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In the latest revelation of my technological inaptitude for the genre of blog, I realized that I had to press a special button in order to open the blogoforum (hey, "blog" is a legitimate prefix now, right?) for commentary. The button has been pushed. The floor is yours, and I apologize for the delay. I had started to wonder why all my trusty critics had laid down their arms . . .

Sinai, Part Two: "Zay al-Atrash fi az-Zaffa"

Mohammad, one of the many young men hanging around our desert camp with no clear role or employment, agreed to take Sarah and me to a Bedouin farah, or village wedding party taking place near where we were staying in St. Catherine. On the way over, we had chatted as if we were all pals of the same age on the same page; you know, discussing our trip in the desert, whether or not I would marry Mohammad . . . the usual stuff.

Suddenly even this tenuous delusion of normality vanishes. Mohammad pulls his truck up next to the women’s tent of the farah and dismisses us.

“Here you go,” he tells us. “You will stay with the women. The harem. Listen, they’re welcoming you.”

Sure enough, waves of ululation emanate from the sea of seated women. Hundreds of eyes fix on us from their black frames. Welcome? I decide to take his word for it. Sarah and I disembark and approach the tent. Mohammad, our one connection to this massive family affair, drives off to join the men elsewhere.

As we draw near, hands begin to reach out to us, and a low chorus of “ahlens” rises from behind veiled mouths. The voices sound warm, and the kohl-rimmed eyes squint up at us in what looks like friendliness, but without smiles I still feel unsure. We grasp hands with each and exchange “ahlens,” moving down the line without aim until one anonymous handshake pulls us into the fray. Children stop in their tracks to stare at us, and whispers precede our steps between the seated figures. We smile with exaggerated warmth to make up for the uncertain expressions of our company and continue to pick our way through. I spot an open space and we sit, where bug-eyed little girls surround us within seconds. We greet them and introduce ourselves. Confused by our strange accents but too curious to give up, they answer our questions and continue to stare. I smile as big as I can in their solemn, inquisitive faces, and hope to convince them without words that I am a nice, normal girl who just so happens to talk funny and look radically different from everyone else they know. Try as we had to dress modestly for the occasion, we look around and realize that we have failed: although both clad in long sleeves and skirts on this ninety-five-degree desert day, our bright colors blare amongst our black-clad peers. The younger girls wore multi-colored hand-me-downs, but all the married women (roughly age twenty and up) blended together in a black wash of capes and scarves. Then, Sarah’s realization:

“Dude, I’m wearing the man colors.”

Her white shirt and skirt / new periwinkle Bedouin scarf combo had seemed suitable that morning, but now we saw that her attempt to wear her most Bedouin-friendly outfit had backfired in the most obvious way possible: only men, and all of the men, wore white and periwinkle. We stole uncomfortable glances at the white-and-periwinkle assemblage in the man tent. Oops. Yet another casualty of the fact that we only ever get to interact with males. Worse still, the playful, hippie-cool way that Sarah had slung the male headscarf around her waist probably offended Bedouin sensibilities even more than the misplaced colors. I attempt to salvage the situation and confide our error to nearby ladies.
“We just realized that these colors are only for men . . . we are sorry . . . Next time we will know better!” They laugh and tell us not to worry. Each asks us our names and where we’re from. I introduce myself as “Hanna,” hoping to cause less confusion than the first-person-pronoun-sound-alike “Anna,” but unwittingly pronounce it the opposite of the Arabic way, “HANna” instead of “HanNA,” so the name got whispered about and discussed anyway. Sarah, as usual, received surprised and delighted recognition for her name, which she merely pronounces in the Arabic fashion, “SAHra.”
“HER name is Sara too!” bursts out one of the girls, nudging a smaller one who hisses “Ssshhhhh!” and cowers in embarrassment. “This is an Egyptian name. Why do you have an Egyptian name?”
Sarah and I have long since abandoned attempts to explain that one could likely find Sarahs in most parts of the world. Such efforts always fall upon deaf ears; Egyptians seem to prefer leaving the pleasant conundrum of this blond, American Sarah to their imaginations.

By the time we have exchanged names with all the girls in our vicinity, a new row crowds in front of the first, the littlest ones hopping right into our laps. The lull of repeating our information over and over and the constant stream of new brown faces begin to blur the names together: Hanaa. Huda. Aziza. Salwa. Iman. Samra. Sara. Hanaan. Karima. Fatema. Some get bolder and start asking more questions. How old are you? Are you married? Most look surprised when I reveal my spinsterhood, unmarried at twenty-four. Sarah has kept up her charade as a married woman all summer, and has a ring to prove it. However, the notion of a husband far away in New York while his wife capers about foreign countries dressed as a man ends up sounding just as puzzling.
“You are married? Where is your husband?”
“Do you have children? Why not?”

Some, including Nabil, have expressed doubt that we uncivilized Americans understand the difference between “(haram) boyfriend,” “engaged,” and “married.” Sarah had told him many times that Jeff, the love interest that visited her for a week, was her husband. He reacted with incredulity, then joy, his opinion of her much augmented. After the visiting husband disappeared, Nabil immediately asked Sarah when we could expect the first baby.
“Not yet,” she confessed.
“But why?” he pressed, baffled.
“Well . . . he’s in New York, and I’m here!”
“But he was just here for a visit. Sooo . . .” Nabil makes abdomen-bound gestures, indicating that a week’s visit provided ample time for a man to inseminate his wife. Indeed, why else would he visit? Since Nabil’s wife and family live in a village hours away from Cairo, I suppose this method of reproducing is familiar to him. Sarah’s excuses must have made him suspicious, because he later approached me to clear things up.

“Are you married?” he wanted to know.
“Not yet, not until I finish my studies,” I gave my standard answer.
“And Sarah. She is married?”
“Yes, Sarah is married, al-humdu lillah.”
“But she is married or she is just engaged?” he pursued, eyes narrowed.
“Married, since a year ago. You have met her husband, right?”
“Yes. I have met him.” Whew. He’s on to us.

The girls at the farah do not pose further questions as to Sarah’s married life, however. They show more interest in our jewelry, of which they fondle and inquire after each piece. If they recognized a Bedouin piece, they wanted to know where we had gotten it and how much we had paid. For objects of unknown origin, they wanted to know from what country they came, who had given them to us. I found myself recounting the histories of my signature lavish jewelry collection with great animation and embellishment. To my surprise, they took more interest in the beaded bracelet my sister Emma had made than the necklace she had brought me from Peru, since it looked Bedouin. I was asked to affirm its origin multiple times. By later in the day I had understood that jewelry always provided one of the first objects of interest and exchange between women. More specifically, one should come to Bedouin engagements ready to part with any item she may be wearing, save perhaps her wedding ring. Even the oldest women reached out of their cavernous cape sleeves to finger my rings and bracelets. I would try to follow suit, but if I allowed my eye to linger on an object, it was immediately and irrevocably foisted upon me. The little girls and old ladies that eyed my Great Aunt Flo’s silver ring with covetous interest must have thought me quite dense not to have taken the cue and handed it over, but I stood strong. In the end, I managed to get off okay: minus two bracelets, plus one ring and one necklace. Fair’s fair.

Sitting with the women in the tent however, we have not yet reached the point of exchanging gifts and continue exchanging information. An older girl leans through the little ones to introduce herself. Aziza, aged twenty-one, already married for almost a year. She wears a long black cape with red trim and a black knit scarf pulled across her face. Brown henna coats her fingernails. She sounds friendly but again, without her mouth I remain a bit disconcerted, since the intensity of her stare hits me ten times harder isolated that way. Mouth or no mouth, I reckon that as far as she’s concerned I may as well be from another planet: flowing golden hair in broad daylight, skinny as one of their ten-year-olds (at twenty-one, Aziza had already begun to look quite matronly), a bright pink skirt, unmarried and unattached, and saying that she had wandered all the way here to Egypt just to learn a different language. Aziza digested all of this with no comment however, instead deducing that I must find this whole spectacle new and fascinating. Perhaps caught up in the sudden discovery of her novelty in the eyes of this outsider, she grabs my arm.

“Would you like to see the party?”
“Er, yes, is this not the party?” I try not to sound horrifically stupid.
“No, no of course not. This” – she gestures across the seated figures – “is just so we can greet one another.” Was she giggling behind her veil?
“Ah. Well then, yes, of course I want to see the party. I have never been to a Bedouin party before.” I give a disarming smile for both of us.
“You will come with me, in a little while.” She informs rather than offers.

I squeeze her arm and say thank you. Her insertion completed, Aziza turns back into her circle of peers and the little girls close in on us once more. Soon the real reason for the gathering becomes apparent: a foray of men arrives carrying large silver platters of something edible. As far as I can tell, it looks like the rice from the day before. The women have shifted into circles into which the messengers deposit the platters. Sarah and I find ourselves in one in which no platter has yet arrived. Mutterings arise among the women and the eyes on us make me fear that our circle has been somehow singled out for punishment due to inclusion of whiteys. Fortunately, these worries dissipate before breaking into a full-out confrontation when a platter arrives at last. If we had been the cause of its tardiness, this did not discourage the women from insisting that we eat first, faster, and more than everyone else. The contents of the platter could best be described as Bedouin grits: sticky starchy something or other speckled with brown grease. It was quite bland and we weren’t very hungry, but we assured them all that it was delicious. I asked Aziza if she knew how to make it too and she said of course, with no small degree of pride. If the men in ‘Aid’s village had looked amused at our attempts to eat with our hands, the ladies tittered outright. I tell them that it isn’t that strange for us, that there are some American foods that one eats with the hands as well, but there must be something fundamentally wrong with the way I go about it because merry eyes remain fixed upon me for the entirety of the meal. In retrospect, it occurs to me that it must be my insistence upon licking my fingers after each bite that does me in. They seem to just wait til the end, which I suppose makes more sense; my incessant finger-licking must strike them as persnickety and useless. I must observe, however, that they looked pretty funny too, grabbing big handfuls of gritsy goo and stuffing them under those masks. Not a shining moment in Oriental feminine mystique.

