A Travelogue, Part Two: Lectures and Fellowship in Ramadan
Editor’s note: While on sabbatical, M.A.R. Habib, Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and Communication, chronicled his international travels, where he was invited to give multiple university guest lectures and collaborate on research abroad. Rutgers–Camden Faculty Blog will publish excerpts of his accounts, along with the images he took from the places he visited, as part of a multi-part series.
I last wrote just after the beginning of Ramadan. During that month, we would get up around 4 a.m. to eat and begin our fast, then I would work for two or three hours. I was a bit lazy about going to the gym, maybe two or three times, with a couple of workouts at home.
In the evenings, we would eat food that was relatively simple and healthy, though on a few occasions my host and friend Magda would invite us for dinner in her garden with her beautiful, extended family.
She also arranged a gathering of contributors to a book we are editing together, which is now under contract with Routledge. It was nice for me to meet them face to face; one of them, a very pleasant Egyptian professor called Mostafa, had even more of an English accent than me (though I have mostly lost mine), having attended a British school. He brought some delicious Indian food, which he had cooked for the occasion.
My next academic event was at the Women’s College of Ain Shams University, where I gave a talk on T.S. Eliot and Modernism. I learned “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” off by heart many years ago, but on this occasion, I stumbled through it while being tired and fasting; the students, however, were very kind and helped me along.
I could go into some detail about the differences between students here and many of those in a rich country like Kuwait, but I will refrain, except to say that not being born into wealth confers many assets, such as strength of motivation, not feeling entitled, and in general, knowing that you need to engage with your studies earnestly and to reflect on your position in the world. This is not to disparage the several wonderful students I had in Kuwait, with whom I have kept in touch with today, some of whom went on to master’s and doctoral programs in England and America.
The campus of Ain Shams is not new; it is not a rich university, but it is rich in academic culture and has a lovely atmosphere. Around the campus are a lot of cafes and restaurants where you see the students sitting; we stopped at one of them for a drink of mixed fresh guava and strawberry juice—mouthwatering, especially in the hot weather.
I mentioned in my previous post that one of my Arabic tutors is called Montasser, a lovely, very gentle-hearted man, whom I have known since 2022. We finally went to visit him and his family, who live in a small village called Mait Mohsin in the district of Mansourah.
His apartment building sits by a tributary of the Nile, and we went for a long walk through the neighborhood, seeing the animals, the crops, and the local shops.
They laid out an amazing table of food for us, which, needless to say, was far more than we could possibly eat!
In Part Three: University visits throughout Egypt and a trip to South Africa.
