Some (long) Thoughts on Egypt....

(sorry this turned out to be a really long post, i guess i'm just getting some things of my chest)

I havent really written so much about the political situation here in cairo at the moment,

mainly because i dont think i'm the most informed person to be writing about those kind of things.

I can write a little bit, but its purely my personal opinion and how things here have affected me.

To be honest i'm just tired of it all...

its not my fight and i'm stuck in the middle of tensions that i have no emotional connection to.

I understand the people trying to fight for a better life, 

there are so many people here who probably dont even fully comprehend just how much better their lives could be with a government that put its peoples needs first rather than their own, 

but at the same time i believe that

 'Charity begins at Home'.

How can you expect the leaders of your country to be

 honest, sensible, peaceful, trustworthy people, 

if you yourself are not these things.

(i'm sorry that i am incredibly generalising)

but let me say this....

in my time here as a blonde haired, blue-eyed foreigner i can tell you that on a DAILY basis, 

i am harrased in the streets as i walk down them - 

people staring at me,

 shouting at me,

 taking pictures of me,

 (of course there also the people who just want to say hello and be friendly too, again on a daily basis)

I am scammed by people who think that because 

i am a foreigner they can charge me sometimes as much as 200% the regular selling price....

(this is understandable as most foreigners in this country probably

 do earn a lot more than the average Egyptian but i myself am on

 an Egyptian salary and nobody believes me when i try and explain this to them!)

Egyptians have a short temper, 

and the common way to treat each other is to yell and scream to get things done, 

often resorting to fisticuffs. 

I once asked my friend why he punched the boy who was sitting next to him. 

'He just made me so angry,' he said, 'and punching him made me feel better about it'. 

I said to him, 'the ability to control our anger is what makes us better than the animals'.

 He replied to me that he had never thought about it like that before, 

and no one had ever told him it was wrong to react in such away.

And so i say again, 

if you expect the people who lead your country to be the best examples of you, than you have to improve yourself. Improve how you treat your fellow men. 

Since the Revolution there have been many protests,

sometimes tension filled - sometimes not.

 i rarely call in sick to work, but i do occasionally call in scared!

In general though there has not been a lot to worry about, 

the problems have been incredibly localised.

But just a couple of days ago whilst travelling home after

 a dress rehearsal with a friend on the Metro as a man went to exit the train, 

he purposely pushed his body up against mine and grabbed my ass to cop a feel. 

This was not the first time this has happened, 

but it has been happening on a more frequent basis. 

Most of the time i'm left absolutely helpless, and to be honest it makes me feel incredibly violated. 

I know it may sound a bit funny that someone grabbing my ass makes me feel violated, 

but please trust me  in telling you that it does.

 Men stare at me, they openly push themselves up against me,

 they grab my ass as i walk down the street,

 they walk behind me - following me all the time telling me how much

 they want to f**k me whilst i pretend not to hear....

and i can tell you that the constant daily strain of it wears you down. 

It makes you feel less than human,

 it makes you feel like an object that it is okay to treat like that, 

no better than they would treat a dog.

So the other night when it happened to me (again) on the Metro, 

i totally wigged out, 

i went crazy ass nuts on the guy, screaming and shouting proper Egyptian Style.

 And he of course did what they all do, throw their hands up in the air in the 'i surrender' pose and shake their heads claiming that they didnt do anything

 (sometimes when they do this i begin to doubt myself but this time i clearly saw what he did)

and then i broke down in tears and just kept

 repeating how i couldnt do this any more,

 this life here is too hard.

When i got off the train at the next stop,

 a few people who had been on my carriage came and apologised to me for what had happened. 

And i can tell you that this is something that happens often too. 

When they see something happen that shouldn't have, 

Egyptians will come up to you and say sorry, even though it was not their fault. 

They say sorry on behalf of their country,

 and they say sorry because they know as well as i do there is nothing either of us can do about it....

I guess i broke down so badly this time because i see an end in sight, 

and i dont need to keep myself toughened up any more.

Then yesterday  i heard that Principal male dancer from the company

 had been at a shopping mall with his friend, and was in the car park 

and him and his friend were held up by gunpoint by four armed assailants.

 As he ran to get help from some nearby security guards they shot at him and the bullet went through his femur breaking the bone in two. 

With the healthcare system the way it is here in Cairo

his chance for a full recovery and to be back on stage again any time soon are very slim.

So Egypt, 

its been an experience, and i think one that i wouldnt change for the world, 

but also one i wouldnt particularly recommend to anyone.

