Whose Cat Was That?

Erwin Schr?dinger - Biography

Erwin Schrodinger (whose o has two dots over it) was an Austrian physicist who came up with the diabolical thought problem involving the possibly dead cat. He never tried it out. But that's ok. Thousands of introductory physics students have been enamoured of Shrodinger's possibly dead/possibly live/possibly both cat for decades.

Driving with Schrodinger's Cat

I have a son with a degree in theoretical physics who has tried to explain the subject of quantum mechanics to my limited mind a number of times. Oddly enough, I keep running across references to quantum mechanics in the strangest places these days as well. In conversations, books on philosophy, novels, and finally, I realise, in Cairo traffic. They call it synchronicity when you keep running into the same people or ideas in various contexts at a particular point in time...well, maybe the physicists don't call it that, but people who talk about patterns in one's life do.

Whenever there is casual conversation about quantum anything, Dr. Shrodinger's poor maligned feline gets mentioned. Dr. S' cat was used as a thought problem illustrating the fact that quantum mechanics talks about the probability of something happening rather than the observation of it happening. In the thought problem a cat was to be sealed up in a box in which there was a decaying atom, a device to measure the decay and a relay so that if an atom decayed, a poisonous gas would be released that would kill the cat. Since no one could predict when the particle would decay, the life span of the cat was indefinite but it could be discussed as a probability. Mathematically, the situation would be expressed as the cat being both living and not living to a certain extent, but as we all know, for the most part, that is a condition that is very difficult to achieve. So empirically, the cat would either be alive or dead.

Now the connection between the cat and Cairo traffic occurred to me the other evening when I was navigating the insanity of a summer Thursday evening (like a Friday night elsewhere) in downtown Cairo on my way to my sanctuary in the boondocks. I learned to drive in a country with a booklet of traffic laws on which prospective drivers would be tested. I learned to drive in lanes, obeying traffic signals. These things don't work the same here. When there is an agreed-upon set of rules and markings as to where cars are to go or not to go, a driver can relax a bit and predict where another driver will be. That doesn't happen here ever.

A oneway street in Egypt is, like Schrodinger's cat, an expression of probability. If you start down one, you are not guaranteed to be able to continue without meeting someone head on, but you have a greater probability of not meeting someone. The fact that traffic police usually just make notes on the license numbers of cars having drivers using mobile phones or not wearing seat belts tends to encourage such random behaviour by drivers. I have never seen a driver pulled over by a policeman for reckless, fast, or inappropriately directed driving. It just doesn't happen. When I encountered not one but at least six or eight cars driving in the wrong direction on that Thursday night, I was annoyed but not surprised. It's strictly rollerderby rules out there, but what a great way to learn defensive driving.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that Cairo may just be one huge thought experiment. When I first moved here and was trying to figure out the rules to the game, my late husband told me that "In Egypt everything is forbidden and anything is possible." Sounds like Schrodinger's cat would have been right at home.

And Now Dates

Yellow dates, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

When I lived in Canada, we would watch for the green summer leaves to turn red, gold, and orange, knowing that it was the sign that summer was over and winter was on its way. Egypt, as always, is a different story, but we also have something that is the signal that the heat of summer is over. We watch the green dates on the palms turn to gold, yellow and deep red in preparation for the date harvest. This comes in September and October just as the mango harvest is winding down, which is a good thing since they are both very labour intensive harvests.

The date harvest is one of my favourite times of year here. Entire families move from the villages to camping huts in the date groves of Dahshur. Near Abu Sir, where the fields are open for cultivation, date palms occupy smaller groves or line the edges of fields. As the bunches of dates get heavier towards the end of summer long ropes made of palm fiber are tied to some of the older, taller trees to help stabilise them and keep them from bending right over. Naturally the ropes attract the children who climb over them and bounce from them whenever the adults aren't looking.

There are over 600 varieties of dates, most of which look a bit wrinkled and brown when they've been dried. Fresh and crisp, however, they are anything from pale yellow to a burgundy red and can be almost round or as long and thick around as a thumb.

