Pondering

Well I only have about 5 days left here and I figured a new blog entry was in need. So much to say….

Okay, I’ll start with something that happened to me today. I was walking back to the Medina (the dorms) in broad daylight while wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a long sleeved sweater over my t-shirt. I was minding my own business when all of a sudden a man in his late thirties or forties wearing a jalabiyya approached me and said, “Izayyik, ya kouskous?” Which basically translates to, “How are you doing, you cunt?” Now I’ve actually had worse things yelled at me in the street here before in English, such as sexually explicit acts, but the difference is that this time it was in Arabic. I like to give the men the benefit of the doubt when they say profanities to me in English; I assume that they just don’t know what they’re saying or the level of disrespect it shows me. But this time I was just really infuriated that this middle-aged man, who should have known better, and who would NEVER even whisper a word like that around any of his female relatives (curse words are extremely disrespectful here; Egyptian boys have a totally different way of speaking amongst themselves and would never say some of the things that they say to other boys in private when a girl that they respect is present. In fact, the only reason that I knew what this word meant was because we actually spent one of our Egyptian colloquial classes learning the different curse words and what was appropriate to say to females and not) said it so blatantly to me, probably because he was under the impression that I wouldn’t understand him. I was particularly annoyed because I try so hard to be respectful of the culture here; like I said, I was wearing a long-sleeved sweater and jeans in 90 degree weather in order to be appropriately dressed! Anyway, I totally stopped moving after he said that to me, and debated whether I should say something back. What I really wanted to do was to go off on a feminist rant. But (1) I didn’t have the vocabulary for that and (2) I don’t think it would have done any good. It probably would have just antagonized him. So I didn’t do anything. Which is the part that really sucks. Sometimes I just want to…..I don’t even know what I want to do. MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND. KNOCK THEIR HEADS AGAINST THE WALL. TEACH THEM ABOUT RESPECTING OTHERS. Arrrrrrrrrrrrg.

Another thing that I wanted to mention here was a recent discussion that I had about most Egyptians views on Jews. We’ve talked about it several times in my Political Islam and the Society class, and it came up again the other day when I was watching a movie with one of my Egyptian friends. We were watching “Hassan wa Murkus,” which is a movie about an Egyptian Christian and an Egyptian Muslim who fall in love. The movie ended really optimistically with both the families joining hands and walking together in the midst of a huge protest between the Christians and the Egyptians, so I couldn’t help but feel proud of the Egyptian cinema for at least making a statement about unity. But then I thought back to the movie about Israel I saw here a few months back, so I asked Eman Khader, basically the most Westernized of our Egyptian dormmates, if she thought a movie like that could be made about Jews, and we both promptly responded, “No, not now.” The thing is, most Egyptians don’t separate between Jews and Israelis. They see anyone who is Jewish as a contributor to the Nakba (the catastrophe of 1948 when Palestinians were forced to flee Israel), and the continued killing of the Palestinian women and children that they see shown on the news each day. It doesn’t help that there are no Jews here to show them an alternative on which to judge the religion (there are approximately 6 Jews in all of Alexandria). The education system also just perpetuates these generalizations/ stereotypes. In all the public schools, students are required to take a class in religion, but by religion I mean their particular religion. This means that the minority of Christians are sent off to be in a class by themselves to learn about Christianity, while the Muslims learn about Islam. And no one learns about Judaism (or any other religion for that matter, since the other religions aren’t even acknowledged as true religions). My politics class basically decided that this is an extremely counter-productive system. First of all, by dividing the Muslims and Christians into different classes, it teaches the Christians from a young age that they are a minority and further divides Egyptian society. Secondly, the children never learn about cultures different from their own. Or more importantly, they don’t learn the fact that it’s a mistake to judge an entire society or culture based on what they see in one particular instance, or in a particular group of people. I guess I can just draw this back to my experience this afternoon with the man on the street. He most likely saw me as “the typical foreigner without any morals.” It just drives me nuts that there’s no nuance. People on the street see you, and instantly jump to conclusions about your upbringing, background, morals, etc. There’s just so much “black and white” here.

On a different note, I would also like to mention the fact that many Egyptians criticize Western women for their obsession with beauty and the need to always follow what is “in fashion.” Well, I actually see the same thing here, just in a different way. Just like there’s a societal pressure in the West to wear what’s in fashion, there’s a societal pressure here to wear what is thought to be Islamic clothing (whether or not it’s truly commanded by Islam is up for debate). I am absolutely certain that all of the women who claim to wear the hijab for religious reasons are influenced at least somewhat by the societal pressures and expectation to wear one as well. These women aren’t living in a vacuum. There’s no way of separating them from the societal pressures of veiling.

Wow, this is getting to be somewhat of a rant. I guess it’s time to move onto something more positive… Well, I just spent two days in Marsa Matrouh which is a beach town in Egypt. And let me just say that it was absolutely GOREGOUS. I had actually been there this past summer, but that was during tourist season (April is still considered winter here). First, we went to Aguiba which was this really cool beach with a bunch of caves and tide pools to explore. Then, we relocated to another beach about fifteen minutes away, and we were the only people there! It was amazing. I have never seen water that blue or clear before, or sand that white or clean. I firmly stand by the statement that Marsa Matrouh in non-tourist season is Egypt’s best-kept secret. I have never been to the Caribbean, so I cannot say that it was better than the Caribbean, but I’m pretty sure that it is…

Alright, time to finish my Amiyya video project.