Sunday, June 26, 2005
Aswan-Year one-June 10, 2003
Today I have been in Cairo for almost one full year. And I am spending my first week of vacation at the exact same place I was 13 months ago ... on the Nile. It’s both sad that I have returned here instead of somewhere more exotic and nice in a welcoming, introspective sort of way. In other words, a good place to reflect upon the last year and prepare for my last year in Egypt.
As for being on the Nile, its beauty is never a disappointment. In fact, I think it’s even more beautiful to me now that I know more about her and her tenacity. Like mountains or any other of nature’s wonders, rivers like the Nile are so much more impressive in their ability to give life and withstand harm and abuse than buildings or other man-made monuments. The sound of water (so gentle and yet dangerous), the lushness of the palm trees, the women washing clothes on the shore, the air, with its 110-degree temps, hugs your body in oven-like breezes. And somehow I am so happy and so comfortable.
My first visit was filled with visions of tourist police, the inside of pharamacies (we got badly sick last time), fear, trepidation, wonderment, anxiety, expectation…none of which allow for much relaxation.
We are here with both sets of parents, showing them the nature’s side of this country. They seem to be enjoying themselves — minus a little (expected) sickness. They have found themselves to be minorities here as Americans. A sign of more bad times ahead for the tourism industry. We hope they will spread the word to their friends about the affordability and safety of Egypt.
This coming month, July, will be my first month as editor of the magazine where I started as an assistant last July. I am excited and conflicted. Working in Cairo has proven to be much more difficult and with so little payoff at the moment. Ideas like teamwork, constructive criticism, efficiency just don’t mesh here. What ends up happening with many foreigners working in Egypt is that the work ethic of Westerners is taken advantage of. So to make up for the fact that the journalists I work with don’t have the same great training as they do back home, I am required to do a lot of the work the reporters should have done in the first place — therefore making my job all the more difficult. Not to mention the fact that little things — such as getting paid on time and having access to the best equipment — is a long, lost luxury. Once you become accustomed to such things as not having enough petty cash to order toilet paper for the office, you have let it in. Those who never let it in — for better or for worse I am not sure — leave.
Speaking of leaving, we have said goodbye in the past month to many good friends we made here. An expat community is such a transient mixed bag of people and summer is a time to say goodbye to many of them and prepare for the next wave. Like an adult summer camp. Many of the reasons for leaving are consequential — teachers don’t work summers; university students don’t attend classes; oil companies give their foreign employees the entire summer to visit their respective homes.
Other reasons aren’t so tidy. We know one woman who is actually so completely frustrated with the culture that she headed to Virginia for the next nine months to learn Arabic (in the middle of her two-year degree program where she is required to take a test in Arabic.) A journalist friend left because he can’t get the American media interested in any of his articles on Egypt. A group of about eight local journalists have left to start an English-language newspaper in Baghdad. Two teachers left mid school year because they could no longer stand the Egyptian classrooms where they were being verbally and physically abused (one was called “Mrs. Sharon” when the kids were angry at her; another got a pencil in the thigh). Another journalist friend is leaving partially because of an overall malaise she blames on Cairo.
This “malaise” seems to crop up in relation to Islam. We met teachers in Alexandria who blame the religion on the lack of a lust for life, or a listlessness not necessairly seen in other developing countries (Mexico was mentioned as a developing country where one religion dominates yet the people are famous for their ebullience.) Karen Blixen, in her diairies of which “Out of Africa” was based, writes about Muslims:
“From what I have observed there is on the whole something remarkably dry about the Mohammedans I know despite their passionate nature; but I don’t know whether this is due to their religion or the race, or perhaps due to the fact that they never drink wine. I wonder whether a nation which is never intoxicated comes to be lacking in the lyrical element in their emotions, and also for instance that corresponding in their sense of humor to what we call conviviality?”
A little too simple perhaps to blame it all on teetotalism, but she also wrote:
“I think that Mohammedanism makes the people who embrace it or have been brought up to it clean and proud and gives them a kind of heroic or stoic view of life, but also that it makes them, to us, quite intolerably doctrinaire and intolerant. As a whole, in my view, it is a dry religion or philosophy of life, and its dangers lie in either becoming purely external and consisting of an endless number of formal rules and ceremonial, or else in leading to fanaticism.”
