http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php The thoughts of Samia Serageldin. Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:03:12 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss092 ramy@thecairohouse.com ramy@thecairohouse.com en The semi-official newspaper of Egypt, Ahram, looks like a real estate advertising supplement: every other page carries a full page, color ad for vacation homes in one of the new compounds on the Mediterranean coast, the Red Sea, or the new outer suburbs of Cairo. Much of the copy sounds ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=167&c=1 The Egyptian papers are full of carefully calibrated reports on the current hotspots in the Middle East: the Mediterranean Union with Sarkozy and Mubarak as inaugural co-heads; the International Court’s condemnation of Sudanese president Omar Bashir; the bloody bombings in Iraq; domestic sectarian strife. Coverage of the inaugural Mediterranean Union conference ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=166&c=1 Egypt's Riviera, the minister of tourism calls it, and the Mediterranean coast west of Alexandria has its pretensions: a couple of hundred kilometres of turqoise sea and relentless sun dotted with resort village after resort village, some upscale, some not so much. Summer temperatures hovering around 33 degrees C, warm, ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=165&c=1 I suppose the same goes for places as for people: we are often attached to them more for the sake of the memories of our youth than for their own. My first experience of life as an adult took place in London, and perhaps that is part of the reason ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=164&c=1 Portland, Oregon, is officially the Rose City- more on that in a minute- but unofficially, it's a toss-up between the Polite City and the Clean City. The streets are of Singaporean immaculateness, as a simple comparison between impeccable Pioneer Square and funky Harvard Square will attest: not even a leaf ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=163&c=1 As of last night, Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. I have mixed feelings for Hilary Clinton: on the one hand, sympathy and admiration, because all the other (male) candidates basically had to do was shave, choose a tie, and show up, whereas she had to ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=162&c=1 The plans of scores of Palestinian Fulbright scholarship recepients were abrubtly dashed when they were prevented by Israel from leaving Gaza to travel to the United States to study. Nothing could be sadder, or do more to reinforce the reality that Israel is turning Gaza into a prison and following ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=161&c=1 What was it about the year 1968? The May student revolution in France; the "Prague Spring"; anti-war student demonstrations here in the United States, and- as Senator Clinton memorably reminded us- the twin traumas of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. A sort of collective madness that ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=160&c=1 "The Visitor", an independent film in theatres now, treats- with understatement and metaphor- the subject of xenophobia in post 9/11 America. Walter, the protagonist, is a type of American familiar on any college campus: the tall, grey, cold, middle-aged professor who may once have been brilliant but has fallen into ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=159&c=1 Against a background of tulips in full bloom across the April-green quads of Duke University last weekend, an international cohort gathered for the second annual conference on "Marketing Muslimwoman". The term, and the conference, are the brainchild of miriam cooke, Arab and Islamic Studies professor at Duke. "Muslimwoman" refers to ... http://thecairohouse.com/blog/index.php?p=158&c=1