As the corn is harvested at the end of summer, the stalks are saved to be woven into walls to surround fallow fields where the dates will be sorted and dried in the sun on mats woven from the fronds. The dates most commonly sold in markets outside the Middle East and North Africa are those that have been left to ripen in the sun. The fresh dates have an astringent taste that can be a bit hard to get used to at first, but they are wonderfully refreshing as they aren't as sweet and heavy as the dry ones. Some dates are left to dry totally and can be stored for a year or so. Dropped into a bowl of water or milk, they reconstitute in a couple of hours to their heavy sweetness. An image of dates drying in Siwa Oasis can be seen at www.on2anotheradventure.com/ siwapic7.html

Date palms are believed to have been one of the first plants to be domesticated and they are a marvel. There is no part of the plant that cannot be used. The trunks are split to use for building or supporting things. They are fibrous and rot quickly if left wet, but in Egypt that isn't much of a problem. The fronds are cut a couple of times a year and used to thatch houses or animal sheds. I use them to shade my aviary. I have chairs, sofas and tables made from the ribs of the fronds from which the leaves have been stripped to use in making mats, baskets and fiber. The sheep, goats, horses, donkeys and camels are fond of the fronds and of chewing on the palm trunks themselves, and they love the windfall dates that they can find on the ground. In emergencies, water can be found by cutting the growing heart of the palm and scooping it out of the center of the trunk, while the heart itself is a nourishing meal. Dates themselves contain a wealth of minerals and are used to rebalance the bodies electrolytes after the Ramadan fast.

I lived around palm trees a good part of my life without really understanding the wonder of these incredible trees. They are very slow growing but they begin bearing fruit early. There are some new groves where the bunches of fruit barely clear the ground. That must be great for the harvesting and maintenance. But for me, one of the great joys is just looking out over the fields from my roof and watching the long fronds tossing in the wind like landlocked sea anenomes.

Mango Heaven

Mango lady, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

I have a mango problem right now. It isn't a bad problem, I don't think. Actually it's rather nice in a way. You see mango season is in full swing and living as I do in the middle of mango orchards, lots of well-meaning neighbours have been giving me mangos. That was fine as long as I had a bunch of young people under my roof, but my daughter is now on her way back to New York, where she will join Emily who was here earlier this summer. Their other friend now has an apartment in Zamalek, from whence he will venture forth in search of Arabic lessons and volunteer work with some of the refugees living in Cairo. The house is all mine and so, apparently are the approximately eight kilos (almost 20 lbs) of mangos in the kitchen. You see the problem? I'm sure that plenty of you would kill to have such a problem. But be warned: Eating 8 kg of mangos could bring on some fairly ferocious gastrointestinal revenge.

A few days ago we were invited to a Mexican lunch and mango feast at some friends' home. They own a large mango plantation east of Cairo towards Ismailia. Karim brought in a selection of about 10 types of the 32 varieties of mango that he grows. They varied in size from a large tangerine size to some monsters similar to the 1 kg creature being devoured in the photo. Of one variety, he only had two examples so they were cut into small slices to drive us all made with temptation. It had almost no fibers (a failing with some mango varieties) and a rich sweet almost buttery flavour with just a hint of coconut. What a mango! And in about four years when his crop is ready, he will make some very nice money with them.

Mangos aren't cheap by Egyptian standards, though they might seem so with the application of exchange rates. During the three or four months that they are in season, they sell for anywhere from 6 to 15 or 20 LE per kilo. The price varies with the variety of mango (there are hundreds of varieties) and the rarity of the variety, along with how good they look and their ripeness. So far this summer my household has managed to consume about 300 LE worth of gift mangos and about 50 LE of mangos that we've bought.

Mangos are sweet and high in betacarotene, so they are good for you. But what our visitors always have to find out the hard way, they can be a bit tough on the tummy. They are rich and rather acidic, so our summer visitors always have to gradually ease into mango consumption. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Green is good for you

Health News Article | Reuters.com
Every so often, and unfortunately far too often, I see a news item that proclaims something that is so horribly obvious but which we seem to have somehow forgotten. Reuters news service today ran an article about how researchers have found that children with attention deficit syndrome and hyperactivity become calmer when they spend time in green places. Well, duh. What an extraordinary idea. Children need to be out of doors among trees and plants.

I don't know. Probably I've been spoiled by the fact that I lived my childhood in green spaces because my parents believed that children belonged outside of the house as long as the sun was shining or at least it wasn't pouring buckets. I also was able to spoil my own children in that respect and able to toss them outside as much as possible. Egypt's climate, like Southern California's, is great that way. If I have to spoil and be spoiled, that's the way to do it. Better a day fishing or hiking than a day in the mall.

The fact that this story is news is probably even more interesting than the story itself. Humans had best be careful with their living spaces because it is much too easy to live in nice clean concrete than it is to cope with the randomness and mess of nature. But it isn't good for us. I get anxious after a week in Manhattan or London. Some park time calms me, but it isn't as good as going out my front door and gazing over the fields behind my house. I guess that I'm living proof that these researchers know what they are talking about.

My daughter took care of my menagerie while I went to Sharm utterly dogless for 3 days. Her remark when I came home made me laugh. "Staying alone at your house is too much work to be a holiday, Mom." Well, yes. You have to be up in the morning to feed the dogs and parrots and to prepare the dog food for later. The garden needs watering daily in the summer and the animals have to be fed again in the afternoon. Then, if there are any animals sick or injured, the medications have to be administered. No, it is a job, but those days that I can just stay around the house and paddocks to do it, well, they are the best.

