Here I went!

To say the least, the past month and a half since classes have been done has been an opportunity that I never would have dreamt I would have the pleasure of living.  I’ve travelled to Lebanon and the south of the country, occupied heavily by the militant group Hezbollah.  I saw heavily fortified Israeli border and the UN peace keeping forces there.  I watched as the power flickered on and off in the southern Lebanese valley from atop the villa at nightfall.  The powerful rush I felt in that part of the world was unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life.  Politics, my life passion, came to life in a way that I never would have imagined.  To feel your passion surging throughout your body through experience is such a different experience than watching events on television, reading books, and writing analyses about the conflict.  Looking over the Lebanese Mediterranean northwards from a mountain towards Beirut at sunset was indescribably breathtaking. I learned much about the Lebanese as a people; their passion for living, dancing, partying, national identity, and the amazing amount of cultural and religious diversity that puts America’s cultural melting pot to shame.  Living with a high population of Shia’ and Sunni Muslims, Druze, and Christians is completely normal in this patchwork society that views diversity as a given.  

Traveling to Amman, Jordan, also gave me a new perspective on the Middle East.  Though I stayed in the “old Amman”, it was comparatively better kept than Egyptian streets.  There was still the random overpopulation of cats that plague Alexandria and Cairo, but the mood was different.  People didn’t stare as much at us, and we only received a few taunting “welcomes” and even more genuine ones.  No one screamed at me from across the street because I was foreign, no one asked me “what’s your name?” or “where are you from?”  People were generally happier than Egypt and more modernly dressed, though the faux Dolce and Gabbana tees and Armani Exchange shirts and tub of gel still marked what I’ve always associated with Middle Eastern culture.  Like many Arabs, appearances are so important and Jordan was not different in that respect, nor was Lebanon.  It was at this point that I realized that the problem with Egypt is the low level of education among its exploding population problem.  With the lack of education, people are less apt to know how to interact with people who are different than them in appearance and in culture.  It creates the problem of the uneducated boy or man on the street treating non-Egyptians like they are oddities and spectacles for their entertainment pleasure, whether starting into their souls on the tram, or monitoring me walking on the street, their gaze following my movements until I’m out of sight.  People in Jordan and Lebanon did not ask me if I was Muslim, they did not ask me if I pray, and they did not tell me to go talk to Obama for them.  I didn’t feel the tight ball of tension in my chest in Lebanon and Jordan because I wasn’t being followed by Sartre’s infamous “Gaze” by the local population.  I was able to forget about my every move, gesture, dress, etc. because people simply were disinterested.  I felt free, like I had “escaped”, however temporary it was.

We also had the fortune of going to the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan.  The first time I laid  eyes on the main building, the Treasury, was when my dad and I sat down to watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusaders.  Sitting there watching Indiana Jones dodging a swinging axe and jumping through collapsing rocks, it never crossed my mind that I would one day stand before the 3,000 year old testament to an ancient civilization that predated Rome.   

Stepping foot inside the Citadel of Alexandria spurred the same feelings of standing in the shadow of greatness.  Built on top of the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria (which collapsed after an earthquake in the 12th century), I could almost imagine its immense height and base which contained 100s of rooms for the laborers.  Every time I stood at the foot of some great monument or famous tract of land-the Pyramids, the Citadel, Petra, downtown Beirut and the south of Lebanon-surges of energy just shot through my body in disbelief at the things I had the privilege of experiencing.  3 Wonders of the Ancient World later, I am now waiting for the semester to start, when I will start classes at the Arabic center, a class in the University of Alexandria itself, and my internship at the Library of Alexandria, the replacement library for yet another Wonder of the Ancient World.  

My time in Egypt, however, has been quite a challenge despite the travel opportunities that I’ve had.  Despite Egypt’s cultural and historical past and potential, the government has failed to seize the opportunity to develop it.  The government has also failed to take its people into consideration.  The government, run by a large bloc of business men and President Mubarak’s National Party, which has been in power for 30 years, the interests of the ordinary have yet to be met.  Services are spotty, the most important being education.  I never realized until I came to Egypt how everything is tied to how educated a population is.  What does all this political and educational speak have to do with my experience in Alexandria and Cairo?