After the male messengers returned to clear the platters, Aziza announces that it is time to go. Where? We haven’t a clue, but we get up and follow her, a gaggle of awed little girls on our arms, at our sides, and in our wake. Newcomers appear and ask the same questions, often getting interrupted by our longer-standing fans. The few facts about ourselves that we have provided glimmer around us in a confused game of telephone.

“They are from America.”
“HANna and Sara (yes, an Egyptian name!).”
“No, Anna and Sara.” (I had accidentally given my real name a few times.)
“They live in Egypt.”
“Twenty-four and twenty-five.”
“The bracelet is from her sister. Her sister in America.”
“She has three sisters.”
“No, three brothers!”
“She is married, but no children.”

We trundle thus across the village, looking down as we pass wandering men. I wonder what they think of their daughters’ and sisters’ new charges. It occurs to me that I am unsuited to any of the present categories of female. Although older than Aziza, I probably have more in common with the teenagers. However, due to this perceived peerdom, the teens seemed shyer around us, which left us with the little girls. I alternate between feeling tall and ungainly or skinny and runty, both versions clad in scandalous bright colors.
“Can you dance?” the girls want to know. “Do you prefer Bedouin or Khaliji (from the Gulf) dancing?” Um. My belly-dancing course last year at Union Square seems worlds away. The notion that one would learn to dance by “paying money” to “take lessons” “on the way home from work” would no doubt strike these ladies as absurd. So I just said no. “You have to teach me,” I tell Aziza, whose eyes twinkle out at me in response.

Upon entering a cement-block house, our guides scatter and shed layers of modesty. New ranks of women surround us. Ahlen. Ahlen wa sahlen. We shake hands and ride the current to a back room from which dance music blares.
We crowded into the dance room, which was smaller than my bedroom and populated by at least forty females. A massive boombox surrounded by sticky tapes sat on a dilapidated dresser standing in the corner. Older women line the walls, with an inner ring of seated children demarcating the dance floor. This leaves only enough space for about three girls to dance, but turn-taking appears to be the norm anyway. Those not dancing clap their hands and let loose the occasional ululation. A song ends and an older girl who looks like Aziza only in a tight-fitting gold top and casually slung headscarf, barges from the dance floor through the crowd to man the station, intercepting requests and yelling back commands. Sarah and I plaster ourselves against the back wall, next to the black-veiled, baby-toting mothers, in hopes of establishing our position as observers.

Not to be. “Dance, dance, dance!” plead all of the girls, tugging at our hands. “Ru’si, ru’si, ru’si!” was to become the phrase in Arabic we heard the most often that day, with “Ta‘ibti? Ta‘ibti? Ta‘ibti?” (“Are you tired? Are you tired?” etc.) a close second. Resistance is futile. We allow our waist-height charges to drag us into the ring. The Aziza look-alike, who later turns out to be Aziza without her face scarf and cape (embarrassing . . . but really, how can one tell?), lunges to our rescue and starts laying out the moves. We try to imitate her, but pale in the shadow of her aggressive femininity. Her arms and hands trace suggestive circles around her pulsating shoulders and bosom, her bare feet skip and kick beneath undulating hips, her eyes fix us with a saucy self-possession. All eyes follow our interpretations of this example. I imagine how my skinny, jerky version of this sensual performance must look to them. Were they laughing behind their veils? Were they wondering how two grown women from this rich foreign country had gotten this far without learning to dance? I wonder if they pity us, or take pleasure in their evident superiority in this domain. No matter; if only in the interest of entertainment, our lacking in grace posed no obstacle to the general commitment of our hosts to keep us dancing. The staunch ring of bodies around the dance floor frustrated any attempt to escape. Bolder partiers, mostly the younger girls, begin to take turns challenging us to hip-wiggling duets. Those little vixens-in-training showed no restraint. Their lips fixed in impetuous confidence and their eyes fixed on us, they set their bony hips whipping back and forth with the mechanical speed and intensity of a washing machine. Some have tied scarves around their hand-me-down jeans, or around their t-shirted shoulders. They are hot, and they know it. I shake it back the best I can, to their squeals of delight. We lean into each other and away, alternately grinning and exchanging sultry glances. The older women observe this interaction from the wings. Do they resent our domination (albeit forced) of the dance floor? I shoot them smiles that I hope convey a rueful yet enthusiastic appreciation for their party. Their eyes twinkle back. I think they like us.

I notice a lone boy of about twelve years, dressed, of course, in the same outfit as Sarah, enjoying the proceedings. Seated in a chair at the outskirts of the circle, his eyes devour the spectacle with obvious pleasure. Just as I am beginning to wonder what the cutoff age may be for male inclusion in female gatherings, a furious grandma answers my question. She storms out of nowhere, grabs the errant spectator by the ear and drags him from the room. This punishment does nothing to dilute his impish grin, which pops up moments later at the room’s one tiny window. Apprehended once more: another old woman slams the shutter on him, and the temperature in the room quickly rises. A slight scuffle of window opening and closing ensues. Sarah and I continue our enforced performance. Since the handful of favored songs, each at least seven minutes long and based on the principle of theme-and-variation, has by now begun its second rotation, we have our moves all ready. More specifically, we are ready for Aziza’s moves, which include hefty hip-wallops at choice cadences. After the first few sent us sailing into the human wall, we now slap ‘em right back at ‘er. At last, Aziza declares that it is getting hot and suggests that we take a break. She leads us into another room, where she flops down on the floor and leans against the wall. We do likewise. The room slowly but surely fills with staring girls. Silence reigns.
“Do you wear any makeup?” Aziza studies my face.
“No, not usually . . . I don’t really know how to put it on.”
“I will do your makeup.” She commands a girl to fetch her bag, still considering my naked features with bemused inspiration. Her messenger reappears within moments and the artist sets about her work.
“I am doing the bride’s makeup tonight,” she boasts, fishing out a palette of colors I can sooner picture in a pack of highlighter pens than on a human face. I elect not to voice this observation to Aziza and surrender myself to her vision:
“Mashi, al-fanaana,” I say. “Alright, Miss Artist.” This sarcastic linguistic performance tickles Aziza, who repeats my words under her breath, chuckling. “Mashi, al-fanaana. She actually knows all of these words. How about that . . .” As she continues to murmur about me in the third person, it occurs to me that she likely does regard me as more doll than person, which would explain the shamelessness with which she applied magenta eyeshadow to my lids. She painted my face with decisive strokes, blending the edges with her thumbs. To her credit, the color matched my inappropriate bright pink skirt exactly. I look out of my new magenta eyes at Sarah, who is suppressing laughter. Not so fast, Atwood: Aziza has the same medicine for you. A few expert strokes later, our faces match both my skirt and each other. We thank Aziza and bask in the admiration of our company.
We soon discover that Aziza’s vision extends beyond the makeover.
“Would you like to dress up like a Bedouin girl?”
Small messengers scatter to amass black frocks and Aziza’s firm hands tie us in tight: an over-cape snapped up to our throats and black-knit scarves wrapped first around our heads, then across our noses. I feel like I’ve been gagged. The girls breathe oohs of admiration, or perhaps surprise: wow, just one black scarf and these two weirdos actually look normal! Aziza stands us up against the wall for pictures. We try to pull her in and she reels back.
“Not me, ma‘lesh,” she murmurs. “Mamnoua’ for us, photography. Forbidden.” Ah. We thank our lucky stars that we had not busted out the camera while in the dancing room, unwittingly transforming our companions into sinners with one fell click.
After our photo shoot, Aziza hustles us back onto the dancefloor in our new garb, no doubt eager to show off her handiwork. You’ve got to be kidding, grumbles my sticky, sugar-infused body, already sweltering under the black polyester cloak. But she is not kidding; in we go. The eyes register surprise, and perhaps laughter. I force one little girl to admit that we looked prettier before.

***

“So where would you like to travel, if you traveled?” I seize another quiet moment with Aziza to extract more of the personality behind the cloaked dancer.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t really work like that here.”
“Yes, it’s very different. Hard for me to understand.”
“Here, you see, women don’t travel by themselves. Once you get married, you stay in the house and you are in charge of your house. The man brings the money. This is how it has always worked here.”
“There are some families like that in America too.”

Other women begin piping up with questions for us. How long have our people been in America? What is our heritage? Is it cold in America? How cold? I fear my enthusiasm may have clouded the clarity of my answers, but my audience did not seem to mind. They hold on to my every word, then whisper amongst themselves. Aziza takes particular delight in our performance, and from time to time murmurs under her breath, “What fun . . . this makes me happy, talking to these girls.” I squeeze her arm, then offer her two of my small beaded bracelets that she had been admiring. Her joy soon transitions into speculation, and she voices her even greater appreciation for my earrings. I manage to escape with them, especially since we have to leave the farah rather suddenly. Mohammad appears out of nowhere and says yella. He wants to take us to another wedding, his aunt’s, where the dancing and name-memorizing and fending off of single sons and brothers would (and did) begin afresh, where we can allow swarms of new women to coo over us and little girls to wrap our faces in various forms of coverings, shrieking with glee (all convinced that we looked much more beautiful that way), where we can try to avoid more sugary tea . . . Sarah looks a bit cross-eyed at this prospect and I feel woozy, but there is nothing for it. We try to infuse our now hurried good-bye to Aziza with compensatory affection, promising to come back later that night if at all possible.

“You won’t come back.” Aziza has already turned away from us and corrects us in a flat voice. “You won’t ever come back. You will stay there.” Our protests fall on deaf ears and we can do nothing more but follow Mohammad. Aziza does not watch us leave.
Back in the truck, Mohammad resumes his usual flirtation, the separate tents and flocks of black veils all but forgotten. He turns to me with a grin.

"You liked the farah? So when are we getting married?"

I had told him earlier that I would on no account marry him unless he could come up with ten good reasons. And maybe break off his current engagement.

