A Summer on the Nile
A Summer on the Nile is my first book of poetry, written during my stay in Egypt and over the course of the following year, my senior year in high school. That year was not a pleasant one for me, for the most part, so the poems are not all wonderfully uplifting, though some are. Because I use special transliteration and Arabic fonts on both the Macintosh (and in WordPerfect 6, years ago when I used a Wintel PC), and it is difficult to use such fonts on the web, the rendering of Arabic words and phrases will be somewhat less than exact. Long Arabic vowels I can easily indicate with the circumflex (^), but strong consonants, which require dots underneath the letters, will have to wait for Unicode. The primary problem remaining will be differentiating between the `ayn and the hamza, or glottal stop. To this end, all `ayns (an English long "i" but from the throat) will be designated with a grave apostrophe (`) and the hamzas (the sound made between "uh-oh") will be acute apostrophes (´). Also, the special instance in the Cairo colloquial dialect where the qâf (hard "k" or "q") is silent will be indicated by a bolded apostrophe ('). This dropped sound is mostly not noticed, but occasionally sounds like a hamza.
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Contents
Titles in all italics are only descriptives for works without titles.
(It might be a while before all of these are on-line)
Dedication
Jasmine and Turkey (an introduction)
An Egyptian Journey
Shahâda
For Kate wal-Qâhira (To al-telîfon)
The Head of Hasan
For Comfort
al-Bayt fil-Qâhira
Shaykh `Umar's Thuluth
Footsteps of the Sphinx
al-Kasra al-Fasla (The Last Tic-Tac)
al-Hâra
The Knight of Muqattam (a response to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Kate")
Sabâh il-Full
"Yâ Rabb!"
al-Gebel
al-Sultâna
Ha'î'a fî Harîm
On the Road to Jerusalâm
Dâr al-Salâm
The Road to Heliopolis
Mab'ara al-Far`ôn
Snellville Smells Like Cairo
Return to Contents.
Saturday, November 26, 1994
Here I am, sitting as a lonely man in my room on a cold, dreary, rainy day at
the end of November. It is two days after Thanksgiving, and the pain of that
day still lingers strongly as I bang out nonsense on this obsolescent
machine, the electronic typewriter.
It seems like only yesterday I was celebrating the Fourth of July in Ma`âdî
with a group of people whom I hardly knew but were my best friends. What has
become of us and our wonderful experience that we are like this: hearing only
the clattering of the dinosaur as we remember . . . .
Drifting away, the jasmine wafts through the crowded streets. People are
talking everywhere. "Come to my shop!" "I know exactly what you want!"
"Perfume, real cheap!" "Here mister! Leather, gold, silver! Come! Buy!"
Even the Aussie fellahîn: "Ice cold Coca-Cola! Ice cold!"
The sounds of trucks grinding through the twisted alleyways of Khân
al-Khalîlî. People telling people to get out of the way. No one listening.
Trucks stopping. Horns honking from Shâri`a al-Azhar. Boys on bikes,
ringing their bike bells to let us know of their approach. Littler boys with
pushing- or pulling-carts, using the same bell, alerting Kmart shoppers of
the blue-light specials they bring on their pushing- or pulling-carts. The
smell of exhaust from the bus stop on Shâri`a al-Azhar makes its way through
the streets and alleyways too, just as Mahfûz would through Gamâliya.
There's the smell of dust and trash, and even a faint whiff of Coca-Cola or
shwerma from a vendor. If you're lucky, you'll come across a large,
picturesque man carrying the drink vendor's equivalent of bagpipes. He
colorfully tilts the selected side and fills up a cup with the desired
beverage, flags on the contraption streaming. Or some man in a galabiyya
will chase after you, grab you by the arm, and drag you into his shop.
Maybe you want to escape the main strip and find some peace, or you want to
see another part of the sûq. You turn down the side alley, through the
scaffolding, and come upon an excavation/construction/restoration of a mosque
all in one. You notice that they're always ready to bargain when you don't
want the item, but that they never will bargain when you want it. Sometimes
the quality is suspect, but you like the item. Do you buy it, or do you look
for something better in another shop? What happens if you turn down one
dark, twisted alley and find a shop, only then realizing ma`andish filûs, and
that you don't remember how you managed to get so deep into the place and
will never find it again. You also realize that the shopkeepers on the front
must have designed all of the alleys so that you think you're going deeper
in. But you never do; you just end up right back on the main drag again.
Walking past a shop, you encounter a man outside who tries to sell you the
top to a miniature minaret. Never mind that you came on a plane and could
never get it home. "Buy it anyway." Or, "My pretty, I do something for you;
now you do something for me," and the leather-salesman bends over for a kiss.