There are no lines in Egypt.  You must push your way to the front, whether for a pop at the movie theater, purchasing a train ticket, or checking out at the grocery store.  I mean PUSH.  I’ve tried to make eye contact with people for the longest time.  They simply look at me and push me.  I was always TAUGHT to wait in line, whether at lunch or when I’m at the ATM.  I’ve had to jump outside my comfort zone to play the game, but it goes against what I was taught.  I fear that someone will fight me back.  It’s been taking less and less courage to say “excuse me, there’s a line” or push another human being because I want to be next because I’m slowly realizing my American rules are not going to apply here.  

People at the ATM will watch you put in your number, take out the receipt for you, and again cut the line that I had imagined that doesn’t actually exist.  Many people, stare, as I’ve previously mentioned.  Staring and laughing at me for God knows what reason.  I’ve tried to take steps to soften my appearance so I don’t stand out as much.  I have traded in my shorts and sandals for jeans and brown shoes.  I don’t carry around a backpack anymore, it looks too much like a “khawayga” (foreigner).  It makes me feel more comfortable about going out because it lessens the staring and comments.  

Children are the devil here.  They follow me, pull at my arm, and yell trite, simple sentences in English, asking me my name, where I come from, and if I have a pound to give them.  They piss on the back of the tram, play in the street with the diseased cats, throw fire crackers at people, and wander the streets unusually unsupervised.  I have to yell things at them when they heckle me, hoping to teach them that it is not okay to talk to foreigners like they do, telling them to respect themselves and shame on them for certain provocative behaviors like the fire crackers.  If nothing else, they’ll think twice before harassing a non-Egyptian.  It makes me realize that their learned behavior probably originates with their parents, who treat foreigners like a spectacle, as these children mostly seem to demonstrate this behavior with their interaction with foreigners.  

The other target group is women, both Egyptian, and especially, foreign women.  Children form about the age of 5 through their early 20s find it amusing to harass women through “mu’akasat” (cat calling).  Egypt was the only country I’ve visited in this region, with the exception of poorer Morocco, where this phenomenon is also prevalent.  Western women are stereotypically viewed as being “loose and easy”, mostly from the way we dress, or more appropriately, how we don’t dress.  European and American woman do not wear the headscarf, or hijab, which is seen as a religious duty and an act of modesty on the part of the woman.  Western woman wear their hair uncovered, and many interpret this as being immodest and sexually loose because they don’t care enough to hide their “goods”.  Apparently hair is the ultimate sensuality here, probably because it’s always covered and there’s a certain mystery as to what the woman is hiding.  I can only speculate.  I was once told that it’s known that woman are of course sexual creatures, but they need to cover it up because you don’t need to see the “proof of the honey”.  Women in Egypt, generally, don’t show skin.  They wear long-sleeved shirts and long skirts.  Tight clothes are a rarity.  Thus, the myth of the uncovered, skin-showing Western woman is prevalent and so is the rumor of their immodesty and their “immorality”, two things in this particularly religious society that are comparable to being an hopeless, stumbling alcoholic or being gay in some parts of the United States.  Women, both Egyptian and non-Egyptian, have become the constant victims of touching and yelling.  

In the start of our program, one of the girls was walking by McDonald’s when a young boy ran past her, grabbing her chest on the way to join his friends on the other side of street, doing a victory dance as he ran away.  Other girls and women I’ve met have been told about how bad American men are in bed, and how an Egyptian man is better than 1,000 Americans, whether in the marriage or in the sack.  An Egyptian man knows not to say this to an Egyptian woman, and those who say such things don’t have enough manners, respect, or education hold their tongues AND hands when they come in contact with a foreign woman.  Shouts of “Pretty!”, the whistling, “Sexy girl!”, and random grabbing of extremities has made me resent that part of society. Again, the education system has failed because of the prevalence of  damaging stereotyping.  I couldn’t have imagined being a girl here, and every time I complain about how irritated I am about being stared at, I think at how much worse it would be if I was female and not Egyptian.  

Foreigners are assumed to be stupid cash cows to many uneducated Egyptians, especially around tourist areas, which the government has failed to take measures to protect against.  People have jumped into my cab to take me to their shop with the cab driver complying, telling me they work for the Pyramids, showing me a ratty business card like I’m an idiot and compliant.  Telling them “no, get out” doesn’t work unless you yell at the top of your lungs.  A foreigner that fights back is a rarity; it makes me think about how naive tourists can be.  Cab drivers will say they know a place, but will then drive to the wrong place, ask everyone if they know it, ask me where the place is, and then try to charge me 5 times the amount it should be because they’ve “done so much work” for me, or because they had to dodge so much traffic, or because they take me on a “tour of the city” instead of going directly to where I need to be.  The fights I get in with cab drivers have pretty much subsided as I don’t look at them anymore as I pass my money through the window and walk quickly away.  They can’t catch me if I don’t let them.  Again, I try to show them that not all tourists and foreigners are complacent idiots with a bottomless wallet.  

