Week 5 - Ramadan and novel writing

Monday: I had just returned from France late the night before, so getting up in time for my 9 o’clock class in the rafters of the Union Society was a real treat. I basically rolled from my bed 20 minutes before the class began, and rode my bike to the Union Society after doing only minimal work to make myself look somewhat reasonable. The class was all the way at the top of the building in the attic, and so the room is pointed and sloped on both sides, with tall gothic windows showing a view of Cambridge to the north. The teacher, Emma Sweeny, was much younger than I had anticipated. She is petite, brown haired, and bright. She has published one novel and is working on her second. Her first novel won all sorts of awards in England and abroad. She sat at the head of the table and I to her right. When the class began, we had a naming game to help her remember our names. The game entailed us saying our name and then the name of the people proceeding us in order. I was the first, so everyone in the class had to repeat my name. It was fortunate for me though because I had to repeat no ones. After the class ended, I went back to my room and slept for four hours. I was that exhausted. I have been taking longer naps than I ever have in the rest of my life here at Cambridge because I do so much and don’t get quite enough sleep. Not to mention, my double sized, white comforter bed with a view of the garden through its gothic windows is quite appealing. It is always perfectly comfortable. Well, that is as long as I actually take the time to do the sheets right. They haven’t quite gotten the memo about fitted sheets here in Europe, as far as I’ve found at least. I had nothing else going on the rest of the day, so I spent it in work on my novel and my supervision. I also wrote my letter home, naturally. I went to bed around 11.00 like usual, and was just as exhausted as ever. This seemed to vindicate my nap, suggesting that I really did need it.

Tuesday: I did not have class until 4.50 on Tuesday so I had the time to work on my supervision more. I initially thought that it would be at the Union Society again, so I went and sat in the coffee shop to work on my writing and my supervision. There, I ran into several people I know who were having a conversation on all sorts of things. I sat near them, and therefore pretty much just eavesdropped for a while instead of working. After a while, I joined the conversation when the topic of the philosophical importance of eating organic foods came up. The question mainly revolved around whether eating inorganic food was removing us from our natural state, and what our natural state is. One person posited that our natural state is more obvious when we only eat foods which have not been sprayed with pesticides or what have you, and we don’t consume any sort of drug. Another maintained that it is impossible to find a natural state because we have been genetically altering our bodies since the day humans arrived on this earth, invented fire, and began to cook food. Even organic food, by this strain of thought, is not natural because it was all modified from its original form by people some time ago. I tended to side with the second argument, which may be obvious from this paragraph as I have not really given the first a convincing strain. One of the guys had to go off eventually, so I spent a while speaking with Bret, another guy from BYU, about how to write in a way that is honest and faces real problems without being gruesome or titillating. He offered some really useful suggestions on the topic. I then realized that my class was not in fact where I had thought it was but was back at Kings, so I headed off that way. I rode my bike like the wind itself to Kings. Our class was in this out-of-the way room up in the administration portion of Kings. This room, it turned out, was the site that Virginia Woolf, who spent much time at King’s, had in mind when she wrote the lunch scene at the beginning of “A Room of One’s Own,” which was based largely on Cambridge, in particular Kings (Oxford she did not know as well).
This was our first seminar where we got to know each other and received our first assignment, which was to write a pitch for our novels. I had a hard time doing it well because I have so much going into the novel that it is hard to extract the main points and explain them accurately. That failure was evident when I received a critique on my work the next day. Tuesday night was also Family Home Evening, I think, though it could have been Wednesday--I’m not sure. It had been hot all day, but by the evening it was raining off and on. We went to a park to play games, but by the time we got there it was pouring rain. It was a beautiful scene though. We all huddled under a weeping willow right next to the Cam where the punts are docked and little café’s with boxes of bright flowers hang over the water. We ended up going to someone’s apartment in Pembroke for the rest of FHE. I got to meet some people who are from BYU who I have never really come to know that well, and was glad about that. It has turned out that Pembroke, largely because of the high number of married people who were given rooms there, has been the place to be this year. I feel like at Kings I’m a little out of the way and I don’t get to know the BYU students that well. I am really bummed about that.
I had to run off from FHE to meet with Mohamed to go to Iftar, which is the breaking of the fast for Ramadan. Ramadan had begun a couple of days before, though I had not paid it much attention unfortunately. I went to the feast in hopes of interviewing some people, and I did manage to get at least one interview while there. As usual, the women sat upstairs and the men below. I went up with my hijab on and sat between some very nice young Muslim girls, native to Cambridge. I had forgotten, for a moment, that I was going to the feast so I had eaten a lot of food at dinner that evening. But it was alright in the end because I was able to talk to one kind girl about her experiences with the police. Unsurprisingly, she had not really had any, and was therefore able to provide me with the perspective of someone who doesn’t really get involved in these things.
After Iftar I had treats with Mohamad for a while at the communal kitchen in the Fitzwilliam street house. Like a good Arab, he had brought treats from Lebanon to share with people and was glad to share them with someone. Another guy from BYU joined us and we spoke about the Middle East, Indonesia (where he went on his mission) and morality in general. I didn’t get home until late that night, unfortunately, and went straight to bed.

