al-Qâhira fî Amrîkâ
(Smokey Ardisson's Piece of Cyberspace)
An Homage to Cairo
The Mosque of Sultân Qâytbây, 1910
Northern Qarâfa, Cairo, Egypt
From SIRA's Cairo postcards collection
(© coll. R. Vergnieux)
The Mosque of Qâytbây is one of my favorites in Cairo. It also serves as a symbol in my post-Cairo poetry. Samples here are from A Summer on the Nile.
Ahlân wa Sahlân! Salvete!
Arabic and Latin, respectively, for "Hello"
al-Gadîd or Novî: The What's New section:
April 2003
Updates to the MAL Memories section and a little bit of the much-needed clean-up of this page and the Latin sections. I do actually have a fair amount of scanned material for the Latin Clvb site; I just need to find the time to polish the images and code the pages. School and my other two webmaster jobs eat most of my time. . . .
May 7, 2002
Poets of the Café, with love and thanks, and best wishes....
April 1, 2002
The Rant, the end of the free Internet, and the new email address. . . . Plus, the <sigh> that follows.
I've almost finished my third year of graduate work at Georgetown and have no illusions that this site will receive lots of attention. Perhaps, like most of my friends (those against whom I "competed" for the "Best of CGHS Class of `95 Websites" award), I should just take my website down (the Internet is dead), but I seem unwilling to do so. I do, however, hope to continue to make minor updates from time to time. Thanks for visiting (all 19,000 of you to this main page since June 1996!), and please stop by from time to time.
Coming soon:
Even though I'm now back in school for graduate school, I still hope to find the time to give this site a well-needed overhaul. Photos for the Summer in Syria page and more photos from Egypt and my decade of MAL participation are still on the way, inshâ´allah. Until then, visit what's here and thanks for coming. Please email me with your comments and suggestions.
Learn more about me, my life, my friends at GU and elsewhere . . . .
Some of my favorite sites:
- First, the shameless plug for the new family business! I'm not a paintballer myself, but family is family, and hey, I'm the webmaster/graphic artist/jack-of-all-trades for the company. So Wild Bill's gets top billing.
- My home base for exploring Cairo from America, and home of the "Cairenes on the Internet" list, is the Unofficial Cairo Home Page.
- The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University is where I hang my hat during half of the day. See video of Jordan's King Abdullah II dedicating the Center, an Arabic poetry reading, and other events, too!
- The History Department at Georgetown University is where I hang my hat during the other half of the day. Since I've been the webmaster since December 2000, I find it quite odd I never added the link to this page until summer 2001!
- Another nifty place to visit is the American University in Cairo (AUC), whose webserver was the first in Africa. Be patient, this connection sometimes still is slower than sites in the US—but it is worth the wait!
- Perhaps the best source for news about the Arab world is ArabicNews.com. They cover so many stories and important events in the Middle East that somehow never make it into the mainstream media. Ok, they're a little biased toward the Arabs, but hey, it's news you wouldn't get otherwise!
- The League of Arab States page maintained by Ed Haynes of Winthrop University, is a great resoucre for those wanting to learn about the world's oldest international political organization. It is also particularly helpful for those participating in the Models of the National Council on US-Arab Relations or the International Model at AUC. I "grew up" in the Atlanta High School Model, for which I served as a committee chair and Secretary-General while at Berry College, and the delegations from Berry dominated the Southeast Regional Model in Savannah, Georgia in 1997 and 1998 and were invited to the 10th Anniversary Cairo International Model Arab League in 1999.
- While I don't know anything about their tours, Museum Tours has a nice site and a virtual gallery of color lithographs of Egypt done in the mid-1800s by one of my favorites, David Roberts, R.A..
- National Senior Classical League page maintained by Kevin Fu at MIT. The Junior and Senior Classical Leagues are national Latin organizations with many state and local chapters. The Georgia JCL always rocks the National Convention, and I'm sure it will again this year, as well. And within Georgia, I'm partial to Central Gwinnett High School, which is one of the largest chapters in the state and also had the 1995-1996 Georgia JCL President, Jessee Morris. There are also now official Georgia SCL and Georgia JCLwebsites; go have a look!
- Panda Mail is a free way to check your regular POP3 email account (one where your email normally is downloaded to your computer) from anywhere in the world (even Abû Dhabî) and still be able to download it to your computer when you return! I use the service all the time; plus, the banner is cute!
The Cairo in America Web-Counter says that you are the 
visitor to al-Qâhira fî Amrîkâ since June 2, 1996. Mabrûk! Congratulations! On July 19, 2002, the counter rolled over 20,000! 20,000 visitors in a little over six years; I guess that's not bad for a small site like mine!
This main page is over three years old now and changes very slowly, although it is in dire need of a major redesign when I get the time. The subpages, however, are updated more frequently as I scan new slides and find neat stuff. Thank you for bearing with me, and please come back again soon. Thanks.
© 1996-2006, Smokey Ardisson
This page was last modified on November 11, 2006.
Watch for the arrival of more Syria and Cairo pictures, coming in a few weeks, inshâ´allah!