I’m charged “foreigner” prices where prices are not set, which is almost everywhere, even when buying food.  This point brings me to another internal battle that I constantly fight with myself.  I am not Egyptian, and I know that in America, I made 5 times as much working at Starbucks as the school teacher at the university.  I understand the concept of expecting more money out of foreigners as a rule because we can afford it.  But I am not a typical foreigner.  I am a student on a stipend, and I know what the prices are supposed to, from cab rides to food.  It’s the principle of getting charged an unequal amount of money based on a stereotypical assumption of who I am.  I a “rich” foreigner in a country plagued with social and economic issues that I am assumed to have no knowledge about.  I hate that feeling, knowing that I am assumed to “have money”.  That Egyptian “Gaze” that falls upon me fleshes out my stereotype in which they bind me: a white American: rich, not religious (thus not really respectful), naive and easily taken advantage of (which is of course justifiable because he’s not Egyptian and not Muslim), only speaks English, weak mentally, throws money around like it’s paper, helpless as a child (and thus subject to tipping for information or directions) etc.” This angers me, and I’m constantly fighting the stereotype every day of my life. I’m a walking dollar bill.  

Corruption on the street.  I don’t know how many times I was cornered and told that I had to tip the police officer or the security guard, even the so-called “tourism police”.  At the Citadel, a security guard gave us a tour.  I figured he was bored because there were so many of them everywhere in the  country with nothing to do but sit all day and fall asleep on their riffles.  At the end of the superficial informational session, he held out his hat.  I didn’t know what to do until he said filoos (money).  Caught off guard and not knowing how he would use his powers as security against me if I denied, I gave him 10 pounds.  I was so angry.  

Again, at the Pyramids.  We took a picture of a camel, which I warned our friend about; everyone will charge for a picture with their camel.  Out walked a security guard to talk to us.  He looked at the camel, looked at Laurel, and said baksheesh (tip).  I looked at him and my chest burned with anger.  I stared at him, and he repeated himself.  I told him I clearly understood as I stared at him like many Egyptians stare at me: straight into his eyes.  I said  baksheesh lil boolees, ‘aadi hina? (a tip for the police? Is that normal here?) I made the situation so awkward that he didn’t know what to say as we just left as I shook my head at him.  He clearly wasn’t expecting me to call him out on his shameful display of corruption.  I had reached a point where I was tired of being taken for an idiot here.  The people who are supposed to protect the tourists are taking advantage of them.  Again, a walking dollar bill.  

My anger and non-constructive criticism of this society, however, was getting me no where.  My constant fear of standing out and being a public spectacle was driving me insane.  I even compared going out and being around Egyptians to being in a Vietnam camp, where they played the same song over loud speakers until the prisoners went insane.  I felt I was going insane, and I was letting the system of this Third World country take advantage of me.  It was making me resent myself, others around me, and the world I came from for having money and this world for treating me like an animal because of it.  My top phrases that I have memorized by heart to scream at people:

“Don’t touch me!”

“Respect yourself!”
“Watch yourself!”

“Shut up you little devil!”

“I’m not stupid, I know the prices in Egypt.”

“No, that’s enough money, bye!”

“Please don’t stand so close to me.”
“Sir, what are you doing? There’s a line.”

“Yes I pray, why is it important to you?”
“No, I don’t work for the government.”

“It’s not important where I’m from.”

“Excuse me, I don’t want a tour of the city, I just want to go straight to X.”

“I don’t have have Obama saved in my mobile, sir.”

You may notice that my Arabic has been defensive, very basic language to get people off my back. It’s gotten me out of long, drawn out and complicated situations.  It’s helped me assert myself in a country that you either take the opportunity or you are taken advantage of.  It was for survival.  I was living in survival mode.

