Thursday, May 12, 2005
Cairo-Chairsitters-Sept. 30, 2002
I read some Cairo diaries that were published recently in the New Yorker and a number of things struck me. First, these diary entries written by someone who has lived here much longer than I and who has an historical perspective as he visited Cairo more than 30 years ago as a teacher. Second, many of his observations are the same as I have had (crazy driving, pollution, etc.) but the vast majority are so totally different from anything I have seen or heard that he may as well be writing about another country.
What I am doing is most certainly not novel. But what makes a travel journal enduring and readable is the writer’s point of view. So after reading Lawrence Wright’s version of modern Cairo, I realized that I am doing you, my readers, a disservice by offering you my narrow view of things.
Let me unload some of the baggage I carry that colors the stories I have been relaying to you.
First, I am cheap and I am broke. I earn one-tenth of what I earned in the US and my husband is a student. This means that many of the beautiful places in Egypt are inaccessible to us. Egypt has many resort-like areas (Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada, El Gouna, Agamy, Ain Soukna) where you can spend less than you would in the US for top-notch Club Med-style facilities. These are the places of white sand and turquoise waters and bellboys. You will not hear about these places in my diaries. Even if I was making good money, resort life has never been my style.
But because of my cheapness, you will hear about the inside of a Cairo bus. You will know what fuul, tammiya and fatta taste like. You will feel the stares that I feel when I ride the Metro. You will know what the men at the awha (male-only coffeehouses) talk about. These are the activities, the transportation and food of real Egyptians — the majority of the country that cannot read, write and barely have jobs.
Second, I am self-conscious in public. I do not like being noticed. It takes away some sort of control I have over what I am thinking and forces me into situations I never asked for. Yet, at the same time, I am friendly, and this invites unwanted attention. This personality trait of mine colors the way I think about Egyptians. It doesn’t matter why they are staring at me. There are too many reasons. The No. 1 reason is sheer difference. There are some foreign women here who enjoy the staring and sometimes even bring it on. I go through phases. Most days I try to ignore it. But after ignoring it for a couple of days, I want to be brazen. I am angered by the fact that I am letting someone else’s behavior change mine — letting them make me feel ashamed or too feminine. I get angry that they make me feel like a teenager again who has no confidence and a terrible self-image. During these anger phases I stare right back or call them a bad name in Arabic or hiss at them they way they hiss at me. I will wear skirts on these days and keep my head up at all costs. Then the next phase that hits is a more liberal approach. Why bring on more trouble? I switch my skirts for baggy pants. This is just their culture. It is a sexually repressed culture; it’s not their fault. Male-female relationships in Egypt are not based on mutual respect. They are not even allowed to develop friendships with women to learn what women are capable of. The sexual barrier becomes its own character. And it doesn’t go away. Men here are convinced that women are only out to snag a man and then sit at home on their ass and complain about the servants. The men have little sympathy for the lack of role models and the heavy-handed patriarchal society that created these kinds of women.
So it is impossible for me to write about my adventures here without these nagging traits of my own getting in the way. If I were a man, you would have a totally different opinion of Egypt after reading my diaries. If I were rich, you would most definitely have a different view.
Back to Mr. Wright and his NY Times diaries. Politics. Again, I haven’t mentioned them much which must seem odd considering the time and the region I am in. This is again colored by me and possibly not the real Egypt. Wright writes that Egyptians’ hatred of Americans is palpable and growing. I simply cannot speak to this sentiment since it goes against everything I have experienced here. It is true that many Egyptians are not convinced that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11. It is true that Egyptians think America’s blind support of Israel borders on criminal. It is true that Egyptians view most Americans as naïve. But it is not true that Egyptians as a whole hate Americans as a whole.
This is quite possibly the largest small town in the world. People here look out for each other. A woman stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire can expect to be helped immediately with no fear of being attacked. I run into people on the street almost once a day whom I have met before or seen somewhere. Just walking around the city, you are “welcomed” about 10 times. Egyptians love foreigners. The vast majority want us to enjoy their country and stay here.
The country’s problems are numerous. It is a hard place to live for anyone. But the problems stem from the government being too entrenched in the daily lives of citizens, being corrupt and being too huge. There are some 16 million people in Cairo; 6 million of them work for the government. Herein lies the problem. The massive inefficiency created by the beast of bureaucracy leaks into the private sector and creates jobs like the hole diggers and hole fillers, and my favorite, the chairsitter.
The chairsitter is classic Cairo. You cannot go anywhere without seeing a chairsitter. I believe they are meant to be security of some sort, but there is so little crime in Cairo, that these guys go for weeks without looking at anyone’s ID or stopping anyone from going anywhere. Hence the name: the chairsitter. There is literally at least one chairsitter per residential building. If the building is more than five stories, then there’s two chairsitters. If the building has companies inside, each company has its own chairsitter. There’s chairsitters in public areas – parks, gardens, etc. There’s chairsitters on just about every corner in our neighborhood. There’s a chairsitter in every public bathroom. And at least, in this case, maybe they are holding the only toilet paper roll so they serve a purpose.
Another totally random observation that has nothing to do with anything: Cairo is covered in bats. They are everywhere at night. My colleague from NY and I finally (think) we have figured out why. The city is plagued with abandoned buildings. Some were left mid-construction either because the project ran out of the money and went under or because the government put the squeeze on the project for some reason. (There’s even one building that was hyped and promoted as a high-tech high-rise. Halfway through construction, they stopped because they failed to make enough parking spots ahead of time so the government shut them down. And it’s too expensive to tear down.) So, anyway, we think that the bats are living in the buildings, which act as perfect, dry caves all day, and then they come out at night.
