Body paint, flashing(shing) lights(lights).

Paris/Atlantic promo poster Spring 2010

What happens when a silly suggestion in the ASM (AUP student media) office one afternoon gets taken seriously and an impromtu photoshoot takes place? Well, a few nights ago it involved a champion friend donning his nature costume and being fingerpainted waist-up, stuck with sticky notes, and getting tungsten light blasted into his eyes for an hour or so.

The shoot was to produce a poster for the journal of creative arts at AUP, Paris/Atlantic. The journal, edited by Saara Vanhanen (previously by Oona Doyle) has been growing in recent years and features fine art, photography, creative writing and any twisted mash-up some ecstatic brain can muster.

Here’s a look inside painting Satta up for the first staged photo I’ve done in years. Cheers.

On America, Love, the year 2009 and Travel.

Andrea, my love braving the Brooklyn cold on the last day of the longest year of my life.

By far the least useful entry I’ve considered for this blog, but it is a good way to transfer my energy from Cairo through a short stay back in the U.S. to Paris.

I haven’t been home to Indiana in a year, a usual circumstance these days, but never one I get over when here. There is always a last-year-ness to my rural wanderings in Crown Point, Indiana. A film-set, on location shoot of the places where my life used to take its full course, make its baby steps towards young-man-hood or something. Places where I fell in love, argued with my parents, escaped sure trouble with relative ease, realized that my parents were nearly always right even in their wrongness or misunderstanding of my situation. The old bars, where my old classmates who stuck around hang out, my old haunts, Mainstreet Café, all exist surreal, exterior like living memories. The comfort of home lies in its static-ness, stability, the ability to, for once this year, not live in constant motion – and my mothers cooking. Being back in the comfortable space of family is a bit unsettling if only because I know what comes next by its vague cloud-form.

Getting out to the city (Chicago, where I write this in some University of Chicago student coffee shop) or driving to New York City with friends from other existences have made this transition period a little more normal in comparison to my life in all other ways. In familiar and unfamiliar cities, alone or with a few close friends, taking in it. Drinking in skylines and neighborhood vibes like shaay masri or café serré. I’ve found a new love for the city of Chicago and finally seeing New York City, Brooklyn, was like the first time I set eyes on Paris, phantasmagorical. I realize in my relationships that location is neutral and not giving meaning to love, brotherhood, strange attraction, but given meaning by them. I realize that America is not a place in the dictionary sense of the word, but an infinite set of possibilities (many of which some people work very hard to destroy for others, a true reflection of power the world over) intersecting in feeling and subjective time. In other words, it is just like every other place, only faster. A shock down my spine. Times Square is stoooopid. Loving this non-place means loving everyone here. Guns, flags and freedom aside. Better to love each other in chains – love is cruel.

Love is constantly in motion, so best I travel to meet it head on whenever I can. Better I travel than stay still in general.

2009 means motion, means a thousand years in one, means opting to be alone in Marseille, means Omar Chenaffi and I walking in the Fes Medina, means catching myself in a lovetrap in Paris between two women who could destroy and recreate the whole world with the blink of an eye – and who probably do, and who would be great friends if it weren’t for me, means righting my wrongs in Stockholm and being forgiven by the woman who matters most. 2009 means rediscovering her wonderful smile in Hungary and saying goodbye on train platforms, means roaming the streets of Beirut and Cairo, learning to decipher what turns out to simply be an alphabet, means meeting monstrosity face to face in Palestine – that wall, that horrible concrete beast that loves inhumanity – and means coming home to falling snow, freezing cold in Chicago, cold beer and strangely familiar faces in a small town bar, love of my life at midnight in Williamsburg loft. 2009 was a shitshow, and it was lovely.

In six days I’ll be back in Paris, full circle, ready to create something, inshallah, or to make life happen at least. And I hope to fill this blog with useful things, whatever may present itself as such to me, translated through technology, for who-knows-who to view. Cheers. Happy New Year. Bonne Année. Kul Senna Wa Antu Bi Khayr.

Yanni Bas. Khalas.

It came to an end too soon. Goodbye Egypt. Hello Chicago, Paris.

Love, Sex, and Egypt’s Elite (w/ Mona Elkalban)

AUC students describe their views on sex and relationships in Egypt, find the American University environment open to new attitudes – despite male double standards.