Life here is so different, 

and my eyes and my mind have been opened in a way that holidaying here, 

or reading about things on the news would never have made me understand. 

(if you have made it to the end and are interested at all, 

this post is quite good.
http://www.elazul.me/2012/06/egypt-epilogue.html)

My Guru....

After that last little post talking i just wanted to dedicate a 

post to two people here who have inspired me here in Cairo...

the first is my director,

when she gave me this job i was the shell of a dancer.

I had just been let go from my last company where i had been made

 to feel like i was a nobody 

and not good enough to even be on stage.

But she saw something in me and gave me a job as a soloist.

i'll admit it, f

or the first couple of months i felt like a fraud.

When they called for the soloist, or read out my name in castings,

 i was so confused that they really meant me!

And she gave me roles that i felt i didnt quite deserve

 but at the end of it i realised that i could do it and that i did have it in me.

I became what she saw in me.

 I became confident and enjoyed the opportunities that she gave to me. 

I enjoyed working in rehearsals with her.

Madam alla with her broken arm and the 'pas de troisers'

The other person i would like to mention is Madam Alla.

Madam Alla is very scary when you first meet her. 

She only speaks russian...

and i can only imagine that she is a hundred years old.... 

She only rehearses the soloists...and she rehearses them hard.... 

In my first rehearsals with her i got so worried every time 

she shouted at  me, she would get so angry. 

Then when everybody else had done their variation once or twice 

and finished rehearsals and were ready to go home 

she made me stay and do it two more times. 

I felt inadequate and wanted to work hard to please her.

When the corps de ballet have holidays or there is an extra day off, 

if you are working with Madam Alla you dont take holidays, 

you work on National Days and extras on weekends. 

During the performances she is pretty nerve-wrecking, 

she stands in the wings and you can see her disapproving looks 

when you make a mistake, 

stomping her foot hard if you get out of time, 

she finds you after your variation and either gives you the head nod or the head shake.....

yes she can be intimidating....

but....

the more i have worked with her the more i have learned

 that she pushes her dancers so hard because she wants the best from us.

madam Alla watching from the wings

After one performance of Swan Lake,

 i hadnt felt like i had done particularly well and was scared to see her the next day

 as i thought she had been watching from the audience. 

She came to me the next morning and apologised that she didnt have

 any corrections to give me, she was so sorry, 

but she had been sick and had had to go to hospital during the performance. 

She was absolutely  devastated that she hadnt been there for me....

(i told her i danced the performance good not to worry...hehe).

and it was so nice to know how much she cared about 

my performance...not for her...but for me, she wanted me to do My best.

I'm grateful for the chance that i have had to work with these two women 

who have both pushed and inspired me in different ways.

And its the inspiration and reaching of goals that they gave me that has

left me feeling content with my career

in a way i never could have not so long ago.

New Horizons....

So this is it,

my last week and a half as a professional Ballet dancer....

and how do i feel?

Well, 

actually i feel tired and fed up.

I think this reaction is more to do with being here in Cairo,

i'm so fed up with this city, it doesnt suit me at all.

the lifestyle, the way people communicate, the dirt, the political unrest

its not me, 

and its been wearing me down for the last two years

and i cant wait to leave.

And i cant seem to disconnect that feeling of really looking forward

 to leaving here for good with the feelings

 i ought to be having about my life as a dancer finishing.

I feel like i ought to be having some regrets, 

some nostalgia....

but it just isnt there...

i am fed up here 

and all i can focus on is getting out of this joint.

I was thinking today that perhaps this is a good thing, 

perhaps its all part of the big plan. 

So many dancers cant give it up, they cant let go,

and being here has worn me down to the point where i am just happy to let go.

Ballet class bores me,

its seems so tedious and repetitive,

but that is nothing to do with ballet itself,

its to do with working with the same teachers in class for the past 2 years 

who for those 2 years havent inspired me or motivated me, 

they have bored me, 

bored me to the point where i have stopped trying and i dont care anymore.

I look in the mirror and i get frustrated with the imperfections

 which i feel are getting more imperfect rather than improving....

and then i realise that i dont have to care or get frustrated about those imperfections anymore,

 so i dont.

The last few months i havent been cast in anything 

that has required me to push myself,

when i was doing Swan Lake i was pushing myself technically,

 and Danses Qu'on Croise i was pushing myself emotionally, but now i'm just drifting in the background...fading away.