This was written in 1914 or so and is still remarkably spot-on.
Another reason I haven’t written a diary entry in so long (besides work encompassing far too much of my time), is that this malaise has gotten to me some too. I’m not ready to blame this culture or its religion, though. In my case, it could be the company I work for. But there are bad, bad days for sure when I close my eyes and think of San Francisco and even Atlanta and remember simpler times. Like the day I was grabbed three times all before 11 a.m. Like the day I was told my phone etiquette was “too American and offensive.”
We were also recently treated to some amazing experiences thanks to our last visitors prior to our folks. These good friends from California treated us like royalty for a week since for them things in Egypt were ridiculously cheap. From fine food and wine to a hot-air balloon ride over the ruins in Luxor, we were literally wined and dined.
It was perhaps one of the most luxurious weeks I have experienced in my life. And it’s amazing the conflicting feelings a week of luxury can conjure in a person. On one hand, I feel any expression of gratitude for my visitors’ generosity won’t ever be enough. On the other hand, I learned a valuable lesson — and I think my friends did, too.
In America, money solves lots of problems. From the government down, Americans believe throwing money at a problem will fix it. And why not? Money can put more computers in schools. Money can put more policemen on the streets. Money can buy food to feed the hungry. But even in America, the human urge to cheat the system, to get more than your share, is more than prevalent.
Our friends were discouraged in Egypt when, attempting to put smiles on rural Egyptian children’s faces, by giving them money they watched the kids steal from each other and tell lies. Their display of generosity turned into a feeding frenzy and ended in a swarm of children grabbing and begging and following us.
Money is all so relative. It most certainly comes with strings. I have yet to add to my life the massive responsibilities of children, a house, college fund for the kids, etc., so perhaps I am speaking out of extreme inexperience and naivete. But I learned last month that I am free. I have no debt. I have no financial responsibilities. I can move where I want, I can adjust, I am flexible. Financial freedom. I have always thought that financial freedom meant having enough money to alleviate — if not obviate — financial worries. But it’s much more complicated than that and I think my friends leaned the same thing.
As for when we will leave? Another thing Egypt has taught me is that some planning is pointless. Things do sometimes happen for a reason and by some other hand, someone else’s plan, perhaps. We will start answering these questions ourselves in six months or so and ponder the next adventure.
As for being on the Nile, its beauty is never a disappointment. In fact, I think it’s even more beautiful to me now that I know more about her and her tenacity. Like mountains or any other of nature’s wonders, rivers like the Nile are so much more impressive in their ability to give life and withstand harm and abuse than buildings or other man-made monuments. The sound of water (so gentle and yet dangerous), the lushness of the palm trees, the women washing clothes on the shore, the air, with its 110-degree temps, hugs your body in oven-like breezes. And somehow I am so happy and so comfortable.
My first visit was filled with visions of tourist police, the inside of pharamacies (we got badly sick last time), fear, trepidation, wonderment, anxiety, expectation…none of which allow for much relaxation.
We are here with both sets of parents, showing them the nature’s side of this country. They seem to be enjoying themselves — minus a little (expected) sickness. They have found themselves to be minorities here as Americans. A sign of more bad times ahead for the tourism industry. We hope they will spread the word to their friends about the affordability and safety of Egypt.
This coming month, July, will be my first month as editor of the magazine where I started as an assistant last July. I am excited and conflicted. Working in Cairo has proven to be much more difficult and with so little payoff at the moment. Ideas like teamwork, constructive criticism, efficiency just don’t mesh here. What ends up happening with many foreigners working in Egypt is that the work ethic of Westerners is taken advantage of. So to make up for the fact that the journalists I work with don’t have the same great training as they do back home, I am required to do a lot of the work the reporters should have done in the first place — therefore making my job all the more difficult. Not to mention the fact that little things — such as getting paid on time and having access to the best equipment — is a long, lost luxury. Once you become accustomed to such things as not having enough petty cash to order toilet paper for the office, you have let it in. Those who never let it in — for better or for worse I am not sure — leave.
Speaking of leaving, we have said goodbye in the past month to many good friends we made here. An expat community is such a transient mixed bag of people and summer is a time to say goodbye to many of them and prepare for the next wave. Like an adult summer camp. Many of the reasons for leaving are consequential — teachers don’t work summers; university students don’t attend classes; oil companies give their foreign employees the entire summer to visit their respective homes.
Other reasons aren’t so tidy. We know one woman who is actually so completely frustrated with the culture that she headed to Virginia for the next nine months to learn Arabic (in the middle of her two-year degree program where she is required to take a test in Arabic.) A journalist friend left because he can’t get the American media interested in any of his articles on Egypt. A group of about eight local journalists have left to start an English-language newspaper in Baghdad. Two teachers left mid school year because they could no longer stand the Egyptian classrooms where they were being verbally and physically abused (one was called “Mrs. Sharon” when the kids were angry at her; another got a pencil in the thigh). Another journalist friend is leaving partially because of an overall malaise she blames on Cairo.
This “malaise” seems to crop up in relation to Islam. We met teachers in Alexandria who blame the religion on the lack of a lust for life, or a listlessness not necessairly seen in other developing countries (Mexico was mentioned as a developing country where one religion dominates yet the people are famous for their ebullience.) Karen Blixen, in her diairies of which “Out of Africa” was based, writes about Muslims:
“From what I have observed there is on the whole something remarkably dry about the Mohammedans I know despite their passionate nature; but I don’t know whether this is due to their religion or the race, or perhaps due to the fact that they never drink wine. I wonder whether a nation which is never intoxicated comes to be lacking in the lyrical element in their emotions, and also for instance that corresponding in their sense of humor to what we call conviviality?”
A little too simple perhaps to blame it all on teetotalism, but she also wrote:
“I think that Mohammedanism makes the people who embrace it or have been brought up to it clean and proud and gives them a kind of heroic or stoic view of life, but also that it makes them, to us, quite intolerably doctrinaire and intolerant. As a whole, in my view, it is a dry religion or philosophy of life, and its dangers lie in either becoming purely external and consisting of an endless number of formal rules and ceremonial, or else in leading to fanaticism.”
This was written in 1914 or so and is still remarkably spot-on.
Another reason I haven’t written a diary entry in so long (besides work encompassing far too much of my time), is that this malaise has gotten to me some too. I’m not ready to blame this culture or its religion, though. In my case, it could be the company I work for. But there are bad, bad days for sure when I close my eyes and think of San Francisco and even Atlanta and remember simpler times. Like the day I was grabbed three times all before 11 a.m. Like the day I was told my phone etiquette was “too American and offensive.”
We were also recently treated to some amazing experiences thanks to our last visitors prior to our folks. These good friends from California treated us like royalty for a week since for them things in Egypt were ridiculously cheap. From fine food and wine to a hot-air balloon ride over the ruins in Luxor, we were literally wined and dined.
It was perhaps one of the most luxurious weeks I have experienced in my life. And it’s amazing the conflicting feelings a week of luxury can conjure in a person. On one hand, I feel any expression of gratitude for my visitors’ generosity won’t ever be enough. On the other hand, I learned a valuable lesson — and I think my friends did, too.
In America, money solves lots of problems. From the government down, Americans believe throwing money at a problem will fix it. And why not? Money can put more computers in schools. Money can put more policemen on the streets. Money can buy food to feed the hungry. But even in America, the human urge to cheat the system, to get more than your share, is more than prevalent.
Our friends were discouraged in Egypt when, attempting to put smiles on rural Egyptian children’s faces, by giving them money they watched the kids steal from each other and tell lies. Their display of generosity turned into a feeding frenzy and ended in a swarm of children grabbing and begging and following us.
Money is all so relative. It most certainly comes with strings. I have yet to add to my life the massive responsibilities of children, a house, college fund for the kids, etc., so perhaps I am speaking out of extreme inexperience and naivete. But I learned last month that I am free. I have no debt. I have no financial responsibilities. I can move where I want, I can adjust, I am flexible. Financial freedom. I have always thought that financial freedom meant having enough money to alleviate — if not obviate — financial worries. But it’s much more complicated than that and I think my friends leaned the same thing.
As for when we will leave? Another thing Egypt has taught me is that some planning is pointless. Things do sometimes happen for a reason and by some other hand, someone else’s plan, perhaps. We will start answering these questions ourselves in six months or so and ponder the next adventure.
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