By: Mona Elkalban & Joe Lukawski

CAIRO — As a few college guys gather together to share their juicy stories about their experiences with the “hot babes” they had intimate encounters with, a small group of girls wearing revealing clothing join them and greet them with kisses. They call each other “Habiby” and stroke each other’s hair. Contrary to Egyptian norms for public behavior, they are “allowed to do so” in the AUC environment. At the same time, a male student packs his belongings and heads for the mosque on campus to pray as another female student clutches onto her books keeping her eyes fixed on the floor as she passes the crowd speaking of their sexual experiences and relationships.

Many AUC students believe that the AUC environment is more open-minded than that of the traditional Egyptian society. However, there are still mixed views on the concept of relationships, sexual and non-sexual, within the campus boundaries.

According to Dr. Ghada Barsoum, the increased contact with western ideas common to many upper-class Egyptian students creates new ideas and attitudes towards sex and relationships among other topics.

Mohamed Soliman, a mass communication major, said that the difference between the AUC community and the Egyptian society in general is that outside AUC, people are more focused on religion. In the AUC community, he finds that people are more focused on income.

Forbidden Fruit or Too Ripe to Resist

Dina Tarek, a 19 year old business major, agrees that AUC students are more open-minded than the traditional Egyptian society, but says that she has her limits when it comes to relationships.

“If two people love each other and marriage is an intention then there is nothing wrong with that as long as their parents are involved,” she said. “But as for pre-marital sex, it’s not only against Islam, but it also causes social problems such as fatherless/motherless children and women getting used.”

As Tarek is a veiled teen, she believes that veiled girls should not date for fun, but rather only date if the relationship is serious.

“You have to fall in love to get married and if the relationship is serious enough then the parents should know,” she said.

Though some like Tarek believe that the parents must know about the relationship, others like Shahira Sherif, a political science major, are involved in relationships without their parents knowing.

“Hell no, my parents don’t know,” Sherif said. “They have no idea. I wouldn’t care much if my dad knew but never my mom. I can tell them when [my boyfriend] has a job.”

Sherif has been in a relationship for five months with another AUC student and does not believe that she is doing anything wrong, even though her parents might believe that dating is an issue.

“There’s a limit before it can be called haraam, or forbidden. When a couple has pre-marital sex, then it’s haraam.”

“Anything You Can’t Do, I Can Do”—Double Standards

Ibrahim Sayed, a business major, does not find shame in fooling around before marriage, including fooling around with “prostitutes,” which seems to be a slippery term in Egypt. But when it comes to marriage, he said he would never marry the kind of girl he has intimate encounters with.

“I’m not thinking about marriage right now, that’s why I think that it’s okay,” he said. “A girl isn’t supposed to act like that, it’s just not right…but I’m not complaining now.”

Sayed said that he prefers to marry a veiled and “respectful” girl who is one hundred percent sexually inexperienced and has a “clean past.”

“I don’t want my future wife to be known as the slut that everyone hooked up with,” he said. “Regardless of how western AUC students are, we still have that Egyptian mentality where we are a bit overprotective of our girls.”

Soliman believes it should be mandatory for a couple to live together before marriage.

“A guy and a girl should live together before marriage and date for a while so they can see the true sides of each other,” he said. “If they just get married right away, they aren’t going to last.”

He added that he does not believe that there are any physical limits between couples and non-couples alike.

“There aren’t any limits until the girl gets pregnant,” he said. “I know people who have experimented with prostitution, and I think that’s okay to experiment but not on a regular basis. God knows the diseases they have. [When I get married] I hope she’s in the same social class as I am, but I’m not looking these days.”

Though these very different views coexist in the halls of AUC, Barsoum says that sociologists find the double standards exist regardless of class or ‘westernization.’

“Though we have very little data regarding sexual practices among university students in Egypt,” she said, “the studies that have been done show that patriarchy and gender inequalities are reproduced across the board.”

Eid al Adha, Thanksgiving, the West Bank and the new Berlin wall

This year the beginning of the Islamic Eid al Adha feast coincided with American Thanksgiving, making for a symbolic weekend in the West Bank.

CAIRO –  Every year millions of devout Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca, the ‘Hajj,’ to follow in the footsteps of the prophet Mohammed, PBUH, completing one of the pillars of Islam. Thousands don the white seamless garb of the Hajj, revolve round the Kabba, and perform the ritual stoning of Satan and the sacrifice of a sheep.

