Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria & Elsewhere

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

Sphinx Rising

Three years ago Husband No. 1 and I went to Egypt.  I'm not an African-American Egyptianist, i.e., someone who spends time arguing who invented mathematics first -- the Greeks or the Egyptians.  (For the record, nor am I descended from great kings and queens of Africa.)  Fred had gone and recommended we go, so we did.  I now realize that my brain and many other Americans' brains need to be scrubbed because more than once when, after telling someone I travelled to Egypt, they'd ask, "Didya ever go to Africa?"

"Well, yes.  I travelled to Egypt."  Check a map if you don't believe me.

I love that country and hope to, need to go back.  We went to Alexandria one day and toured the modern Library of Alexandria where, I kid you not, I was treated like a movie star.  One moment I'm looking at a lithograph from the the days of Napoleon's sojourn in Egypt and the next minute I'm shaking hands with children asking me who I am, where I'm from and so on.  As stunned and flattered as I was, that's not why I love Egypt.  It's the people I met (some of whom may be out in the streets today).  We were very aware that as Americans we were undoubtedly safer in Cairo than in New York.  You figured out right away that Mubarak's regime would never ever let a Western tourist come to harm.  Husband No. 1 and I used to count the different uniforms we saw  representing different police and/or military forces.  We stopped at five and then wondered how many plain-clothes were around, too.

 When I read or hear of people here complaining about the US being a police state I roll my eyes, because, frankly, they don't know what they're talking about.  Egypt is the real thing.  It is what a dictatorship looks like smells like acts like.  Here's an example of what an authoritarian regime does to its people: The man who drove us to Alexandria spoke excellent English.  He explained that he worked in the States for several years as King Faisal's driver (when the King was in California).  At one point he was offered permanent residence (imagine that happening now) and he turned it down to return home.  Now, he said, if Islam didn't forbid it, he (and all other Egyptians) would commit suicide.

Egyptians are risking their lives in ways most of us Americans never have and can't imagine.  I am in awe of their courage.  I recommend visiting Mona Eltahawy's blog to find out more.

I Have Been Given the Weekend Off ...

... by my husband who decided, in His Infinite Wisdom, that he, too, has too much Work To Do.  (I mean , really now, what do college-educated people in their 50's with bad backs have to do but work?)  I am in the midst of picking up the pieces of a life interrupted (joyously) by a daughter's wedding, approximately 15 inches of snow over several days, and best of all, the offer (accepted) of writing another libretto after having not done so for, say, 15 years.

I'm working with a composer, Whitney George, and we are together writing an opera based on Guy de Maupassant's "The Diamond Necklace".  How times have changed!  Whitney and I have never met, and may not meet until the first performance.  Yet we have this mutual support society thing going on which is a joy.  We're doing this all through e-mail and (gulp) our face-to-face meetings might even be Skyped.  She was referred to me by my Very Good Friend, Fred Ho.  (He and I did some damage to the artistic firmament when we Wrote "Warrior Sisters" together, my last opera collaboration before this one.)  Anyway, doing the libretto is my idea of fun.  

Also, I was on my way to NY last Sunday and just by accident my friend, Taylor Ho Bynum, who I met through Fred was on the same train, and we had one of those rollicking co-artists conversational riots until he had to 'scuse hisself to work on the sheet music for the 10-piece Positive Catastrophe Band performing that night at Jazz Alley.  (Oh, God, New York will never be what it once was where jazz clubs were the center of the universe.  A part of me longs to have lived there in the 1950's, despite the fact that I would have probably drunk myself to death).  And, as I told The Husband, I realized that there was an "Ann T. Greene"  who got left behind when I left New York.  It's only when I work with or run into fellow "creatives" that she emerges.  I miss her and need her here.

My Thoughts About the Upcoming Edition of Huck Finn That Excises the Word "Nigger"

Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger.