Ma Salaama Cairo!

Desperation

So the day before we left, my good friend Jon and I were eating at our favorite koshari place one last time. He went up to the register to pay as I finished up my food. As he was paying, several people saw him from the street and came inside. They began questioning him in Arabic. He looked flustered, but I just laughed, thinking that they were asking for money and he was having trouble navigating a tactful refusal in Arabic. But they were persistent and growing more frantic. I quickly joined him and realized they were not asking for money, but interrogating him on his business in Egypt. It became clear that they had taken interest in us because we were American, and they were upset, but our Arabic wasn’t good enough to figure out much more than that. As they grew more excited, we decided we needed to get away.

As soon as we moved outside, people from the growing crowd grabbed us and would not let us move. They demanded identification.

Luckily I had my passport in my pocket, so I showed them and shoved it back in my pocket before they could wrench it from my hands. Jon had left his passport in his apartment.

He tried to explain in English and Arabic that he had a student ID only, and the passport was in his apartment. The crowd was unsatisfied, and some of the men began shoving Jon and trying to take things from his pockets.

A man was holding my wrists and refusing to let me help Jon. I scanned the crowd looking for help. People were running from up and down the street to see what was going on, most paused just beyond our aggressors, trying to determine how much of a threat we were.

I made eye contact with a tall Cairene who looked sympathetic. I started yelling to him that we were students, we did not know any of these people, and we didn’t know what was going on. He joined with two other Cairenes to help us break away from the men holding us.

“Run!” he yelled. We tore away from the crowd and dodged cars until we made it across the street. We ran another block with the mob following us, and then made our way to the nearest metro station.

The people who assaulted us were likely conservative Egyptians from villages outside of Cairo. Many of the less educated Egyptians from rural areas were gathering in the city that day for a huge rally the next day. That week there had been several statements from politicians and military leaders blaming foreigners (specifically Americans and Israelis) for inappropriate actions in Tahrir. Basically the government was trying to delegitimize the protests by painting them as a plot by foreigners to undermine Egyptian stability. For these villagers, likely illiterate with no experience or education beyond the dusty confines of their village, they were doing a noble service for their country by detaining us and hindering our “Anti-Egyptian” agenda.

What would it take to motivate you to assault a stranger on the street? I don’t see this as an issue of character. This event underscores the desperation many people are experiencing in Egypt right now. There are few options for constructive action, and things are not improving quickly, if at all…

Hazem Mohamed Elshafee

Hazem Mohamed Elshafee is one of about twenty Egyptian adults who come to the Al-Kayan community center in Cairo twice a week for English classes that I teach with several other DukeEngagers. He was born in Kaluobia the biggest city near Sinduon, the village where he grew up. Very interested in learning and tradition from an early age, he enjoyed village life immensely. Hazem's eyes glow when he reminisces about village tea brewed over a wood fire, far superior to the city tea here in Cairo. As a child he fondly remembers wandering the family farm with homemade slingshots. Sinduon is a large enough village that Hazem was able to attend schools close to home through secondary school. He frequently returns to the village to visit family, celebrate high holidays, and check up on the family farm.

Hazem left the village to attend 6 October University where he studied Mechotronic Engineering, a combination of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. He now works for the Cairo Metro as a maintenance engineer. After one of our first classes together he walked with us to El-Demerdesh metro station. I turned away to buy a metro ticket, and when I looked back Hazem had deftly removed the covering of one the defunct mechanized turnstiles. Within a minute he had run a complete diagnostic and with a few adjustments to the whizzing belts and circuits, the turnstile was functioning once again.

Hazem is always bright and engaged. He’s very excited about improving his English, and it’s apparent that he invests himself fully in everything he chooses to undertake. He’s a jokester and he always has a giddy laugh brewing just under the surface.

Like most Egyptians, he has mixed feelings about the Revolution. Mubarak had been in power for almost his entire life until the Revolution, and Hazem is part of the generation (those now in their 20’s and 30’s) most negatively affected by the failures of the old regime. So the idea of change and Mubarak’s departure are exciting prospects for him. Nevertheless, he is uncertain of the Revolution's future as of July 9. The protests now feel more like festivals, with families and lovers strolling leisurely through the square as vendors sell sweets and t-shirts. He wants to see Egyptians developing and executing plans for a better future while simultaneously protesting for democracy and restitution. He sees some Egyptians using the protests as an alternative to more practical means of improving their situations; they wake up, grab a blanket, and head to Tahrir, rather than going out to find work. Nevertheless he recognizes that many of these protestors are without any alternative recourse.

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Hazem as both his teacher and his friend. We both like trading stories about our native cultures and experiences in our very different homes. Yet all things considered, I watch him moving through life day-to-day as I would expect any of my American friends to if they were operating with and in the same cultural and historical background and context. Hazem thinks that the internet should be restricted in some ways, and he would be uncomfortable wearing shorts in public, but ultimately he is motivated by his love of God, family, and country. He dreams about a better future as an individual and for Egypt collectively, and he pursues those dreams with optimistic ambition. I admire his determination, extraordinary work ethic, and above all his propensity for laughter and celebration of the simple parts of the human experience that make our seemingly mundane lives extraordinary.

Some pictures I stole from Veronica Fournier, a fellow DukeEngager

Day trip into the city with the kids from Ana Al Masry

Head stand competition with Ahmed at Al-Azhar Gardens

Forum on the United States' Involvement in the Egyptian Revolution at Cairo University

Outside Ana Al-Masry

American/Egyptian Fusion jam band playing a few blocks from our apartment

The Question of Privilege

So I finally have the time to blog again-- now that I’m stuck in the apartment with food poisoning. I don’t know whether it was the ful and falafel sandwich from a very local hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the week-old pizza and dipping sauces that I faithfully enjoyed to the end (holy relics of my long-lost country’s cuisine), or just the fact that I rarely wash my hands between playing with the street children and eating the food they prepare for us in the desert. Regardless, I’m enjoying the break, despite the frequent trips to the bathroom.