Though not all make the long journey, the end of the Hajj season is marked on the Muslim calendar by the Eid al Adha feast, where families and friends get together and slaughter sheep in commemoration of God’s mercy upon Ibrahim – replacing his son with a sheep for the sacrifice.

For Mohammed Asakrah, 22, of Beit Lehem in the West Bank, the feast is a time for closeness with one’s family, “a time for good will.”

“First, we all go to the Mosque to pray, the men together and women together,” he tells me. “When prayer is over it is time to slaughter the sheep and wish everyone ‘Kul sena wa anta bi khayr’ (All the years and you at peace, with wellness).”

The nearby Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam where the Prophet, PBUH, is said to have ascended into paradise, is a major site of worship during Eid al Adha. However, for some like Asakrah, it is off limits.

He recalled having been to the holy site only once for the Eid, before the construction of the towering eight-meter-high wall separating sections of the occupied West Bank from Israel. The wall, constructed in 2005, cuts the route to Jerusalem off with horrifying checkpoints, separates neighborhoods, and generally pens in Palestinian West Bank residents.

According to Asakrah, only women and 45 year-old (or older) men are allowed to cross the wall to pray under the Dome of the Rock during the feast. However, an elderly Beit Lehem woman furiously recounted to my travel partners and I her own denial of entry to pray in the mosque this year.

The entire experience inside the wall, one that according to an ex-Israeli solider from Tel Aviv only twelve percent of the Israeli population has undertaken, is a very emotional one for pilgrims and travelers alike. Myself coming from the United States – thinking of my own family sitting round a Thanksgiving table full of food the night before, giving thanks for each other’s good fortune and sharing in the bad – being in the occupied West Bank during Eid, I couldn’t help but be thankful that this wall didn’t surround my neighborhood, preventing me from celebrating and being with family as it does my Palestinian counterparts.

Fadi Hazboun, 20, a Christian from Beit Lehem, described how the day-to-day stress of checkpoints and being walled in becomes tiring, and sometimes infuriating. Both Hazboun and Asakrah cross several checkpoints every day to get to work and school, to visit family. Though as a Christian, Eid al Adha wasn’t an event for him, he expressed empathy for his Muslim friends who were denied access.

“It’s haram (a sin),” he said. “We are not free here, not even to pray to God. Muslims are good people and the Qur’an is a book just as holy as the Bible or the Torah. Especially during their holy feast of Eid, they should be allowed no matter their age.”

The ex-soldier mentioned above said that “it was probably for security reasons.” but that he “did not agree with the measure.” I haven’t been able to get an official statement concerning the measure from the Israeli government.

“ICH BIN EIN BERLINER,” reads a large graffiti piece along a section of wall near the Deheisha refugee camp, recalling one to the moment in history where Berlin was divided in two and that moment just over twenty years ago when the Berlin wall was torn down. Others offered slogans of hope, images of the famous Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, or as in the “Faces Project,” giant depictions of Israelis and Palestinians making the same silly faces. One Palestinian businessman whose restaurant looks directly onto the wall even changed the name of his local eatery and painted the menu five feet tall on the wall itself.

These pieces of art, in my glance, are images of resilience, hope and solidarity from inside the Palestinian community and from abroad – with artists such as the UK’s Banksy donning the wall with their messages of support. In a way they are all looking into the West Bank and saying to its residents, “Kul sena wa antu bi khayr. This wall will not last.”

This weekend, while families across the States ate turkey, and Muslim families the world over shared in the sacrifice of sheep, I saw a monstrosity of a wall and met the people who hope to overcome it – and as the solidarity of a couple Israelis I met led me to believe, it must be through good will.

Margaret Mead Film Festival at AUC

Through films little seen, and a genre little known, the Margaret Mead Film Festival brings ethnography the world over to the screens of AUC.

CAIRO – Ever seen a game of Cricket played Trobriand style? The trials nomadic Tibetan Pashmina herders face sending their kids to school? The life of umbrella-makers, job-hunters, soliders and farmers in China?

From Oct. 12 until Thursday Nov. 5, The Margaret Mead Film Festival, brought to the American University in Cairo for the second time by the department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology, filled the screens of the new campus and Tahrir Sq. campus with images from afar.

