A Line or Two on America

The one thing I was repeatedly told about going to Egypt was, don’t have any expectations. Thus I, and I think my peers did the same, put myself in a mindset to be ready for surprises. I figured I’d probably learn a thing or two about Egyptian culture and society along the way; what I didn’t anticipate is how much it would tell me about my own. When I’m put into a new situation or something unexpected happens, I am usually not surprised. No big deal, that’s what’s supposed to happen when you interact with a new culture. In an earlier blog post I think I interpreted this as being unfazed by my interactions in Cairo. But the truth is that I am fazed, and the effect lies in the fact that something was unexpected in the first place. Instead of getting a better understanding of Egyptians, I think I’ve ended up learning more, through contrast, about Americans.

One of the main insights I feel like I’ve gained, and the one that’s been most on my mind lately, is that we Americans are obsessed with lines. Yes, lines. All types of them. In the metro, when there are massive mobs trying to get in and out of the same door of a car at the same time, or trying to buy tickets, it’s a bit foreign. I suppose earlier I dismissively thought (quite pompous in hindsight) that this had something to do with civility. But the truth is Egyptians are no less civil than the people I’ve been surrounded by for most of my life. My fellow Americans are just absolutely infatuated with organization, often for no real purpose other than to subdue their unyielding (and perhaps more unnatural than I thought?) fear of chaos. Our reaction to the mobs at the metro is just the surface of some sort of new metaphorical insight I feel like I’ve gained about the American and perhaps Western mindset.

And that’s not the only kind of line. The American is proud of nothing more than he is his open-mindedness and acceptance of others. Yet perhaps exactly that idea can limit his outlook, which sounds paradoxical and probably is. Whatever. Most of my Arabic class here is discussion based, so we often end up talking about important and usually sensitive issues in America and Egypt with our teacher. Our teacher would ask us how Americans viewed something or what the tradition was for something and we very quickly learned the word for “it depends on…” Within the first week it became absolutely necessary to explain to our teacher the concept of “politically correct.” In being so constantly preoccupied with not hurting anyone’s feelings or not generalizing, we were drawing another line- a boundary. A limit. And lots of them at that. I’d realized a while ago that Americans hate to generalize or offend people (yes, I know what I just did there. Clever, right?), but once we had to talk about something in a foreign language, without the ability to say things exactly right, I really saw just how stunting it could be for communication. Every society has boundaries about what can and cannot be done, but ours is an intellectual boundary and seems to be a lot more apologetic. Our group knows each others’ values and backgrounds; why, then, is there still this constant trepidation to say something that may, theoretically, have offended some person from some family in some random area of the country? Why do we get so uncomfortable when an Egyptian in a coffee shop asks us about our religion and feel the need to constantly repeat the fact that this is only one opinion and not everyone believes this way? Of course it’s your opinion- you’re the one who said it; it’s not about clarifying that. It’s about that historically deep-rooted, socially promoted discomfort- not with being wrong, but with being perceived as ignorant or closed-minded.

There is another line still, though it’s very similar to the former. A few days ago I was in a largely Christian area in a church with a few friends on a mountain called Moqattum (an experience that really deserves its own post, though the chances of that happening are pretty slim). We were discussing the relationship between Muslims and Christians in Egypt and one of my friends said something that struck me. He knows the country much better than I do and was telling us how he’d seen Muslim women come to the church we were sitting in and ask the patron saint for protection. He then related that followers of each religion have parades for their respective saints and how sometimes they attend each other’s parades. My friend prefaced this with the observation that the relationship between Muslims and Christians in this area was “pretty odd.” I immediately thought of Islam and Hinduism in pre-colonial India. First of all, I don’t think Hinduism even had a name at that point. People just believed in their gods. If one of those gods had a prophet by the name of Muhammed, then so be it. And if one of the Muslim prophets was a Hindu god named Ram, that’s cool. It was all very… natural. When the British came and went, they left lines. Not just boundaries like the one between Pakistan and India, but categorical lines. People were asked if they were Muslim or Hindu and were then filed in one drawer or another. I’m not arguing that partitions didn’t exist before the evil Western man came in and created them, not at all. But I’ve heard too many stories about people who had no idea if they were Muslim or Hindu, or what the differences were between the two, or even that there were any differences, before British occupation. I think that developed countries in the west, more than any other countries, feel some need to categorize things. It’s no surprise that taxonomy was invented by a Roman. For something to exist, there must be distinctions between it and something else. It goes back to the western preoccupation with organization.