Driven by hunger and my ancestral instinct to hunt and gather, I left the apartment mid-day today to forage for some food. In the course of my brief foray (the food poisoning has me on a short timetable), I saw a gattling gun mounted to the back of a pick-up truck, protestors camping in Tahrir square, and children sleeping in gutters along the side-streets. Then I found and devoured a McFlurry.

When we talk about third world countries, I see images of huts in Africa, nomads in the desert, or rural villages in South America. It’s disconcerting to see third world poverty and disorganization in a country where everyone wears jeans, owns a cell phone, and watches American movies.

During our first week in Cairo, I met one of the arsonists who set the National Democratic Party HQ on fire in Tahrir during the protests earlier this year. He’s my age, and he wants the same things I do: a solid education and the opportunity to work hard to build the future he dreams of. Due to forces out of our control, I found myself in America where I very much have those opportunities, while he was born in Egypt without the means for a stellar education at a time when a quarter of people 20-30 years old are unemployed.

How do I reconcile with the fact that while I'm on an all-expenses paid trip with my world-renown university, he is choking on tear gas and dodging rubber bullets because he has no hope for a better future in the world as he knows it? We were born into vastly different life experiences. The spectrum of possible reactions ranges from sickening guilt to ambivalent acceptance. Surely he protests for the right to the lifestyle I enjoy, so why not enjoy it? Yet in some way, I feel that that acceptance cements my privilege at the expense of his.

I like what our professor, Mbaye Lo, shared with us the other night. He said that as his father dropped him off for his first day of school, he told him, "this education is not for you to get a job, but for you to help those who cannot help themselves." The privilege I was born into has afforded me an education, like most of you reading this blog. The education we have does not denote any type of superiority and inferiority, but rather a disparity in opportunity. We may not be in control of where and what we're born into, but we are responsible for our ensuing actions. It is easy to come to terms with the third world from outside of it, but I invite you to consider how unsettling it can be from within.

Garbage City and the Zabaleen

Last week we went to “Garbage City.” Collecting garbage is a business in Cairo. Garbage collectors make a living by selling the recyclables they find in the trash. Over the past century, the Zabaleen have established themselves as the city’s garabge collectors. The Zabaleen used to be a nomadic tribe of Christians, who, unlike Muslims, could keep domesticated pigs. When several members of the tribe settled in Cairo, they found that they were better suited for collecting trash than the Muslims doing so at the time, because their pigs could dispose of the organic waste as they sorted through it for recyclables. Now the Zabaleen are the city’s garbage collectors. Like the Mafia, different areas in Cairo are controlled by different families, and there are turf wars when groups collect outside of their territory. With donations from upper class Christian communities in the suburbs around Cairo, a church was built in a huge natural cave in the Zabaleen neighborhood. The Zabaleen are often involved in fights with Muslims from other poor neighborhoods. Largely uneducated and living in absolute squalor and filth, the Zabaleen are scrappy street fighters, sometimes identified by cross tattoos on their arms.

I’m still coming to terms with the images from our visit. Trash was in piles two to three stories high—inside and outside. People of all ages sat in repulsive piles of garbage, sorting out plastic and cardboard as millions of insects swarmed around them. Children hopped along trash piles spilling in and out of houses, laughing and coughing. And despite these conditions, people seemed more happy and friendly here than any area we had visited thus far. I think a lot of it can be attributed to their excitement at seeing foreigners in a place that seldom receives visitors of any kind.

Most of all, it was striking to see yellowing posters of Jesus and the Virgin Mary hanging on peeling wallpaper above piles of garbage when all my life their pictures have been in elaborate churches surrounded by average American neighborhoods that would appear as absolutely fantastical palaces to the Zabaleen.

Mosques, some Churches, and a Synagogue

For me, one of the most significant parts of this trip has been observing the religious culture of Cairo.

Muslims are by far the majority; Cairo is known as the city of a thousand minarets because there are so many mosques. Christians compose a small but potent minority (I’ve heard 7-10% of the population). Jews are few and far between. Egypt has a rich history of varying religious movements, and Cairo presents a physical record of this religious transition. There are hundreds of beautiful mosques and churches, each with a story.

Many of the stories I’ve heard as we’ve visited these sites are charged with polemic. At the first church we visited, our Christian guide explained all the subterfuge that the church’s founder had to overcome from a conniving Rabbi turned Muslim. Another day, at a Shiite mosque with a Sunni guide, we heard stories of the Shiite founder’s mental illness and the Shiites current delusional practices of reverence. The histories of these places of worship have been rewritten to forward the religious beliefs of those telling the stories. I don’t doubt that there is some truth in the stories we heard, but almost always the presentation concluded in a way that rendered the beliefs of “the other” as virtually unpalatable.

In America, social pressure often pushes people (and conversation) towards secularism rather than religion. In Cairo, exactly the opposite is true. It seems like people are programmed to wax religious in every aspect of life. It’s jarring to go from a country where it feels like a social risk to share your beliefs, to a country where people reference God in virtually every conversation. People even brand themselves. Many Muslims have a large bruise on their forehead from frequent prayer. To some it is a badge of piety. And most Christians here tattoo small crosses on their wrists.

I’ve been asking about Egyptians’ views on recent tensions between Muslims and Christians a lot. I’m still processing through all the responses I’ve been receiving, but hopefully that will be a blog post of it’s own soon.