Michelle in Egypt

From a year of internal quiet and sitting in cramped alleyways with a hose in my hand; from a year of togetherness and crowdedness and nosyness and fun; I turn to nothing less than the New Jersey suburbs.  Something about this place feels like a cave.  The people return, shuttled in their shiny vehicles, and hussle into the boxes they live in.  Then they sit, shielded from the sunlight and the rain and everyone around, looking out windows at others doing the same.  Talking outside is an anomaly.  Standing together requires cigarettes.  Everyone protects himself, his house, his car, his body.  Everyone picks out pretty things and plasters them on his body.  Everyone speaks with overtones of defense.  Nosyness now, but of a different kind: minus the curiosity, it has an air of authority.  I can see the freedom all around me manifested in a kind of societal paranoia.  Maybe my car will get stolen, my watch, my house will get robbed, maybe he looked at me funny, maybe she’s not from our country, maybe someone’s listening to this phone call, reading this email, monitoring me, maybe terrorists will strike.  America is a strange place.  Today, I’m a foreigner in my own land.

Today is my “KIFAYA BI MASR!!!” (enough of Egypt!)
day. The finger that lays down for five
minutes on the doorbell that sounds like a cat screeching. The ragil outside who wants electric money it
feels like we pay every other week. The
bowab and his wife trying to tell me something I (of course) only understand
based on my assumptions of context. Myself not knowing verbs like “to give” in Arabic. The 103 degree heat that stifles my smile and
sucks up the breeze from the fan. My
sticky body in my room falling asleep doing homework only to feel the creepy
sensation of a little bug crawling over my face. Flies on my eyes while I’m trying to
work. “wa ma’andish fulus. Wa ‘andi
imtehan.”

I had good juice
today. I also have experienced no harassment
since donning a hijaab and taking cabs everywhere. Or rather since the gentleman who parks the
cars decided to take a sit down with his car on my foot. So something’s good.

And still I look
outside romantically at the millions of satellite dishes and the laundry on the
line getting even dirtier than it was before someone “washed” it.

Egypt and I must be dating to have
this kind of love-hate going on at the same time.

I guess I’ve
never dated America.

Mumkin bokra… fil mish mish.

It’s probably a very pathetic thing to be so concerned with
the material things around you – to be happy simply because you look around
yourself and see objects you like. Objects which somehow define you. I see myself drinking Senegalese tea, with a biography of Former
President of Egypt Anwar Sadat under my computer and an Islamic art calendar
behind it. I see five Arabic
dictionaries and phrasebooks, books on human trafficking, Arab and Muslim
stereotyping in American popular culture, civil rights and liberties
infractions on Arab and Muslim Americans, international law and reconciliation
in post-trauma societies, myths and history of the Middle
East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, international race
relations and social movement theory. I
see myself working at a computer late into the night, looking out my balcony
window at the city of Cairo at the top of
Africa, next to the Nile, with satellite
dishes plastering the tops of all the buildings, sprinkled like salt over every
conceivable surface. I see the sand and
the dust and the wind. I see the boys
playing football below my window, hear the chanting of the schoolchildren as
they learn English and Arabic, the call to prayer filling up the sky, seeming
to stop traffic, grab people and pull them in, turn off my music and force me
to reckon with a mass of people singing to Allah.

Is it so bad to enjoy the moments you are in? If I could remain here, listening to Ella
Fitzgerald; if I could remain here, knowing that people I love are just a text
message away, a few dusty and uneven steps away, always ready to say
‘yes.’ Yes we will have a dance party in
the hallway to fake beat-boxing. Yes we
will go to a random market just to buy scarves that we can inappropriately or
appropriately (depending upon which of us you’re talking about) don as often as
we’d like. Yes we’ll play dress up at a
party with a scandalous theme. Yes we’ll
cook something we’ve never made before, go somewhere we’ve never gone before,
spend hours studying an area of the world we’d never seen before. Yes we’ll plan, work, want, love. Yes we’ll confess, confide, smoke all the
sheesha you could ask for. We’ll walk
anywhere, fly anywhere, do anything, yes. Yes we’ll laugh with you and listen to you. Yes we’ll be your friends. Yes.

Strangely enough, this isn’t some imaginary life I’m living
in Cairo, as
much as it may feel like it is. It just
so happens that I found people who I fit with. The dictator posters line our walls and oriental wall-hangings drape
from the ceiling. The tufaH incense
fills the air and swivels in dancing wisps like a backwards tornado. The ladies come home late and giggle late
into the night after writing their IR and Econ papers. They plan and scheme and plot and dream.

And I discover every day, over and over, that there is
nothing like having a home.

In the last throes of this 10-month shift, which has mangled me, pulled
me apart, gotten underneath my skin, and literally run me over, I now find
myself rebelling.  My roommates and I were sitting in my room the other night making inappropriate metaphors and discussing even more inappropriate behavior.  This of course occurs after our inappropriate party, meant to shock and offend everything about everything.  "Orientalism" was the theme, and it served to allow everyone to let out the steam they had been holding in since arriving here. 

