this morning I didn’t feel like doing much of anything.
“Come on,” she said. “It will be fun. The kids are great. You’ll love spending time with them and they’ll teach you some Arabic. What do you say?”
My dad had left for Giza before sunrise to work on his paintings, and it was obvious that sitting around the room wasn’t going to do me a whole lot of good, so I agreed.
Downtown Cairo apartments
The cab dropped us off in front of a concrete building on a busy street a few blocks east of the Egyptian Museum. The building was dirty with pollution and in total disrepair. It had all kinds of Arabic signs hanging from it and there was this little tree standing in front of the building, just growing out of the sidewalk and covered in dust and looking all alone and sad in this congested, concrete jungle.
Inside the lobby, we made our way to the elevator.
“We’re going to the fourth floor,” my mom said.
I pressed the button and the doors opened. The elevator was the size of a tiny closet with a cracked mirror and a flickering bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the ceiling.
“Um, I think I’ll take the stairs,” I said.
“I’ll join you.”
Up the granite steps four stories was a yellow door.
“This is it,” my mom said.
A wooden sign engraved in Arabic hung over the doorway. It looked like this:
“What does that say?” I asked my mom.
“School,” my mom said.
“Can you spell it phonetically?”
“M-A-D-R-A-S-S-A-H.”
When my mom walked in, the kids went wild, jumping up and down and clapping their hands and pulling on her dress. I wondered if teachers were always greeted like this, or maybe it was just that she was so different, tall and blonde and blue-eyed, a rare thing to see in the Arab world. Either way, I’ve never seen kids so excited to begin a day of school.
“Sabah el kheer,” I said to the kids as they gathered around me. That means, “Good morning.” I sat on the edge of the table and a boy climbed right up on my lap.
“Kaifa haloka?” I asked him. This translates to: “How are you?” when speaking to a male. When speaking to a female, it’s “Kaifa haloki?”
Instead of answering, the kids would just smile and giggle and talk to one another, looking at me like I was the most curious thing they’d ever seen.
Their teacher was a young Egyptian woman who looked like she had just graduated from college. She came over and introduced herself.
“You must be Gannon,” she said in perfect English. “I’m Mandisa Mahfouz.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said and we shook hands.
“Your mom has been a tremendous help. The kids are making great progress. As you can tell, they are thrilled to be learning how to read and write. Most of them will be the first in their family to do so.”
The room was pretty simple with low ceilings and long cracks that ran all the way up the walls, most likely caused by the earthquakes that are common in Egypt. The windows along the far wall were open and you could hear the sound of the traffic below, only at a slightly lower volume because of the fourth-floor location.
None of these distractions mattered to the kids. They were there to learn. Ms. Mahfouz spoke to the class in Arabic and pointed to the blackboard where she had sketched the Arabic alphabet in bright white chalk. It looked like this:
Abjad Hawaz Hotty Kalamon
The children read it aloud together as Ms. Mahfouz pointed to each letter. And just like that, the day was underway.
The literacy program was really something. I mean, not only were these children learning to read and write in Arabic, they were learning English as well, and the way they reacted to the lessons with such enthusiasm, well, it was just awesome.
I have to say, my time at the school was really fun, and under different circumstances I would have come back day after day to help, but something was eating away at me and when something is eating away at me so bad that I can’t focus on
“Come on,” she said. “It will be fun. The kids are great. You’ll love spending time with them and they’ll teach you some Arabic. What do you say?”
My dad had left for Giza before sunrise to work on his paintings, and it was obvious that sitting around the room wasn’t going to do me a whole lot of good, so I agreed.
Downtown Cairo apartments
The cab dropped us off in front of a concrete building on a busy street a few blocks east of the Egyptian Museum. The building was dirty with pollution and in total disrepair. It had all kinds of Arabic signs hanging from it and there was this little tree standing in front of the building, just growing out of the sidewalk and covered in dust and looking all alone and sad in this congested, concrete jungle.
Inside the lobby, we made our way to the elevator.
“We’re going to the fourth floor,” my mom said.
I pressed the button and the doors opened. The elevator was the size of a tiny closet with a cracked mirror and a flickering bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the ceiling.
“Um, I think I’ll take the stairs,” I said.
“I’ll join you.”
Up the granite steps four stories was a yellow door.
“This is it,” my mom said.
A wooden sign engraved in Arabic hung over the doorway. It looked like this:
“What does that say?” I asked my mom.
“School,” my mom said.
“Can you spell it phonetically?”
“M-A-D-R-A-S-S-A-H.”
When my mom walked in, the kids went wild, jumping up and down and clapping their hands and pulling on her dress. I wondered if teachers were always greeted like this, or maybe it was just that she was so different, tall and blonde and blue-eyed, a rare thing to see in the Arab world. Either way, I’ve never seen kids so excited to begin a day of school.
“Sabah el kheer,” I said to the kids as they gathered around me. That means, “Good morning.” I sat on the edge of the table and a boy climbed right up on my lap.
“Kaifa haloka?” I asked him. This translates to: “How are you?” when speaking to a male. When speaking to a female, it’s “Kaifa haloki?”
Instead of answering, the kids would just smile and giggle and talk to one another, looking at me like I was the most curious thing they’d ever seen.
Their teacher was a young Egyptian woman who looked like she had just graduated from college. She came over and introduced herself.
“You must be Gannon,” she said in perfect English. “I’m Mandisa Mahfouz.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said and we shook hands.
“Your mom has been a tremendous help. The kids are making great progress. As you can tell, they are thrilled to be learning how to read and write. Most of them will be the first in their family to do so.”
The room was pretty simple with low ceilings and long cracks that ran all the way up the walls, most likely caused by the earthquakes that are common in Egypt. The windows along the far wall were open and you could hear the sound of the traffic below, only at a slightly lower volume because of the fourth-floor location.
None of these distractions mattered to the kids. They were there to learn. Ms. Mahfouz spoke to the class in Arabic and pointed to the blackboard where she had sketched the Arabic alphabet in bright white chalk. It looked like this:
Abjad Hawaz Hotty Kalamon
The children read it aloud together as Ms. Mahfouz pointed to each letter. And just like that, the day was underway.
The literacy program was really something. I mean, not only were these children learning to read and write in Arabic, they were learning English as well, and the way they reacted to the lessons with such enthusiasm, well, it was just awesome.
I have to say, my time at the school was really fun, and under different circumstances I would have come back day after day to help, but something was eating away at me and when something is eating away at me so bad that I can’t focus on
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