My celebrity status in Egypt

Yep that's right, I'm famous. Well, sort of.

Obviously, in a country that is pretty homogeneous in terms of ethnicity (Wikipedia says: 99.6% Egyptian) as well as religion (about 90% Muslim), my sadly not-tan skin, light eyes, and rapidly blonding hair stick out in a crowd like a snowball stand in the desert. This has caused me a lot of grief in terms of trying to inconspicuously walk down the street without every bored guy pulling over and following me in his car, but it has had some not-so-annoying consequences as well.

For example, the time we drove to Cairo after class to catch Egypt's World Cup qualifying football (soccer) match against Rwanda. It was a pretty crazy experience; as soon as we finally pushed our way through the crowds to start climbing up to our section, our Agnabiyya اجنبية (Foreigner) presence raised a huge cheer from the entire stadium! The Egyptian fans are insaaaaane! They love their football. Everyone was jumping up and down dancing, yelling, playing drums and tambourine, waving huge flags, and doing the wave. We learned a few Masree cheers while we were there, my favorite one was: Opah eh! (clap clap) Opah ah! (clap clap) In-sha-allah-ha-naksab, Opah eh! And repeat. Which means something along the lines of, God willing, we're gonna win, hey!

People in the streets also love us. Egyptians are some of the most friendly and curious people that I've ever met, and although they often express their curiosity by staring openly at us, they're always willing to stand up for you if you're having trouble on the street, give you confident directions (even if they have no clue where you're trying to go) or invite you to sit down and have a cup of shay (tea). After visiting some cool ancient catacombs and Ptolemy's Pillar one day, Laura, Jake, Monica, and I decided to wander for a while through a colorful market down some narrow and clearly less-foreigner-traveled side streets. After a few blocks, I felt like the Pied Piper, wandering along with a train of little kids following behind us, and every fruit seller and fishmonger calling out "Welcome!" or in the case of one grandfatherly onion-merchant, asking us to rate his dance moves.

Another day, I was walking on the beach with Hannah to watch the sunset, and a guy came up to show us his baby, Meryam, and handed her to me after talking to us for a few minutes. Cute! Or there are the countless cases of friends of friends who I've never even met inviting me to be a guest at their engagement parties or weddings, which are some of the most gorgeous and elaborate events in Egyptian culture. I went with my friend Haidy to the engagement party of one of her best friends, Youmna, and it was amazing! It was almost like an American wedding ceremony, complete with the exchange of rings and a jewelery set to the bride, the bride and groom's first dance, cutting cake together (the cake had roman candles on it!), fancy dresses, of course lots of dancing, and even that crisscrossy-hands-feeding-each-other-cake thing. Needless to say, getting married is pretty expensive here, and definitely no expense is spared. From the perspective of the Egyptian girls that I'm friends with, getting married and starting their own family is the biggest moment of their lives, that they prepare for from birth, pretty much. Boys too, save up money before they even meet their future wife.

ANYWAY, back to the subject of my Egyptian stardom! A few weeks ago we went to see the concert of Egyptian pop star Tamer Hosni, kind of like the Justin Timberlake of this part of the world. It was pretty sweet! And a few weeks later, who shows up on the pages of women's magazine Nusf al-Balad (Center of the City) in the who's who guestlist Tamer Hosni concert section? Uh-huh, I think you can probably guess. Check out that bottom left hand corner, BAM! ;-)