Wednesday: I had to turn in the pitch for my novel to my group the day before, and had to critique the other pitches as well. I didn’t have class until 2 though, so I went to the University Library for the first time to go through a book that could help me with my research. I had to ride my bike, and I locked it to a fence which was decorated with laminated fliers for different musical concerts going on throughout Cambridge, things like “Medieval choral music,” and “the four recorders,” and “Music of Henry the V, Baroque.” The same man who designed the famed red British telephone box, and looks just like one built the University Library (UL). It isn’t red, it’s brick, but similar nonetheless. I had to get special permission from the PKP office, and a letter from them assuring the necessity of me going to the UL for me to enter. Then, I had to go to the admissions office, which is just to the side of the exhibit on Books and Babies that I had gone to before. The man there had me sit for a while while he mussed with some papers, then took a picture of me to put on a card, then gave me a new little ID freshly rolled off the press. With that, I was able to pass security and enter into the actual library. It is strangely arranged, with long and narrow rooms that recede off into alcoves where people can sit studying. If you need a particular book, as I learned through the help of a willowy woman in a flower dress, you look up the number and title and submit a request. Within a half hour, they will have had it sent to the front desk from the deep vaults of the library. The UL is a patent library or something like that, meaning that every book published in the UK is supposed to have one copy there. Obviously it is overladen with books. My supervisor told me that it is actually sinking under the weight of the books and they’re trying to find a way to keep it buoyed up.
I got the book eventually, though I could not remove it from the room it was in. Therefore, I took meticulous notes about it instead. After finishing, I had to rush back to King’s for class. I was too late to print out everything I needed, unfortunately, and was quite irked by having to tell my teacher that. After class I had to work really hard on my supervision and I went to with Mohamed and a friend of his to Iftar at a local joint called Nandos. They serve only chicken dishes there, but they’re all really good. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal. I had to rush off to meet with Kacem because he had someone he wanted me to interview. It turned out to be four young Muslim men who met with Kacem at the Chicken Cottage, the British version of KFC.
They were really interesting people. They were between the ages of 19 and 25 and were all the sorts of guys who dress in gangster clothing and baseball caps and so forth and who sit slouched in chairs. They were really happy to hear that I was minoring in Arabic and seemed willing to open up immediately to my questions. They all called me “sister” just as they would another Muslim, so in that way at least I felt accepted. I only had 4 questions for each of them, but some of them were considerably more verbose than others. They really did not agree that the police were doing a good job here in Cambridge because they felt like they were looked down on and targeted by the police force. One of the boys said that because he is a youngster, he reacts to them in the same way they behave to him. If they say “hey!” he will say “hey!” in return he said. Another one of them told me of how he was wearing a red Kaifa at the counter-demonstration against the EDL when they came to Cambridge. He said that people started to take pictures of him and there were cameras following him, so he put the scarf around his head and hid his face. He then told me that he had been searched 4 times that evening, and once was strip searched and only saved from arrest by his uncle. Kacem afterwards explained that he had been really silly doing that because he was standing in the front of the march and was attracting attention to himself by hiding his face. I think the guy was sort of proud of himself for doing something so daring. He was only 19.
When I asked all of them what they would change if they could change something about the police, they said that they wished that the police would treat them the way they wanted to be treated. The golden rule, pretty much. I could not be sure of how much they were saying was accurate, and how much was conflated either because they thought that was the way the others wanted them to react or because they wanted to make their actions seem grander for me and for their friends. It wasn’t an ideal interviewing situation by any means, but I think that even with all the extenuating circumstances, they got the basic message across. They know when they’re being profiled and targeted and condescended, and though they would not normally necessarily act up, though it is hard to tell considering their age group and lack of a solidified job or career. They all still live at home, and will until they marry.
After the interviews, I went with Kacem to meet up with Mohamed and his friend to have some tea at a local shop. We sat for a while and discussed the image of Muslims in western media, which, unsurprisingly, isn’t good.
I think, now that I look at this, that I’ve conflated Wednesday with Thursday. Therefore, this is both days. Now on to Friday.