This goes for America, too: it’s difficult to costantly be appropriate.  You try as hard as you can not to step on anyone’s toes.  You try to be good, you try not to offend, you use the PC-terms whenever you can, you try not to insult, to overly criticize, to judge.  And you uproot yourself from your home and you try even harder.

And then at some point, you look around you, and you realize, this is absurd.

Kula haga.  Kula haga fil a’ishti ghareeb, wa la ma’ni aieh haga.  Fil haqeqa, enta tahowal wa tahowal wa bi eh? 

In any society a person is held in by the behavioral constraints that exist to order, normalize and contain.  It’s just that we moved into a different cage.  An Egyptian cage.  And as anyone would say, if you don’t like it, then leave.  Taba’an.  But I’m not saying I don’t like it.  I’m just saying that I’m in it and I’m rebelling just as much as I’m crawling inside further. 

So we’re pulling out niqabs and gallabyas and kifayas and za’atar and hommos and laughing while the sheesha mixes with the booze, the smell of the smoke bellydances into the faces of the drunken many, the dancing quasi-Arabs shake to ghetto American and Spanish music - origins flowing together into a cocktail which could only be created by the displacement and reorientation of the many into a drink that will never taste right.

We’re lost, our identities have been confused and redirected.  Just look at our apartment.  Just look at these people who have clearly lost their minds.
 

Just to prove I do have some connection to events in Ithaca, NY…  here’s something a friend wrote me that I thought you’d enjoy.

"UMass upsets Cornell in their first ever road playoff win in Ithaca, New
York yesterday narrowly edging past the pansy-boy Cornell team 10-9.
When asked about the humiliating loss Cornell Captain Sally McCrysalot
had this to say: "Basically we were just scared by the superiority of
this UMass team in every way.  They outplayed, outmuscled,
outsmarted, and outsmarmed us.  Also they are better
looking.  I guess this just proves that the town of Amherst is
flat out better than Ithaca, New York.  I could really use a
bagel."  Many thought the win to be an impossibility and were even
more doubtful when UMass players brought a keg to the sideline, but it
only seemed to fuel the fire behind the amazing Minutemen.  During
a pregame interview UMass captain had this to say:  "Fuck you man,
ha ha.  Ima mess shit up today.  Yo man, why are there two of
you."  Apparently so disgusted by the apparent crapiness of
Cornell in every way shape and form the president of the school has
labled every building condemed, declared bankrupcy and moved to Florida
where "there is some goddamn decent lacrosse!"

Read more at http://umassathletics.cstv.com/sports/m-lacros/recaps/051306aaa.html"

(They only had one.)

So yesterday my leg was run over by a car.

This brings an interesting perspective to life in Cairo.  Suddenly rather than seeing the friendly, familiar, open space around me where I am able to go wherever I like whenever I like with very few restrictions, all I can see are the obstacles everywhere.  Stairs! Cat! Trash heap, bricks. No sidewalk! Beggar! Pothole. No elevator. Class on third floor. Teacher on second floor. Library up two flights, need key for elevator. Cat! Crossing street - oh god - the cars, the donkeys, the people, the busses and mini-busses…

Cairo is not handicap-accessible.  What few sidewalks exist are normally so bumpy and full of random lifts and holes that one has to constantly look at the ground when hobbling.  One must also keep an eye out for teenaged-boys who would love a piece of anything with breasts.  This includes girls who are covered, although less frequently verbalized. 

Suddenly my day revolves around what I am capable of doing.  Where will I be stuck.  How will I eat.  How will I get to class.

Oh the life of a still-very-mobile not-quite-invalid.  What do people do here when they’re REALLY injured??? 

According to Elizabeth… they go back to Germany and get real medical care until they’re better. 

Oh right, that’s only if you’re a rich foreigner like us… what about the other people here?  I bet when you get injured at work, you are completely out of luck, despite all of the post-socialism mechanisms.  I’m going to find out.

Gatherings are held here, below the Egyptian and Palestinian flags.  Tea is served; words are exchaged.  With the help of our strategy map of Middle Eastern and Muslim countries, we analyze different elements of Arab society.  One takes the security route, focusing on military tactics and capabilities; another reads about global political economy and political Islam; another takes the social welfare perspective, Nasser-esque in its ideals, and analyzes the a-political components of Arab society.  Our visitors add perspectives on everything from Egyptian beauracracy, the failure of trade reform, and recent terrorism, to how to get an illegal Sudanese passport at the Mugama.

We are becoming Arab men.  Toula-playing, sheesha-smoking, paper-reading, tea-drinking Arab men.  Gissella and I agreed a few months ago that it was bound to happen… shorbat a3ds, tammiya and shay took over our diets.  Add Palestinian zaatar to the list for breakfast with a3sh shamy or baladi, look over our shoulders at our revered and criticized leaders, listen for the disdain in our voices as we discuss the actions of the Israelis…

Soon we’re going to start cat-calling at each other… what’s next? Blaming the Jews?

… or maybe just speaking Arabic.