The annual festival in New York, founded by the American Museum of Natural History, selected six programs for the MMFF’s traveling edition – including films from Australia, The Himalayas, Swaziland, China, Italy, Abkhazia, Laos, and Papua New Guinea – which AUC was granted permission to screen. The films were introduced by AUC professors and often concluded in discussions.

“The festival gives students and the community a chance to screen rare films with images they may not have the chance to see elsewhere,” grad student and festival aide Sarah Leonard said.

“I love documentaries, but I don’t get to see them often enough,” visiting student Raina Zantout, 22, said after a screening of Donagh Coleman’s Stone Pastures (2008).

Among the films screened was AUC professor Jerry Leach’s 1976 film Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism, “one of the most bizarre anthropological films ever made,” according to the MMFF. Leach shot the film while working on a PhD at the then-developing University of Papua New Guinea.

Skeptical as to whether or not the general AUC audience would be receptive to the title – cricket being little known in Egypt or the United States, Leach said that in viewing the film, audiences would recognize that the game “just cried out as something that had to be filmed.” The solid group who turned out the to screening didn’t go away disappointed, staying around to chat with Leach about his experience of the Trobriand Islanders and the process of making the film.

“It’s a great event and I’m very happy to [have shown] my film at AUC,” he said.

However, ethnographic film remains a fairly unknown medium with students, that many would be surprised to discover.

“Documentary is a strange beast in the region,” associate professor of anthropology Mark Westmoreland, who took over organizing the event this year, said. “Here people are much more accustomed to fiction film than documentary. Part of bringing people in is an educational process, teaching people how to view and gain from these films.”

AUC grad student Yasmine Khalifa, 24, is currently taking Professor Westmoreland’s visual anthropology class to “figure out the techniques” of ethnographic film.

“[The class] is my first experience with film,” she said. “so it’s great to have the Margaret Mead Festival here. The films I saw were very interesting.”

Festival volunteer and anthropology major Sam Walton, 22, isn’t considering a career in film, but enjoyed the opportunity to screen the films and help the festival.

“It is hard to choose a favorite film from the program,” he said, “but Stone Pastures really made me think. Seeing how difficult that life was made me reconsider my own.”

For Leonard, the film festival is a way to “engage students with the medium.”

“Ethnographic films are refreshing because they aren’t typical commercial documentaries,” she said. “Documentary doesn’t have to be boring or safe. These ethnographies are experimental, on the forefront of film. Come check them out.”

Though some of the fifteen screenings drew crowds of up to sixty viewers, others remained fairly intimate. One screening of Stone Pastures drew a small but dedicated crowd of 21 viewers, like visiting student Sarah Shipley, 20, who braved the Cairo traffic from new campus to make the screening.

“I really enjoyed the film’s large panoramic shots and work with available light,” she said.

Festival organizers attributed some of the low-turnouts to the changed schedule and the distance between the new campus and the Tahrir Sq. campus. According to Leonard, attendance was generally higher on the new campus with twenty to sixty viewers to the Tahrir campus’s ten or twenty.

“Considering the swine-flu break and condensed schedule, the turnout was good,” she said. “With Tuesday classes it was hard for some students to come, even for extra credit.”

However, this is being taken into account for the festival’s future with the idea of combining screenings in a day or weekend event. According to Westmoreland, the goal of this is to include the public and engage the city with the films and dialogue offered by the MMFF.

“I feel like showing the films downtown is a great way to bring people in,” he said. “I think next year we need to think about how to do that, [whether] we should be collaborating with cultural centers or embassies. I feel like if more people knew about it, more would come.”

With the curtain dropped on this years festival, students and Cairenes will have to wait for next years line up to feast their senses on a new buffet of global images and stories told by world renowned filmmakers. For more information on how to become involved with next year’s festival, contact Professor Westmoreland in the department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology.

The Limits of Control at Cairo International Film Festival

"Limits of Control," Jim Jarmusch, 2009.

Yesterday wrapped up the final day of screenings for Cairo’s International Film Festival, and though I only managed to make it to three screenings towards the end of the event, Jim Jarmusch’s May release “The Limits of Control” occupied all the filmic processing  capacity of my brain. The screening we attended was filled mostly by expats and artsy types, go figure.

