The Great Library of Alexandria

It hasn't been around for over a thousand years. But, there's a new library in Alexandria called Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

In all fairness, the new library is awesome. Just check out the pictures, the architecture is awesome. One might say, it's a modern marvel.

But, it's a joke. The library wasn't built as a center for learning and studying. It's a tourist trap. It even has a planetarium connected to it. You can't even bring books into the library. It's not even open past 8 p.m (it closed at 2 p.m during Ramadan). And, anyone who has seriously studied anything knows that the best learning goes on past 2 a.m (But, I'm just asking for a library open until at least 10 p.m).

Huge tour buses are always parked in front of the library and tours go on all day long. There's even a concert hall right next to the library (referred to in my Franki Valli and the ... post). It even has the fastest book publishing machine in the world -- they needed some superlative. 

The new library was a great investment for the Egypt. Not only does it increase tourism, but it also gives pride to the Alexandrian people. Not only is it a tribute to when Egypt was on the top of the world, but it also shows that Egypt can still build wonders.

As a college student, my problem is that this place is not a real library. Sure, it has 3-4 million books, it's very quiet, and there's internet access. But, you can't bring in books, check out books, stay past 8 p.m, or find books critical of the Egyptian government. I've talked with taxi drivers, library employees and a manager about the rule against bringing in books; they all say that there's plenty of books inside the library and I can just read one of those. 

If you're into architecture, come check this library out. Other than that the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is just a sub-par library.

I hate to rail on something that people put so much hard work into, but truthfully, all I want to do is go in the library and study.

A Peculiar Foundation

Here's an article from the Cairo bureau of The New York Times that brings up an archaic, yet oddly contemporaneous subject: the foundations of modern Egypt on a long gone civilization. 

Definitely read the previous post first to get a sense of tourism in Egypt before reading this.

Egypt has a long history, so they make do with what they got; they export it. Tourism makes up 6-7% of Egyptian GDP (according to a World Bank report and an Egyptian government website). A high percent of tourism is totally understandable when the place is a luxurious, beautiful island like Hawaii or a romantic city like Paris, but when all you got to offer is something that has nothing to do with your culture, then something, somewhere went wrong. 

Egyptian towns are even sacrificed for this economic focus on ancient Egypt. Here's a story from the Egyptologist tour guide in Luxor (this guy was actually very intelligent, spoke english perfectly, but I could never tell if he was genuinely in love with Egyptology or his exuberance was more a product of his paycheck). He told us that there was another town very close to Luxor that was filled with ruins and likely had monuments underneath the town. And with the biggest smile on his face, he told us that the government is paying for the cost of relocating every citizen of that town to make it available for tourists to see the ancient stuff. Even if the government successfully "relocated" these people (which I doubt would happen), the idea that they are kicking people out of the land that most likely their great great grandfathers lived in is slightly repulsive in exchange for a little bit for tourism cash.

Here's one opinion from Slackman's article that I hyperlinked, "We feel the might of this history when we get paid ... but if we don't get paid, we feel nothing." 

So, a question that arises seems to be: Do the Egyptians derive identity from ancient times or is just for the money?

The answer: From what I've seen, the answer, for the most part, is it's about the money. Ancient Egypt is used as a tool to develop modern Egypt. And, truthfully it works. The most western places are the hotels situated in Luxor and Aswan or right across from the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo. 

And clearly, there are no more animal sacrifices or polytheistic practices or women walking around topless (let alone showing their elbows or knees). So, of course, it's not like any hieroglyphic from the ancient Egyptian culture.

But from what I have seen, there's still ancient Egyptian culture floating around. Something like the Library of Alexandria might've only been built for money (a topic that I will revisit in a future post), but there is a sense of pride that the Egyptians have in ancient Egypt. They were one of the first great civilizations. Egypt is something to be proud of. The pyramids and all the ancient things are truly amazing (just check out the picture of Abu Simbel below). 

When Egypt is compared to countries I have heard the long history of Egyptian culture invoked more than once to argue for Egypt's superiority. For example, in a conversation about Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a point was made that Saudi Arabia is simply a product of oil because it was just a big place with a lot of tribes in earlier history; on the other hand, Egypt is a product of history and culture and it produces something more than just raw materials.

Just some thoughts on a country trying to stay balanced on top of a pyramid.

Luxor Today

Luxor is considered the hassling capital of Egypt. Every single person on the street made a comment to me as I walked by. Most of the comments were sale pitches in British accents.

The regular ones:

"Hi, how are you. Take a look at my store"

"Sir, where are you from"

"Come in, you can look for free"

When I didn't respond:

"Why don't you respond to me sir. Was breakfast bad?"

"Sir, please. I just want to talk."

When they just wanted to play with me:

"You lost something... my heart"

"Your water is spilling. Look. Look. Look. Made you look."

Walking with girls:

"You are a very lucky man"

"You are a lucky man to have three wives. Would you consider selling one for some camels?"

85% of Luxor's economy comes from tourism, according to word on the street (and confirmed with my own eyes). These people's well being is entirely based on money coming from foreigners, and my guess is these people are tired of the foreigners ignorance of the modern culture. People come to Luxor to see "ancient Egypt" and "the exotic Middle East" but that's not a reality. It's awesome to see the Valley of the Kings, the Tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, the Temple of Luxor and Carnak and many others, but most of the tourists don't really care about the people in the town. Furthermore, the tourists look for belly dancing shows or participate in orientalist parties where the men where jalabeas and the women whatever stereotypical outfits that you might expect Jasmine from Aladdin to wear. There is no reason for these tourists to care about the people of Luxor any more than any other random city or town in the world, but the fact that tourists come to Luxor without a sensitivity for the culture and people (this is my opinion on the subject) aggravates the locals and leads them into this backlash of hassling -- especially because it sometimes works to get them to buy stuff. 

There was this one great restaurant that is making a killing off the hassling. At Oasis, all the waiters speak perfect english, there's burgers on the menu,  and outside their door they have a sign that says, "Feeling homicidal, come in and enjoy a hassle free meal."

And without further ado, the good old days when this place was called Thebes...

In order of appearance: Temple of Carnak, Valley of the Kings, Close up in the Valley of the Kings before entering a tomb, Tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, Temple of Luxor

A Day Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

These houses are all from the time of "Alexander," the fourth century BCE. The town is definitely a sight to see. It's out of this world, and I have no idea how to explain something like the whole planet of Tatooween in one blog post, but here are some snippets.

It's not a big town by any means, but it has its own language. The language has Arabic roots, yet no one in the world except a Siwan can understand it. Almost everybody in Siwa speaks Arabic fluently except for some of the older men (I don't know about the women because they are kept inside all day, but that is for another blog post). English is pretty pervasive too. The kids seemed to only know the "Welcome in Egypt" or "Hello" phrases, but many of the shop keepers and waiters spoke English very well. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed that many of them had three languages down cold.

This is definitely a tourist town. We didn't go at a crowded time, but everything seemed to revolve around a couple tourist activities. The Siwan tribal dance during the sunset, biking around town, taxi rides by mules, climbing the mountains overlooking the town, swimming in hot springs, and a safari in the desert that consists of driving up and down vast mountains of sand, swimming in a movie-like oasis, and sandboarding. 

In addition to their tourism industry, they export great bottled water and possibly the best dates in the world (the price: 4 Egyptian pounds for 1 kilogram). With such great economic resources, I was awestruck to find that Siwa was so different than anything I've ever seen. 

Siwa has definitely started to modernize (and it's only at the beginning), but that doesn't mean it has westernized. There's a difference that I'll explain further in the future, but here are some examples for now. They have the first world necessities such as a hospital, police station, gas station, hotels, pharmacies, restaurants, and even a sports club, but they don't have a supermarket and internet access is limited mostly to tourism. There was one shop where you could play playstation, but I didn't see any kids playing Alexandria's favorite game: FIFA '08. The kids were all outside swimming in pools or dancing at night. Some ten-year-olds even drove around tourists on their mule wagons. All the Siwans whom I met had cell phones (nice ones with video cameras and mp3 players), yet they all wear very traditional robes. Most people had motorcycles, yet most of the college aged Siwans whom I talked with had only left Siwa two or three times in their entire lives. Before I visited Siwa, the Siwans had never seen a Westerner beat a Siwan in ping pong... well, let's say I was more than happy to show them something new.

More to come on Siwa in upcoming posts.  Five days without the internet means a lot of catching up to do with the world.

Externalities in Cairo

I took a train from Alexandria to Cairo last weekend with 3 friends (1 guy, two girls). For only 40 pounds (less than 8 dollars!), I chilled -- literally with the air conditioning -- in the second class cabin for 3 hours.  Immediately after exiting the train station, a 50 year old man who was walking towards us unzipped his pants and exposed himself. He did it so quickly that it seemed like he had a lot of experience. Anyways, that was my first impression.

Cairo has a problem with pollution (see skyline in picture below). It dried up my eyes so much that I couldn't wear my contacts for more than a couple hours. The air was so polluted that I felt like I couldn't breath and I was coughing until a day after I returned to Alexandria. 

Taxi drivers go crazy because they can usually rip off tourists. I tried to get two taxi drivers to bid down the price from the Pyramids to a place for lunch and one ended up taking a swing at another. A couple hours later, a taxi driver got out of his car and tried to push me after he thought I didn't pay enough (his tire popped before we got to our destination, so I assumed I'd get a discounted price). After the whole street descended on us (10 people circling us), we all discussed the price. The people on the street were more interested in conflict prevention than a fair deal, so I decided to just pay a dollar more and walk. 

Kids can go from playing soccer with their friends to crying on command and trying to get money from foreigners.

Whenever I asked for directions to the American University Bookstore, everyone told me "ala toole" (straight ahead). It turned out that I circled the bookstore for 15 minutes before someone gave me good directions.

Museums and many shops close at 4:30 in preparation for Ramadan dinner. So, we weren't able to check out any of the museums. However, I convinced a guy to open up his bookstore at 5:45, so I could get an English to Arabic dictionary.  

The pyramids were super sweet. They are huge. The Sphinx is awesome and camels make pretty funny noises. 

Don't Sit on this Table

The ancient Egyptians used it for sacrificing animals to the gods.