One guy invites you into his tiny shop, room only for the six of you, and you
all sit down. He tells the kid to go back and keep bringing in the t-shirts
you want, but the kid never gets it right. You search all over for the
perfect little clay man: not too big, not too gaudy, not too expensive, not
too touristy. Gosh, everything is touristy! All the golds and silvers and
brilliant colors in tourist-trapping fabrications. Not that reality is
bland, but the items for sale looked like they had so much gold and silver on
them, as if gold and silver were going out of style. "Come into my
pap-ee-rus shop" they all say. "Come now because tomorrow I go to Amrîkâ for
my brother's wedding." But later it's "the shop closes tomorrow for two
months to draw more pap-ee-rus!" Funny how they always appeared to have
plenty of unsold pap-ee-rus (or should I say, bananna rind). Or searching
for full. Jasmine is the essence of al-Qâhira. You walk up and down the
corniche in a group or with a girl, and you're besieged by boys selling full
or roses. Go yourself in search of it for a surprise party for a girl's
birthday, and not a bit to be found, save some that one soldier gives to
another. Or you ask the traffic cop if you can take his picture (useless
laziness of the police) and he shakes his head no. Or an off-duty soldier
greets you on Shâri`a al-Azhar your first time in Medieval Cairo, (waiting
for the rest) and tells you the real bazaar is the Street of the Tentmakers;
Khân al-Khalîlî is the tourist bazaar, he says. You remember these things
before they forever fade.
Such is the power of a lonely, cold, dreary, rainy night in November.
Return to Contents.
An Egyptian Journey
This is not Cairo:
Five-Star Hotels on the Nile,
Dinner cruises and casinos.
Tourists shuttled from tourist stop to tourist spot
In air-conditioned buses.
The Egyptian Museum,
The Gold of the Pharaohs
The rich clothes —
The inner courtyard of AUC.
(Yea, though I was once part of it,
I despised it.)
This is not Cairo; this is not Egypt.
Cairo is the smog and dust
Enshrouding the city in mourning.
It is four or six in a small taxi
Riding on the bumpy roads
Through the summer heat
And perhaps being ripped off by 60 cents.
It is al-Azhar Mosque,
Still damaged from the Earthquake.
Tens of people crammed onto a bus
That doesn't stop; just drives.
Jasmine sellers,
Construction projects started
Half completed
Never finished
Street vendors impoverished,
Donkeys, mules, horses, chickens, cats,
Hayâ wi môt fî nafs ilmakân —
Life and death in the same place —
Several English spellings of Mar Girgis on the Metro
Catcalls at our women;
50+% of theirs in veils.
Mint tea, factories belching smoke and dust
Recycling; Mercedeses and Suzuki vans
Wanting the same spot on city streets
Dirty Nile, Zamalek, soccer fields —
Streets in the Northern Cemetery — wedding —
Life and death in the same place —
World Cup Soccer (in Arabic)
Three television channels
Bumpy roads.
Rice and corn —
No lanes, Malish, inshâ´allah,
The Delta, the Canal,
The Desert Road.
The Coptic Church, "Santi Bishoi"
Mamlûks, Ottomans,
Caliphs, Khedives,
Fâtimids, Saladin —
Seventeen million crammed into a city.
Life and death in the same place.
Beef Pepperoni at Pizza Hut,
7UP, Sprite, and Teem; Coke, Pepsi, Sport Cola — all the same
VIP-Police Escort to Alexandria —
Makes me wonder — Why?
Bicycles, fellâhîn
al-Ma`âdî, trash on the street,
Qur´âns on the dash,
Amulets from the mirror, dancing eggs
(Work hard, Work smart)
Dilma shây, bakshîsh, Baraka.
Friends waiting — the Hotel
Kindly children with flowers
A father carrying his dead son in the city,
A naked boy cared for by the village
Cleaning sidewalks thrice daily,
Seven tons of sand, Sûfîs,
Nights on the roof, sunrise in the Valley.
Pride —
The Kleenex girl — Kleenex for everything,
Even a half-eaten apple — no handouts —
Pride
This is Cairo. This is Egypt.
Return to Contents.
al-Kasra al-Fasla
(The Last Tic-Tac)
The Tic-Tac is finally gone;
The last of the august race has disappeared.
I'm not sure if I'm happy or I'm sad;
The windblown Cairene sands
Change truth from glad to mad.
Sometimes I don't know if I should stay
And let myself just fade away
Or return to the city by the bay
At 4 AM to rise to pray.
Called from the minaret of Qâytbây,
I have no choice;
Hardship and truth have stolen my voice.
A disposable society is not the way to go;
Our systems of morals we give, throw upon throw;
Too many times we've fallen in this trap
Again
Passing from one to another form of sin.
So let us return to the truth
Echoing now from the towers of Qâytbây
Thus he returns to khamsa wa `ishrîn to pray
Return to Contents.
Snellville Smells Like Cairo
Snellville smells like Cairo;
I knew it on the road.
Emilie's is like Carroll's . . .
Yesterday, Cairo came home.
I wandered through the city
Around the courthouse
Danced ghostly images of Midân al-Tahrîr
The city is my home.
Yesterday, Cairo came home.
Return to Contents.