Friday: I had to go to the Friday prayers to meet with someone I was supposed to interview. That was a 1.15, and so I rode my bike there, jumped off, put on the hijab, and climbed upstairs. I was not a pretty site with my face all red and sweaty. The prayer was fairly typical, though there were so many women because it is Ramadan, that I sat on the steps with several other girls. They were really, really nice and they explained to me some of the things that the Imam was talking about in particular Taqwa which is the Arabic word for piety or something of the sort. Afterwards, I found the person I was supposed to be interviewing and discovered that it was actually not the person I had agreed to interview but someone else. I was really embarrassed to have confused her with the other person, and never did find the right person.
In keeping with the rules that there are 3 people with you when you travel, Amelia and I waited at the train station for about 40 minutes for Mohamed to show up so we could take the train together to London. Once there, Mohomad went to visit a friend and Amelia and I had to find our way to the place we were supposed to drop off our things. It was in a small area called Denmark Hill, completely out of the way of central London, and as soon as we got on the train to take us there things started going wrong. It turned out we were on the wrong train, so we got off after about a half hour and spent about an hour and a half trying to find the right one. We were in a place called Lambeth there. I invented a song which went something like, “I’m stuck in Lambeth and I’ll be here forever standing here in the middle of this street waiting for a light to change… let me just die…” Amelia and I also invented a joke. Two knights of the round table, Sir Cumfrance and Sir Cuitous are walking down the street one day when Sir Kel approaches them. Sir Kel asks them, “hey, do you know how to get around?” Hahahaha!
Obviously, we were getting a little punchy in our exhaustion and confusion. We finally figured out how to get to Denmark Hill on the bus. The bus took forever as well, stopping as it did nearly every 200 feet. We had to keep our eyes peeled (what a weird expression) for anything that looked like the King’s College hospital that we were staying near. Finally, we found it and made it to our rooms. Somehow that I haven’t quite figured out, the whole escapade took about 6 hours. At our rooms they gave us only one key. When we opened the door, there was only one bed in the room. Amelia just about died. We went back to the front desk eventually to ask if there was some mistake. IT turned out there was a second room we were supposed to have, thank heavens. We took the train, which we found eventually by taking a bus to the station the long way, back to London to meet up with Mohamed for dinner at an Iraqi restaurant. On the metro, the lights went out. When we began to ascend the escalator it broke. We were still at the bottom. Let me tell you, it was a great relief to be done with the journeying bit. Amelia and I decided we would never travel again. Obviously we didn’t keep that up for more than a couple hours. We went with Mohamed to a restaurant in the Arab part of the city. He had found it after living in London for a year and trying most of the Arab restaurants so we knew this one would be good because he is a bona fide Arab and knows his stuff.
I got a kebab. My heavens, I have never liked kebab before but now I do. It was AMAZING. It just fell apart on my fork and went great with the rice and vegetables. After the dinner, he showed us around one of the main streets of London. They were beautiful in the night, all enlightenment structures and lit brightly and colorfully. I was impressed really with this part of London. I realized that London is beautiful. We finally took the metro back to the hostel and went to sleep.

Saturday: I woke to a marching band outside the window. An American marching band, naturally, as there are no marching bands in England. It was time to wake up obviously; I didn’t really have a choice. This was a much better day than the preceding day in that we actually managed to do things. We first went with Cherry down to Buckingham palace and tried to get inside. Unfortunately, the lines were so long that there was no way we were going to get inside that day unless we waited until 5.30 that evening. So we just took pictures outside of the palace and sat and ate lunch. Then we went to the Tower of London where we had to pay 15 pounds to get in. The price was worth it though because we got to have a tour from one of the beefeaters, a wonderful man who had served in the Army for 26 years and was asked to be a beefeater on his retirement. He told us all sorts of stories and had a whole series of jokes that were fabulously funny and a way of projecting so everyone could hear him. He led us through the castle and into their church where he concluded the tour. He lives there, with the 33 other beefeaters and their wives (or husband in the case of the first female beefeater) and families. After the tour, we waited in the extraordinarily long line to see the crown jewels. It was one of those things I didn’t really feel like I had to do to be happy, but since we were there, I might as well. I took an assortment of pictures of the faces of people in the crowd, then grew bored with the camera and contented myself with watching the sky. Finally, we were allowed to stand on the slow moving conveyer belts that go past the crown jewels. One of the largest diamonds in the world is inset into the scepter. It is huge! There were multiple crowns that we were able to see, including Queen Victoria’s diadem. We saw the Windsor sapphire and a whole bunch of other things that I don’t really know much about. Then I raced through the museum in the white tower, built originally in 1077 and full of the original kings’ armors (all of which are stunning pieces). Finally we left, going to the play we had bought tickets for that evening. It was Lion King, and we had bought tickets for 15 pounds each to stand in the standing room only area in the very back. We were able to lean against the railing to watch the show. It wasn’t too bad standing for that long, particularly considering how good the performance was and how cheap the tickets. It was an absolute riot of color and beautiful costumes, and dancing and drumming. The only bits I didn’t like were a couple of songs added that weren’t in the original movie. They sounded very theater-y and didn’t really fit with the whole feeling of the piece. The older Simba didn’t have a very good voice either, though he really looked the part. After the show, I had to rush back to our rooms (which took 2 hours) and meet with Mohamed so we could go back to Cambridge together. It was really fortunate that he was there because the train back was full of people who were the definition of sketch. I finally got back to my apartment at 2 am.

Sunday: I went to church, which was wonderful though I was exhausted, and slept for 4 hours afterward. I was exhausted, again. When Amelia returned from London, I went to her room and talked to her about my novel writing class for a while before going to sleep at 11.