What I am doing is most certainly not novel. But what makes a travel journal enduring and readable is the writer’s point of view. So after reading Lawrence Wright’s version of modern Cairo, I realized that I am doing you, my readers, a disservice by offering you my narrow view of things.
Let me unload some of the baggage I carry that colors the stories I have been relaying to you.
First, I am cheap and I am broke. I earn one-tenth of what I earned in the US and my husband is a student. This means that many of the beautiful places in Egypt are inaccessible to us. Egypt has many resort-like areas (Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada, El Gouna, Agamy, Ain Soukna) where you can spend less than you would in the US for top-notch Club Med-style facilities. These are the places of white sand and turquoise waters and bellboys. You will not hear about these places in my diaries. Even if I was making good money, resort life has never been my style.
But because of my cheapness, you will hear about the inside of a Cairo bus. You will know what fuul, tammiya and fatta taste like. You will feel the stares that I feel when I ride the Metro. You will know what the men at the awha (male-only coffeehouses) talk about. These are the activities, the transportation and food of real Egyptians — the majority of the country that cannot read, write and barely have jobs.
Second, I am self-conscious in public. I do not like being noticed. It takes away some sort of control I have over what I am thinking and forces me into situations I never asked for. Yet, at the same time, I am friendly, and this invites unwanted attention. This personality trait of mine colors the way I think about Egyptians. It doesn’t matter why they are staring at me. There are too many reasons. The No. 1 reason is sheer difference. There are some foreign women here who enjoy the staring and sometimes even bring it on. I go through phases. Most days I try to ignore it. But after ignoring it for a couple of days, I want to be brazen. I am angered by the fact that I am letting someone else’s behavior change mine — letting them make me feel ashamed or too feminine. I get angry that they make me feel like a teenager again who has no confidence and a terrible self-image. During these anger phases I stare right back or call them a bad name in Arabic or hiss at them they way they hiss at me. I will wear skirts on these days and keep my head up at all costs. Then the next phase that hits is a more liberal approach. Why bring on more trouble? I switch my skirts for baggy pants. This is just their culture. It is a sexually repressed culture; it’s not their fault. Male-female relationships in Egypt are not based on mutual respect. They are not even allowed to develop friendships with women to learn what women are capable of. The sexual barrier becomes its own character. And it doesn’t go away. Men here are convinced that women are only out to snag a man and then sit at home on their ass and complain about the servants. The men have little sympathy for the lack of role models and the heavy-handed patriarchal society that created these kinds of women.
So it is impossible for me to write about my adventures here without these nagging traits of my own getting in the way. If I were a man, you would have a totally different opinion of Egypt after reading my diaries. If I were rich, you would most definitely have a different view.
Back to Mr. Wright and his NY Times diaries. Politics. Again, I haven’t mentioned them much which must seem odd considering the time and the region I am in. This is again colored by me and possibly not the real Egypt. Wright writes that Egyptians’ hatred of Americans is palpable and growing. I simply cannot speak to this sentiment since it goes against everything I have experienced here. It is true that many Egyptians are not convinced that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11. It is true that Egyptians think America’s blind support of Israel borders on criminal. It is true that Egyptians view most Americans as naïve. But it is not true that Egyptians as a whole hate Americans as a whole.
This is quite possibly the largest small town in the world. People here look out for each other. A woman stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire can expect to be helped immediately with no fear of being attacked. I run into people on the street almost once a day whom I have met before or seen somewhere. Just walking around the city, you are “welcomed” about 10 times. Egyptians love foreigners. The vast majority want us to enjoy their country and stay here.
The country’s problems are numerous. It is a hard place to live for anyone. But the problems stem from the government being too entrenched in the daily lives of citizens, being corrupt and being too huge. There are some 16 million people in Cairo; 6 million of them work for the government. Herein lies the problem. The massive inefficiency created by the beast of bureaucracy leaks into the private sector and creates jobs like the hole diggers and hole fillers, and my favorite, the chairsitter.
The chairsitter is classic Cairo. You cannot go anywhere without seeing a chairsitter. I believe they are meant to be security of some sort, but there is so little crime in Cairo, that these guys go for weeks without looking at anyone’s ID or stopping anyone from going anywhere. Hence the name: the chairsitter. There is literally at least one chairsitter per residential building. If the building is more than five stories, then there’s two chairsitters. If the building has companies inside, each company has its own chairsitter. There’s chairsitters in public areas – parks, gardens, etc. There’s chairsitters on just about every corner in our neighborhood. There’s a chairsitter in every public bathroom. And at least, in this case, maybe they are holding the only toilet paper roll so they serve a purpose.
Another totally random observation that has nothing to do with anything: Cairo is covered in bats. They are everywhere at night. My colleague from NY and I finally (think) we have figured out why. The city is plagued with abandoned buildings. Some were left mid-construction either because the project ran out of the money and went under or because the government put the squeeze on the project for some reason. (There’s even one building that was hyped and promoted as a high-tech high-rise. Halfway through construction, they stopped because they failed to make enough parking spots ahead of time so the government shut them down. And it’s too expensive to tear down.) So, anyway, we think that the bats are living in the buildings, which act as perfect, dry caves all day, and then they come out at night.
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