Now don’t get me wrong- my friend isn’t some dumb American who’s completely unaware of the fact that societies have different religious and cultural norms. I, as primarily a westerner, also found the information he shared strange. I think I’m guilty of drawing all of these types of lines. I’m not even so sure if that’s a bad thing. I really don’t think I would have been able to fully appreciate it without the contrast of Cairo though. It’s definitely not the only thing that being here has taught me about Americans and probably won’t be the last; I’m curious to see if I’ll find even more biases once I go home.

Maalish

My biggest concern before coming to Egypt with DukeEngage was that I wouldn’t be able to handle the bureaucratic red tape strung all over anything you want to get done in developing countries, particularly in the service sector. My next biggest concern was that I would be able to handle it. I figured my anal-retentive personality type would get the best of me in the end and I would be irrevocably frustrated with the small, unforeseeable obstacles that proved to be insurmountable. But the flipside, which may almost be worse, is that I would be completely unfazed by the roadblocks that not only obstruct me, but are also a representative symptom of a disease-ridden system, and that I would become jaded to the zeal that would have been the root of my former frustrations. That, I thought, might be a more permanent effect, and the idea of it didn’t sit well with me, to say the least.

There’s an important word in Egyptian Arabic called ‘maalish,’ and it means some combination of ‘Excuse me,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ and mostly ‘It’s okay.’ There is no English equivalent. Someone’s crying and you’re trying to make them feel better- maalish. You bump into someone in the street- maalish. Something stops your work from going according to plans- maalish; just say maalish and move on. It’s an ‘Hakuna Matata’ of sorts and it’s quite descriptive of the Egyptian mentality. On a somewhat tangential note, I think that’s one of the reasons I love Egyptians. They’re hilarious. They seem to carry such a light-hearted, carefree frame of mind and they are so flexible and accommodating that they are fantastic to be around and make friends with. However, when it comes to getting things done, it’s that exact type of thinking that makes work difficult in Egypt.

Granted, you have to be flexible to function here or Cairo will eat you alive, and that’s been surprisingly easy for me and I think most of us to adjust to. I often hear people in our group say, “ah, it’s Egypt. Maalish.” Yet I can’t help but thinking that being so forgiving is irresponsible and, quite frankly, a little condescending. One can’t be completely rigid, but I think an actual asset Americans bring to the table here is that indignant sense of entitlement to efficiency. Because the truth, pompous as it sounds, is that we often get it. The Sudanese are infamous for being late. We simply told our class that we will begin on time and now all of our students are in the room before we walk in. Part of me wants to argue that the culture and socioeconomic situation of Egypt make it so that the country and it’s people can only do so much; the other part of me is asking, who the hell do you think you are not to demand more? 

A Little Lesson

I think I’ve learned something about sincerity in this country. When I got here my first response was to spurn any advances made by Egyptians. It seemed like the more appropriate thing to do to try to fit in and seem like I knew what I was doing; just ignore all the ‘Welcome to Cairo!’s and ‘Ante Gamila!’s (You are beautiful!).

On Wednesday we took our St. Andrews students to the park and as I sat down to play cards with some of the girls, a woman and her daughters asked to join. We ended up befriending the group and they proceeded to spend the rest of the time with us at the park. The mother and I talked for a bit, or attempted to at least with my broken FusHa, classical Arabic, and her strict Eamiya, dialect, and she, for god knows what reason, took a keen liking to me. She insisted that I come to her house for dinner one day, to which I responded Insh’allah, God willing, which any Arab can tell you is a go-to word when you want to politely decline an invitation. Her daughters asked me for my phone number, which I gave them hesitatingly, and email address. The whole situation was incredibly sweet but I just wasn’t entirely sure how to react.

Afterwards, I told Brendan how the woman had invited me over and he said “Really? That’s awesome! Are you going to go?” Just the fact that he asked made me realize for the first time that I hadn’t even considered it. The people here are so friendly and welcoming I think I’d be foolish not to take advantage of that beautiful aspect of the culture that seems to be dying off in the states. Sure, there are a handful of people with ulterior motives and you must be careful about who you acknowledge, but if a flower shop owner gives you a rose for a simple 5 minute conversation in return, like one did to me today, what’s the harm? You get to practice some of your Arabic and, who knows, you probably made their day.