To each Thanksgiving its crisis

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, in spite of the fact that every year, it seems, there is an unexpected crisis: like the year, on a snowy Michigan Thanksgiving day, when my then ten-year-old oldest borrowed my brand-new cross-country skis and skied downhill with them, snapping the skis in two and barely escaping the same damage to his spine. Or November the year before last during a heat wave in Cairo, when I tried to prepare a traditional American Thanksgiving feast in 90 degree weather, without fresh cranberries or pumpkin. This year, I was looking forward to the quietest, most drama-free Thanksgiving ever. Until my son called to announce that when he came home for the holiday he would help me out by frying the turkey out on the back deck. Now I don’t fry anything, let alone something that requires 5 gallons of peanut oil, but he reassured me that he has all the equipment necessary and that he fries turkeys all the time for tailgate parties. We didn’t count on the weather this morning; it is raining, but not enough to derail the plan. At the last moment it turns out that a crucial piece of equipment was forgotten, the hook with which to lower the turkey into the oil and extract it post-cooking. A gardening hand rake was used as a substitute. At the moment the oil is bubbling furiously and the turkey has been consigned to its gruesome end, leaving the oven helpfully free to bake potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing and tarte Tatin. Very shortly- it’s amazing how quickly a turkey fries- the hour of truth will be at hand. May this be an uneventful Thanksgiving!

Esse Quam Videri: Muslims Self-Portraits

Todd Drake's valuable photo journalism project aiming at challenging stereotypes. I saw the exhibit when it was on display at UNC in September. Invite Todd Drake to exhibit at your school.

Spectators' video-recorded impressions, including mine.

Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People

Attended a live taping this morning of Dick Gordon (who sounds just like he does over the radio in "The Story") interviewing John Conroy, the journalist who wrote "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: the Dynamics of Torture" in N. Ireland, Chicago, and Israel. In spite of saving scores of coerced confession convicts from the electric chair in Chicago, Conroy is saddened by the indifference of society.

California- not what I expected!

I was very much looking forward to giving a talk on The Naqib's Daughter at a luncheon organized by The Egyptian American Organization based in Orange County on the last Saturday in September, followed by an address to an Eng Lit class at CalPoly in Pomona; I was especially looking forward to catching up with an old friend and to enjoying Southern California's famed dry, crisp fall weather. Boy was I in for a surprise!
Not that the luncheon talk didn't go well, it did, a pleasant affair attended by over sixty lively Egyptian-Americans who were full of questions and even more apt to snap photos non-stop, flattering but disconcerting. At the university talk in Pomona, none of the students snapped photos, but they were attentive and engaged, and the campus is beautiful, with the Arabian horses that are a legacy in perpetuity from the Kellogg family. No, the surprise, or rather shock, was the 110 degree temperatures that seemed to coincide with the weekend of my visit! Still, my host very kindly drove me to the seaside, Corona del Mar and Pelican Beach, where it was 20 degrees cooler, somehow.
As governor Shwarznegger would say: "I'll be back!"

California dreaming.....in one week, guest-speaking in Long Beach

So looking forward to being the guest speaker at a luncheon at a restaurant in Long Beach on Saturday the 25th September. I will be focusing on The Naqib's Daughter, at the invitation of the new Egyptian American Organization, based in Orange County. For reservations and tickets, contact the EAO  http://www.eaous.com/files/global/55/eaous-newsletter.pdf

Excluding Muslim Americans from sharing in their country's history?

The controversy over the construction of the Park 51 Islamic Center brings back painful memories. For three hours on the morning of 9/11, I did not know if my son was one of the victims; he worked for one of the banks in the World Trade Center and on any given Tuesday might have been either in New York or in London. I could not get through to him, but three hours after the attacks he called, from overseas, to tell me: “Mom, I’m all right.” I was one of the lucky ones; I was one of the mothers who did get that reassuring phone call. I can imagine what it was like for those who didn’t.

So it is particularly painful to hear, nearly a decade after 9/11, virulent voices raised to exclude Americans of Muslim faith from sharing in their country’s history, including its traumas; to exclude them from participating fully in the rights and privileges of American citizens, including religious freedom. It’s as if Muslim Americans- regardless of their condemnation of the attacks and their disassociating Islam from the atrocity committed falsely in its name- are nevertheless held collectively responsible for the act of a score of hateful fanatics.

Another painful memory revived: I had planned my annual Fall party, scheduled weeks ahead, for what turned out to be the Saturday before 9/11. I worried that any signs of entertaining would be misinterpreted by the neighbors as ghastly insensitivity at the very least. This year, one of the two great feasts of the Muslim calendar will fall on September 11; it is a lunar calendar, and feast days fall on different dates every year. On this feast, Muslims celebrate the end of a month of fasting and cleansing the soul. This year, though, the coincidence with September 11 means that Muslim Americans will justifiably be concerned that any signs of celebration are liable to be misinterpreted. They will be more aware than ever, in the context of the “mosque controversy”, that they are objects of suspicion and rejection by many of their neighbors.

Samia Serageldin's Blog: Ramadan at the Beach: and Egypt's summer of discon...

Samia Serageldin's Blog: Ramadan at the Beach: and Egypt's summer of discon...: "Ramadan at the beach is a surreal state of mind. The beach resorts up and down Egypt's Mediterranean coasts suddenly acquire an end-of-seaso..."

Ramadan at the Beach: and Egypt's summer of discontent

Ramadan at the beach is a surreal state of mind. The beach resorts up and down Egypt's Mediterranean coasts suddenly acquire an end-of-season look about them in mid-August, as the majority of the vacation population evacuates back to Cairo. The glamorous young things in bikinis are gone, after one last weekend of partying like Rio before Lent. For the die-hard vacationers who decide to remain during the month of fasting, the desperate beach resort businesses re-invent themselves: little planes buzz over the beaches, trailing streamers advertising Ramadan "sehour" at the same nightclubs that served whiskey and rock only a few days earlier.
With the reflux of thwarted vacationers back to steaming, miserable Cairo, new problems arise: a shortage of electricity and water as the returning millions of residents crank up air conditioning systems and fill their swimming pools and water the golf courses in the suburban compounds. The table conversation at the lavish iftar and sehour parties circles around the power cuts and water shortage and the potentially dire consequences of neglecting Egypt's Nile Valley policy, whence the country's lifeline of water is drawn from the African hinterlands of its neighbors to the south.