The film, directed by Jarmusch, shot by Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love), and starring Isaach de Bankole (Coffee and Cigarettes, Night on Earth, Ghost dog: the Way of the Samurai) brought together a whimsically honest style, great locations in Spain (Madrid, Tribunal; Sevilla), glorious cinematography in a crazy, mysterious story of retribution against reality (played briefly and hilariously by none other than Bill Murray).

Needless to say, the walk out of the theatre for the group I saw it with was a slow bizzare one. Hard to say why, but the film resonated with themes in my life in a way that I can’t really understand. However, the length and meditative pace and repitition of the film had one of my fellow viewers retitle the film “Limits of my Patience.” I find this a bit harsh, but the film certainly does require the viewer to submit their viewing style to Jarmusch’s vision, which feels invasive to say the least – but that’s the success of this film in my opinion. It forced me to open up to the story, and proceeded to enter me and make things vibrate that I didn’t know existed.

Check out the trailer for ‘Limits of Control’ at Apple.

The Nile Delta, Zagazig and Mansoura

Merrit in a back alley near the train station, Mansoura.

SLIDESHOW

An aimless weekend in Egypt without grandiose plans to spend 10 to 12 hours in a bus through the desert (though I recommend this as well) led Merrit, Ally (two grad student friends at AUC) and myself on a less ambitious, but equally enriching journey through Egpyt’s Nile delta. Stopping off at a few random cities, Zagazig (Za’azi in ‘amaya) and Mansoura, we ended up taking in more than we had expected.

Zagazig (Zig-zag as I affectionately called it) attracted us with the prospect of seeing catacombs filled with cat mummies, soap factories, and a nondescript, tourist free weekend spot to walk like an Egyptian – no, not that silly dance, rather like the tango with speeding traffic. The catacombs ended up being a no-go, an archeological inspector telling us that they had been destroyed by urbanism years ago, but a highly bureaucratic visit to the most run-down archeological site in Egypt made up for it. An eerie sense of the past haunted the place, rather than the reglorification of ancient Egypt found in the reconstructed, tourist filled sites. And the morning fog was fog indeed – caused by humidity, not the smoking furnaces of the nearby soap factory (though I’m sure it’d smell good.)

After a cozy breakneck cab ride through some agriculture and small towns, we arrived in Mansoura, much like Louis IX of France arrived there, except we weren’t arrested. The place he stayed, Bayt Luqman, however was a far cry from prison. The Egyptian king at the time, as the restoration workers who invited us in for a look despite their ongoing work told us, didn’t find prison suitable to a king, so he kept Louis IX imprisoned in his own house. Arab Hospitality! Masoura was a bustling mass of street signs, food, people buying and selling cheap imported goods and handmade wonders like they were commodity futures at the NYSE in the late 1980’s. Buffalo milk ice cream is among one of the local favourites, one that we were glad to indulge in and one that brought us close to the community, licking away at our cones in a mass of weekend strollers doing the same. (Chocolate Mango is highly recommended).

Little kids loved us this weekend (queue emotional bleeding heart travel narrative types….) We met some real hustlers and kingfishers among the youth of Mansoura and Zagazig. But as our short bus ride back into Cairo proved, real life always comes back too soon. In this case, its a good thing the youthful, aimless wandering afforded us by the Nile delta is so nearby.

Stractions – Alice Crosara and cohorts.

Check out my friend Alice Crosara, fashion photographer extraoidinaire, and her artsy cronies, myself included (quite shamelessly) on her blog:

http://stractions.blogspot.com/

Now featuring my ex-roommate, my captain, and hella imaginative photographer, Ian Santos Robson – among other talented people I am glad to share digital space with.

 

Cheers

Joe

AUC students protest Israeli oppression

Yesterday, organized by the student organizaion “Al Quds AUC,” a group of thirty to forty students stood in protest of Israels action on Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem a day earlier, where they reported injured 18 and stirred a violent backlash by Palestinian area residents.

Get the story at — Al Jazeera

Whether or not they are being heard – their protest being on a highly secured campus (compound) in the Middle of Nowhere, Outside Cairo, Egypt – the protest was a sign of solidarity. The one Jewish student I saw taking part seemed serious about his involvement in the demonstration, another sign – that this isn’t about religion or culture, but politics and hegemony.

For more information on Al Quds AUC, e-mail the club’s president Ahmad El Bughdadi at alquds.auc@gmail.com.