Academics being defensive

Today a BA student at Harvard emailed me to ask for an electronic copy of my thesis on the development of the Darb al-Ahmar, and I spent the morning converting files, and scanning tables and prelim pages that apparently got lost transferring from my old computer to my present one. And I found myself surprised to find that it was good and very serious. Also puzzled that I just didn't take it any further. Need to think about that. Now I'm living in the wrong town to do any more with it. Why was that, just because I was occupied with babies and making friends with mothers and playdates. Strange.

Anyway, I looked up various colleagues and senior people who were working in the area, and found that of course their current work is increasingly up one meta-level, from the urban history of Cairo and the 'Islamic city' to studying the conceptualizing of those cities. I suppose this is inevitable, but it makes me a bit sad. I know academics have to use conceptual frameworks these days to keep professional, but why do they have to become more and more self-referential , and more interested in the framework within which they are studying than in the content they are looking at? Honestly, sometimes I just wish people could come off duty and talk about the real subjects they are still actually studying, if they would admit it. It's the academics' form of political correctness. But it's so annoying. And in a decade or two it will look so dated.

And it's so predictable. And there's such a gulf between that mode, and what you would actually say if you were going out to a totally novice audience - clever high school students, or even, heaven help us, DANES. Shouldn't that difference make one worry?

Anyone else terrified of Danish numbers?

After Fuzzy's Danish language clip, I found this. It's a Norwegian comic called Fleksnes.

YouTube gives a translation. The Dane speaking over the radio is saying, Mayday, mayday, mayday, can anybody help me, I am in trouble in high seas. Fleksnes says, Hello, this is Oslo, Oslo calling. The Dane on the radio says, Hello Oslo, finally someone is responding to my distress call, here is my position - and then he gives his coordinates.

Danish numbers terrify me actually. On a good day I giggle, but last month I went to pieces in a class presentation because I had naively put in all these dates, which I just couldn't say. In retrospect it was hilarious.

Who we are

I am a sometime journal editor and (if I'm honest) failed would-be academic. I am from Wimbledon, London, and I am in my forties. We came to Denmark nearly two years ago. A long time ago I took a year out from work and went to the Middle East to see if I could manage it on my own. I meant to spend six months in Cairo, because it was an easy place to start, and six months in Istanbul, which I knew was incredibly wonderful. I never got to Istanbul (except on holidays). I wanted to study the Mamluk buildings I could see all around me, and I had the wherewithal to teach at the American University, so I started a diploma in Islamic studies, and then although I knew it was all taking too long I did the M.A. in Islamic Art & Architecture instead. By 1995 it was taking much too long, and I quit working to do the Arabic and the thesis full time. I also married Mark, who I'd met three years before on a downtown Cairo evening with some Danish friends. We met seeing an Adel Imam comedy called Terrorism and kebab. Bless him, he supported me through it all, and we found ourselves pregnant, and we had Laila, and I got finished some considerable time later. And then we had Zahra, and then we had Lina. I became a full-time mum, Mark got his Ph.D., his first proper job in the AUC History Department, worked incredibly hard and gradually became a real, good historian, good enough to get back to the real world. I was going to get an article published on Mamluk urban development. But I didn't. And I was going to get my Arabic back up to running speed again. But I didn't. Looking back, I was depressed. Despite the wonderful community of mothers, school and children, so active and rich and good for those children and so life-enriching, and something I will always be incredibly grateful for. Pity. The not doing things, I mean.

And we missed Europe, and wondered. Do we go home? Should we go home, is it conceivable not to go home at all ever? Isn't Cairo too little a pond, shouldn't we go back to the North again? After all we are Europeans. You can't go beyond a certain point with most things in Cairo. And we didn't want the girls to go through adolescence in Egypt. I wanted to go back to Europe, Mark wanted to go to the US, where most of his community is. Mark also missed Europe, but his Europe is Spain/France, where he partly grew up.

And then we took this job. I say we, because Mark is the most considerate person and we took the leap to come here together.

So: Mark is a historian at AU. We bought a house in a prosperous area not far from the sea, a lovely house with a dream of a garden. We'd never had a house, let alone a place with a garden that you can do old-fashioned things in. It was heaven. The children, Laila (12, in the green jacket in the bike ride pic), Zahra (8) and Lina (7), go to the folkeskole down the road. They can do the Danish thing. I have been doing the Danish thing and am getting there, but I've been slow. Why, for someone who can read and write Modern Standard Arabic? God knows, I don't. I've also been slow to face that I have to get on with my life. I am getting going now, and I want to get going fast.

Laila is seriously able, and is developing into an independent, mature person. She reads grown-up novels, and was ahead of her class at BISC in Cairo. Won't say any more on that subject. Zahra is very bright and is a very strong person. She is Out There. She's very active and plays a lot of football. Little Lina got in here at the børnehave stage and it was very good for her. So she is going up through the Danish system. I've finally woken up to teaching her to read FAST. All three girls should really be at school in English. Practical problems about that.

And I have made some friends here. I have two and a half wonderful Danish friends, and a wonderful non-Dane.

So that's us.

There are others out there!

So this is my new blog. I hope I'll have some good things to say, not just formless complaining (not that others do that). We have been here for almost two years, but I discovered the expatriate bloggers of DK - even, dare I hope, Århus! - only in the last two weeks. We have all been so lonely. On a good day it doesn't feel that way, but there isn't any doubt that the experience we are having is quite alien. Mark thinks it's the Århus experience, not the Denmark experience. I think Copenhagen would be nicer, and life out in the suburbs makes it worse. It's especially hard on Mark, who grew up in central London and never went outside the Circle Line. But we've spent years growing up the children in an apartment in the bustling heart of the loveliest part of one of the greatest cities on earth. From Zamalek to Risskov! And the Veri Center!! ooh, I can hardly bear to write it.

When we were weighing whether to come, a Danish friend said, There must be interesting people somewhere in Århus: the question is where to find them. Myself, I wish he'd said a lot more. But the thought that I may have found a few - in the bloggers - is making me smile today.

On a bike ride with my daughter