***

After another three hours of dancing, either in intense duos with little girls or in awkward, bird-like mating sequences with Mohammad's unmarried cousins (most of whom looked younger than me), the crowd suddenly mobilizes. Sarah and I find ourselves squashed into one of the many vans promenading through the streets of Saint Catherine in the zaffa. In this part of the wedding ceremony in which all members of the party drive around hooting and hollering and honking their horns in a rhythm three months in Egypt has forever engrained in our heads: "Beeeeeep, Beeeeep, Beep-Beep-Beeeeeep!" Zaffas are in fact so loud that they have made their way into a popular saying: "Zay al-atrash fi az-zaffa" means literally "Like a deaf man in a zaffa" and metaphorically, "one who has no idea what's going on." It occurred to me as we clamored through the serene desert village that the proverb had rather coincidental significance for Sarah and I in that moment. As my head pounds under the eight-hour attack of dance music and squealing little girls, I worry that it might become even more relevant.

The ladies surrounding us ululate in intersecting streams. Since I do not know how to ululate and have no gusto left for the night, I simply compliment the woman next to me on hers. She laughs, denies it, then pauses and thanks me. Perhaps they do not see ululating as a skill at which one can excel. In the back, a pre-adolescent boy leads the troups in a number of chants, some of which involve shouting "Allahu akbar!" As our dilapidated van hurtles through the desert night and the chorus of voices thunders back to his shrill crowing, it occurs to me that the outfit would fit right in on an American newscast or movie about the Middle East. Beware, the terrorists are running amok in the night with their women and children! Little would the apprehensive viewers know that we were in fact just on our way to the third wedding celebration taking place that summer night in Sinai. "Allahu akbar!" I chirp back with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. Man, these people's appetite for partying puts this American girl's to shame. Sorry, Mohammad, even if I wanted to marry you, I don't think I'd have the energy for another one of these to-dos any time soon.

Sinai, Part Three: Biwan

“BiWAN. Bye-wan. Buy one.”

It took a few times before I discerned this command, but now it has become the obligatory refrain in the beach cafes of Dahab, where bedraggled Bedouin girls prowl with plastic bags full of their handmade jewelry amongst reclined tourists, vulnerable in their decadence. If from your sprawl you catch their eye, you’re in for it.
“Hi. Wheroo from? America?”
“Bonjour. See vous play, parley-vous fransay?”
“Buon giorno. Compra un regalo.”
Sarah and I wish we only spoke Estonian. We wave them away: “La. Khalaas. Khalayna.” Fat chance. Despite the variety of languages in which they can greet you, they seem not to understand “no” in any.
“Come on. Wheroo from? France? Deutsch?” a persistent preteen in a magenta veil hounds us.
“Musr.” I answer with the impudence I feel she deserves. To my dismay, she replies in a bored tone,
“Ahhh, Musr. You are an American who come to Cairo for study Arabic. I know many like this. They all come to Cairo for study and come to Dahab for vacation.”
So much for novelty. Our saleslady has seen it all. I give in and talk to her. Her command of English (perhaps stupidly) astounds me. She speaks with lazy, natural inflection, more self-assured than I may ever be in Arabic. I tell her so.
“Yeah, but I don’t learn English from school. I learn it only from tourists, from you. This the best way for learning languages. Come on, biwan. Buy one.” She leads her younger sidekicks in a chorus of suggestions. “You got sister? Brother? Mother? Buy one for everybody, everyone you know. You got husband? That you husband?” She gestures to a group of Egyptian men sitting nearby and raises her voice. “Tell them to buy you one.” The men glance over, amused. Great. Attention.
“No, no thanks, we don’t want any. We already bought some, look.”
“It’s not fair. Buy more. Where you get that?” the girl grabs my hand and examines the ring given to me by an elderly woman at the farah. “That’s not real gold. It’s no good.” Her companions lean in to sneer at the no-good ring.
“Maybe not, but it was a present.” I smile and take on a matronly tone with the little snot. “When someone gives you a present, you don’t say, ‘That’s not real gold, that’s no good!’ You say ‘thank you.’”
To my consolation, these words resonate with the jewelry critic, who nods sagely. “Yes, when someone gives you a present, you say, ‘thank you.’”

This turns out to be the high point of my interaction with the trio. Their demands abate somewhat, but they refuse to go away. When Sarah tries to repeat her lack of interest in their products, the ringleader clips her off,
“We’re not trying to sell you anything now. We just want to talk. What languages you speak? Fransay, Deutsch?”
Sarah, visibly riled by the cheeky linguist, gives her a haughty response in German. One of the younger girls then pipes up, displaying her capacity in the same tongue:
“Fuck you.”
“What?” Sarah is flabbergasted.
The little girl reiterates the curse with zest, a toothy smirk smeared on her face.
“That is a naughty thing to say! Don’t you go around saying that!”
The Germanophone bracelet-seller looks pleased with herself. I try to change the subject and ask if the girls are sisters.

“No way,” affirms the oldest. “We just do business together. We don’t like each other. I don’t like her, she don’t like me.” She gives one of the other girls a slap for emphasis. Geez. How much of this is just part of the act? The dissonance between the girls’ demure dress and their crass speech and behavior starts to upset me. When I realize that I wish they would just sit in their photographable villages and look cute, I upset myself even more. Finally they go away, the eldest dealing me a last blow by asking if I am pregnant. No, just bloated from all of the stupid potatoes and grits you people eat, I want to hiss, but instead I just lie back on the cushions in the sun and try to forget her. After all, the money that got me here makes me by definition a bigger bitch in their eyes than they could ever be in mine, right? And I have the advantage of chalking their unfriendliness up to their abject misery, so I can’t really stay bitter. Still, I missed the adoration of the girls from the farah. I guess it all just depends on the context in which you meet. Maybe if we had met these girls at a party they would have been just as enchanted with us; but I suspected that little girls raised in Dahab got over any initial fascination with foreigners before they learned to speak under this regimen. We have reached the hyper-developed edge of Sinai tourism; our guidebook had promised that weary travelers could “escape cultural immersion” in Dahab and relax in an Western environment, artificial but well-preened. Indeed, like most endeavors to this effect in Egypt, Dahab’s palm-tree-shaded restaraurants with their obsequious servers and obnoxious dance party music have succeeded in becoming “more West than the West.”

***

Our second run-in with the Dahab Souvenir Force gets off on a better foot, since Sarah resolves to buy something.
“BiWAN. Biwan. Hello. Look, pretty.”

I shoo them away, but Sarah looks both of the itinerant salesladies in the eye and tells them in Arabic, “Mashi, I am going to buy one. One. Not more. Wahid wa bas, khalaas.”
“Mashi, but look how pretty, don’t you have sister? A mother? A husband?” the two little girls give me up for dead and surround Sarah with sparkling beads in five seconds flat. “Bussi, helwa. Mish helwa? Bussi bussi . . .” The little girls are younger than those from the previous day and more willing to abandon their harsh English speeches to entreat us in their own language. I lean in to help Sarah decide and we echo them, yes, helwa owwie, ooo. The girls get our names, which we have now learned provide them with a potent weapon: they understand and manipulate the increased difficulty one has in refusing someone who calls him by name. One feels almost robbed hearing one’s name whisked off by those little voices: “Sara, Sara, my friend . . .” Their names: Nadia, the elder and more garrulous; Selwa, her younger and longer-haired companion. While Nadia focuses on Sarah’s progress with her wares, Selwa makes repeated efforts to induce me to join the buying frenzy. I resist. After forced wearings of the bag’s entire contents and much deliberation, Sarah selects a red beaded necklace and a bracelet. The girls award her the right to select one gift for her pains. It seems the Bedouin system always operates on a “buy one, get one free” system.

Sort of. After Sarah chooses her present, the givers inform her that she now owes them a present. While she flounders in her bag for an expendable item, I come to the rescue with a known winner: my mechanical pencil. The girls pounce upon it with avid fascination. I manage to wrest it away long enough to show them how to press the eraser to make the lead come out, a miraculous act that both girls repeat with fierce concentration. I suspect that in their care my pencil will not be long for this world, but a present’s a present. Sarah at last comes up with a gift suitable for the girls: her Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Pocket Phrasebook. However, she lays out some conditions first. She opens up the book to the English-Arabic glossary in the back and points.

“Can you read this?” she asks. “If you can read it, I will give it to you.”
I see Sarah’s logic; although I imagine she did not really want to part with it, she had concluded that its potential benefit for the girls in their sales exploits made it an ideal offering; that is, if they could read it. However, that Sarah dared to suppose that Nadia and Selwa might renounce their right to the shiny little book based on such a trifle struck me as absurd. They snatch the book away and start flapping through the pages with a recklessness that makes me wonder if they have even handled a book before. I decide that beyond all reasonable doubt the girls cannot read any Roman characters, but it matters little; the book entertains them as an object and there will certainly be no taking it away from them now.
Sarah continues to press them: “Can you read this?”
Nadia flinches. “Yes . . .” She draws her finger over the words, but remains silent.

Selwa, still wrestling with the mechanical pencil, announces, “Watch, I can write Mohammad.” She flips savagely through the book looking for an open space. Sarah opens her mouth to protest but we see that it is too late. Selwa flattens the book open and bears down so hard on the pencil that the lead keeps collapsing back into its tube. But she writes it: Mo-ha-med, in shaky, squarish Arabic script. She sits back on her heels to admire her handiwork, and appears satisfied that she has proved her literacy as far as any reasonable person could require. I praise her penmanship. Sarah, indulging a rare mood of linguistic pedagogy, writes their names in the back of the book in both English and Arabic, then makes them a chart of the English and Arabic numerals. Nadia and Selwa snatch the book back and forth and quarrel over who would take it. They too wandered Dahab together only on business; the end of the day meant dividing up the booty, both cash and presents. Our begging them to share has no effect.

“She lives over there, I live over there,” explains Nadia, pointing in vaguely different directions.
“You can go to each other’s houses,” I suggest.
Nadia pouts and turns to Sarah. “You don’t have another one like it?”
Then the girls come to a solution: since the truly precious part of the book in their eyes seems to be the page with Sarah’s number chart on it, Nadia sets about trying to reproduce it on the next page. After completing her jumbled version, she begins to tear it out.