I know its going to hit me later.

Hit me when i've not done class for a while and realise how good i had it.

and i'm already looking into places where i can do classes over the summer when i'm on dry land

ballet is a part of my soul,

but for now i need that break.

If your in Cairo....

this week come and see us dancing in Swan Lake....

that girl in the middle on the right,

thats me!

Bummed....

picture

so i'm feeling a little bit down today.

Been working hard for the past month on Swan Lake,

and performance were meant to start in just over a week today.

I was beginning to feel in good form and ready to get on stage,

and especially after the rather blue experience i had with Nutcracker this year,

was quite looking forward to it.

But things in the ballet world are never stable....

and here in Egypt with the current political climate its even worse.

Today we turned up at work and told that all rehearsals/performances are postponed.

We should have a meeting tomorrow to let us know a bit more....

I feel like all my hard work will have gone to waste,

and i'm not sure that i can keep up my enthusiasm for that long

not knowing when we will next actually get on the stage...

Looking Forward to....

I should probably write about how i'm stuck at home again,

because getting to work is a bit dangerous again.

But instead i'm just going to post this.

Ooooooh, I can't wait!

Backstage At The ballet

Another year over,

Another Nutcracker finished.

The Nutcracker is not one of my favourite ballets to perform,

and this year it seemed more hectic than ever.

I was dancing in the roles of,

Parents,

Soloist Snowflake,

Corps De Ballet Snowflake

Spanish

Arabian

Soloist Waltz of the Flowers

Okay, okay not all at the same time....

but having to juggle so many rehearsals and keep my stamina

(and sanity) was pretty hard work.

Especially seeing this is the time of the year when people get sick,

and if a dancer gets sick or injured,

all your thinking about is

Dang! what am i going to have to re-learn

in order to compensate for one missing person in the performance tonight!

Before one particular performance a girl came into work and quit her job.

Enough was enough.

And so we juggled around the cast,

and it was stressful,

because at the moment we dont have a lot of spare dancers....

and i went on stage dancing a role that i hadn't expected to.

Feeling exhausted and run down.

But,

as i sat on the Metro heading home that evening a girl came up to me

and asked if i had just been in the ballet.

She had her programme and wanted me to sign it.

She told me how much she had loved the ballet.

It was the first time that she had seen one in real life, and not just on tv.

How she thought it was so magical....

She was blown away.

And it made me realise that even though backstage

half the dancers are wanting to kill each other,

and are bodies are falling apart out of exhaustion.

The audience cant see that (thank goodness)

And although at times the magic gets a bit stale for me,

there are others out there who can still see it.

It's also nice to be on stage too.

Dancers spend a majority of our time in the studio

but when i'm on stage and it goes well....

Nothing Beats That.....

w

Pinned down....

So i've spent the last week housebound.

its not so dangerous outside,

but i've got some kind of virus or something that has rendered me bedridden

which i guess is not so bad seeing as work has been shut down all week any hows.

at anyrate...

i've become addicted to Pinterest

I'm not sure what the actual point of it is, or if i'm using it right cause basically everytime i see a pretty picture i'm like 'repin'....

surely there is more depth to it than that.

I'm loving the recipes that i've found on it.

Like hows AMAZING is this Panda Bread....

Under Cairo Curfew

So here i am again, under curfew.

Although this time i just dont have quite the

same fear factor as i had back in January.

Sure things are crazy down at Tahrir,

but i no longer liver in that area,

and in the area where i live now (about half an hour away)

life is going on as normal.

Well i say normal,

i havent been to work in 3 days,

because of its proximity to Tahrir.

In fact,

i'm more annoyed about the fact that i haven't had

any water in my apartment for the last 4 days

(unconnected to any protest problems)

I just wonder how much longer Egypt is going to

keep ebbing and flowing in this violent way.

I really dont know enough about Egyptian politics

to be able to make any sound comments on the situation here....

but i do know that nobody can want

to continually live in this type of unrest.

A different kind of Halloween?....

So facebook has been filled with Halloween this week.

Pumpkins and crazy costumes everywhere.

There is very little Halloween here at all,

on the other hand this week see's one of the big Muslim holidays.

The Eid Festivities.

One of the main things that happens during these days is that a sheep/goat is sacrificed.

So popping up all over town are little makeshift barns where you can come and pick your sheep.

i guess its a bit like us having a turkey for Christmas but having to do the killing part yourself rather than just picking it up from Tescos.