Reading about Egypt and the Middle East

The primary activity of our merry band of vacationers has been reading, oddly enough, so I thought that I'd talk about books a bit. The reading list for my visitors has been as follows: Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' (Given the Hardy Boys booby prize), John LeCarre's 'The Constant Gardener', Milan Kundera's 'Ignorance', Heinrich Boll's 'The Silent Angel', and a Polish translation of Joseph Heller's 'God Knows'. I also brought along a book edited by Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel Hakim called 'Traveling Through Egypt' which is a compilation of travelers' tales from Egypt from the ancient Greeks to modern times. It's a perfect beach or garden book because it's organised by topic rather than time period, so you can be comfortable picking it up more or less at random. The accounts of travelers the like of Ibn Battuta, Lucy Duff Gordon, or Gustave Flaubert give a fascinating persepective on the activities of tourists as well as on the country itself.

I've bought a lot of books from the American University in Cairo, and for people interested in any aspect of Egypt, their website is a useful stop. I was first introduced to Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel prize winning author, through the AUC press paperbacks for sale in hotel lobbies. I bought one (Midaq Alley), read it and went back for more. I've lost more Naquib Mahfouz novels than I care to remember by loaning them to friends to read and pass on. I'm now the proud owner of autographed copies (hardback this time) of the Cairo Trilogy.

AUC Press publishes books about Egypt that aren't published anywhere else. You can find modern literature, including all of Mahfouz' works, guidebooks to the birds and animals of Egypt as well as the cities and ruins, historical and sociological studies, language handbooks, and the best book that has ever been written about Cairo, Max Rodenbeck's 'Cairo The City Victorious'. Max's book got rave reviews locally and my children bought me a copy when it was first published. In return, I bought each of them the paperback to take to college and read whenever they got homesick. Later, every one of the visitors we've had has been given a copy of the book to remember Cairo by. In almost every case, the reader has dived in to resurface about a week later with a big grin. So if you can't afford the air fare, try the bookstore.

What's an Egyptian?

A herd of unattended camels marching out of Nuweiba at sunset, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

We are six in the house in Sharm el Sheikh this weekend. One American widow of an Egyptian journalist, one Canadian widow of an Egyptian businessman, two Egyptian sisters who moved to Egypt in their early teens, a Polish architecture student who has lived in Egypt since he was six, and the American/Egyptian daughter of the first widow. It's a good group and the Polish student is handlng being the only male in a group of five women very well. We're pretty entertaining, I think.

The variety of backgrounds, languages, interests and ages (from 18 to 55) makes for some unusual conversation and my friend and I have been having a great time listening to the kids' reminiscences of being teenagers in Cairo. The girls all went to secondary school together and none of them knew the Polish boy, although they are all more or less the same age. But the stories are all similar, youthful adventures in Cairo's souq's, nightlife, coffee houses.

Janie and I have different memories of our youth, hers from Ohio and mine from Southern California, but we share a rural background. Neither of us had anything like Cairo to ramble around in as teenagers, but we did enjoy a time of more freedom of movement and action than many kids growing up today do. The world was a considered to be a safer place then, or something....I haven't really figured out what happened to things other than the triumph of liability insurance.

I was thinking about our little group courting skin cancer under umbrellas by the sea, about questions that I get at least once a week about the welcome that Americans specifically get here. All of us are, in one way or another, foreigners here, although none of us really feels like one. And, on the other hand, I recall the entertainment value that my trail rides in the countryside on my own or with guests or friends provide the local population in Abu Sir. There, among the fellaheen, we are foreign even when Egyptian, but our audience smiles at us with blue, grey, and hazel eyes sparkling in faces that may be as fair as our own or the brown that is usually expected. Everyone, from the ancient Greeks to the modern British, have left their mark on the people of Egypt.

Asking about a foreigner's reception in this light is a kind of funny question. Egypt isn't really that monolithic a country. The cultural/racial/ethnic mixes vary in both type and intensity from the north which has been the landing spot for foreigners for centuries to the south where the Nubians, who even have their own language, were dispersed by the flooding of their lands when the High Dam was built. The "ancient Egyptian type" of individual associated with the frescoes and bas-reliefs of the pharaonic tombs is generally conceived to be found around Aswan more than Alexandria, but he/she is just as likely to be fluent in Italian as Arabic. And, in fact, when you see enough of the frescoes and bas-relief, you realise that even in pharaonic times, Egypt was a melting pot of tribes and people's who were drawn to the Nile Delta for a variety of reasons. Welcome is part of Egypt's history.