After living here, I’m always walking around thinking how much I can rough it.  I’ve gotten used to flies on (and in) my food, insane traffic, honking so loud I can’t even think straight, being hissed at when I walk around, shopping in market places so dirty you’d mistake parts of it for a trash heap, flies in my kitchen, bed bugs at Kanzy and in the sheesha place in Zamalek, hanging laundry off of a ten-story balcony when I’m afraid of heights… you name it.  And then something like this happens.

Jeremy and I enter our $4 per night "hut" room in Dahab to find three cockroaches in his bed. 

Fine, that’s fine, it’s only three, it’s a cheap room, we knew the hotel was sketchy at best… but for crying out loud.  They were in his bed.  And then I looked around at the floor and found more, at least ten more than should ever exist in any eight by nine foot space.  There were three under one carpet, two under the other carpet, and several popping in and out of the room from under the door every few seconds.  After a while we couldn’t even keep track of them.  I kept beating the ones I could catch with my flip-flop (and the cockroaches-can’t-be-smushed thing is a myth, my friends, because these suckers die a slimy, disgusting death, leaving eggs behind in their own body muck! - not that I knew that at the time!) but I just couldn’t kill them all.  I sat upon my coverless bed only to see one climbing up the side of the bed to join me. 

By the time we decided (instigated by me not being able to deal with this AT ALL) to just go find another hotel for the night, I was shaking trying to check my clothes for cockroaches.  Jeremy finally just convinced me to leave everything there and take care of it in the morning.  Jeremy, by the way, is a saint for dealing with this.

In any case, all of this made something very clear to me: I like comfort.  No matter how many times I want to be the one who can rough it, who doesn’t let small things get to her, who doesn’t need expensive things and fancy surroundings, I have limits, and this is one.  Apparently, I draw the line at cockroaches.

Didn’t I learn this in India?

Imagine walking into an apartment that while spacious, looks (especially in the kitchen) like someone actually took old rotting food and jammed it into the cracks of every surface and rubbed it around the walls just for fun.  Then imagine that every conceivable door and piece of furniture’s door was falling off, often on top of you.  Any glass which exists is broken, including mirrors and table tops, and a plague of flies sits like fog overhead in the kitchen.

Then imagine living there.

Yes, we are insane.  However, the price was right, and with a lot of carpentry and electric work performed by our Sudanese neighbors, and cleaning late into the night on several occassions, it’s home.

Maybe you are still wondering about the fog-like plague of flies… I thought this sketchy can of spray with bugs on it and a big "X" would take care of them, so I proudly brought it home one day…

"Michelle! Are you insane? You’re going to kill us!"

Oh right. No safety regulations in Egypt.

Well, ma lish, we decided to try it anyway.  Three hours later there we were, hands over our faces, scooping up a breath of air, darting into the kitchen to spray until the choking was unbearable and then shoving the can into the next roommate’s face for her turn.  After a few minutes we all met on Kerry’s balcony, sputtering, gasping and coughing, talking about our throats closing up… of course, it was worth it for the fly graveyard on the floor the next day.  Until they came back, times ten, a week later.  Then suddenly died - see exchange between Gissella and I:

M: I think the flies are gone.  That’s crazy, there were thousands like yesterday.

G: It’s probably because they have a short life-span.  In fact… I think they die as soon as they breed…

M: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since the flies experience we’ve only almost died one other time, a time involving garlic bread, fire, our neighbor Mory, the oven, and a lot of gas which leaked unnoticed for an entire day and night, until the whole hallway smelled like gas and our tank was empty.

But ma lish.  I have a home.  Besides, where else am I going to make schwaya Asian food?

There’s something unmistakably corny about being in Egypt.  Whether it’s the flower pattern on every girl’s shirt, the barrage of Valentines’ Day gifts and decor stores, complete with giant red sparkly pillows proclaiming "I LOVE YOU!" to the street outside, or just the way a sleazy guy will suddenly begin to sing to you as you walk past him, girly romanticism is everywhere.  It’s in the old romantic movies, the language of the linguistically-seductive Egyptian merchant, the whistles of the gawking men on the street…

Now where normally this would entirely gross me out, here I have developed a kind of condescending "aw, how cute" attitude towards it.  I am coming from America, Culture Exporter extraordinaire.  My country originated such songs as "Who Let Dese Hoes In My Room?", "Money, Cash, Hoes", "Gunz Come Out" and "Pimpin All Over the World."  We see nearly naked girls all the time, gyrating like jello.  We are waaaay beyond the shyness of holding hands in public.  So all these little kids (my age) courting each other for marriage (whoah buddy) is just…. so cute.

This is not to say that America lacks disgusting displays of false romanticism or modest and shy people (there’s a word for them, though).  After all, we are also the country which originated the Hallmark holiday.  But it seems different there… a girl who wears too many girly things is dorky.  An overtly romantic man is a woss.  Men don’t sing on the streets.  And the bottom line - little boys don’t bellydance in public.

I’d like to end with a quote (from The Crapavan again) which should represent what I mean here:

"Naz Shahrokh, an art professor at AUC, described the evening as ‘a delight.  Like sunshine.’"