“Nonono!” Sarah cries, her ownership of the book still too recent to witness its destruction without protest. The girls do not seem to heed her distress, but rather grow restless with the book’s strong binding and give up the task. Selwa satisfies herself with removing the plastic cover instead. Bedouins seem to have a very hands-on approach to everything. I try not to think of it as animal-like; they are very little girls. At last they deem the transaction complete and traipse away, after encouraging us to reflect on other possessions we might consider gifting. Sarah and I realize later that we had engaged in another inadvertent “Orientalist moment:” white man gives savages tool to worldy success, a primitive English primer. Oops. Heh heh. We lean back and exhale. We were just trying to play along. So much for “no cultural immersion in Dahab.” Time for a well-earned nap.


Not so fast: Selwa and Nadia reappear within minutes, perturbed by a piece of pending business: I had given them a present, and they had not offered me one. They spread out their wares once more and the process begins afresh. However, there is no more talk of us buying anything; we have passed that level. Instead, they revert to the dynamic of the girls at the wedding. Nadia curls up next to Sarah and starts playing with her hair. Selwa grabs my finger and ties colored strings onto it to make me a personalized bracelet. She braids with firm, rhythmic jerks, reminiscent of Aziza’s makeup application and Amal’s veil-tying. Her eyes narrow in concentration and her face sets into lines of tan, grey and black. Selwa is eight years old and not a big talker. I study her tiny body, folded in next to mine. Ripped jeans embroidered in gaudy flowers reveal skinny brown knees; her hair ripples in snarls of the same tan and grey of her face over hunched shoulders. I want to give her a compliment, anything to make her smile, but can’t articulate a single one to this solemn, scraggly artisan. I continue to ask her questions instead, which she answers in monosyllables. Then she takes a turn with the interrogation:

“Do you know how to pray?”
Huh? Selwa repeats the question, her eyes still focused on her work.
“Well, yes. Maybe not the same prayers as you, though. You see, I am Christian, so we pray differently.”
This response seems not to register with Selwa.
“No, I mean do you know how to pray. The prayer.” She begins to intone the Muslim fatiha, then tries a different tack. “Do you know the Qur’an?”
I doubt that I “know” the Qur’an in her estimation, so I attempt to remain noncommittal lest I be asked to display my knowledge.
“Um, I have a Qur’an. I have read parts. But it is very hard for me, since it is in Arabic.”
Selwa considers this in silence then declares, “You must learn the Qur’an. It is the word of our God, the merciful and the compassionate.”
“I will try to learn the Qur’an one day,” I promise. “But I think it will take me a long time.” I doubt Selwa captures the extent of this understatement. Not to be detracted, she resumes her original inquiry.
“So do you know how to pray?” In the face of my persistent vagueness, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
“Repeat after me. Bismillah al-rahman al-rahiiiiiiiim.”
I repeat as best I can, although Selwa’s murmured renderings defy syllable discernment. She takes me through line by line, then demands that I repeat the whole prayer back to her. Er. I admit to her that it takes more than one go to train a heathen. Maybe I should write it down?
Nadia interjects in Selwa’s missionary project from time to time from her perch behind Sarah. Without pausing in her braiding, she warns her younger mate of various practices that their home-training in Islam has revealed as haraam, such as writing down prayers for foreigners. I do not catch everything, but gather that God has a bone to pick with foreigners, especially those who speak English.

“So you don’t want me to teach you a Christian prayer?”
“Mamnoua‘, forbidden!” Selwa and Nadia reject my offer in unison.
“Fine, I won’t teach you. But it’s a nice prayer. I learned it from my mother, just like you learned yours.”
“But God doesn’t like the foreigners’ prayers. He doesn’t like foreigners.”
“How about you Selwa, do you like foreigners?”
“I like them all right, sometimes. But God doesn’t. Rubbina mabiyhubbahumsh.”
“Does that bother you? Liking them when you know God doesn’t?”
Silence.


Okay, okay, I get it. I wish I could go to the source and hear the religious lessons these girls received from their mothers. It saddens me that the little girls from the farah had probably undergone similar instruction at the hands of theirs. Those friendly ladies who told us we were “so beautiful, zay al-‘asl” must actually have been thinking to themselves, “These floozies may be pretty, but that won’t get them too far with You-Know-Who.” Depressing. I decide at least to achieve some degree of respectability in the eyes of my present company, and commit myself to writing down the prayer for my later ardent study. Selwa dictates a second time. Fortunately, her limited reading skills prevent her from detecting the imprecisions in my rendering. As we finish, a new gaggle of girls descends upon us. They peer over my shoulder at the scribbled prayer, still twittering “biwan biwan,” but distracted by the obvious rapport between their mates and these generous foreigners. Selwa and Nadia show off their gifts; protests and demands abound. Sarah and I extract ourselves from the imminent brawl with verbal and physical difficulty. I feel bemused but a bit shaken by my encounter with the bracelet-seller-turned-missionary. After all, if Selwa had succeeded in giving me the gift of Islam, how could I have repaid her? On second thought, I’m betting that in a pinch Selwa would gladly accept a few more mechanical pencils in exchange for her soul-saving. When someone gives you a present, you say “thank you.”

Standing in Line

I dodge parked and moving traffic and sidewalk-sitters, and squint through the noonday sun in an attempt to distinguish the line in front of Shuruq from the surrounding crowds of men. Damn. I am in for it.

My use of the term “line” here is meant in bitter jest, of course. There is never a “line” at Shuruq, or any establishment of its kind. Instead, the patrons heave themselves into a squirming mass of limbs, pressing against the counter and waving pounds in the faces of the adroit but constantly swamped sandwich artists, shouting “Mohammad! Mohammad (the Egyptian equivalent of “Hey you!”)!” Only the most aggressive and persistent will receive sandwiches. Knowledge of this requirement brings out the most aggressive and persistent in all of the patrons; having shuffled off the coil of manners and personal space, each clambers over the others as if groping for the one lifesaver tossed to a score of men overboard. The workers intercept their cries for help in the order they overhear them, and sandwich descriptions echo down the line: “Wahid ta‘amiyya, itnayn ful bi bid! Talat ta‘amiyya wahid baba!” For a girl with clear notions about what she wants and doesn’t want in her sandwich, this raucous telephone system poses a formidable challenge. I have taken to repeating the words to myself on the way, in hopes of pronouncing them with confidence and clarity at the crucial moment: “Wahid sandwich ta‘amiyya bi baba ghanou wi salata. Wahid sandwich ta‘amiyya bi baba ghanou wi salata.” Of course, the overwhelming pressure of the described context usually trips me up and I botch it, or they misunderstand and give me two sandwiches, one with ta‘amiyya and one with baba ghanoush. In short, you have to really want that sandwich to brave Shuruq. And if you succeed, your efforts are rewarded with a delicious pouch wrapped in a piece of scratch paper (often still with names and dates scribbled on it), costing you between half and one Egyptian pound or about fifteen cents. It is worth it. I live on those things.

Still, usually I go to Shuruq with Aaron and let him brave the mosh pit. He has the advantage, besides being male, of standing at least a head taller than most Egyptians, which enables him to stretch his handful of guineas right to the source even from the margins. But this time I face the trial alone, and begin to doubt immediately that I will be able to acquire a sandwich. I do not want to crush my body in there the way they are doing because that would be haraam. The unusual presence of a foreign woman at such close range has already attracted its due attention. Like a row of dominoes, heads swivel, abandoning momentarily their mission to catch the eye of the foremost sandwich-maker in order to ogle me. One submits me to such a flagrant mental undressing that I ball up my fist and almost say something unpleasant, but then realize that the ranks have closed in behind me and there is no telling how long we will have to remain in this proximity. If I make a scene, chances are at least some of the men will take my side; but it would push my much-needed sandwich even farther into the uncertain future as the current brawl transformed into a different kind of brawl. “Wel-cohm in Eeegypt,” the creep purrs with a big smile. I press my lips together and look at the ground. Asshole. Stop staring at me. I can’t keep averting my eyes forever or I will not get a sandwich.

Fortunately, my faithful patronage of Shuruq has not been for nothing. One of the employees picks me out of the crowd (not that doing so can have been very difficult) and catches my eye. “‘Ayyiza eh?” he calls through the din. I muster my assertiveness.
“Wahid sandwich ta‘amiyya bi baba ghanou wi salata.”
“Wahid sandwich ta‘amiyya bi baba ghanou wi salata.” He repeats it back to me, then shouts it behind him and turns to the next customer. Now comes the faith-based part of the process, in which you trust that somewhere amidst the relentless contrapuntal litany of orders, yours has lodged in the mental list of at least one of the employees, who will eventually reach it through his unobvious logic and make it like he always done. I wait. The men ogle. The sun bears down. The boy who originally took my order tells me “Da’i’a wahida,” which translates literally as “one minute” and pragmatically as “uh oh, still have to deal with that girl.” I force a smile and stretch a guinea to him through the bodies.

I wonder if the workers ever get afraid back there; after all, the entire enterprise takes place within the confines of a hallway-shaped room full of steaming pots and pans. What if the counter gave way and unleashed the seething heap of men upon them? I can picture it now: the tumble of bodies against the makeshift countertop sends platters of shakshouka and baba ghanoush splatting onto the floor and the fallen, that fat guy in front of me will whack the formidable steel vat of ful (an Egyptian specialty: a paste of fava beans cooked to a mud-like consistency in huge, jug-like pots) on his way down and knock it askew, thus overturning its steaming, muddy contents into the fray. Someone’s cigarette, flicked free of its consumer, will land in the bag of papers attached to the wall and catch flame. “Allaallallalllah!” the writhing victims of poor organization will shout, shoving to break free of the cess pool of ful. That’ll teach ‘em to stand in a line, eh? However, imagining this scene does not bring me the hoped-for vindicitive diversion, as I realize that in fact it does not constitute such a far cry from reality. So why don’t I just go to one of the many establishments on the block adjacent to the American University that cater to Westerners? Western environments seem to inspire Western behavior, and so far Aaron’s hypothesis that the presence of a cash register inspires line-formation has held true. Not only do the customers stand in lines, but also they belong to both genders, and eat pretty salads and sandwiches on plates delivered by obsequious waiters who are happy to beguile you with the few phrases they imagine are English. So what if it costs thirty times as much? Had I not just concluded that week that the best way not to get angry over inexorable cultural differences is to avoid the situation altogether? To this effect I have even started wearing headphones in all public places, a practice I have always ridiculed, simply to drown out the constant hissing of my uncouth admirers. You invest in your sanity.

At last my sandwich appears at the end of a disembodied hand reaching through the tangle. I grab it, seized with the instinctual fear that one of these fellow feeders might get it first, and disentangle myself. The package feels heavy. I open it and sure enough, there are two sandwiches. I do not scream on the outside, but register the unladylike observation, “You’d think after all that they could get my FUCKING order right, those CRAZY, OBNOXIOUS, DISRESPECTFUL....” and so on. I slump into a chair, resigned to eating the separated contents of the sandwich I had ordered. I peek into the first one. Ta‘amiyya and baba ghanous. I peek into the second. The same. “Mohammad” had not messed up. Mohammad had given me two sandwiches just to be nice. He felt sorry for me. He empathized with me, an American girl in a too-short skirt, carrying her laptop and asking for an abnormal sandwich in the hostile and homogeneous territory of working-class Egyptian men. I taste my remorse in every bite.

Sinai, Part One: Cowboys of the East

“Wait, I think that’s my camel,” Faraj interrupts himself, breaking off mid-tirade and pulling over into the gravel. He squints out the car window at a group of unmarked dromedaries ambling across the plain. I wonder both how he can tell his camel from the others and what his own personal camel might be up to erring twenty miles away from its owner’s workplace.
“That’s him all right.” Faraj confirms. “But he’s on vacation,” he answers my question before I ask it. “Camels need at least three months off every year, or they go crazy.” He takes another look at his vacationing camel, then squeals back onto the blacktop.

I had arranged with Faraj the night before to set Sarah and I up with a desert safari. As usual, the Mohammad had not needed to go to the mountain: Faraj had appeared at my side unbidden, no doubt tipped off by the grapevine go-ahead. “I hear you want to take a desert trek. Where do you want to go? Here, come show me on the map.” As I traced vague trajectories, he set me straight: “Look, I have twenty-five years of experience in this desert. You can go by what you have in your book there, but they don’t know everything. Just leave it up to me, I will make sure you see the most beautiful parts of this desert.” Faraj was not the first local to try to take our plans in hand. But he had a presence that demanded respect. Rather than the slight, often reclining frame possessed by his fellow Bedouins, Faraj had the build of a northern woodsman. He stood half a foot taller and had chest and arms twice the circumference of the mean, and the bristling black beard and sideburns that wreathed his jaw gave his face a more rugged air than the traditional Bedouin moustache. In place of the usual periwinkle headscarf, he wore a black-and-white checked scarf slung around his neck, revealing a curly black mullet. To my amusement and comfort, I found both mullet and scarf reminiscent of my own rural countrymen. Faraj, Cowboy of the Wild Wild East. Best of all, Faraj spoke clear, easy-going Arabic, his Bedouin accent closer to fusshah than the Cairene dialect. And to my delight, he addressed me as an equal, never doubting that I understood. This was a welcome anomaly in the tourism industry, where adherence to the lingua franca of broken but persistent English overrides most attempts to speak the local tongue. Faraj was chill. Faraj was cool. I liked Faraj. So I agreed. But the next morning brought to light that in fact all of Faraj’s Jeeps were either in use or out of order, so he offered to place us in the care of a friend (a network that ten minutes’ stop-driving through St. Catherine proved to include the majority of Sinai’s population). We were to connect with this friend at a meeting point of undisclosed nature about fifty kilometers away. After a quick grocery trip in town in which Faraj selected and bagged our every need with expert nonchalance, we hit the desert highway.

***

Faraj settles back into his regular cruising speed at 160 kph and expounds upon his knowledge of camel psychology. “It’s true you know,” he continues with mounting emotion. “Camels need three months of vacation per year. I know. I’ve had a camel go crazy on me before. It happens quickly, from one day to the next. The camel snaps, then he’s ruined forever. Khalaas. It’s a sad thing, a crazy camel.”

I did not doubt Faraj’s sincerity on this point, but I also gathered after a few moments’ conversation that he took great pleasure in deeming things and people “crazy.” Perhaps he just likes to say crazy: “Majnoooooon!” “Majnooneeeeen, kullUhum!” (Crazy! Crazy, all of them!) He soon extended his three-month break requirement to all things that work, even cars: “If we gave our cars three months of vacation a year, they wouldn’t break so easily! They would last for years, like people!” We didn’t say so at the time, but the way Faraj drove his might well drive it majnoon in the near future. Faraj moved on to claim that all people living in cities were also majnooneen, since they never took any vacation. By his estimation, living in a city was tantamount to loss of human nature. He declared himself incapable of bearing more than three days of oppressive city life at one time.

“Here in Sinai, we don’t need any of that. We need the desert, the wind, the sun, each other, that’s it. I grew up in a village you can only climb to by camel, there’s no road. I used to come down only when I had to. But now they’re trying to control our land too . . .” I began to recognize the tirade as Faraj’s speech genre of choice. He moved the eye of his verbal storm from topic to topic, each villain some threat to the freedom of the Bedouin people. He held the Egyptian police in particular contempt.

“It’s majnoon, all of these checkpoints fencing off our land, all of these majnooneen who treat us like criminals as if they had some greater right to be here. Idiots, all of them! They have no respect for this land or for the Bedouins. I hate talking to them. Before I say anything they already act like I’ve done something wrong.”
By this point I have discovered the rewarding practice of one-upping each of Faraj’s outbursts, which never failed to draw his booming repetition and agreement. I throw out a goodie:
“They’re the criminals! But they’re official criminals, paid off to carry out the government’s crimes.”
“Exactly! Official criminals spreading the government’s corruption! Suddenly their word is law, the majnooneen!”
“Corruption always comes from the top! What can we do about it?”
“Exactly! From the top! Bizzzubt, we can do nothing.” And so on. Between the two of us we could have led a good anarchy rally.

Faraj manages to contain his rank hatred when conversing with the majnooneen at the three checkpoints deemed necessary for the tiny village of St. Catherine. He rolls down the window dutifully to the posse of white-uniformed goons staffing each one and answers their numerous questions with terse self-assurance. His condemnations resume seconds after each exchange.
Once on the highway, Faraj began to alternate between demagogy and pedagogy, pointing out features of the Sinai desert. After a few minutes I could distinguish the two principal plants of the Sinai: the siyyal (acacia tree) raatam (a bush with fern-like upward thrust branches. I asked if the washes of shining black rock came from extinct volcanoes.

“No, from water,” he informs me. “All of this used to be covered with water. You know, back in Noah’s time. You know the Prophet Noah, right? Just kidding. No but really, it was covered with water.” I sense that his long experience giving desert tours has precipitated a wealth of half-true myths with which to entertain his charges. Noah? Why not. I did see definite remains of rivers and rivulets in the now hard and broiling rock. Our guide that afternoon would also make constant reference to the Sinai desert’s watery past, to which it owed its rich plant life. I jot everything down in my travel journal, and try not to feel self-conscious about the likelihood that Faraj’s former students engaged in the same activity. I wonder if he has constant déjà-vu. I wonder if all travelers, no matter how engaged and inquisitive they try to be, now appear the same to him: rich, self-indulgent seekers of the Other, no doubt brought on by city-life-induced craziness. Unsatisfied with our own lives, we rely on foreign, ostensibly more “authentic” experiences elsewhere in order to accomplish such vague and self-centered goals as “broadening our horizons” or “seeing how the other half lives.” For one so committed to the preservation of the elements and simplicity in one’s life, such an endeavor must appear pretentious at best, prying at worst.

If the monotony of my company bothered Faraj, he seemed to have his method of dealing with it. He begins to rant about the evils of introducing foreign plant life to the Sinai. I relax back into my conversational role, I too resigned to revert to method rather than attempt to make full sense of my relation to Faraj in that moment. Our mutually supportive call-and-response harangue had begun to gather steam when he took an abrupt turn down a sand path and ground to a halt in front of a small assemblage of tents and cinder-block houses. I felt a pang of consternation at the imminent change of society. I had grown used to Faraj. Faraj was my teacher and my friend. I buck up and face our greeting squad, a herd of children already peering in the car window, the bolder ones saying “haylo, haylo.” Faraj sweeps us past them into a half-tent, half-hut where an older Bedouin man stokes a fire. He rises and greets us, then shows Sarah and me to a mattress against the wall where we were to sit and consume tea as fast as they served it to us. Beyond this development, no further move is apparent. We sip and try to make out the information that Faraj and the man are exchanging. They speak in low and hurried tones, and I can only discern the words “Jeep,” “sahara” and “farah,” the word for wedding party. Faraj must be passing on news of the farah the next day. He had told us about it too, and said he would make sure we got to go to part of it. The party apparently started that night, and would continue all the next day. What else passed between the two men I could not decipher. I try to stay alert in case anyone addresses me.

Soon our role in the social gathering becomes clear. A little girl appears and begins laying out an assortment of scarves and jewelry. Her mother hovers near the doorway, presiding over the transaction from afar. The girl turns to her when we ask to lower the inflated prices. When she refuses, Faraj sticks up for us. “They aren’t tourists,” he murmurs. “They live here. They study Arabic.” I smile at the woman, attempting to assess her reaction to this disclosure. This is difficult to do beneath the black veil covering all but her eyes, which are sizing me up a second time. It occurs to me that contrary to what I might like to believe, my cultural engagement represents no good news to her. She would no doubt prefer a million times an indifferent foreigner, fresh off the plane and ready to spend money, over a kid wearing a Bedouin scarf the wrong way and eking out “salaam ‘aleykum.” Gag me, she must be saying behind her curtain. Just buy something and go away. We do buy something, although at close to half the original asking price, and think we have fulfilled our duty when two new families arrive with identical wares and begin hurriedly spreading them around us. It is disgusting of me to say, but the whole encounter resembles a kind of feeding frenzy: we are the carcass thrown among hungry animals, with only enough meat on us to feed the fastest and cleverest. The latecomers must have received a silent dismissal from Faraj or the man at the fire, because they slink off without a word. The few lingering children receive a harsh reprimand from the fire-stoker and scatter. I hope we have not sown seeds of bitterness among the village families. Perhaps they can share the forty-two Egyptian pounds we contributed to their cause? I have no idea whether Bedouin villages operate on a communal system or not.

The women and children’s role in the “welcome” concluded, men of all ages begin to gather around the fire. All wear identical white ankle-length tunics and periwinkle headscarves (one of which Sarah had just purchased). Each sneaks looks at us and returns our salaams, some showing more entertainment than others at our command of Arabic. We lean against our wall and wait, feeling conspicuously white and female. Eventually a platter of rice with a small pile of salad (tomatoes and cucumbers) in the center appears and the men flock around it.
“Come, come eat,” they urge us, leaving at least half the circle open for us to occupy. They dig in, balling up the sticky rice with their fingers. We follow suit, which incites a low ripple of laughter. A boy appears with two spoons, but we refuse.

“We can eat as you do,” I insisted. But we must not have been doing it right, or the sight of foreign girls eating with their hands cracked them up because the chuckles continue throughout the eating occasion. The rice is delicious. We say so many times.
Then, yella, says Faraj. This is ‘Aid. He introduces us, we think at random, to a young man crouched by the fire. Um, ahlen, we say. He nods, barely looking at us. Okay. Faraj loads our belongings and all other desert-trekking equipment into the back of a pickup truck and then gestures to the front seat. ‘Aid reappears and slides behind the wheel. Ah. Somehow I had thought that Faraj was to be our right-hand man and guardian throughout the expedition. I guess I don’t understand Arabic as well as I thought I did. Sarah and I look a bit dubiously at the cramped front seat, but of course have no choice. We cram in. My years of yoga come in handy as I eke out a way not to straddle the gearshift or sit in anyone’s lap.

***

‘Aid is a whole different animal from the garrulous Faraj. He speaks only when spoken to, and gives brief, simple answers. I make scattered attempts to engage him in these halting conversations, but focus the majority of my attention on devouring our surroundings with my eyes. The Sinai desert changes colors every few minutes; other-worldly rock formations surge from the sand, acacia trees twist upward at their feet. We had left ‘Aid’s village, Arda, around noon and shadows were scarce. About three minutes off the blacktop, our truck gets stuck in the sand. ‘Aid spins the wheels furiously and refuses our offers to get out and push. His solo efforts finally succeed after a few uncomfortable minutes of rocking back and forth in our rut. We praise his technique and brace ourselves against future employments of it.

After a twenty or thirty-minute drive through sandy passes and spiky mountains, ‘Aid grinds to a halt in the shade of a large rock and announces a break. A break already? Well, I guess we kind of are already in the thick of it. He pulls out mattresses from the back of the truck and proposes tea, which we decline. He shrugs, then plops down and lights a cigarette. Unsure of what should be done on such a break, we wander around the rock a couple of times, then follow his example and sit in the shade. Silence roars. Sarah, as is her default, hunkers down for a little shuteye. She stretches out with her new Bedouin scarf over her face to protect it from the flies. I take out my notebook and draw. As I sketch the rock formations in front of us, I wonder as I had with Faraj if we are typical or anomalous charges for ‘Aid. Was he used to tourists who ignored him and talked to each other? Or who made more efforts to talk to him? Clearly, he barely spoke English, so if he had had friendly experiences with tourists they would have to have been Arabic-speaking, maybe other students like us. I wanted to be a unique person for ‘Aid. I did not want him to look at me as yet another installment in his monotonous professional life. Although, all things being equal, taking forays into the desert he loves does not seem like a job that one should complain about. Not that ‘Aid was complaining; if anything, he looked pretty content stretched out on his mattress with a cigarette. But he seemed much more interested in playing with his fancy cellphone than in talking to us. After a quarter hour’s pause at least (all of these time estimations suffer from the utter impossibility of quantifying time’s passage in the desert), he speaks for the first time, and reveals the actual purpose of the stop: for us to climb the dune in front of us and take pictures. At our leisure, he stressed. The sun is still high in the sky, so you may want to wait. I wonder how long he reckons we would have to wait before any real change in the position of the sun took place. I decide not to find out and announce that we will go right away. We wave to him from the top as planned and he drives around to the other side to meet us. The sun burns my feet so badly on the way down that I start screaming. I stop abruptly as my arrival at the bottom of the dune reassures my (if altered) survival, but my heart continues to beat at irregular speed as we drive away. I try in vain to shake the scalding sand out of the holes in my sandals.

Our next stop is a well, consisting in a plank-covered hole in a stone with a bucket next to it.
“Come, we are going to clean off,” ‘Aid explains. We follow him and stand on the rock as he sends the bucket down on its rope. As he pulls it back up, he beckons to us to come closer. He dumps the first bucketfull over our scorched feet. Heaven. We sigh with relief and exclaim over and over again how beautiful water is. It works out, actually: the primal nature of our experiences suits our primitive capacity of expression. He draws up bucket after bucket and empties them over our sandy legs and hands, and at last gestures for us to bow our heads and douses the sweaty napes of our necks. We gasp with pleasure and surprise at the cold, and ‘Aid smiles perhaps for the first time. Our wet faces glisten in the sun, our laughter tinkles in the silence and for a moment I can imagine that we are a band of naughty preteens escaped down to a nearby lake for some aquatic flirting. I offer to do him the same favor, but he declines; we stand by while he rinses the same body parts in the same order, then fills up a few empty bottles to use for cooking later. He refuses all help.

As the day continues, I grow more and more determined to reach ‘Aid in some way. He only addresses us by suggesting that we stop to take a picture whenever we declare something beautiful (about every forty-five seconds). “Tsawwarou? Tswawwar?” At first I always decline, in hopes of refuting his apparent belief that our kind regard the world as one big, personalized photo-op. But eventually I give up and agree to let him stop, thus precipitating the play-by-play photo coverage Sarah and I now possess of our day in the desert. Let him think we’re like everyone else, I admonish my smarting pride. And be honest with yourself: you did not come to the Sinai to convince the Bedouin people that not all tourists are the same. You came to take pictures, if in a somewhat figurative sense. Let it go. ‘Aid does not care if you are a typical tourist; ‘Aid is glad you are a typical tourist. So you should not care either.

'Aid

***

That said, I daresay ‘Aid started to warm up to us after awhile. As the sun droops lower and the temperature cools, the desert appears to catch fire, glowing red and orange. This evidence of passing time grants our outing an unspoken resemblance to a roadtrip between friends, and Sarah and I begin to take turns singing our favorite tunes. The guarded distance preserved between us by his silence paradoxically stanched any bashfulness that might otherwise have prevented our adhoc performance in front of a strange man. If he intended to treat us as anonymous picture-taking weirdos from another planet, we may as well seize the opportunity to act as goofy as we pleased. After belting a few selections from Ani DiFranco and co., I turn to ‘Aid and ask him to sing something for us. He hesitates, our freedom from bashfulness apparently not having reached him yet.
“Come on,” I encourage him. “Sing. Anything. Do you know how to sing?”
That does the trick. “Of course,” he scoffs, and clears his throat to prove it. He reflects for a moment, and then begins to croon in a low, wavering voice. I repeat “Allaaah, allah,” at what I hope are appropriate cadences as I have heard done in other Arab musical performances. Encouraged, ‘Aid begins to warm up and settles into a more driving melody. Sarah and I clap our hands and he joins us when the terrain allows. Once I capture the melody I oodle along in a mixture of nonsense syllables. We trundle along, our voices bouncing and rattling to the rhythm of the road. The next time we get stuck, ‘Aid lets us get out to push. I guess that privilege only comes with the extension of trust (or with the relinquishing of pride).

This surrender to team spirit does not extend much further however; ‘Aid remains loath to allow our participation in the remainder of the night’s preparations. We thus dawdle about as ‘Aid collects dry wood for the fire, and later as he sets up camp, which in fact consisted of little more than the fire, surrounded with our mattresses and boxes of food supplies. ‘Aid squats and busies himself first with the fire-building, then with the making of yet another round of tea, then with vegetable slicing, then with cooking them. Feeling useless, I insist upon making the accompanying salad. Unfortunately, by this time the sun has gone down and I discover that I possess little talent for slicing tomatoes without a cutting board in the dark. ‘Aid watches my progress, his face expressionless. Wow, I could not possibly be a more annoying charge. I take as long to cut the tomatoes as he took to prepare the entire main dish, and manage to squash most of them in the process. He makes no comment, but I imagine that he secretly feels that he has taught me a lesson about imposing my involvement in the domain of his expertise. We eat in silence, but for our repeated compliments and his occasional encouragements for us to prove our appreciation by eating more.

The fire dwindles and the stars emerge in dizzying force, more than I have ever seen at once.
“Look, look at the stars,” ‘Aid urges us, the intensity of his voice suggesting that in the desert “looking at the stars” becomes an activity requiring greater concentration than we cityfolk were used to expending. We stare into the depths and silence creeps closer. Before I let it cover us for sleep however, I press ‘Aid with more questions. By this time, he has a sense of my linguistic appetite and has started offering bits of Bedouin vocabulary unbidden. But I have some deeper inquiries.

“Is it strange for you spending so much of your time with foreigners?”
‘Aid does not understand the question. After a few more attempts, he answers with his usual vague nonchalance,
“No, of course not. This is my work, I have done this for years. Sometimes I take tourists on long trips, a few weeks. It is normal for us.”
“But doesn’t it get boring for you, spending time with people who can’t speak Arabic very well?”
“Many tourists here speak Arabic, many of them are Arabs.”
“And you, if you could travel, where would you want to go?”
“I can’t travel, I don’t have the money. I would go to Saudi Arabia . . . Jordan . . . But I don’t have the money, I’ll never have it.” As usual, I am sorry I asked but am still interested by the answer. You can see Saudi Arabia from the coast of the Sinai, and ‘Aid can’t imagine having enough money to go there. I explain hurriedly that we would never have the money to travel either if the government did not give scholarships to people who study Arabic. Yeah right, he’s probably thinking, and he is right. Who am I to claim that we aren’t rich, as Sarah lies there with her iPod and I trill along about how much I love traveling. We are rich. We are paying ‘Aid enough for trucking us around and taking pictures of us for him to feed his entire village, an amount we might just as soon have spent on a night out in East Village, New York. I decide to shift the focus of our discussion from my implied riches.

“How is the tourist industry these days? Do you have a lot of work?”
“Enough, but not as much as we used to have . . . It comes and goes. But the best time for us was when the Jews were here.”
I hope that ‘Aid does not notice the thought-bubble full of question marks and various other keyboard symbols that pops up over my head. I try to suppress the astonishment from my voice.
“You mean . . . during the Israeli occupation of Sinai? You mean, that was actually a better time for you?”
“Of course, much better. There were many more tourists, from Israel and from everywhere. We always had work. And we were freer. The Jews just left us alone, and left the desert alone.”
After two months of putting up with Cairene Jew bashing, I wished Aaron could be there to hear this glowing report of his people. Perhaps I read into his words too much, but it sounded to me as if 'Aid regarded the Jews simply as another tribe, not a malevolent world power. After all, the Bedouins in theory recognize no nation-states, be they on contested territory or no. I do not press ‘Aid further on the subject however, by now understanding that ‘Aid really only has a couple of sentences worth to say about anything, at least to us. I lie back and follow the original instructions of our tour guide. Brighter stars twinkle in and around the gauzy white scarf of the Milky Way, the occasional meteor blinking on and off. I begin to hum, and when I stop ‘Aid takes over, his thin voice wavering above the crackling embers. I hum along with him until I tapers off and offers to show me the original version of the song on his cell phone. Sarah and I take turns admiring the handheld video of a Saudi singer, surrounded by female dancers in full “khaliji (“Gulfie”)” step, which as far as I can tell involves a lot of swinging one’s hair from shoulder to shoulder. I keep forgetting that although technically we are still in Egypt, these people have much more in common with the Arabs of the Gulf: their dialect, their tribal traditions, their dress. And in direct contrast to the insistent nationalism trumpeted by Cairo taxi drivers, the Bedouins rarely mentioned Egypt at all. When they did, they often seemed to equate “Egypt” with “Cairo,” as indeed many Egyptians do, which from the Bedouin point of view was in no way a compliment.

We drifted off to sleep to the sound of ‘Aid playing with the different ring tones on his phone. At least that is one pastime in which both Bedouins and Egyptians seem to take equal pleasure.

***

On the way back the next morning I run the topic of Israeli occupation past Faraj. What was the period of Israeli control like for you and your family? Better or worse?
“Far better,” he replies without hesitation. “With the Israelis in charge, we didn’t have any of these checkpoints. They left us alone. They let us rule ourselves. We didn’t even have paved roads like this then. See this road we’re on? It wasn’t there. We traveled by camel.” I empathized with Faraj, but thought to myself that he seemed to take a certain degree of pleasure in the speeds at which Sinai’s new highways allowed him to travel. I asked whether and how the Israelis had stationed governors or other officials throughout Sinai.
“Oh, almost none,” he furrowed his brow. “A few. Maybe five hundred policemen per thousand villagers instead of five thousand. Ha ha! Five thousand per thousand! Ha ha ha!” Faraj had really cracked himself up. I laugh with him, enjoying the light moment. Faraj, despite his laid-back character, did not laugh often. I can only think of two other times when he really let loose. First, when he at last attempted to include Sarah in the conversation. Unsure whether she too understood Arabic, he started her out with a freebie: he announced to her that the world was small and demanded her concurrence. She replied, in her first demonstration of spoken Arabic, “Maybe, but the plane is expensive.” This unexpected display of irony delighted Faraj. He repeated Sarah’s pessimistic innovation of the maxim many times over, chuckling. The other time occurred when I showed him the sketch I had done of ‘Aid in my little book. He squinted and leaned closer, then burst out in guffaws of recognition: “That’s . . . that’s ‘Aid! Ha ha ho ho ho!” The simple but faithful likeness of his colleague captured in the notebook of a young American tickled him mightily. He glanced back at the drawing a few times, still snickering, until I closed the book to return his attention to the road.

“We have secret roads now to get around the police,” Faraj confesses, pointing to an example on our right. “We have to. We just can’t tolerate crossing them every time. It’s better this way.” I should get some pointers from these guys on building secret roads; I could sure use one from my apartment to school that avoids all loitering men.

My experiences with ‘Aid and Faraj made me think about the possible levels of engagement for the Bedouins in the tourist industry. Somehow, Faraj had come to inhabit a kind of middle ground between tourist and Bedouin, possessing enough chat n’ charm to make our experience comfortable and enough gruff n’ grit to make our experience exotic. I wondered how long it had taken him to reach this level of mastery of this admittedly tricky industry (especially when dealing with snoopy tourists like me). Furthermore, I wondered how he felt about it. Clearly Faraj was a man of strongly held opinions, and I did not doubt for a second that he had one regarding livelihood based on the repeated enactment of pseudo-cultural experiences for foreigners. But is it even fair for me to project my own misgivings about the tourist experience onto the tour-givers? Might they not enjoy it, or at least not hate it? And since our money is providing them with a subsistence permitting for cell phones like ‘Aid’s, they can’t hate us too much either, right? Just because I insist upon torturing myself over the ethical and epistemological issues that tourism raises for me does not mean that they do. ‘Aid and Faraj have probably both forgotten me by now. Well, welcome to the most poetic advantage of affluence: the time and scope to get one’s panties in a knot. I suppose I should take to heart the message of these eastern cowboys: just listen to the silence, look at the stars, breathe the clean air of the sahara and forget the city. Otherwise you might end up as majnoon as an overworked camel.

Spectre of War Turned Spectacle of Nationalism

Built with a grant from North Korea, the dome of the October 1973 War Memorial Panorama looms from behind its surrounding wall, looking like a cross between a futuristic fortress and an ancient mausoleum (now that I put it this way, I wonder if that was intentional, as such an aesthetic marriage encompasses Egypt’s dominant visions of its future and past). Matt and Aaron had apparently set their hearts upon visiting this phenomenon some years ago, and at last a suitable Friday morning came along and we rallied our troops. We supposed that we would most likely have the place to ourselves and thus could monopolize the knowledge – and entertainment – of its employees.

Upon first arrival, it seemed we might be right. We circled its imposing walls under the noonday sun looking for an entrance. Each time we passed an iron-barred window into the Memorial grounds, one of the boys squealed. Mounted warplanes and tanks glistened in the sun, their snouts pointed upward in frozen triumph unfortunately rendered ridiculous by their clearly defunct status. The collection contained the only two Israeli tanks allegedly captured in battle. Matt and Aaron wanted their pictures taken astride those tanks. But when at last we found a staffed peephole, the many employees lounging behind it did not see fit to give us any further instruction or attention than to sling a vague finger in the direction from whence we had come. Okay. For such a ghost-town of an attraction, especially in Egypt, you’d think we would be treated to, if not showered with, a bit more obsequious attention. Not so; we lumbered around the majority of the wall’s circumference before infiltrating, a privilege earned at ten pounds a person, plus two more if we wanted to take pictures.
What photographable sights awaited us indeed: iron-cast war-scenes stretched across the monstrous walls; odd Korean-Egyptian hybrid propaganda posters leered from the shadowed surrounding fences. We bucked at our harnesses, but Ringleader Matt wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss the central spectacle. As it turned out however, we need not have rushed to make the advertised 11:15 showing (what a surprise, I know). “There will be a three-parts show,” one of the many milling employees explained to his anxious, foreign ticket-bearers. “But we will start them when the people come in sha’ allah . . . just wait over in the cafeteria.” When the people come, eh? In sha’ allah. We made our way over to the “cafeteria,” a gazebo in which sitting down meant being laden with unordered snack products for which one was later asked to pay. But sure enough, the people came. Families mostly, but a good number of youthful couples also had made the October 1973 War Memorial their date destination that Friday noon. At last, the operators decided we had reached critical mass and called us over to the first attraction.

We filed into a crummy theater with a dias of battered movie chairs facing a long, narrow curtain that could not possibly cloak a movie screen. Indeed it did not. When the lights dimmed and the curtain parted (aided by a youth whose sole job description may well have been, “Pull the curtain the rest of the way open when the mechanics give out, which they will”), perhaps the most extensive and pathetic diorama we had ever seen spread before us. A replica of a desert battlefield threatened in the dull glow of Christmas-style lights embedded in its papier-mâché dunes and plastic tanks. Our unison snort was not shared by our co-patrons however; they sat in what must have been respectful, perhaps even reverent silence as the ridiculous spectacle unfolded. With some loose correspondence to the deep-voiced commentary, plastic planes and rockets began to lauch across the scene on dental floss trajectories. Strobe lights and fog-machine emulsions accompanied recorded explosions. At moments the overall impression was almost convincing, until about mid-way through when one of the rockets got stuck on its string halfway and remained dangling, red and impotent, above the battlefield. The irony was killing me. However, I discovered at the end that the irony was most likely not seized by the diorama’s operators, nor indeed its visitors. Despite the foreboding toll I apprehended in the all too wilted-looking depiction of the Egyptian offense, the commentary did not recount the end of the war. The narrators rather saw fit to end with Egypt’s epic invasion of occupied Sinai. We assembled in the second decrepit theater, this one boasting industrial strength air-conditioners that blasted the back-row observers (us). Perhaps the fabula continues in Parts Two and Three?