In fact, i even went into one supermarket where

next to the Pringles they had set up a mini stall with a couple

of baby lambs that you could pick up and put in your trolley if you so desired.

Most of the mini barns are set up right next to the butchers though....

who have been working over time in the last week.

I havent left the house yet today as i've heard that this

morning is the big sacrificing morning and the streets can be filled with blood.

Real blood,

not the red corn syrup type...

i guess that's kind of Halloweeenish

at any rate,

Happy Holidays....

update

so i did leave the house for a couple of minutes and witnessed -

-2 cows lying down tied up about to have their throats slit

- a sheep being hacked up with an axe

- a stall full of animal heads

-various random animal limbs all over the street

- pools of blood

-a terrible stench

i quickly decided to return home to see the

cows had already been skinned and beheaded

Pretty Dresses....

Its not so cold here (still warmer than a Scottish summer)

but i've been feeling a bit poorly so decided to wrap up warm this morning.

As in donning a pair of jeans, and wearing boots instead of sandals.

On my walk to the Metro station one of the local shopkeepers shouted out to me.

'Where are your pretty dresses? I like your pretty dresses.'

It made me laugh.

Being pretty much the only 'white' (blonde/blue) girl living in a pretty Egyptian area

sometimes i feel like a bit of a celebrity.

i really don't make that much effort with my clothes styling here,

because most of the time i'm trying to be as incognito as possible,

seeing as the blonde/blue thing gets me enough unwanted attention all by itself

but i do like my pretty dresses.....

Movie under the Moon....

I came home from work last night to find that my roommate

had borrowed a projector and set up a mini-cinema on our balcony.

It was lovely to sit out side under the moon

(i would say stars but in Cairo its pretty hard to see them)

and eat cold pizza

(it had been warm but by the time i got there it was cold)

and the movie we watched....

O Brother Where Art Thou,

its a corker!

Water....

In Egypt,

A litre of Petrol (Gas)

and a litre bottle of water

are roughly the same price.....

not quite dead...

My blog has not died....well not completely....

I'm working on getting an interent connection up

and running in my apartment.

Most days i'm calling up my landlord telling him

that the connection is still not existent.

He sends round some little man who does something...

but whatever that something is it does not manage

to connect me to the world wide web.

I've got to the point where i hate the sound of my own voice as

i call him up and winge once again that whatever its

is the little man did this time its was still unsuccessful.

Today he implanted to large very ugly cable

that connects from outside my window....

through my bedroom to the living room....

they are just hanging there connecting to nothing

(well probasbly to something but def not to the internet),

looking ugly, and obstructing my ability to

close my window any doors in the apartment....

i'm thinking i should take the high ground and

pretend that i can live without the interent.

but it would be a lie

i cannot

Backstage at the Ballet...

I'm currently camera-less as my charger

was one of the many items that i keep discovering went missing when i lost my bag.

But here a few pictures from our last performance

by my lovely fellow dancer Vicente....

The show must go on?

The end of my first year as a dancer at The Cairo Opera Ballet is coming to a close.

One more performance to go....

maybe......

it could be cancelled,

depending on whether the current protest

that is on Tahrir Square will continue or not.

Which kind of sums up what life is like here at the moment.

I constantly receive emails from my Embassy warning me

that perhaps this Friday there will be a protest and it could become dangerous.....

in fact i receive them so often i've begun to ignore them.

Also, having moved out of The Downtown area,

i no longer feel connected to the events which are happening there.

In fact on my street right now there is a live band

and street lights and a big party going on.....

not many revolutionary thoughts going on here at all.

But, I check out the news and see that the situation at Tahrir

this week seems to be hotting up again.

The change and progress the people want is slow.

Things go on,

but the Revolution and the discontent that it brought up is still around,

under the surface,

ready at any moment to resurface.

(photo of me by Vicente)

2 birds, 1 stone.....

Like most big cities Cairo has an Underground train system.

Its called the Metro.

Having recently moved further away from work and the Downtown area

(i disliked the constant threat of revolutionaries on my doorstep).

I now have a slightly longer commute to work.

The Metro in this summer heat is stinky and suffocating.

Its like half an our in a sauna....

and let me tell you this i am not the type of girl who likes to go to saunas ...ever.

But i do like to try and look on the bright side of life

and so here is one thing i do like about my commute on the metro....

shopping.

Oh yes....shopping.

Egyptians have a thing where they peddle their wears on the metro.

