 blogs.

The Top 500 Blogs will be available in Amazon and all bookstores by
the end of 2008. Living in Egypt will be included in the category of
"Personal Blogs", so look out for that!

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Coming Back Into Focus

Being short a camera has been a terrible strain. I'm used to a lovely little Panasonic Lumix that fits into a pocket and is so easy to shoot. Then last week an angel called Angela dropped into Egypt and dropped a camera into my life. She had a week off work and had always wanted to come to Egypt, so she and a photographer friend of hers came and spent a week at my guesthouse. She liked my photos and hearing about my dip in the canal, brought along an extra camera that she'd replaced with a newer model. It's larger and more complicated than the Lumix, but I figure that I can learn to use it. I'm back in business, and who knows? Maybe they will even be able to fix the Lumix.

Well, this last week has been busy with showing Scott and Angela around my part of Egypt. Naturally, they wanted to see the pyramids at Giza, so we rented some camels and went out just before sunset to catch the last light on them. We'd already spent most of the day in the desert chasing sun and shadows around Dahshur, Sakkara, and Abu Sir under a gradually darkening sky. We met our camel man in Nazlit Semman and headed out onto the Giza Plateau along with all the other visitors who have someone to pay off the tourist police who are supposed to be keeping us all out, but who are actually making a living wage on the bribes to let us all in. This is a fine old Egyptian tradition. As we reached the top of the hill, that evil winter Giza wind tore into us leaving Angela and I with our teeth chattering while Scott shot the photos that he wanted to get.

It's amazing what a passion will persuade people to do. I'd been asked to cover the endurance race being held at Sakkara Country Club under the auspices of the Pan Arab games. Teams from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were to race 120 km in the desert in a series of five loops with vet checks at the club. Unfortunately, the start of the race was scheduled for 5:45 am, necessitating a 5 am wake up. Happily, there was excellent catering at the race and once the teams of riders got underway, we were able to find a good breakfast while waiting for them to finish the first loop. Endurance racing really is not a spectator sport. There isn't much to see of the racing part because the riders are very quickly usually stretched out over miles of trail, each essentially riding alone. Once they get back to the vet check area, the horse is checked to see that its pulse and respiration have dropped to normal, and then there is a half hour hold for the horse and rider to eat and drink something before setting out again. Exciting, right? I overheard one nicely dressed woman remarking to a friend that this was the first endurance race she'd ever seen and probably the last too. She'd never spent so much time in her life "watching horses get bathed." A major part of the preparation for the vet check is to cool the horse from its exertions in the desert to the point where its heart rate is low enough to pass muster.

At the end of the day, the UAE took team gold and the individual gold, silver and bronze medals...as expected. Qatar took the team silver and Syria and Egypt shared the bronze. Bed felt great after chasing from one end of the race area back to the press tent about a dozen times to update the progress of the race to a website for endurance riding. I was really proud of our Egyptian team for their performance and careful riding of their horses. They were riding home-bred and home-trained horses rather than the best that money can buy.

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving as well as the last day of Angela and Scott's visit. We played with the horses and Scott got some lovely photos of Shams playing with her herd...the dogs. She is now downing over a litre and a half of milk at a feeding and is eating crushed horse pellets and fresh berseem. She wanders around after the grooms, plays on the lawn with my driver, and curls up in the shade with her buddies the dogs. She doesn't seem to realise that she's a horse at all. After taking them for a quiet ride in the neighbourhood during which Scott only took 670 photos, we wandered over to some friends of mine who live nearby for turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie and all the rest of the traditional stuffing appropriate to Thanksgiving. Early this morning we got to the airport to get my visitors back to the US and Scott left me with about three thousand photos of the race and the parts of Cairo that they saw. It's going to take me ages to see them all!

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani