Of Jews and slips and healing cracks: Parts Four and Five

4. Salah

Not all Egyptians approach the subject with such fire and brimstone. As sunset approached on our second day in Basata, Salah paused next to where Aaron and I lounged on the spread of cushions and straw mats. He must have either been in a chatty mood or had been waiting for a moment to engage us in conversation, because, after the customary exchange of “masa’ al-khayr, ‘amil eh, humdu lillah,” he squatted next to us and began to ask questions. First, as usual: how had we gotten interested in Arabic? Where had the money for our scholarships come from? What did we want to do later on? Then, as usual, our responses led to a discussion of American politics, in which: I give my diatribe about why Americans are not a political people and why in turn they feel no sense of international responsibility; Aaron reminds our interlocutor that only a very small crust of strange people are leading America, and thereby the world, to this sorry state of affairs. Salah nodded, piecing together (I hope) our broken renderings of these ideas with the patience his demeanor implied. Then he weighed in:
“So, that top crust is the Jews, right? Isn’t the Bush administration mainly controlled by Jews?”
“La!” Aaron bristled and began his pre-verbal gesturing in hopes of thwarting any further inadvertent falsehoods. Struggling to suppress the emotion in his voice and speak in measured but forceful Arabic, he began the speech I have heard him develop over the past few weeks. The gist: the Bush administration has strategic interest in Israel to further its longterm ambitions in the Middle East, but has no particular love for Jews as a people. Furthermore, the momentum of this administration stood to face resistance after the Congressional elections in the fall.
“Isn’t the Congress mostly Jews?” Salah posed the question in a mild tone, but with conviction, as if aware that we might protest but unable to ignore the accumulation of what he had been told his whole life.
Of course, Aaron and I both denied this obvious error with vitality augmented by the magnified emotional affect of our speech in Arabic. Salah listened in silence. Unlike most Egyptians with whom we had discussed this topic, he never interrupted or protested, but rather appeared to weigh each utterance as a new object for contemplation. I wondered whether most of what we said really was news to him or if he had had this same conversation with scores of previous American tourists in Basata. His questions implied that he had not: why would an American join the army? Oh, was there unemployment and poverty in America as well? Oh, poor immigrants might prefer to die for a cause than to live hapless lives in the lowest rungs of American society? He asked, listened and nodded for over half an hour, then someone called him away on a task and he said he would see us later. We did not get the chance to talk to Salah again.

5. Babaya!

“Your name is Haroun? I am ABU Haroun!” trumpeted the jolly juice-seller at the corner of Tahrir and al-Dokki Streets, the man responsible for a sizeable chunk of our mango-dependent happiness.
Aaron returned his cheer. “Babaya!” he crowed, opening his arms. “My father!” (The prefix "abu" means "father of in Arabic names) We slurped our chewable juice and waited for Abu Haroun’s next move. Ever vigilant.
Abu Haroun had not finished with the topic of his name. “This is a family name,” he continued. “Because my grandfather” – and he leaned in to whisper into Aaron’s ear – “was Jewish! An Israeli!”
“Aaaaooohaarrggghhh,” ventured Aaron, searching for an appropriately ambivalent noise. Does one show enthusiasm and incriminate his Jewishness? Or does one stare down one’s Jewish nose at Abu Haroun with nonchalance, or even faint contempt? While we addressed these questions in hurried silence, Abu Haroun had fished out his identity card to prove his claim. He held the yellowed posterboard up under the floodlights outside the juiceshop, cupping his hands around it as if to guard its inflammatory contents from the surrounding patrons’ eyes. “You see? Abu Haroun! A Jewish name! It’s true!” We nodded and squeaked affirmatives as other juice-stand loiterers craned their necks to see the card. Nice, very nice name, nice Jewish name, nice Jews (?).
Abu Haroun seemed content to carry on the dialogue without our imput. “The Israelis are not bad people,” he observed with magnanimity. “I think they are a good people. All people are good. It is their governments that are bad! In America, in Egypt, in Israel, it’s the same problem. If they let us be, we would all get along. Don’t you think?”
Yeah, we thought so all right. But Aaron wasn’t about to come out and say, “Yeah, kind of like right now! I’m Jewish, and yet I’m not trying to eat your babies! We’re just enjoying some juice and looking at each others’ papers. Mish ma‘’oul!”
Later, Aaron confessed that he thought Abu Haroun might have lied about the Israeli grandfather to trick him into admitting that he was an Israeli himself, no doubt inspired by the sheghala-spread rumor. I couldn’t quite swallow that, especially since Abu Haroun had showed us his card, but it did give us pause. How much more complex might Egyptian attitudes toward Israelis be than their obligatory mouthfuls of superficial denouncements might suggest? Months before when first confronting the issue of Jew-concealment, Aaron and his friend Matt devised a reality TV-show to address this question: “Hey! You’ve Just Been Talking to a Real Live Jew!” The premise is simple: a hidden cameraman captures a conversation between a Jew and an Egyptian, preferably one in which exchange of salaams and names leads to some kind of good-humored discourse and tea-drinking. Then, right after the congenial Jew leaves the scene, the cameraman jumps out of hiding and trumpets, “Hey! You’ve just been talking to a real live Jew!”, capturing the hoodwinked Egyptian’s reactions on live TV. The variations in these responses would provide the entertainment for the series’ viewers. If presented dramatically enough, it may even appeal to the wider Egyptian audience and, in sha’ allah, win some compassion for the Jews. Unfortunately, these two Jews’ courage and means do not yet match their creativity, and we have thus bypassed enough precious data to comprise a whole season of H!YJBTTARLJ!

Also unfortunately, for every one of those occasions I am sure that one hundred more will follow. For example, each time we get into a cab. We know the drill; Aaron sits in front with the driver, I sit in back with ears perked to catch whatever conversation they might strike up. If the drive is long enough, we can expect to end up discussing Israel via the reprise of now-familiar motifs: Americans, are you? Why do you study Arabic? Well, blimey. Ma sha’ allah. You know, I do not like your president. He is not a good man. Why have you voted for him? America and Israel are destroying Lebanon. Isn’t that terrible?
So what do you want us to do about this, sir? And what, might we add (not aloud) are you doing about it, besides posturing before your American passengers? Not that you could do much else, nor could we, besides come here and try to learn the language. However, the length of taxi rides and the often surly attitudes of drivers usually discourages even Aaron from setting them straight in any detailed sort of way. Most often we just nod and say “Ah, aiywa, sa‘ab giddan . . .” Yes, yes, very difficult, naughty Israel, irresponsible us. Sorry. We exit the scene without embroiling ourselves further and go on about our business. However, playing this role in the majority of conversations does begin to weigh on one’s conscience, as well as one’s self esteem. Must we, Jewish or no, accept this constant brow-beating as an inevitable part of our lives in Egypt? Would we do better to add yet another lie to the mix and say that we aren’t American, or is it rather our responsibility to reveal that some Americans are trying to make a difference? What right have they as a people to critique us as a people? If their all-powerful president had access to the same international dominance as ours, would he make any less trouble? And for all the accusations of apathy we Americans receive from Egyptians (and everyone else, for that matter) for letting somone like Bush rise to and stay in power, Egyptians’ dissatisfaction with Mubarak’s reign has provoked no manifest initiative for change. On the contrary, when we question Egpytians about their opinion of Mubarak, the age-old “illi ya‘arifu ahsan min illi maya‘arifush” rules the day:

“Of course he does bad things, but at least we know what to expect from him.”
“No, he isn’t perfect, but the Muslim Brotherhood would be worse so we may as well keep him.”
“Anyway, he’s a clever politician . . . he makes sure everyone gets what he wants, that’s all.”
“I don’t see anyone else presenting an alternative. The opposition factions just argue with each other, so we can’t depend on them to solve any of our problems.”
“And besides, he’s funny! He fits the role of a powerful leader.”

Sound familiar, American liberals? Okay, so we don’t have the threat of a Muslim Brotherhood, nor have I always known exactly what to expect from Dubya, but such details aside, one can find all of these arguments on the lips of common Americans in defense of their president. Of what then, my Egyptian cousins (assuming that you represent, as you say, Oumm ad-Dunya, the Mother of the World), can you accuse us? Of gaining our livelihood based on the advantages our nation’s current wealth provides? Of worrying ourselves only about what concerns our lives and our families directly? Of basing our vision of the outside world on television images, since we grew up in the center of a vast country without means or reason to travel? Of failing to stage a full-scale revolution against our vagabond president? Or simply, of being born into a nation at the zenith of its global supremacy, thus making our political apathy tantamount to complicit imperial terrorism? If these be the possible allegations, a comparison between American and Egyptian nationalisms and political consciousnesses may be the next project worthy of undertaking. A suivre.

Of Jews and slips and healing cracks: Part Three

3. Attack of Agouza

(a half-inadvertent Peace-in-the-Middle-East moment: Aaron and his new buddy Ahmed)

At the height of noon at Basata, a seaside commune in the Sinai, one has two tolerable courses of action: to stay in the water with divine-strength sunscreen, or to lounge in the sheltered communal space, drink Sprite and try not to move. Aaron and I had started with the second and had begun to mobilize for the first when Ahmed installed himself to monitor our progress in the Arabic novels we were reading. If people we meet register surprise when they hear us speak Arabic, they succumb to utter befuddlement at the notion that we could read it. This befuddlement often turns to denial: when possible, they ask us to prove it and thrust a text in our faces, then breathe over our shoulders as we read, correct each mistake in pronunciation and translate into English for us any word they happen to know. Then, “So did you understand it? What did it say?” Well dag, I was concentrating so hard on pronouncing it right that I didn’t really catch the meaning . . . I guess now you think I don’t speak Arabic even though we are bloody speaking Arabic and have been for the past two days . . .
With this in mind, imagine Aaron’s unease when our new friend Ahmed scootched in next to him and commanded him to read aloud from Tayyeb Saleh’s Season of Migration to the North. Among possible Arabic taskmasters, Ahmed seemed a gentle and compassionate candidate. Big brown eyes and chipmunk cheeks make him appear younger than his twenty-nine years, and two days together had confirmed his natural state as reclined on one arm in a white linen pyjama shirt and pants. Now however, he sat haunch to haunch with Aaron, alert and challenging. Aaron gripped the book like a life raft and plunged in. Ahmed remained ever vigilant; each time Aaron stumbled over a word he sprang to action: what does that word mean? In his anxiety, Aaron did a rather poor job of hiding his annoyance at these frequent interventions (not that I do any better myself in similar situations), but Ahmed either did not notice or did not care. If Aaron didn’t know the word, he translated it into English. If Ahmed didn’t know the English word, they delved into Hans Wehr together. I sat to one side writing down all of the new words in my little book and imagining myself as the wife of a famous and adventurous general, a clever wife who in the end learns more from listening than the men learn from doing, then manages to save the day in a thrilling climax. HA. I sipped my Sprite and plotted. Aaron and Ahmed forged ahead. At least two hundred pages remained to be translated and as luck would have it, the scene upon which Ahmed had joined the project bordered on pornographic. This of course made the process of translation more compelling, and Ahmed’s enthusiasm flagged not. (Aaron later revealed that his tutor’s infernal breath had rendered the task all the more harrowing.)
In the end it was Mohammad who saved Aaron from an afternoon of tedium. Shirtless and hair-slicked, he plopped his bulk down next to us and lit a cigarette. As usual, he wanted to talk. My insides had begun to stew from the heat and I wanted to swim, but there you are: “isn’tanopportunitytospeakArabicthebestpossiblechoiceatanygiventime?” Aaron’s performance provided us with the first topic for discussion, but the point of infinite density that is Israel made quick work of hijacking us and downward we spiraled. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
“Israel can’t win against Hizbullah on the longterm. It’s a guerilla war,” Ahmed lectured, and went on to list examples of other guerilla wars in modern history: Afghanistan, the current struggle in Israel-Palestine, and, with a smirk, the American Revolution. “America should know best of all that even great powers can’t defeat guerilla warriors.” He gathered steam. “They are easily replaceable – there is an endless supply of unemployed, angry youth in the Arab world that would just as soon die for their country, die for ideals, than die in humiliation under an imperial power. They will never give up.”
“Yes, but they can’t win either,” burst out Aaron. “I’ve heard this argument, that guerilla warfare and suicide bombing in particular have become a last resort for freedom fighting. But I can’t agree that it is a winning strategy. Maybe they can make a statement, gain access to international attention, but it will never be an answer. A violent non-state actor cannot expect to be taken seriously and receive sympathy in the context of an international political system.”
Since Aaron had offered a perspective outside the traditional line of discourse, it was as if he had not spoken. Ahmed did not argue with him; he simply picked up where he, and his brothers, had left off so many times before: “But without America, without American weapons, Israel would be nothing compared to warriors from all of the Arab countries combined.”
Mohammad took off with the weapon theme. With much gusto, he listed the varieties of American weapons used by the Israeli army; however, popping out of Egyptian Arabic in Mohammad’s Australian-accented English, “F-16s” and “M-16s” sounded jolly and harmless. And indeed, the relish he took in decrying the Americans struck me in and of itself as almost festive. All together now, everybody! One, two, three: Death to America! We Americans stood by feigning diffidence and foraging for eloquent, equivocal defenses that would give our interlocutors food for thought without revealing Aaron’s Jewishness.
Mohammad leaned forward on his cushioned bench, his eyes sparkling, his wry smile darkened. “Who are the Israelis anyway? How many of them could there possibly be? They’re just a handful of immigrants from Europe. We could destroy them. We don’t even need the whole Arab world to unite, any of the Arab countries alone could destroy them. Agouza or el-Dokki could take on Israel! That is, if Israel didn’t have America.”
“That’s why America can’t abandon Israel,” Aaron entreated. “Because without American aid, Agouza and el-Dokki would crush them, and that would not be a solution either.”
After a good half hour of this, I had had enough. Rather relieved for the first time to be an underestimated female, I claimed that my sensitive system could no longer stand the heat nor heated discussion and deserted. On second thought, I ruminated as I trudged back to the hut through the searing hot sand, maybe I’m not really underestimated. Maybe I just don’t have a brain for politics. I guess that’s okay. It makes sense, if I’m operating in this environment of mutually exclusive gender roles. We are the sooth-sayers, the providers, the communicators; they are the planners, the plotters, the victors. Perhaps the system makes more sense than we enlightened modern females would like to admit. At that moment, I felt I could sacrifice all further participation in political discussion without regret in favor of playing in the water with adorable Egyptian children.
Maybe though, I reasoned further, my issue is a bit more specific than that. Might it not be this subject and this context of discussing it that strikes me as particularly fruitless? Because at times like these, it sure seems to be. First of all, the conversation is taking place based on false premises, namely, that Aaron is not Jewish and does not have a wealth of first-hand information to offer on Israeli history and the current Israeli point of view. Surely the inclusion of such points would serve to further the dialogue, or at least shake it out of its usual “self”-centered tail-chasing. But at this point, we had already lied, and who knew how Mohammad and Ahmed would react if Aaron announced the truth at this point? Mohammad had claimed to have Jewish friends in Australia, and both ticked off the breezy given, “Of-course-the-Jews-aren’t-evil-just-their-politicians-are” more than once. Ahmed even took a fancy to declaring that he would like to marry a Jew: “Maybe then I could convince her!” These submissions aside, our educated and articulate friends showed no greater capacity for separating “Jew” from “Israeli” than Aaron’s sheghala, and neither of us felt prepared to hack away at this formidable barrier in ‘aamiyya.
So was it worth it to embroil ourselves in these conversations at all? For me, probably not, at least not in what concerns Israel. I don’t know enough to feel confident supporting a position and if I did, arguing with Ahmed and Mohammad would infuriate me beyond the powers of articulation even in English. This often seems to be the case with Aaron. His knowledge of the region and its history puts him in the position to offer objective and informed insights; however, when combined with his personal struggle in reconciling that knowledge with the contradicting historical narratives that informed his childhood, his desire to enlighten stems not just from scholarly but also from emotional obligation. Once funnelled through a foreign language, the disparity between what he aims to deliver and what gets communicated is often daunting, and his determination to navigate this gap does not always serve to clarify his expression. My vicarious experience of this growing frustration silences me as much as it provokes Aaron. Sometimes I just can’t stand to listen anymore, so I go and play with my favorite Egyptian yet, a five-year-old named Safiyya who would rather sing songs and have underwater tea-parties than talk about weapons and geopolitics. Ihna bashar, mish kideh? (We're all human, right?)

Of Jews and slips and healing cracks: Part Two

2. Hany

(Hany el-Saeed Ahmed, Cairene tentmaker, on the left)

Our conversation with Hany the quiltmaker had gathered momentum. We had come to look at quilts, but after a good half hour the topic had not so much as glimmered on the horizon of our discussion. While I do not doubt Hany’s sincere enjoyment of our company, I understand that the growing frequency of our patronage must go a long way in fueling his enthusiasm. Aaron and I had whiled away the afternoon with Hany not two weeks before, on a mission to purchase a wedding present for Aaron’s friends. We had learned of Hany’s expertise through Aaron’s roommate Matt, who swore up and down that he was the the best quiltmaker in Cairo. Operating under the principle, “illi ta‘arifu ahsan min illi mata‘arifush” (“the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t”), we bored through the veritable swarm of entreating quiltmakers looking for “Hany.” Easier said than done. At last Aaron resorted to asking someone. Immediately the final scene of Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” began playing in my mind, the part where the Roman guards ask the prisoners bound for crucifixion which one is “Brian” so they can release him. Obviously, man, woman and child claim to be Brian, and the cheekiest imposter (Eric Idle, of course) is freed, while the real Brian is left to hang. But before I could open my mouth to relay the potential relevance of this scenario to Aaron, a fellow had spirited us into a stall and sent a boy to fetch Hany. When the sought-after seamster appeared, there could be no mistake that the messenger had led us to the right hole. With mention of Matt, Hany’s moustached smile nearly split his face and his fervor burbled over us: “Mat-sew! Of course! My dear, dear friend! How I miss him, how is he, is he still in Egypt? He is? God be praised, I MUST see him, and who are you? Matt’s friend, of course! How wonderful, you must be wonderful as Mat-sew is and this is your wife? God be praised!” We filled in responses with rising animation, influenced by his ebullience. I had worn a scarf over my hair that day which, coupled with posing as Aaron’s wife, made me feel downright respectable for the first time since arriving in Cairo. I reckoned that Hany was the first Egyptian with whom I could build a relationship within an acceptable, if fabricated, social framework.
Our friendship with Hany flourished indeed. The pre-purchase conversation betrayed no decrease in effusion from Hany, and earned us much praise for our Arabic. Never had we felt so encouraged and appreciated. Every response and observation, glubbed or no, met with his heartfelt agreement and even awe. “Exactly, Ustaza Anna! How true! Such a clever wife you have, Ustaz Haroun! Ustaz Haroun, you are a fine thinker! Beautiful ideas, these ideas of yours, and so true! However do you do it! Ahhh, Ustaza Anna wants to tell us something. What have you thought of, Ustaza Anna?” We glowed and glubbed along to our hearts’ content, then Aaron bought one of Hany’s finest quilts and fell in love with another that he ended up coming back for later.
I should emphasize here that Hany does truly astounding work. Throughout our chat I kept gazing around the little room in wonder. Quilted designs and scenes covered every inch of wallspace in his windowless nook, and scores more lay stacked and folded in the loft above. Hany’s designs ranged from Quranic script to flowers and birds to geometric patterns to scenes from local fairy tales. He had recently won a contest to create quilted illustrations for a collection of Goha stories (desert fables), which he displayed to us with pride. When it at last came time to talk of quilts, he and his servant boy vanished up into the loft and reappeared with an astonishing assortment of colors and patterns, each (literally) more beautiful than the next. He chatted along about which colors people of different nationalities tended to prefer: Americans – red, white and blue; Italians – assorted, muted fall colors; Germans – sharply contrasting colors, etc. I concluded that I must be Italian. Hany concurred and marvelled at my cleverness and taste. Aaron picked an American one for his American friends. Hany clapped his hands with uncontainable glee. We floated out of Hany’s workshop giddy and delighted to have spent money on his wares. Man, is he good. He probably could have sold me my own headscarf at that point, so taken in was I. As we ventured back through the gauntlet of quiltmaker stands we tried to convince one another that we had clearly selected the winner of the bunch, although from out there they all looked pretty identical.
On the visit in question, Aaron and I returned accompanied by Matt and another friend from school, Justin, both of whom are also Jewish. Hany could not have expressed greater joy at our interrupting his lunch to engage him in conversation for the remainder of the afternoon. As usual, he ushered us into the back offices of his workshop, swept a circle of decrepit chairs around a folding table and sent his servant boy to fetch us sodas. On our previous meeting, we had devoted the inevitable sixty to seventy percent of our discussion to politics, but had managed not to touch the topic of Israel. We were in deep this time though, as discussing politics increasingly means discussing Lebanon, which means denouncing the great Jewish/Israeli/American Satan, killer of babies, destroyer of homes, devourer of land, crusher of hopes.
“Innocent children are dying, a war is beginning without reason, and why? Because Israel wants to control the Middle East! And why do they succeed? Because America helps them! And why does America help them? Because the Jews control America!” Hany announced to his three-fourths-Jewish company. “They control Bush, they control the government . . . and they won’t give up until they take everything!”
Justin balked and leaned forward. “I have a question for you, sir,” he interjected, holding a rather impressive pokerface although I could see his hands trembling where they gripped the edge of his chair. “What percentage of America is Jewish, in your opinion?”
Hany stirred more sugar into his tea and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, calculating: “at least thirty,” his wager.
“Wrong!” exclaimed Justin with triumph. “One percent! A very small minority!”
Hany was unconvinced. “But they are the most powerful minority,” he insisted. “American interests are Israeli interests. America never criticizes Israel.” His voice rose to a feverish pitch. “How do we know it wasn’t the Jews that blew up the World Trade Center? Why did no one notice when Ariel Sharon came on TV to make a statement about the attacks only minutes after it happened? This is no coincidence! It was the Jews!”
He had gone too far. I felt a bit frantic that Hany might notice the smoke coming out of the attacked Jews’ ears as they prepared to defend themselves. Aaron began his marcato rebuttal.
“There is no evidence for any Jewish involvement in the September eleventh attacks,” he opened his commentary, although he did not go into the detailed evidence we have incriminating an Egyptian Muslim. “America’s interests are aligned with Israeli interests because of its strategic interests in the region. The Bush administration does not care about the Jews . . .” and so on. As my three Jewish companions furrowed dark brows over prominent noses in search of ways to set Hany straight without blowing their cover, I wondered how anyone who had ever seen a Jew could fail to identify them. It seems that at least the younger generation of Egyptians (Hany can’t have been more than four or five years older than us) actually have never seen a Jew, or at least not one that admitted it. Another Jewish friend had told me the story of revealing his religious identity to a curious questioner on a bus. The snooper had allegedly recoiled and croaked, “A Jew! An actual Jew! But . . . you don’t have horns, you’re . . . Allah. A JEW. Can I . . . touch you?” Mayhem ensued as the other passengers learned of the religious diversity of their vehicle, and the poor exposed Jew began to wonder if he had made a serious blunder. Then the original questioner’s voice whispered in his ear: “Can I tell you something? I . . . I love the Jewish people. I love Israel. I want to go so badly, but my people would disown me . . . Can I give you my email, brother, so we can meet one day in Israel?” Baffled, my friend accepted the email and vacated the bus in a hurry. “I never wanted to see that guy again,” he confessed. “It was just too weird, it totally freaked me out. I mean, could he have been serious?”
So what would Hany do if while in mid-tirade, tea and pointer finger held aloft, one of his doted-upon charges piped up, “But Hany, hadritak, I am Jewish . . .” No one seemed to want to find out. We steered the conversation back toward Egyptian identity, a topic all Egyptians seem to find irresistible. These discussions also usually give Aaron an opportunity to exhibit his superior knowledge of Egyptian history, the relaying of which he seems to see as a kind of responsibility in the face of such an approximative and often downright false national memory. Insofar as we have heard it discussed and seen it exhibited, Egyptian history can be narrowed down to the Pharaonic times (which encompass, depending on the version, the invention of paper, writing, and humankind), the 1919 Revolution, the 1948 War in Palestine, the 1952 Revolution, the 1967 War, and the 1973 War, all providing timeless examples of Egypt’s heroism, and, most recently, Israel’s demonism. I’m afraid Aaron’s expansions and refutations of these themes have not brought about any epiphanies yet. While Hany claimed that Egyptians “love history” he did not show much interest in registering Aaron’s deliberated addenda to the storyline he cherished. I tried to derail what was quickly becoming the Orientalist paradigm of our nightmares (in which we, the educated whities, catch ourselves explaining to the Mohammadans just how they fit into the big picture that we have constructed). “But in America it’s the same,” I reminded them. “In a public school in the Midwest, you get a very limited, heroic version of American history and rarely does anyone but historians look any deeper.”
“You can’t expect everyone in a society to read,” Matt cautioned. “Throughout history this has never been the case. To run a country, you need most people working out in the fields, worrying about crops and livelihood. History is only really important to the educated minority.”
Hany cheered this point with vim. “Exactly! The most important thing for humans is to stay busy and to spend time with their loved ones. That is the stuff of life, isn’t it? Conversations and jokes and tea . . .”
Little did he know that he shared that pleasure currently with three members of the people that troubled him so. May as well let him enjoy it.

Of Jews and slips and healing cracks: Intro and Part One

I would unfortunately be hard put to exaggerate the extent to which the terms “Jew,” “Israeli,” “America,” and “conspiracy” flow in an interchangeable and constant ring of fire from the mouths of even the most educated Egyptians.

The worsening situation in Lebanon has only served to exacerbate these feelings. Conversations in the streets of Cairo revolve around little else.

Aaron, my male consort in travel, discovery and linguistic advancement here in Egypt, is Jewish. Caught between the pressures of a pro-Israeli family and his empathy for the Arabs amongst whom he lives, the constant recurrence of this conversation weighs on him more than I can claim to imagine. But I feel compelled at least to capture some of these exchanges, as I believe that we have a unique chance to record how this piece of a long-embattled historical narrative is being lived. After the weekly searches for “the voice of the common man” in my “ethnography of the Middle East” class last semester that ended fruitlessly and pretentiously, I cannot let this opportuntiy escape. I must emphasize that I am not trying to speak for Jews, nor for Arabs. I am a close and interested observer and here is my shot at thick description.


1. Aaron’s Sheghala

The only Egyptian to whom Aaron has revealed his religious identity is his sheghala, Mouna. Throughout the summer, their conversations led Aaron to feel true compassion for her plight: a mother of three with a worthless husband, she felt obliged to put her children through private school lest they fall to a lower level of society than their more fortunate cousins. As his compassion and respect for her grew, it pained him to hear her lambast Israel with the same abandon as taxi drivers. He decided to own up. Two hours of discussion later, she still showed little progress in discerning between “Jew” and “Israeli:” “But are you American or are you Israeli?” she persisted each step of the way. I am American. I am Jewish. I am not, and have never been Israeli. I do not vote in Israeli elections. I do not pay Israeli taxes. Therefore I am not an Israeli citizen. Judaism is my religion, American is my nationality.
Aaron thought he had broken through to her at last with a relevant metaphor, unfurled in expert Socratic method:
“Are you a Muslim?”
“Yes.”
“And who founded Islam?”
“The Prohet Mohammad, peace be upon him.”
“And the Prophet was an Arab, right?”
“Yes, he was.”
“So are you an Arab?”
“Of course not! I am Egyptian!”
“But if the Prophet was an Arab, and he founded Islam, and you are a Muslim, does that make you an Arab?”
“Well . . . no.”
“So being a Jew by religion does not attach me to Israel either, or any other nation (Q.E.D.)!”
I hold my reservations as to this argument’s soundness; while ancient Israel may be the cradle of Judaism, the modern nation-state of Israel certainly is not, nor was it founded on religious grounds alone. This makes equating it with the Prophet’s Arabia a bit problematic to my thinking. Allow me to add here that “my way of thinking” regarding this subject lacks extensive exploration and reflection; I consider my opinions in no way formed. Aaron’s sheghala seems not to have the same reservations about voicing her unexplored opinion. She is now suspect of spreading her confused notion of Aaron’s identity throughout al-Dokki (our neighborhood). A few days later, Jen reported that an employee in a koshery restaurant where Aaron never eats had asked her if she knew “Haroun the Israeli, who lives right here in al-Dokki!” Err, didn’t know he was, um, what you said, her flustered response. YIPE, Aaron’s terrified one. In the end, despite resolving to fire Mouna, confront the koshery guy and clarify the entire neighborhood on the difference between religious and national identity, Aaron did nothing and nothing more has come of it. Besides a slight residue of paranoia, we carry on as before. However, Aaron deemed the experience sufficient to give him pause when making any further confessions of Jewishness.

If you could say "cheesy" in Arabic . . .

I have a friend named Ashraf. Actually he is our CASA cultural advisor Ben’s friend, but he humors us newbies and speaks more slowly than most. Ashraf has black hair gelled into parted waves, and a frequent, mischievous smile. He wears jerseys with English writing on them. He manages to make his voice both patient and teasing.
“Is it true that many Americans do not like Celine Dion?” he asks me in ‘aamiyya with some earnestness. We are sitting on cushions at Makan, a warehouse-like but welcoming café, waiting for the musicians to come back on. I laugh, then get pensive, remembering my final moments with my host-sister Fedwa on that rooftop in Fez, Morocco. She had insisted that I translate the song “My Heart Will Go On” for her before I leave, a task that I had been avoiding due to my aversion to songs that make me want to vomit. I did not vomit while Fedwa and I sang the song together directly prior to never seeing each other again, in a mixture of French and Arabic and English, holding each other tight and leaning out over the ledge toward the lower rooftops of Fez. I cried. We both cried, with ineffable sadness.
I elected not to describe this anomaly for Ashraf however, and stuck with my main party line: she sucks. Blondly bold Ben, sitting nearby and ever vigilant, warned me that he had already tried and failed to explain the concept of “cheesy” to Ashraf. It would seem that the “shukhsia Musriyya” (the Egyptian personality) to which we have devoted so much class discussion, contains no such concept. I consider briefly (and now consider at length) the implications of this lacking. To be sure, the phenomenon of “cheesy” occurs with some frequency, if not downright prevalence, in Egyptian pop culture. Posters gasping such asinine movie titles as “Zay al howaa (Like True Love)” and “news” programs featuring slow motion scenes of blighted villagera running from rabid fire accompanied by heartrending music certainly fit the bill. But so much like the silently felled tree in the proverbial forest, if the Egyptians do not see said cheese as cheesy, perhaps it is, in fact, not. So the question remains, if indeed I or Ben or anyone else managed to describe the concept of “cheesy” to Ashraf, would a fluorescent bulb ignite and reveal the folly of his current musical tastes? Or might he discover that in fact this “cheesiness” was the part that he liked? If American consumption of things cheesy is any example, we can satisfy ourselves that awareness of a given item’s cheesiness does not prevent a disturbing number of people from enjoying it.
All told, the explanation of any potential reasons for not liking Celine Dion now failed me. Ashraf, for his part, supported his appreciation with a string of rather inalienable merits: “She has a nice voice. She sings about love. When I listen to music, that is what I look for: voice and content.” What a humbling revelation as to my capabilities in ‘aamiyya. If I can’t even win an argument as to why Celine Dion sucks, I must be truly weak. However, I believe I owe this decline in argumentative potency not only to lack of appropriate rhetorical devices but also to the overall change in my conversational approach when speaking another language. That is, I just kind of want to understand people. So concentrated am I on deciphering their words from the stream of potentially unintelligible sounds that by default I find myself wholly concentrated on their ideas as well. My brain makes a full reversion from offensive to analytic mode, no longer capable of digging out my own opinions. So Ashraf was free to list off with trusting innocence a list of musical artists that would have earned him my harshest derision had he been an American. I nodded and said perhaps I could show him some other music, realizing as I made the offer that my indie rock bands would almost certainly not speak to Ashraf. Ashraf likes to clap hands and dance. Ricky Martin likes to clap hands and dance. I wonder with some discomfort whether Ricky Martin might be “better” than Radiohead on some universal scale.

I Hate the T.V.

“Musalsal” is the Arabic word for soap opera, an artistic genre in which Egypt has earned itself a comfortable position of prominence throughout the Middle East. In a region boasting a wide audience of house-bound women, the musalsal plays a central role in assuring their continued entertainment and sanity. Spinning fantastical tales of love, deception, family values, social class, tradition and greed, the musalsalat provide a melodramatic mirror in the spirit of Days of Our Lives à l’égyptienne. Now, I must admit that I am speaking somewhat beyond my mandate, since I have never actually watched an American soap opera (unless of course the experience was so bland that my memory mercifully vacated its place). In fact, my ignorance of “(pop) cultural references,” a lacking I attribute to the absence of television in my upbringing (aided by the presence of all the righteous literary indignance a family of humanities professors can provide) has often drawn criticism and can be disastrous in Trivial Pursuit. Excuses aside, my ignorance regarding soap operas led to equal cluenessness as to why anyone might want to watch them, be it in America, Egypt, or anywhere else. Explanations of hooked friends fell upon deaf ears. It occurred to me in these instances, somwhere in my subconscious, that fervent adherence to a religious doctrine must generate a commensurate mental block. This realization did not deflect my staunch disrespect for soap operas and everything I associated with them (namely, women world-weary for no worthy reason, Diet Coke in hand and ashtray in lap, that lounge on threadbare couches in listless eagerness to lose themselves in the poorly acted lives of imaginary losers).
I should have known I could not hold out forever, if indeed I was to understand the humantiy we humanitarians keep dehumanizing. Even my undergraduate thesis advisor chided me after reading my latest claims about how Moroccans must all be post-structuralists in order to conceive of their dual identity: “You do not, I hope, mean to speak for all of the Moroccan housewives whose worldview revolves almost exclusively around inane musalsal plots?” Strangely enough, my key theoretical sources, the peerless Deleuze and Guattari, had failed to draw the musalsal phenomenon into their otherwise exhaustive analysis of humankind, Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie.
It was my afore-discussed reversion into this compliant mode in which I place understanding before all else that sparked an interest in the musalsal at last. Shahira, my Egyptian dialect teacher, began assigning them as listening exercises. Suddenly, all of the aspects of musalsal to which I before objected now became invaluable pedagogical tools: simple, predictable plotlines, exaggerated acting, limited vocabulary. I listened with renewed interest and respect, repeating the gaspy, syrupy lines after the actors. Who knew how fun it could be to say such crap out loud:
“I want real love. The kind that leads to marriage!”
“If only we could have a nice apartment and an expensive car. Life is so hard here in the ghetto!”
“Son, all you care about is money! Allah has blessed us with many luxuries, so shut up.”
These people are right at my level, my happy linguistic-understanding chip assures the rest of my brain. This is great. I need to spend time with people that talk like this more often!
I should mention that the content of Egyptian musalsals does seem to differ from that of their American counterparts, particularly in that all roads lead to holy matrimony. The central relationships can be summed up as follows: family members, marriage possibilities, their family members, both family’s members’ marriage possibilities, plus one bad guy and one objective helper guy. Family traditions and values are pitted against class differences and social expectations, permanent and temporary transformations occur in the characters, and in the end the good are rewarded, the good-tempted-away-from-good are punished, and the bad escape and remain at large, teaching everyone involved a lesson and leaving them on their guard. Brilliant.
In the midst of my newfound enthusiasm for the musalsal, imagine my delight to be rewarded for my change of heart with such promptness: “My name is Eli,” said the voice attached to the unknown number in my cell phone, “I was in CASA last year and now I’m working for a Cairo TV network. I have a strange request for you . . . you see, I’m working on this musalsal and we need a foreigner who speaks Arabic with an accent to come in and shoot a small scene. Would you be interested?”
“Umm, ummm, I don’t have much experience, I mean, not since back in the day. . .” I trail off, grateful that he is not, as I am, reliving my last acting role, as a maid in the South Junior High production of Heaven Can Wait.
“Well, experience may not be that important. If you don’t think you would mind being surrounded with lights and equipment and people runnning back and forth and shouting instructions to you in Arabic, then I don’t think it should matter very much.”
If I didn’t think I’d mind? It sounds terrifying. “Well, yeah, kind of sounds like Cairo on a usual day anyway, right?” I cover my apprehension. Now Anna, one does not pass up this sort of thing. One strives to be the sort of person who totally loves this sort of thing, and then eventually one becomes that sort of person. Mish kiddah wa la eeehhhhh? ("Isn't that right?") So I agreed to meet Eli in a coffee shop the next day, unsure of what our encounter was to consist. It turned out to be the first of many unexpected situations arising in my bout with the Egyptian musalsal. I found him upstairs in the Cilantro Cafe by AUC, poised with a videocamera in a red velvet loveseat. After a few cordial exchanges accompanied by businesslike flashes of grin, Eli produced a slip of notebook paper on which he had scribbled a sentence in Arabic. Would I mind introducing myself to the camera and then reading the line a few times? I squinted at his scribblings and decoded the phrase: “Bilash tisafir bukra. Mish ‘ayza ghayurak inta. Bamoot fik....” ("Don't travel tomorrow. I don't want anyone but you. I adore you.") My experience with past musalsal had well prepared me to pronounce the likes of this maudlin sniveling. I delivered it with a well-honed pout, then spent the remainder of the day imagining ways that I could have injected more oomph into it. I was fairly certain that I had ended a potential career in musalsal acting, suddenly my fondest ambition, due to a case of the Shy. Then Eli called and followed his greeting with a pressing query: could I make myself look thirty-five? If so, my spot in the musalsal was as good as secured. Um. Usually I am mistaken for an eighteen-year-old, so we’re talking about a seventeen-year leap here. He rattles off a list of make-up suggestions for the ageing project, and asks if I could go home and try them out, then give a call so he could come see. Um. “They don’t have to know how old you are,” he explains. “If you think you could do this, it’s worth a shot.”
Hours later Jen, Sarah and I stand in front of our bathroom mirror while I make grotesque faces enhanced by my eyeliner-ed “laugh lines” (I swear I don’t have any). We agree that Sarah’s best efforts have indeed succeeded in making me much uglier, and wonder if that counts. A moment of foreboding elapses as we contemplate my shadowed, poreless face, wondering if at thirty-five nature will have wreaked such actual havoc on our youthful beauty. As it turned out, Eli called the next day and said that it didn’t really matter, I should just come as I was and wear something chic, and could I come pick up my lines right now? Wow, I’m famous. The single typed sheet of Arabic becomes my prized possession. I repeat my lines over and over, throughout dinner with Aaron at the Nady Yunany (Greek Club), into the night, and in my dreams. Here they are, in rough translation:
“I didn’t imagine that I would be sending documents of such importance so quickly.”
(Egyptian guy)”Bla bla bla”
(returning his flirt) “You never stop working for a one moment!”
(something along the lines of “Who’s talking about work, I’m talking about thoughts and feelings!”)
(laughing) “I’ve heard them talk a lot about the exchange of drugs, but not feelings!”
Just think of the possibilities for expression in those three short lines! Think how many ways I could blow them! Just one choke between an “’ayn” and a “qaf” and I’d lose my head completely and forget how to speak Arabic and run from the room. I would trip over a camera cord, or man, on my way, and the crew’s surprise would soon turn to mirth, their hearty laughs accompanying my flight. Try as I might to banish this manner of images from my brain, I did not sleep well. How could I prepare for an experience that I could no sooner imagine than I could Nabil singing showtunes? Of one point I felt fairly certain: that in order to avoid the nightmarish possible ends to this really quite insignificant event, I would have to rise above my better-known self. I visualized the moment which began as a demoralizing confrontation of my physical limits and ended up as proof of the power of the mind to overcome them: me stranded on the wrong side of a creek in Morocco, as my new travelmate Ian and our mountain-goat-like farmer guide beckoned from the right side, toward our town and my now remote former life. My bramble-scratched, trek-exhausted legs solidified and anchored me to the bank. I cannot jump this. I know to you it looks like a dirty trickle but to me it is a watery grave, or at least a sloppy, embarrassing fall. Tears welled up and brief considerations of a new, lonely life on my side of the creek flashed behind them. Then I jumped and we went back to the hotel. I hoped to make a similar heroic leap into the Egyptian musalsal.
The morning of the shoot, I gathered the few garments in my limited Cairo wardrobe to which I thought the adjective “chic” could be loosely applied and set off to meet Eli. We taxied out to the Hotel Baron, and gave my lines a few run-throughs. What was this musalsal called anyway? Qalb al-Dunya, or, “The Heart of the Universe.” Dag. So what was it, a love story? Oh no. Its hero was an Egyptian adopted by American parents and sent off to war in Iraq, where he encounters all manner of adventures ranging from brushes with al-Qaeda to equally dangerous foreign women and eventually resolves to find his birth parents in Cairo, an endeavor which somehow puts the CIA and Islamists (separately, I assume) on his trail in a number of high-speed chases. It’s the Ramadan musalsal you see, so it basically needs to represent the apex of all melodrama. Wow. I wondered aloud where my three flirty comments fit into this opus. Eli reread my paper ‘neath furrowed brow and declared that some important information seemed to have been unveiled. Al-humdu lillah.
Upon arrival, I was hurriedly presented to a handful of Egyptians milling about with equipment and papers in a hallway upstairs. Does she speak Arabic? Great. Eli then excused us to get some water, which ended up being water at the outrageously priced café downstairs. Eli went ahead and let me pay for it. I began getting cross, and then hungry, and started feeling less like a princess of the silver screen and more like an eyelinered and useless version of my former self. Eli sat across from me smoking cigarettes and disappeared to “talk to the crew” for indefinite periods of time, leaving me with the one member of the operation that seemed to have taken an interest in my cause: an elderly, almost toothless gentleman named Mahmoud. His actual position and responsibilities, like everything else at the Hotel Baron, were unclear, but he seemed to fancy himself General Acting Coach and Crash Arabic Tutor. My tall, willowy self-appointed caretaker wore a pressed white shirt tucked into dress pants, which is more than can be said for the remainder of who appeared to be the musalsal crew, who wore t-shirts and attitudes incommensurate with their potbellies. I slumped and straightened in my chair, and struggled not to run out of forced smiles for Mahmoud.
I was awarded a brief reprieve from this tête-à-tête when Eli spirited me upstairs to have my make-up done and clothes assessed. Muhammad the make-up man escorted me into a hotel room and sat me down on a stool facing the window, “so he could work in natural light.” An adolescent boy who I imagined to be his son stood by handing him products and puffballs. He applied at least five layers of foundation to my face, asking me a number of questions in a soothing, indulgent voice. I wondered if doing that voice was part of makeup-man training. “Shekli ta‘aban?” I asked as he started in on the sixth layer of foundation. “Do I look tired?”
“La, habibati, abadan, bas al-camera tishuf kuli haga,” he assured me ("The camera sees everything"). He then handed the lipstick over so I could apply it myself, which I did with little skill. I tried to wipe off the sloppy corners without Muhammad and his youthful crew noticing. Then he sent me on my merry way, that is, into the crowded hallway with no further direction. Eli located the costume lady, named Rasha, to inquire after my apparel. I had come bearing a bag of options, unsure of the required degree of chic. Rasha gave me a once over. “What you’re wearing is fine, honey,” she declared, and left me looking down at my metro-soiled slacks in confusion. Well, OK. I decided to change my pants anyway, if anything to give myself something else to do. My attempts to seek guidance from anyone upstairs resulted in shrugs and instructions not to worry. Rasha looked at my lines and had me read them once, then proclaimed to the director that all was well, I spoke Arabic. He eyed me with some doubt and asked again to make sure. Aiywa, ya ragul. Have I just been speaking it to all of you or what? I went back to my post at the café to write unflattering descriptions of the entire crew of Qalb al-Dunya, only to be joined by Mahmoud once more.
After discussing a variety of topics in Arabic, Mahmoud decided upon his third visit to my lonely table that I needed to be taught. He switched into broken English and began quizzing me on basics to the extent that his vocabulary allowed.
“Table!” he intoned and pointed. “Tah ra baaayyy za. Tarabayza. Table.” He continued to repeat the corresponding words with such conviction that my attempts to prove my comprehension, or at least to feign acquisition, went unheeded.
“Ay want. Ay wanta Anna. YOU! Ay wanta YOU. ‘Aaayyyzah. ‘Ayzah inti. ‘Ayz, ‘ayza.” He gestured between us with declining precision until he got confused and warned me that Arabic is a very hard language. It will take me a long time to learn, but I must not give up. I must continue to talk, talk as much as I can to everybody I can, “in Arabic only!” he scolded in broken English before reverting back to the language I allegedly did not know. “Inti shukhsia munfataha, an-nass ya’ashur bi rahha ma’aki. (“You are an open person, people feel comfortable around you”).” He fixed his googly eyes upon me and averred, “Anna makes people feel good about themselves. She listens, she talks and they listen.” Gee, thanks Mahmoud. I am glad you cannot listen to my inner monologue (stuck on an alternation between, “Leave me alone” and “Damn, I’m getting hungry, that is, homicidal,” neither of which would make anyone feel “bi-raahha” in my presence). So yet again, the simple, smiley foreign adaptation of me got mistaken for a girl of uncommon patience and compassion, and my friendship with Mahmoud plowed on through that fertile ground. He apparently meant what he said about feeling comfortable around me, because without warning he pointed to his near-toothless gums and apologized. “No teeth,” he regretted. “I am sorry.”
I was sorry too. Absence of teeth pushes the Egyptian version of the graceful language I study beyond garbled to unintelligible. However, it dawned on me as he burbled that in terms of exposure I am actually getting more used to toothless than toothful Arabic, since I’ve seen a full mouth of pearly whites about as often as bikinis. The inevitable reassurance one takes in familiarity still applies; even unpleasant tasks, once mastered acquire a soothing quality. (I am thinking here in particular of how good I got at balancing in those Moroccan squatter toilets without touching anything while gathering up my voluminous smocky clothing. The prevalence of parasites in the couscous certainly gave me a lot of practice.) I told Mahmoud that teeth were not important and turned my compassionate ear toward his list of further physical ailments. As each body part received its accusation from Mahmoud’s smoke-stained finger I racked my brain for the expression we had learned to say to sick people. I had practiced it on my sheghala twice the day before. As it turned out, Mahmoud moved on before I could try out any of the jumbles of syllables my sluggish memory was producing. He noticed that I had the now much crumpled and coffee-splattered sheet of script containing my key to stardom. He snatched it up and began reading it aloud with all the breath and drama that Eli had told me to avoid. His advice had seemed off-base to me considering the exaggerated acting style of all the musalsals I had listened to.
Mahmoud’s approach confirmed this. He ordered me to say each line, mouthing them along with me and stopping me at the slightest divergence from the melody he had chosen. He took great relish in making sure I understood the meaning of “tebaddul ghazaluh,” the direction in italics next to my second line, which means “returning his flirt.” I realized that in order to convince Mahmoud that I had captured this nuance, especially since he appeared not to know the English word for “ghazal” I was going to have to say that line in a very provocative voice. While I doubt my command of Arabic truly allows for the introduction of such nuance, I have the advantage of speaking with a foreign accent, which I sense makes anything I say sound pretty suggestive. I delivered it with slutty gusto. Mahmoud was delighted and convinced that he had discovered a born actress. Like his reaction to my Arabic, my displayed capability inspired him to teach what he had just declared me already to possess in spades. He launched into a full lecture on the philosophy of acting, based on two main and much-repeated points: body language is everything and you must act from the heart. Many physical examples accompanied this speech, making the whole endeavor something of a performance in itself. Eli sat by, silent and smoking, his eyes unreadable as to whether he thought Mahmoud was full of it. I had begun to collect that Eli was one of those unnerving sorts who rarely offers his opinion through words or body language, but nonetheless gives off the distinct vibe that he has them. At any rate, he seemed to value the old codger’s expertise enough to request a similar workshopping of the scene he had just been handed to act in that day (he was supposed to be a director, then a cameraman, now an actor . . . well, as we Americans say in Egypt, “Mafish nizaam, khaaalas!”: "There's no order whatsoever!"). What an odd pair of different kinds of weirdo I am stuck with, commented the irritable chorus in my hungry brain. Mahmoud, master of nuance, must have heard because he suddenly fixed me with a knowing stare. “Inti mayta min al-jowa‘,” he observed. “You’re dying of hunger.” I tried to protest, not wanting to buy anything else from that plunderous hotel café, but to no avail. He bounded off (he actually looks more like a gazelle than I do) to the counter and scooted back with a handful of small croissants. Rarely has a stale horn of butter tasted so good. Then, “Anna. Anna. Ya ANNA! Tala‘ii, come here!” It was time for my scene.
Heart a-pounding, I clipped over with as much grace and nonchalance as I could muster. Cameramen and photographers had already surrounded a salad-laden table in the hotel restaurant. It’s a good thing I had that croissant or I probably would have broken all veneer of professionalism in a feral attack on the vittles. Hands and voices herded me into the booth-bench on the far side of the table, where I sat alone under the lights and the sudden collective scrutiny of a sea of crew members. I smiled and made faces through my makeup, leaned this way and that, smoothed my hair, scanned the crowd for anyone who might be my acting partner. Then the tall, gruff actor I had been watching in a previous scene slid in next to me, wearing sunglasses, puffing on a cigar and holding a few loose sheets of script. “I haven’t even seen this scene yet,” he chortled to the actor pulling up a chair across from us. He began to bumble through the lines, cigar alternately in and out of mouth.
Great. My ability to say my lines on cue depended rather crucially on catching the ends of his, which might well be impossible. Then he noticed me and I bucked up. Time to pretend you’re an actress, kiddo. Your grandmother always said you should be one, right? And she is never wrong, right? So that means you are. Show this guy. And I do. “You’re American?” he explodes. “Mish ma‘oul, impossible! Hey listen to this girl! Listen to her speak Arabic!” Both men lean in with interest and I deliver the only speech I can perform with any kind of improvisational flair: where I am from, how long I have been here, how I totally don’t speak dialect and am totally sorry about that and am totally trying hard with God’s help (I tend to be even more superlative in a foreign language – I have replaced “like” with such fillers as “totally,” “very much” and “always”). We discern that we both love France and exchange a few pleasantries en français. Their profuse compliments instill a sufficient amount of courage to carry me through the anticipated terrifying moments of actual filming. I hear my voice, as if disembodied, admonishing these seasoned Egyptian actors with breezy pluck, “Inna nushtaghal shwoya wa la la?" ("Are we working or not?") They are laughing and we are performing the scene, my aristocratic-looking interlocutor leaning into me with all the congeniality of a dear friend, or at least a right old bounder. I play back and he pours me a glass of rosé. We lift the glasses to drink and simultaneously spit the disgusting Koolaid that hits our lips back out. We are still laughing and sputtering when the cameraman informs us that we’re done. The scene was great, thank you. “You were fabulous,” he comments to me as he moves his equipment on to the next venue. “Yeah, where did you learn to act?” my partner wanted to know. Um. From that fella Mahmoud over there. “Really wonderful,” says the other actor. “Iktishaf fa’alen, hayya.” ("She's a real discovery.") I hand out my phone number to a couple of gentleman who present themselves as the responsibles and the crowds disperse.
Wha? Done? After all that? I can’t believe it. I wander in a half-daze, heart still pounding, to the table where Eli is still sitting and grinning. “You’re a natural,” he congratulates me. “One take! They must have really loved you.” Uh. So wait a sec. Could I really have discovered a new talent? And could that talent really involve acting in Egyptian musalsals? Am I still my self? Am I a better self? These questions all received my serious contemplation as I sailed back through sunset Cairo in a cab listening to Abdel Halim Hafez. I decided that my makeup-masked reflection in the rearview looked decidedly Lebanese.

Me and my Sheghala

As she swept and dusted, she hacked up Cairosmog in piteous blasts, wiping her hand on her heather-grey hijab. She is our sheghala, the Arabic word for maid, of undisclosed age, although probably in her thirties (it is impossible to tell under the hijab). Her skin is smooth and latte-colored and her jawbone firm, giving her face a graceful look despite her typically multi-colored teeth. The latte skin darkens on her knuckles and cracks on her palms, much like my mother’s dishwater-and-diaper-weathered hands. I do not know how many children the sheghala has, although I assume she has them and has thus necessitated her profession. She must really need the money too, because this cough sounded nasty enough to drive even the most devoted worker to take a sick day. I wanted to make her a Get Well card with flowers but all I had was Lipton, of which I made for her two cups. The first one earned me a grateful touch to the arm, the second one a hug. My cup ranneth over and I said the phrase for sick people I had been practicing in my room before coming out with the tea: “Rubbina yi’awwimik bissalaama (which means roughly, “May God strengthen you in peace”).” I wished I had the linguistic wherewithall to tell her how strange it felt that she cleaned my house, that I had never hired anyone to clean for me, or really do anything for me before now. I had hired the sheghala because it seemed that everyone does it here. In situations like these, I try to remind myself that I cannot begin to guess at the extent to which my assessment derives from uninformed subjectivity. After all, the economy works differently here; who am I to judge what is a reasonable or frivolous way to spend money? We pay her between forty and fifty Egyptian pounds a session, which amounts to less than ten dollars. This woman needs those crumpled bills as much as I need my free time, right? Aren’t we just helping each other? Isn’t that how the world goes ‘round? At any rate, none of these furtive reassurances can make up for twenty-four years of grouping all manner of hired help into a rather fantastical category of servants associated with fairy tale palaces or the sumptuous homes of the anonymous rich, whose behavior I imagined to be necessarily despotic regarding their minions.
I did not want this poor coughing woman to feel like a minion. It does not help that the language barrier between us only strengthens the likeness of the whole affair to the novelistic version in my mind. However, usually the maid is the mute foreigner and the mistress the haughty command-giver, whereas the sheghala and I often end up in opposite positions, or at least I perceive them to be such. Our exchanges prior to the tea-op consisted of rooting through stuffed cabinets full of mystery items looking for a product described by her vague gesturing. Each time I resolve to ask my dialect teacher for a list of this vocabulary, as I eventually give a helpless shrug , say “ma‘alesh” and slink off to my room. (Sarah likes to say that the maid actually “sends her to her room” while cleaning the rest of the apartment.) And by the way, why am I just calling her “the sheghala,” if indeed tortured by this ineffable compassion? Because I never thought to ask her name. I have been thinking about why and here are the reasons I can offer:

1. I never ask anyone’s name. I do not require names until repeated encounters affirm the necessity of my knowing them.
2. We call her the “sheghala,” which to me already feels like a name because it is a new word and she is the only “sheghala” I have ever had.
3. I tend not to ask for information from people in a language in which I feel uncomfortable, due to an irrational fear of not understanding the response and finding myself thereafter responsible for the information given and missed.
4. She never introduced herself. So I never introduced myself. And now it feels too late, since she has come three times without this basic information being exchanged. I feel almost as if asking her name at this point would be insulting.

Whatever the excuses, I do not know my sheghala’s name so her name is the Sheghala. But I feel confident in saying that my ignorance of her name does not in any way reflect my respect for her and interest in her. Our relationship simply presents one more example of the impossibility of assessing social distances and expectations in a new culture. Was I out of line offering the tea? Or was I out of line not buying the Get Well card and flowers? As a foreigner am I even expected to pick up on any of these social cues, or was the sheghala warned from the beginning not to expect anything but rudeness from these uncivilized Western sluts? Her true feelings I may never know, but my conscience seems to have no problem basing its reactions on the feelings it has projected on to her (concocted from an unsavory mixture of Orientalism, poor-snobbism, and Marxism – yikes). I hover in the entryway as she bustles around our dining room. I feel decadent and repressive, dreaming up all manner of meaner barbs I feel certain she must be devising as she sweeps up the veritable blanket of dead leaves beneath our neglected plants. She must be concluding to herself with vindictive satisfaction that our mistreatment of the plants reveals the carelessness and self-centeredness governing our approach to life in general. Typical, she must be snorting. Just look at how these entitled brats treat beautiful nature. No respect for anything or anyone. Cough cough. My guilt intensifies with each trip she makes from the scene of the carnage to the garbage can, clutching the fallen victims to her chest in crackly green bundles. The lie escapes me before I can stop myself: “Kunna nisafir,” I excused my guilty bum. “We were traveling.” She nodded in understanding and made some indecipherable grunt through her cough-clogged throat. Regardless, she seemed to have pocketed the counterfeit; I registered shamefaced relief. I resolved to water my silent, oxygen-giving friends with more regularity in the future, lest their visible ailing continue to allow the sheghala to derive my rotten character.
If I felt uncomfortable about the plants, I felt positively mortified when our sheghala had to clean out the disgusting remains of our housewarming party. We had slept through her original appointment, so when Nabil escorted her up for the second time, she was privy to the talking-to he dealt us: people in the hall smoking! Sudanese! Egyptians! So much noise! I apologized as sincerely as my Arabic would allow, frantic to express how sorry I really was. The party had gotten out of hand, and I ended up having to shoo out a bunch of people I didn’t know around three. I had never imagined that three girls who just moved to this city could draw such a crowd, but there you are: Ben warned us that you can’t have a small party in Cairo. Too many folks around, I guess. My explanations failed to budge Nabil’s scowl so I resorted to repeating “akhir marra (last time)” over and over until finally he left. The sheghala stepped into our sticky, beer-bottle-filled kitchen with tangible disdain. We cowered in our rooms, wincing with each clink of heathenous bottle, taking furtive dashes to the bathroom, as if we were worried that the sheghala might spank us if she caught us alone. I felt like I deserved a spanking. I felt like I had trespassed all possible codes of acceptability. In the eyes of this hard-working, respectable woman I had sprung from latent to explicit levels of haram.
At long last, the sheghala gestured that she had finished. She donned her black outside robe and gathered together the plastic bags of empty bottles she had amassed from the night’s debauchery. I comforted myself in that she could probably get a few piasters for each one somewhere; at least our sins would amount to something useful. I fished out a fifty and pressed it into her hand. As is the custom for the acceptance of payment in such positions, she kissed it without counting it and stuffed it into a fold of her cloak. I stepped back and smiled a last sheepish apology. She smiled back and produced one of our remaining cold beers from her voluminous sleeves. “May I?” she gestured. “ ‘Ashan al-har,” she explained. “It’s so hot out there.” I was baffled, delighted and rectified. “Tafaddali!” I urged her, “Go right ahead!” She gave one of her goose-like nods, perhaps only exaggerated for my benefit but which have come to define her, and shuffled out the door. I wondered what else I might be wrong about. But these worries faded into a comfortable distance and a new preoccupation replaced them: where did the sheghala plan to enjoy her Meister Max, Egypt’s finest beer at eight percent alcohol content? Oh well. Bottoms up!

The Apartment: Sealing the Deal à l’égyptienne (June 7th and 8th)

My first interaction with Madam Afaf occurred over my new cellular telephone. Since I have trouble communicating through this medium even in my mother tongue, I intercepted the stream of indecipherable dialect on the other end with gloomy complacency. How on earth can I deliver to this woman in confident tones the list of requests that I had lost the night of sleep thinking about, much less haggle down the rent? I passed off the phone to Nabil, with relief and then renewed consternation as it occurred to me that I had no means of determining what they were talking about, except that it concerned the future of my living situation and a rather large amount of my money. Not to worry – Madam Afaf arranged to have her English-speaking daughter Hurriya call me back. She did so, and a three-way conversation ensued. I began by outlining as clearly as possible my demands in English: that the sofa and mattress be replaced; that the washing machine be fixed; that they lower the rent from 3,000 L.E. to something closer to the former rent, 2,200 L.E. Hurriyya began by declaring that the rent had not been that low for at least a year, a claim which I knew to be false since I had run into one of the former tenants on his way out. I sensed however that no amount of arguing could budge Hurriyya’s conviction on this falsehood; arguing with people who speak to you in broken, forceful English has never yielded results in my experience. I changed tacks, explaining that unless all of the things I had mentioned could be replaced we simply could not pay 3,000. After each proposal I made, Hurriyya would convert them (in sha’ allah) into ‘aamiyya to her mother, who responded with streams of what sounded like curses. These Hurriyya converted into tranquil but insistent sentences in English beginning and ending with “no.” I had thought that access to a language I have spoken for more than three days might make me a more successful haggler, but the ladies on the other end would have none of it. In the end they decided that Nabil should bring us to their apartment in Agouza so we could hash it out in person. Unsure whether this would frustrate or improve chances of progress, Sarah and I bobbed along beside him, deflecting harassment. I wondered how Nabil felt with us in tow. Would he be seen as a lucky dog or a traitor dog? I did not ask.
Hurriyya answered the door and shepherded us through in a cloud of ahlen-wa-sahlens. She looked to be a very fashionable forty-something. She wore Western (although still modest) clothing, and blond dye muted her silvering hair. We all shook hands and said “ho-arrr-yoo” and sat down in the drawing room (as I later discovered, only prolonged acquaintances merit access to the inner living room). A curious, curly-haired toddler puttered around us, and any attention earned the giver a beatific grin. Wish we could bargain with him. Hurriyya cooed and basked in our expressions of admiration. Suddenly it felt like we were family. How could the actual reason for our visit be something so unpleasant? I was soon to learn that this is the Egyptian way: the more pleasant it is for all involved, the easier it is to get your way, and, more often than not, the more pleased you are with the results. Hurriyya called her mother and sat down.
If we had found the daughter’s reception warm, Madam Afaf’s was ebullient. She descended upon us with kisses and a stream of burbling affection the bore no clear resemblance to the harsh voice I had heard over the phone line. “Oohhhhhh, massa’ al-khayr, habibiti, izayyik, oohhhh helwa al-banaat, etc.,” was the extent of what I got out of her crooning. As is often the case when I find myself in the eye of such a storm of effusion, I was struck dumb. I smiled with what I hoped was appreciative warmth but what I suspected (if I looked anything like Sarah) was apprehensive amusement. I wondered with some anxiety when the phone version of Madam Afaf might reappear. For now, she showed no sign of remembering why we had come at all; she sank with much ado into an armchair and began to tell us of her troubles. She had returned that very night from America, where two of her precious children had chosen to live. Between the extravagant gestures, eyes closed for effect and the bits of her monologue that I understood, it seemed that she found it all quite overwhelming and terrible that they had met with such success; even worse that she had had the occasion to visit them. “Oh! Ba‘iiiid minni! So far away!” I assured her that leaving my family the week before had been equally excruciating, which earned me coos of heartfelt empathy, “Aywa, habibti...” After all, I figured, it works both ways; surely this matriarch will have to humanize me if I refer to myself as a lost little girl. I sensed that her appetite for lost little girls to mother may well be nigh on insatiable. However, as I surveyed the artwork and antiques in her apartment, I gathered that her appetite for money could not lag far behind. Formidably sprayed and dyed hair framed her painted, emotive face, shimmery house clothes her slight physique. I awaited her next move and worked on my smile.
Sure enough, the wily Madam Afaf made a smooth transition: with such an extensive (and growing, as the toddler continually reminded us) network of relatives depending on her alone, surely we understood how crucial the income of renting this apartment must be to her! Should we pay less than 3,000, why, how was she to buy all of the nice things for it that we had asked? Of course, she wanted to buy them – she loved that apartment, helwa helwa that apartment, but how could she do so in the midst of her host of expenses and responsibilities if she offered the apartment for less? I tried to go for the shared empathy approach once more, expressing my appreciation for how hard it must be for her since I too struggled with finances as a lowly student. Hurriyya came to the rescue and switched the negotiations into English. She agreed quite readily to my demands concerning furniture and repairs, but no number besides 3,000 left her lips. Damn, these girls are good, I thought, realizing that by this time they probably actually believed in the lies they were telling us. I tried not to jump on the bandwagon, but . . . was it really worth it? Clearly I was no match for these fortune-seekers. As the negotiations speeded toward their crafted close, I threw out a last attempt: certainly I understood their difficulties and appreciated everything they had agreed to do. But unfortunately, I had promised our third roommate that the rent was less than 1,000 each . . . so I didn’t know if she would commit to living with us anymore. And it’s so hard to find such a good roommate! If only we could have the place for just 2,800 – but you say no. I abandoned the warm smile for an expression of regret so abject that I hoped it would appear that I had already resigned myself to losing the apartment.
This was, of course, a whopper. Sarah and I had no third roommate, much less one making demands, but Hurriyya went for it. Her brow furrowed, she translated my fictitious tale of woe for her mother. To my surprise and delight, the immovable Madam Asaf gave a gruff but understanding nod. Only for us, she emphasized. Because we were “nass kwoyyiss” (good people) and she only wanted to rent her beautiful apartment to “nass kwoyyiss.” We had won. Real smiles broke out on our faces and niceties flowed with renewed feeling. I complimented Hurriyya on her beautiful son, only to find that the toddler was in fact her grandson. I was quite honestly surprised and said so. This breath of sincerity refreshed me and delighted Hurriyya, who ran off trilling to her daughter to show herself. A mousy, bespectacled girl appeared from the back rooms of the apartment, looking not a day over nineteen. Damn. I congratulated her on her adorable offspring. She nodded and smiled and slouched and disappeared, leaving her firstborn to entertain his elders. Meanwhile, a cousin appeared at the door and Madam Afaf vanished into the inner living room to welcome her. As their inspired burbling trickled in, Hurriyya ironed out the details with us and brought us some Sprite. We clinked our glasses with contained glee, unsure if we were already transgressing the accepted limits of hospitality. We hadn’t meant to; nobody had told us to get up, so we had remained seated. In any case, the ladies handled their mannerless bumblers of evening guests with grace. If anything, Nabil seemed to stick out more than us; he slumped in his chair and spoke nary a word throughout the proceedings. I supposed his presence among the ladies at this hour had to be uncommon, although perhaps in his line of work he was used to it. Either way, he looked as uncomfortable as I would feel amidst a group of rednecks discussing their sexual exploits. Madam Afaf must pay him a lot.
Upon our departure (we had stayed for a good hour) Madam Afaf proclaimed us both “gamiiiiila” (beautiful) and congratulated us. We agreed to meet the next day to look everything over. I proceeded to spend the night awake concocting disastrous scenarios, but needn’t have worried. Within twenty-four hours, Sarah, our new roommate (a punchy and perky Georgetown PhD student I met at CASA orientation that morning), and I witnessed an overhaul refurnishing of the apartment, presided over by Madam Afaf herself. She fluttered about, dressed all in green and carrying a very fashionable handbag, touching things and clucking with approval or disapproval (at least this much detail I could surmise). Jen, to my relief and Madam Afaf’s delight, had lived in Egypt before and spoke much more dialect than I. Sarah had been working on a lease agreement with her lawyer boyfriend and hovered nearby with her laptop, ready to fight it out. But Madam Afaf showed no signs of sitting. She orchestrated the entrance and arrangement of two armchairs and two couches, one of which had to be disassembled to fit through our doorway. All the while she chattered along, every once in awhile asking Jen or me our opinion on her furniture selections. After a few such exchanges, I began to worry that I might be nearing the end of my “kwoyyiss” and “helwa” quota for the day. However, since saying either guaranteed me expressions of such utter agreement from my interlocutor, the temptation to repeat them overcame me every time. After all, the furniture was just as “kwoyyiss” and “helwa” each time she asked. This song and dance carried us on into the evening. As the sun sank lower and Sarah’s eyes glazed over, we began to wonder if some cardinal move needed to be made in order to initiate the business part of this encounter. Even when we got the little juggernaut to the table, she wouldn’t stay put. She would make some comment about how much she had done, shughl katir, and mention that without the money she couldn’t do much more. Well, let us give you the money! We all wanted to scream, but it took another half hour or so beyond that to get her to read through and sign the receipts we had made. I handed over 6,500 LE in a mixture of 100 and 50 pound notes, feeling very much like I was purchasing narcotics rather than three months in a Cairene apartment full of old lady furniture. Madam Afaf did not count the money, but she still looked like a pretty high roller stuffing the envelope (which just moments before had contained Jen’s CASA stipend) into her purse. What an old mixer, I thought fondly at her hunched green back. I met her honeyed smile with my own one last time before we slumped into the elevator to get some (fucking) water.
Mission accomplished? Hardly. We hadn’t been able to take out the full amount due to withdrawal limits, especially since one of us started this voyage with a pick-pocketing debacle, and Madam Afaf would not be handing over the key until she had another wad of bills in her crispy, manicured hand. Delivering said wad ended up including another visit chez Afaf. This time she answered the door herself, wearing a kind of iridescent nightie. She enveloped each of us in turn in her delicate, gnarled embrace, and much saying of izayyik and al-humdu-lillah ensued. Kwoyyiss. This deeper piece of business gained us entry deeper into Afaf’s home: she ushered us into the inner drawing room and produced a box of fig pastries. The decoration in the room did not seem to follow any particular theme: it included everything from Persian and Indian prints to a designer Barbie, as well as a photo gallery of Afaf relatives alive and dead. Madam quite nearly collapsed onto the couch next to me. How hot it was [in her air conditioned apartment], and she with so much work to do [in her nightie]. We agreed with the varying levels of emphasis that our commands of dialect would allow. I sensed that it would be awhile before the atmosphere was suited to handing the swooning Afaf 5,000 L.E. After a frame-by-frame presentation of the photo gallery (responses: “Ahh, helwa” [so beautiful] and “Allah yarhamhu” [R.I.P.]), the passing around of a dish of chocolates (by a stiff Nabil), and the drafting of new receipts (me copying Sarah’s lawyerische), it seemed like we were getting somewhere. Then the doorbell rang, and a cousin (or something), materialized and established herself on the couch opposite, gushing over what it seemed could only have been quite a troublesome day. She and Afaf crooned an elegant duo back and forth, the “owwies” and “allaaaahs” and “mishes” rising and falling in smooth waves. I wanted to play. I wanted to take part in this conversation, consisting of repetitious musical reassurances at over ninety percent. I wanted not to feel like an unresponsive pack of limbs with a strained smile on top. But for now, I figured I would try to take in other details. Like the fact that with the appearance of the cousin, Nabil had retired to the outer sitting room. I guess that in principle, he shouldn’t be here at all, except for his involvement in this piece of business.
At last some change in current alerted the garrulous cousin that an important item of business was at hand and could not continue until she departed. But hey, wouldn’t that have been patently obvious? What I can gather is this: yes, of course the cousin realized once she saw us that Madam Afaf was engaged in trying to seal a whitey-size deal. However, since custom does not allow one to say, “I’m busy,” or even ‘My peerless cousin, you are the light of my eyes but if God wills it I will have 5,000 pounds if you swing back by in fifteen minuetes.” So instead, the unannounced and ill-timed visitor must be shown at least a modicum of hospitality, but probably more. Because here’s the catch: while the visitor recognizes the inconvenience of her visit, the concept “inconvenience” must not exist for the visited. Thus an orchestrated exchange follows, in which the “always convenient” visitor receives the accepted amount of attention and offers of snacks, until the host manages to slip in an indirect suggestion to terminate the visit. I think, anyway; maybe it’s the guest’s responsibility to find some graceful way to excuse herself without making it sound like she feels shooed away. Whoever set the ball rolling, we hid sighs of relief when the two women stood up, still jabbering and gesturing. The cousin gave us her regards (“Nice doooooo metyou) and passed into the entryway with Madam Afaf, where the final stages of their engagement-breaking took place. I wondered if she was seizing this opportunity to say, these silly American banaat are about to pay 600 more for the apartment than the tenants last year. Gameel mish kida (nice, huh)? In general, I wondered how much liberty these folks took speaking about us in front of us, knowing that particularly Jen might understand them. Nabil moved back into the inner sitting room. Yo. We whispered to each other in English, feeling a bit rude but not knowing whether striking up a conversation with Nabil would even be considered acceptable. Still, he looked so bored and awkward perched on his chair there by the display Barbie that I wished I could say something to ease the waiting.
Afaf shimmered back in after dispensing with the cousin, and reinitiated our business with a long apology over the cousin’s appearance. Ma‘leysh, mish mushkil, etc. (no prob) were repeated a sufficient amount of times to convince her that we were not thoroughly disgusted with her hospitality. Which must of course be the ultimate failing for such a cultured woman-of-the-world as Madam Afaf. Indeed, she did on many occasions reveal the extent of her multicultural prowess: she pegged Sarah as a German from the German accent she applies to her Arabic, and displayed her limited but graceful command of French upon request (I thereby discovered that Madam Afaf “adorrrrrres Parrrriiiiiis”). Our knowledge of other places and languages seemed to raise us in her esteem, and she took frequent occasions to murmur to her self, “Helwa, al-banaat . . .” Well, niceties aside, these banaat helwaat were about to fork over a pretty helwa chunk of change. I counted it in front of her this time (okay, I just wanted to thumb through those bills again) and we signed two identical contracts. I give Madam Afaf props for not cackling fiendishly when I gave her the money. I sure would have wanted to, but I suppose old mixers of her caliber would hardly bat an eye. Truth is, everyone can relax once the money has been transferred from hand to hand. Madam Afaf even went so far as to assure us that we needn’t worry ourselves over all of these receipts, because she wasn’t like some of these other landlords lurking out there, she would be like a mother because we were “nass kwoyyiss.” We assured her that of course, we trusted her, but had been ordered by Sarah’s lawyer husband to make everything official. This warmed the heart of old Afaf, who asked Sarah where this husband was. Tee hee, he’s in New York unaware that the girl he met on a bus is now announcing him as her husband all throughout a foreign land. Sarah took this opportunity to inform Madam Afaf of his imminent visit. “Al-humdu lilleeeeh,” the heartfelt response. Sarah glows a whole bunch and I can see that announcing herself as a demure woman married to an absent Jeff suits her, perhaps even more than pursuing an elusive Jeff through the infuriating labyrinth of New York schedules and egos. Maybe I had better start up a husband fable myself if e’er I aim to entertain a gentleman caller, although our landlady seems to belong to a more liberal sector of society.
We thank Madam Afaf what we hope is an acceptable number of times (in the double digits) and rise to begin the final stages of our disengagement. Nabil got paid for his pains, which I imagined made the stiff evening worth it, and she salaamaed and mabrooked us out the door. Whew. We all hopped in a cab with Nabil, with whom I still had not figured out how to behave in public. We had set off for Madam’s without him originally, not having understood that he was to accompany us. When he discovered that we had departed, he chased us down, calling out for us to stop. Unfortunately, we have all by now learned to tune out such requests from the street loiterers, and we walked on without turning our heads. By the time he caught us, he had attracted all kinds of other attention, and another man bobbed alongside our now united band, badgering me with questions. Nabil did nothing to dissuade him, and I didn’t know whether to be rude to him or ignore him, or whether the situation required some polite, dismissive statement beyond my cultural and linguistic proficiency. He finally wore out and went away. There sure are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands around here. I’ve begun to switch the chicken with the egg and suppose that perhaps the hassling is just one among the many results of having too many loiterers about. If jobless Minnesotan men lined the curbs of St. Cloud, the ladies would get comments, you bet, and probably more offensive ones. So who are all these guys, and what are they doing out here all day? They don’t appear to come from any specific age group or social class; you pretty much get the full gamut, although the cocktail changes depending on the neighborhood and time of day. You have your teenage boys with hands stuffed in the pockets of tight jeans, challenging you with impudent eyes and suggestive comments. You have the little old men in kufas squatting by various wares or seated on stools, either in groups or alone, who view your passing with a brow-furrowed mixture of incomprehension and disapproval. You have the bored shopkeepers ranging in age from twenties to fifties lolling in front of their empty shops, usually grouped together, inviting you to buy what they’re selling. Then you add in the loiterers-on-wheels, the parade of passenger-less taxi drivers who honk and slow down one by one, shouting “taxiii!” in hopes of gaining access to your unwitting Western generosity. Now, how could you assemble such a sausage fest and not expect the women to get a little bit of trouble, especially ones deemed by their skin color to be loose and lascivious? I excuse them, every one. Besides, now at last I have a place to BE: our beautiful apartment, on the seventh floor of 40 Mesaha Street. Huge windows that slide open at waist height face west toward the Nile and downtown Cairo, with palm-tree-adorned sporting grounds directly beneath. The common space contains our own personal jungle of small palms, ferns and vines disseminated amidst the brand new furniture. Sarah has noted on various occasions that Egyptians tend to over-furnish. Over-furnished or no, plenty of space remains: gleaming hardwood floors provide ample sliding space (see Dave Eggers’ A.H.W.O.S.G. for diagrams). The older furniture in the bedrooms (best described by Sarah as “Pretty Pretty Princess” themed) kind of cracks us up, but adds all the character Calvin’s dad could ask for. Most of the doorknobs, except for a few that have been noticeably replaced, are porcelain with miniature paintings of a small boy and girl in various bucolic settings.
Trilling and bustling in the glow of feminine industry, we three ladies spend the evening spreading ourselves and our stuff out in the new space. We discover by the by that the former residents of the apartment left a considerable amount of their belongings behind. I suppose I am getting my come-uppance for bequeathing my entire estate at 270 Vanderbilt to my friend Erik out of pure laziness (and presence of shared literary interests), although most of the “presents” are in Jen and Sarah’s rooms. It just so happens that the former inhabitant of Sarah’s room was a young American journalist taken hostage in Iraq this past winter. While we reckon that she had to leave in a hurry and we understand, we are wondering what to do with all of her jewelry, clothing, and um, confidential documents. Perhaps everyone who warned me before coming to the Middle East to “not to get abducted” should not catch wind that for the moment, I seem to be following directly in the footsteps of an abductee. Spectre of kidnapped journalists aside, it filled us all with inordinate glee to have a Home under our feet and over our heads. We scrubbed out our dusty drawers with love and pretended not to notice when the smoggy air drafting in made them dusty again right away. We put up posters of Arabic vocabulary that we found in the closet. We told stories and chugged three three-liter bottles of water. We became a family (Sarah: stay-at-home Daddy who tapes down the peeling linoleum; Me: Sugar-Momma who funds the project and checks the expiration dates on the weird stuff left in our cupboard; Jen: super-ambitious daughter who handles the locals for her poor, immigrant parents). We live in Cairo.