I broke down several times since I’ve been here, wanting to just go home, wishing that I could change how people saw me, wishing I could just stay in my apartment until school started.  I never wanted to take another taxi to the mall.  I didn’t want cross the dangerous streets without traffic laws again.  I didn’t want to hear the prayer over the loud speakers at the mosques 5 times a day.  I wanted to smack children, even cheering when I would watch TV when someone would kick around a kid because he was being rude or disrespectful.  My negative attitude was creating an awful spiral down a bottomless pit from which I was afraid I would not escape.  I was afraid of how Egypt would change me forever.  Would I always hate children? Would I not want to have them? How was this going to affect my future in my studies? Would ever be able to rationalize all that was experiencing? Would I ever just accept that this was not my culture? When would I be comfortable with myself enough to live my life here as a foreigner? When would it all feel okay?

I started to wear shorts outside.  The sandals have come back out.  Yesterday, I walked down the street with my Ipod for the first time, listening to anything that would validate myself and who I was.  Music has always been my outlet from EVERYTHING I experience, from happiness to sadness, from helplessness to empowerment, Musical lyrics are the main source of channeling my inner emotions and a starting point when I want to change my mood.  It certainly has helped ignore the outside noise, the staring, and the comments. I can’t hear them.  They all disappear as I fall into a familiar world of musical solace.  

I have started to call home more often.  I realized that, much like when I went away to school, I never kept in close contact with these people and it’s only until they are missing in my life that I miss them the most.  Calling home is my way of staying sane, of validating myself, returning to my “normal”.  I’m “normal” to my family, something that I can’t get out of Egypt right now in this particular point in my journey.  Validating my normalcy gives me confidence to face things that I consider bizarre and irritating.  

I’m not naive enough to think that this emotional roller coaster is over.  I have read so much about adaptation to a new culture, and know it comes in waves, causing a stretching of the brain as the mind tries to validate and rationalize everything around it.  Somethings here just cannot be rendered logical.  My American logic is different than the one here, and it’s going to take constant bombardment, exposure, and time until I accept and acculturate.  For now though, I’m going to take steps to make me happy, from eating cereal, drinking coffee, studying, listening to my Ipod outside, and wearing shorts down to the boardwalk to go running.  Most of all, I’m going to walk with my head held higher, literally, instead of staring at my feet all the time.  I’m not going to try to ignore comments any more, but rather confront then as they come.  I’ve spent too much time pretending that I don’t hear and it only leads to me exploding later after constant exposure to them.  I will still stare back and I will still yell at that untamed child. 

Explaining it through mere words, despite my attempts at detailed entries, is not enough.   Like many people I talk to at home, they think I’m squandering an opportunity to grow and “expand my horizons”, culturally and emotionally.  I don’t know how often I’ve heard “well, if it were me, I would...”.  And I’m sure if it “were me”, I would have smacked that little boy who grabbed my chest by McDonald’s.  The girl, however, just stood there motionless, unable to react and wondering what had just happened.  She thought the minute something like that happened to here, her instinct would be to hit.  But it wasn’t.  It goes to show that one really doesn’t know what one would do until they were actually presented with the situation, something living removed from it cannot provide.

 All I can say is that I “expanding my horizons”, one heartache and one headache after another, I’m learning to live and make uncomfortable comfortable again.  I’m learning to deal with people from another culture, and how to operate in a system that is not built with American logic, nor the same services and expectations that we have in our lives.  My life has been taken and shaken upside down.  I’m in the process of getting through the rush of blood to the head and picking up all the loose change from my shaken pocket.  It’s taken me so much patience to get here, and my frustrations are pat of a normal process of adaptation.  My challenge is finding ways to deal with the absurdities that my logic cannot compute, all in a healthy, constructive (not destructive) manner.  This has been the biggest challenge.  My mind is the biggest obstacle, as I am and always have been, my biggest competition. 

In the mean time, I have to apply to graduate school at U of M and Cornell.  I have a lot of reading, writing, and emails to write.  I have stuff to keep me busy.  I have a body that needs attention, as my fit of cultural shock put it on the back burner the past few months.  I need to feel healthy in order to think healthy.  It’s all connected.  Shwaya bi shwaya  (little by little) I’ll get it.  Don’t expect a miracle, I’m still trying to find some roots in this country, and my frustrations are not over.  I’ll still breakdown, it’s not all Pyramids and Sphinx here.  Have hope, have patience.  I need both to get myself to that my special place. 

“Underneath the cuts and bruises, finally get what no one loses, I’ll find you.  I’m not dead just floating, I’m not scared just changing, you’re my crack of sunlight.”