Day 147: History is Happening

Day 147: August 20, 2020
Global Cases: 22, 850, 102; Deaths: 796, 376
Egypt Cases: 97, 025; Deaths: 5, 212

Elisabeth Kennedy
Assistant Professor in Comparative Religion, History Department 

7:11am: I wake up without an alarm, and surface gradually to the mix of deliciousness and dread that is this pandemic summer. Not having to set a morning alarm since March 13 has been a surprise gift that makes each day more centered, more sane. So has the opportunity to pause on my balcony each evening at sunset, taking a moment to watch the bee-eaters swoop and the kites hover above the city rooftops.

All this achieved simply by removing two hours a day spent on the Ring Road!

8:00am: Do I let myself check the news on my phone? Sometimes it’s heart-stopping. Sometimes it’s a worm-hole of clicks, following lines of concern, humor, fury. Sometimes I find that one brilliant article that helps me wrap my mind around the latest symptom of our political degeneration, or how to get students to turn on their videos in Zoom.

You just never know.

9:30am: Time to tabata, thanks to our local gym holding its fitness classes online. Determined to get some movement in my life after the first few months frozen in lockdown at home, I have forced myself to leap and lunge around in my home office several days a week.

I discovered I can order dumbbells on Souq.com, and the Souq guy delivering in Maadi has staggered to my door with successively heavier loads as I upped my goal every few weeks.

He and I are now on a first-name basis, because aside from home haircuts (not recommended), online shopping is one of the few sources of novelty in this summer’s never-ending round of home routines.

You would think all this sweat would have made me look different by now, but all the Cardio-Blast in the world can’t counter our family’s Corona comfort-eating. Trying new recipes: another desperate attempt at novelty.

I have baked a different flavor of bread almost daily (who is this new person?), and my son has decided this is the summer he will perfect French macarons. Mango season is in full swing. We are doomed.

10:30am: Gym class is over, and my friend who is attending class in person since they re-opened at 25% capacity this month comes over to the Zoom camera and says, “Why aren’t you coming to the gym? It’s SAFE!”

My mind flicks to the infographics rating various activities that put “going to the gym” squarely in the UNSAFE row, with little icons of flashing red lights.

But who’s to say what is safe? I have lived in Egypt for 21 years and remember two revolutions and our first pandemic, the swine flu of 2009 when my children missed over half their school year.

It’s a familiar feeling, threading through all these crises, to be caught between two cultural worlds and their varying estimations of what is safe, torn about who to listen to and which media voices to trust.

But this is the first time I have been so aware of how much my own home country, the USA, is itself a house divided as well. We are each of us entirely on our own as we decide whether and how to “re-open.”

A pandemic feels simultaneously so universal and so private.

11:00am: Time to settle down at my desk and do some research for that November conference paper. But with each of our four family members in a different college, literally, fall plans for re-opening are right now at peak preoccupation levels.

My husband is a college dean and is in a heated discussion with his leadership team on Zoom in the living room.

Note to self: check Souq for noise-cancelling headphones before September.

AUC has set an exemplary bar with its timely announcements of plans, but knowing for a month that I will be teaching online has lulled me into a false sense of predictability.

Five rapid-fire emails in my inbox wake me up. CLT wants my revised syllabi for online learning, yesterday! Sign up to learn how to up your Zoom game! Blackboard can do so much more than you think it can! I could spend this whole summer just figuring out a better microphone.

But wait, there are further complications with two more schools in the mix.

My younger son has learned that his Fall volleyball season is cancelled, and has seemingly lost the will to live.

My older son will move back into the dorms at his US college that is testing every student for COVID-19 twice a week. He needs to prepare a quarantine go-bag in case he tests positive at any point; the guys in hazmat suits will show up at his door to whisk him away to the isolation unit set up in the college parking lot.

What should be in the bag?

The parents’ Facebook page is exploding with suggested items for the list! How is a mother ever supposed to focus on comparing early Muslim and Jewish legends about Hagar?

I keep telling myself I will only Facebook after dinner, only Facebook after dinner…starting tomorrow.

3:00pm: I talk on the phone with the AUC alum who is researching with me for my next book. The conversation not only gives me the boost of connecting with the world beyond my home, it also reminds me how much I really do love my research, and it’s because, ultimately, my students get excited about it too. I settle back at my desk to get lost in a happy trail of footnotes.

6:30pm: Dinner time, and despite seeing no one else all day, the three of us (the eldest has been stuck in the USA since March) have a long and lively conversation.

The day’s news and developments have us confused, thoughtful, and eager to process.

History is happening, and here we are, in the greatest city in the world.

8:00pm: My younger son’s school has opened its soccer field for individual use by advance reservation. We sally forth, tentatively, for our first outdoor evening in a long time. I am saddened by the sight of the dark, deserted campus, with so many memories of happier times.

We miss our oldest son; we should have been with him in California by now, and the disappointments just keep rolling in like waves. But we have tonight out on the field, just the three of us, and we need to hope.

So we throw a Frisbee, slowly at first, then stronger, whipping it hard and far, running and sweating.

We start to laugh, because joy always finds a way. Then suddenly there is a beating of large, pale wings above us. I have heard there are owls in Maadi, but in the hustle and noise of everyday life, I have never seen one.

We watch in awe as the large creature circles low above our heads, then banks away over the dark trees.

For a moment, we forget about the summer that should have been, and are caught up in wonder at the summer we are having.