A little man/lady will come on, she will go down the metro car handing

out one of their items to each person there,

wailing aloud about how great their 1le product is,

they then return and either you buy it or they take it back.

There is a lot of trust involved in this little exercise....

in the London tube there is no way anyone would be returning the item....

in fact the first time it happened to me i thought that it was a free gift.

And 99% of the time the items are crap....

but every now and then they come along with something and you think,

'Yes! just what i needed'....

and it makes my commute just that little bit more worth while.

Eye-opener...

I had the worst day at work today.

The worst.

One of my male colleagues had a fight in the middle

of rehearsal and started physically attacking one of the women.

I've never actually seen this happen before,

a man treat a woman in such away.

Somehow i got myself involved in the situation by trying to intervene

when he looked like he was coming back for more,

which only resulted in myself being shouted at by other men in the studio.

What made the situation worse

was later on when things had calmed down a couple of guys

came over to me to justify the male dancers actions to me.

Let me put this out there now.

It is never okay to hit a woman.

NEVER!

It is unjustifiable.

I tried to explain this to them...

I was not interested as to what the current situation

between this man and woman were.

Who was in the right/ who was in the wrong, is immaterial.

The minute that you loose control and

stoop to physical abuse you are in the wrong.....

NO MATTER WHAT.

I hope that one day the people here will be able to see that.

I was even more shocked,

when one of Egyptian friends

had to explain to these people who were trying to

justify the situation to me,

that the reason that I was so upset was

that I had never seen a woman being hit before.

I feel sad that in this part of the world that it

is obviously not an anomaly.

Where never having seen a woman

being hit by a man is unheard of.

I'm not saying that these things do

not happen in the rest of the world.

They do.

I am saying that it should

not be in any way tolerated.

The situation ended with the woman being sent home to 'recover'

and the man was allowed to continue work as though nothing had happened

This is an experience i wish i had never seen,

but i am also glad that i have, as it has opened my

eyes to a serious injustice.

5 days in Cairo with a lovely lady.....

Last week my bestest bud and loveliest lady of them all came to visit me.

In the dance world holidays are rarely planned,

normally there are rumours flying around and about 2

days before the holiday will start your given some information....

it makes planning for anything exceedingly difficult.

So i had just found out i had a 9 day holiday only to receive a message

from the Lovely Nina from Ljubljana that her ballet company

had pretty much just informed her that she would be having holidays too,

whats more part of our holidays even over-lapped.....

it seemed too good to be true.

It was,

tickets to Egypt arent cheap and Ballet dancers salaries arent high.

So it looked like our desire to meet up would be culled,

and i went off to Luxor slightly heavily hearted than

i wished only to receive a text message half

way through my trip to say that she was coming,

pretty much the day that i got back to Cairo.

I literally couldnt sleep for the next two nights planning an agenda for her 5 day visit.

(no she was given no choice in the matter)

So

She was taken to a Coptic Christian Mass at the Mokatan Cave church....

mainly because we had heard that they do exorcisms,

but apparently no-one was possessed that night....

is it wrong that i wished there was?

and we watched a large Egyptian man squeeze himself into a

belt at Makan, that was a 'musical instrument'

he shimmied his butt around for a good 20mins making sweet

Egyptian folk music with that 'instrument'.

I laughed so hard i cried, it is an instrument i would greatly like to learn to play,

i feel that i have great potential to become an excellent goat belt shimmier.

and she was forced to eat Koshary whether she liked it or not,

as it would make her an authentic Egyptian

(for the grand price of 5 egyptian pounds)

and she felt what its like to be a celeb, when every tom dick or harry wants

their picture taken with you.

i've started asking for baksheeh when they want this....

so far not got any!

and taken on a tour of the Islamic Cairo Mosques by a friend of mine who

knows way too much useless yet interesting information about these kind of things.

and was taken to the second hand book market in Attaba,

because its one of my favourite spots,

even though i'm sure she has no love for second hand books

(i'm doing some serious haggling in this picture)

And we got lost in the market for a while,

but became excellent tag team hagglers playing good cop bad cop to perfection.....

and rode on a camel at the Pyramids

(for what i thought was a good price but found out afterwards wasnt)

on a Camel called Charlie Brown,

which coincidently was the name of the only other camel i have ridden on......

and ate Egyptian food in Felfela a tourist restaurant,

because we be tourists dont ya know.....

and there were a few more things ,

like a trip to the Egyptian Museum,

a Felucca ride down the Nile

and what-not

But for me the best part was just getting to talk to her when ever i wanted.