Hardly. Part Two added movie footage to the diorama version of the Sinai invasion but took no step in the war’s chronology. Unable to part entirely with the 3-D theme, the designers had placed the screen in the back of a shadowed stage lined with ominous cloudy murals and containing still more papier-mâché dunes and palm trees. Fifteen minutes of black and white explosions later, we were no closer to the conclusion of the glorious 1973 War. The still-victorious Egyptian guests trooped out in a jolly mood and lined up for the grand finale in a majestic hall featuring mosaics of battle plans and planning battlers, alongside others depicting traditional Pharaonic scenes. The flock of employees did not allow us to linger for long however; they herded us into a winding staircase that could almost be described as lush, with red carpet and little floorlights along the edge of each stair. The masterminds behind this were pulling out all the stops on Part Three. We were in for a treat.
We got our “panorama” all right. The circular room had a vaulted ceiling and seats facing in all directions, all of which stared full into a never-ending ring of life-size illustrated carnage. Almost immediately, the lights dimmed in the house and rose on the mural and our seats began to move. Closer inspection revealed that the “carnage” applied only to Israeli soldiers and encampments; the Egyptians featured in the mural were more likely to be seen holding a flag aloft while leaping from heaps of burning rubble into golden, smoke-schmeared skies. We sat alternately transfixed and beside ourselves as we revolved to new scenes of destruction and glory. It turned out our backrow seats – out of two rows – proved a better position for viewing the full extent of the spectacle: with each new perspective on the painting, the young couples leaped up to pose for portraits, or sent each other to take dramatic single shots. Aaron and I of course did not pass up this photo-op. I hope the other lovebirds did not take offense at our more clownish approach however; they all maintained absolute gravity in the painted presence of their heroic compatriots.


We emerged a bit subdued. Sustained attempts at suppressing our laughter had exhausted what guffaws we might have loosed, so we milled through the hall of mosaics emitting muted “hoo hoo hoos” and snapping pictures. We then embarked on a sweltering tour through the concrete-mounted weaponry, now swarmed with field-trip groups of Egyptian schoolchildren. Nice day for a climb on an evil Israeli tank, isn’t it kiddies? They hopped about and giggled to their hearts’ content, not unlike my twenty-something American male companions. A joyous memory indeed, the October 1973 War, when presented this way! I wondered if the Japanese had built any such war memorials immortalizing abbreviated histories. I wondered if we Americans had any for the Vietnam War. Probably.

So what do we make of this phenomenon, coupled with the fact that many Egyptians do see their recent history as valiant and true, and their present misery as the sole fault of a West-corrupted government?
I will first posit the caveat that the majority of Egyptians with whom we have conversed are cab drivers. But I must note as well that this vocation bridges a further societal cross-section than in American or European society: most cabbies have a second profession, which may be anything from plumber to professor, and have taken up taxi-driving as a kind of moonlighting job under the exigency of Egypt’s deteriorating economy. I reckon we have met the full gamut too, considering the range of conversations that the same opening lines have led to. However, when I say “range,” I mean more specifically “range of histrionics” because the main thematic line regarding their country changes little: Egypt is Oumm ad-Dunya (the mother of the world), Egypt is rich in culture and welcomes all visitors as brothers (numerous times, in English, before demanding that they pay three times as much as local brothers). On the other hand, there are those who see fit to complain over the extent of Egypt’s current folly, but they tend to focus their criticisms more on politics than on economics. Their vision of the country’s problems seem to revolve around foreign policy, particularly regarding Israel. They speak much more of the Mubarak regime’s failure to take any decisive action against the ongoing atrocities in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq than of its failure to spread the country’s riches beyond the top rungs of society, or to stop the ongoing atrocities in Egyptian prisons.
Not that we don’t fuel such misguided boasting; nothing but praise for Oumm Musr passes our lips in the company of what we have come to see as the principal heralds of her nationalism. No, we are not just tourists! We have come from faraway lands specifically to live in your wonderful country! We love living here, we assure each of them. Such wonderful people, so open and friendly. And yes, we have tasted molokheya (Molokheya is a murky stew of spinach-like greens, garlic and oil, eaten over meat and rice. Although I fear it may be one of the strongest proofs indicated by those in support of Egypt’s culinary deficiency, it is actually not that bad), and are aware that it is Egypt’s national dish, of which all Egyptians should be proud! We are here only for the year, but by golly, we’d be durned if we didn’t end up sticking around, we like it so much. An objective me, seeing my sweaty limbs squeezed, longsleeved and skirted, into the back seat of yet another dusty cab on my way to or from yet another day of grueling classes and punishing heat, might scoff at such unhesitant acclaim. Indeed, my continuing ability to pipe out this now-perfected panegyric bears testament to my desperation to use the language at all. However, in the context of these short conversations, patriotism is the name of the game.

Where can we find a parallel voice for American patriotism? Certainly not in the same context; let us imagine ourselves in a taxi in America’s largest city, New York. We must take into account first of all the likelihood that the cab driver is a recent addition to the melting pot, thus lessening the likelihood of his ability to discuss America’s national character in its official language, let alone his feeling any motivation to do so. Most often, he will not talk to you at all, but rather garble into a cell phone in his native tongue. He could not care less whether you are a Jew or a foreigner or a criminal. But then, one would be hard put to claim that New York represents the epitome of American culture and opinion. No; one would more likely fall upon a diehard American nationalist at a truckstop in southern Missouri. Since many have multiple American flags affixed to their trucks, they are easy to pick out. Here are some views one may convey if you made the U.S. of A. your topic of conversation:

“No one messes with my America!”

“We’re gonna git them Talibans, Dubya said he’s gonna git ‘em and we’re gonna git ‘em.”

“Our boys are over there doing the Lord’s work. We’re bringing democracy and freedom to those people, ‘though I’m damned if they deserve it, crazy Ay-rabs.”



I admit that my selection of comments may seem unjust, as it focuses on what sounds like the least educated Americans’ assessment of their nation’s international role. However, samples from more eloquent sources provide even more depressing evidence of the same worldview. For an overwhelming wealth of examples that inform our current foreign policy, refer to any of George W. Bush’s official statements and actions. Few could deny that that he encourages a flavor of American nationalism steeped in jingoistic audacity. Many have remarked upon the increasing militarism in American culture. More and more, all initiatives take on a martial air. Whether geared toward foreign guerilla outfits or one’s own waistline, we must wage “a war on terrorism,” “a war on cholesterol,” “a war on crime,” and so on.

Nonetheless, an increasing number of Americans have begun to exhibit a sense of irony or even bitterness concerning their native land. While the disgruntled left has kept up a steady stream of impotent grumbling, I have started to hear unexpected dissatisfaction from speakers for the right. A conservative California rancher I ended up next to on a plane from Denver to Minneapolis struck up a conversation with me about Middle East politics after I had the stupidity to reveal that the novel I was reading was Egyptian. My neighbor in 14B, let’s call him Steve, pummeled me with the usual unpleasant array of familiar rhetorical questions followed by his own conceited answers, such as:

Q) Why do these crazies to kill themselves for religion?
A) Oh, of course, because they’re crazy! ‘Nuff said!
Q) So tell me, really, what’s the deal with these veils anyway?
A) I mean, besides that they’re all totally backwards and oppressed by even more backwards terrorist husbands.

As usual, the combination of my annoyance and lack of any direct explanations for what are admittedly puzzling phenomena to the American mind cleaved my tongue to my palate and I ended up offering little more than sophomoric sputterings in the Arab World’s defense. Whether or not he listened to them, Steve exhibited suspicion that a young female like myself would devote her studies to such a hopeless cause in the first place. And just what do you thing you might do about these goons, young lady, his repeated inquiry.

Fortunately, Steve did not limit his criticism to the topic of my academic studies. Buffetted by his assertive ignorance, Steve turned his disparaging eye to America.

“Americans sure are stupid,” he derided his compatriots. “They have no clue what goes on anywhere else in the world. And ya know what? They don’t need to. They can just get fat in their suburban homes and swimming pools and they don’t care . . .”

If the common American was not to be admired, their president deserved utter contempt:

“Dubya is the stupidest president we ever had,” Steve esteemed. “He just leads us into one mess after another. First Osama and Iraq. And now look at all this immigration shit. If he keeps letting these illegals in, it’s not gonna be America anymore.”

But Steve, are we not a country of immigrants?

“Sure, my grandfather was an immigrant, he came over from Poland and worked his ass off, made a living and learned the language. English. These Latinos don’t learn English.”

Why should America not become a bilingual nation?

“No way! We have always spoken English and we always will. That’s the language of America.

Besides, Americans are too stupid to learn Spanish. Americans can’t speak any other languages.”

In the end, despite his glimmers of protectionism for some alleged American character, Steve saw fit to praise only one aspect of American culture outright:

“Country music. That’s something homegrown American, that no one else has got. Now that’s good stuff, goddamn.”

Yee haw, Steve. Crimony, aren’t we there yet?

***

I have not yet heard an Egyptian take such a censurous attitude toward his country and people. However, one does come across the odd joker who prefers to play off his foreign-given reputation rather than deny it.
“You’re Americans, eh? Know what I am?” Our cab driver veered through traffic and turned to Aaron with a mischievous gleam in his eye.
No, what are you?
“A . . . terrorist! Hahahaha! Eh? Just like all of us! Terrorists! Isn’t that right, isn’t that what Bush told you? Hahaha!”
Er . . . heh heh . . . no . . . that is . . . sorry . . . what? Eek. Please don’t kill us. As if relishing our anxiety, the cabbie spun the wheel this way and that with newfound inspiration, still chuckling at his joke. We exited his vehicle in a state of bemused disquiet. Did he really find it funny that the dominant world power characterized him as a terrorist because of his ethnicity? Probably not; but what then to make of his bitter laughter? I realized in that moment how far I was from achieving the proverbial ethnographic goal: putting myself in that cabbie’s shoes. I quickly remembered the ethical scruples that had prevented me from majoring in anthropology: namely, how on Allah’s great Earth could I possibly presume to thus re-shoe myself at will?