Dear loyal bloggers,

I hope everyone is well and happy. I’m sorry to report that I am no longer in Egypt, but rather in a place that needs my attention more desperately. Here is my story…

Disaster struck and I had to return to the place of my youth. When I stood in a sea of empty houses that once teemed with life, rusted piles of twisted metal two stories high, temporary parking lots filled with hundreds of abandoned cars, all I could do was wonder where all the people were. Where are all the residents of this lonely neighborhood? Where are all the owners of these cars that are covered with a thin white film of dried river water?

I had coffee and beignets at Café du Monde, the proud shop that sits across from Jackson Square on the Mississippi River. There are one hundred tables, usually full with laughing tourists and locals, but on this sad day only five people offered their patronage. I sat there and wondered where all the people were. The city that usually dances with inescapable music at every dirty corner sits quiet and sad today, as I do on this lonely day in November.

I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 12 FEMA workers and wondered where all those lost souls of New Orleans were eating their turkeys, if they were at all. The devastation of their lives did not become clear until I stood in their neighborhoods. There is talk that New Orleans should never let the poor back into the city, to leave them where the federal government placed them in Texas and Georgia and Utah and Alabama. But we cannot discard them in rancid hotels where a family cannot cook a meal and the one room is filled with 5 or 6 or 7 people. A hotel is not a home. Are the officials talking of ignoring the poor or are they talking of ignoring the colored or is it the same thing? This would surely be another stain on the quilt of American History if we do not give them the means to return, whether poor or black or white or red.

Katrina is already ignored in the media and no long-term solutions are being discussed. Surely developers with big ideas and flashy PowerPoint presentations will try and convince city council to bulldoze these neighborhoods and build condos and estates along the Mississippi River, a river whose bank has always been home to the poor and lively. But why was the poorest part of the city destroyed? I drove down Magazine Street and all through Uptown, the area of the affluent, and besides some fallen trees and water damage, it was intact and safe. I was pleased that the historic integrity of the homes gracing St. Charles Street were intact, but the ghettos brought me to tears. I cried for all those souls who have suffered countless pains that I’ll never understand.

The day after Thanksgiving I took a drive to Gulfport, Mississippi. I have Army Corps of Engineers paperwork from my FEMA friends, so I was able to enter the militarized zones. The whole coastline is fenced with sharp barbed wire and humvees roam the streets with guns drawn. What are they afraid of? Looting houses that no longer stand? Stealing cars that are broken in two by dead oak tress? People like me who come to pay my respects to the suffering?

Many pine trees that once stood proud and strong were broken and dying on the side of every road. The smell of pine was intoxicating, but I gained no pleasure from the aroma because it hangs in the air at such a cost. The only people of the roads it seemed were disaster relief workers and contractors out to make a buck from the devastation. As I crossed Interstate 10 and approached the Gulf of Mexico, it was not only downed trees I saw, but downed dreams.

Gulfport is a working class town that now sits a ghost town near the shore. I imagined that those with homes on the water waited years to achieve their dream of waking every morning to the smell of the salt air, but all that stood on the shore is concrete slabs. The emptiness of the area was eerie and the hollow air that once filled with children’s voices and lawn mowers on Saturday was chilling. I could almost feel the loss as I sat to stare at the sea on what once were the front steps of a house of love. The house next door, or rather the slab next door, had a plastic Christmas Jesus figurine, the kind that stands two feet tall and lights up, with a sign saying, “Pray for Us.” I began to pray.

But what shall we pray for? For money from the federal government to restore the tangible goods lost?

Maybe for FEMA and the federal government to operate according to their mission statement? Or maybe for the realization that material goods are meaningless and love is our only hope?

Love is the answer to all of the questions and fear in our world. I want to give love and receive love. I feel there is a wonderful opportunity here to fix our broken souls.

Click here for a photo album of my latest pictures.

These are pictures of my roommate and I at Khan el Kahlili. We are smoking sheesha at the oldest cafe in Cairo - open every day of every year for the past 300 years. The Khan was built in 1754 during the Ottoman period and the main gate protected the origional entrance to the Citadel, where I saw Sufi dancing.










The pictures of these mosques are right outside Khan's main square - beautiful, huh?

A look out any window of my apartment produces a view of tangled concrete buildings and smog. The buildings here are quite ugly, as most structures built during periods of modernization in the 1950-70’s all over the world have the same drab, square, brown, lifeless look. I’ve seen the same buildings in Marrakech, Guatemala City, San Jose (Costa Rica), Caracas, Miami, Madrid, Baton Rouge, and San Salvador. What makes the buildings more human is the laundry billowing from the clotheslines outside the shuttered windows and the women who hang it. I love to watch these hard workingwomen who have no idea they’re being admired from afar.

Luckily for me and other inhabitants of the largest city in both Africa and the Middle East, Cairo has many trees. In an act of pure genius or just necessity, condensation from the millions of air conditioners is collected in little tubes running down the sides of buildings. The tubes lead either straight to the plants or into buckets that is used to water the plants. I live on the third floor and my only solace is that the tops of the trees block my view of the street and therefore the street’s view of me. I don’t feel as exposed as the people who reside on floors above my own when relaxing on the balcony. Outside my balcony, if your eyes don’t focus too much on the distance and your ears don’t listen to the noise, you can almost feel like you’re on a pleasant street in a quiet city. Headphones help, as well! I’m usually not electronically inclined (and have been labeled electronically retarded), however my newly purchased Ipod has saved me. Otherwise I might have died from the noise of incessantly honking horns, screaming children, cheering soccer fans, screeching brakes, blaring music, the call to prayer, and all the other sounds that create the city’s identity 24 hours a day. But for now, it’s my city and I’ll call it home.

Here are some pictures of/from my apartment.

This is my friend and I over Turkish coffee before iftar.



These are pictures of my friends celebrating a westernized iftar.







Here is the shesha man. All shesha bars have men whose sole job is to care for your hooka and tobacco.

Here's a quick follow up to my blog from last week.



http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article324581.ece