Gray Areas: November 25, 2012

Gray is what November has become as winter rushes toward us.  Fog, fog, and more fog.  It's gray when it rains and it's gray when it doesn't.

Night temperatures now hover around freezing so the fountain under Alexander the Great and his horse  is silent and gray.  There will be no more colored lights, choreographed water, or music from it until spring.

All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray..... California dreaming on such a winter's day (California Dreaming by The Mamas and The Papas).

Our pursuit to stay in Macedonia legally is now in a gray, limbo status.  In early November the US Embassy sent a letter to Macedonia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to announce our arrival and state that we were under the Rule of Law agreement cloak.  About a week later we heard in an email from the US Embassy that MFA did not currently have the ability to make the ID cards.  Due to their recent change of office buildings, the machine wasn't operating.  We were informed that MFA will not furnish us with a temporary "Get-Out-of-Macedonia-Free" note while we wait for the production of our ID cards.

This illegal status is uncomfortable for me.  Recently, I was taking a photograph for an online class where the assignment was "Justice" and the color red.  The word "justice" is hard to come by here.  In Macedonian, justice is (правда) pravda.  But, I found a line of graffiti that included "Justice" written in Latin letters.  While I was taking the photograph, which took some time to work out as it included me as a self portrait, the woman who lives in the apartment came out and began asking me questions that I couldn't understand.  Eventually, she said, "politcia," a word I could understand.  While I wasn't doing anything illegal, it seemed like with my precarious status, it would be a good time to leave.  

 Too Many Cops Too Little Justice

While confined to Macedonia, we continue to explore.  One Saturday, which was not gray, our plan was to visit the archaeological site of Skupi.  Skupi is located near the village of Bardovci which has become more like a suburb of Skopje.  Once there, we found the archaeological site closed on weekends.  But, perhaps more interesting, was the very busy cabbage market next door.  These cabbages are from Bardovci village.  Full wagons of cabbages are pulled in by tractor and empty wagons pulled out to be returned full.  One of the merchants told us that Bardovci cabbages are the best for eating and especially for pickling to store for the winter.  The season is October and November, and these cabbages are huge and heavy.  One of the sellers gave us a cabbage which we carried all the way back to the city center; it was very heavy.  There were also sturdy, waist-high leeks which stand in picket-fence-like rows.  These are also purchased in bulk and replanted by the buyer to preserve them through the winter.

 Bardovci cabbages in red Yugo

November has also been a month of social activities: Marine Ball, Macedonia Philharmonic concerts, Cinedays European Film Festival, art openings, IWA, a Roma Festival.  I'm not sure what that says about us that we can be so busy but still chafe under this "house arrest" of being unable to leave Macedonia without fear of expulsion.  

Friday night I had a dream that two men grabbed me and shoved me into a car.  I hope that's not a sign of what's to come.  

Despite that bad omen, we've made a decision to travel and take our chances.  Tonight after Dan's class finishes, we are flying to Istanbul for 4 nights.  We will take a copy of our one-sided letter from the US Embassy to MFA in hopes that if we are questioned, the letter will be accepted as our "Get-Out-of-Macedonia-Free" note. 

We've laid in extra cat food provisions--just in case.

Cairo Graffiti-Day: April 29, 2012

Today, we have no appointments until evening when we are meeting several of Dan's former students at a stationary boat restaurant.  We noticed some interesting new graffiti in Zamalek and we were told that there are some very interesting walls in Garden City at American University in Cairo (AUC).  Along the way, we visited some of my favorite shops.  Several people on the street approached us to ask if we had had any problems in Cairo.  They wanted to make sure that we were having a good visit.

The above image is part of a wall of art on Ismael Muhammed Street in Zamalek near an Art School.  I was riveted by the messages in these images.  When I was taking photographs, a young woman explained the iconography of each image.  This image contains the date the revolution began (25 Jan), a bursting of wrist cuffs on the hands holding the religious symbols (cross and crescent), and other hands grasping two of the items that fueled the revolution: mobile phones' SMS and Facebook.

 

The bubble under the fist says "equality" and the smaller bubble below "freedom".  The panel below says "revolution of change" and "7orya" freedom in Arabic.

The word in the center of this image, 7orya,  means "Freedom" in Arabic.  The lightbulb contains a brain and the shape is an "o" in the word.   

The Graffiti Wall on Ismael Mohammed St, Zamalek

Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, SMS are prominent in these images of revolution. Farther down in this line of graffiti panels there is one of stencil art that says "Raise Thinkers, not Fighters."

We were hoping to walk to Tahrir Square, but a shop owner warned us not to go there on foot and not with our cameras.  His reasoning was that the square had no police presence, was lawless, and currently occupied by unhappy Salafists.  With that warning, on our walk we just skirted Tahrir Square enough to see the Salafi occupation and tents.  The US and British Embassies are nearby, and there is a very heavy military presence with tanks and coils of razor wire on all the nearby streets.  Some streets are barricaded by large stones that have been decorated.  We stopped at a favorite art gallery (Duroub Gallery) across from the American Embassy and bought two small paintings.  The gallery owner wanted to make sure we could get to AUC safely so she hooked us up with a young man in the neighborhood who escorted us to the University.  The neighborhood streets are now an obstacle course of barricades and rubble.  Egyptians go about their normal business using planks to scale these barricades or climbing the walls to shorten their route.

The scene on the above wall was an attempt to paint a reproduction of the streets hidden behind the wall.  It was the "No Walls Street" graffiti campaign to paint the concrete-block walls/barricades in downtown Cairo, Egypt.  

After going to the bookstore at AUC, we took photographs of the wall of graffiti on one side of the university.

This mural shows female activist Samira Ibrahim (top most portrait), who was forced to undergo a "virginity test" while in detention by the military.

Much of the Cairo we knew is the same.  Lovers still stroll along the Kasr Al Nile Bridge.

Felucas still ply the Nile dropping their sails to pass under the bridges  The party boats on the other side of the Nile still blare their disco music hoping to attract passengers.  In the photo below taken from Zamalek, the building on the right is the National Democratic Party (NDP) Headquarters building.  It was burned on January 28, 2011, and its charred hull is still part of the Cairo skyline.

Tonight we had dinner with Rana, Hadia, Sara, and Hadeel.  All were Dan's students. They live with their parents still, but are employed.  Post-revolution Cairo is not as comfortable and safe for women. These women have 9:30 pm curfews because their parents are afraid for their daughters to be out later even in a group.  In pre-revolution Cairo, the parties and dinners did not begin until after 9:30 pm.  In Zamalek, a restaurant offered early-bird dinner prices if you came before 9:00 pm.