Colonialism

I think I have finally found a word for a collection of uglinesses I find around me. Colonialism.

Supposedly the UK declared Egypt’s independence in 1922. Egypt didn’t even get to declare it itself. And Wikipedia says, “British influence, however, continued to dominate Egypt's political life and fostered fiscal, administrative, and governmental reforms.”

As my roommate started talking about this "colonialism" concept the other day I started to thinking and since then I’ve been feeling sicker and sicker about it all to the extent that I even want to leave this country just to stop being a part of it. But it still has a hold on the world, no matter which part of it I sit in. And while I’m seeing it so clearly here from where I’m sitting, which makes me exceedingly uncomfortable, maybe my uncomfortable situation here is making colonialism a tad bit uncomfortable as well. I hope so.

Every word that I utter in Arabic seems to be fighting a little for the home team, every conversation in English seems to be another point for the colonial power. My friend told me that people here respect foreigners more than they respect each other. He told me this because I was complaining about how no matter how stupid and poor and young and ugly and inexperienced and unskilled I am I will always be pampered and paid attention to and catered to, just because I’m a foreigner. I have been more and more happy about the fact that I can speak English to so many people, but then I’m getting more and more sick to hear the stories of my friends who say that they can’t get a job without good English, and they can’t get English without money, and this is for a job that pays an average 800 Egyptian pounds / month. If you want the real good jobs, you’re gonna need flawless English, the kind that comes from private foreign schools (American, Canadian, British) for your whole life (=uber rich). And as A reminded us, there are millions of people with flawless native English in the world, those with any flaws need not apply.

My roommate J works in a world of people who have learned English, but at the expense of their Arabic. The top of society is being trained to be dysfunctional and illiterate in their own language. Oftentimes they are dysfunctional in Arabic and English, in a kind of limbo between the two languages, this is the system. Me and two of my roommates have procured jobs here which are expressly for foreigners. Foreigners here are paid more and respected more in the work place. With absolute abysmal Arabic and no qualifications or knowledge of me beyond my foreigner status I’ve been asked to work in marketing a few times. This preferential treatment makes a little more sense in a country like America where I am the WASP majority. Here though, we are very much the minority, and yet, we walk in a room and we’re automatically important. We are an accessory for our friends to show off, kinda like a designer bag, foreigners classy. It will be an adjustment to go back to the U.S. where I am frumpy and normal.

People just ask us questions, we are assumed to be knowledgeable on any subject, even as scrubby just out of college kids on an extended year of travelling. Where is the justice? This world has been set up for us by our ancestors. They wanted a world where they were always able to feel smart and have an easy time navigating and ordering people around wherever they went. Heck who doesn’t? It’s easy, and I’m not gonna lie, if I felt only the utter inferiority and stupidity that comes with being in a strange country with a strange language and never felt the trust in my abilities and respect of my status that comes with being a foreigner here, I might not have made it so long.

But this superiority is cheap, it rings so hollow and painful. You can almost hear it in the voices of the men yelling at you: “Talk to me! Why won’t you talk to me?!” “F*** you!” It’s not just a sexual thing, it’s a fascination with the exotic and maybe a subconscious way to bring you back down to the level you should be at, an anger at the unjust distribution of power. I see it in the way that the police and security service here let the foreigners get away with whatever they want with a smile, while harrassing their Egyptian friends. I hear it in ex-pats telling me that Egyptians are just lazy and unreliable. I hear it in my friend F explaining to me that Egyptian are actually envious of the U.S. because it took all the power and beauty and morality even, and left Egypt with nothing. There's a hopeless sense here among so many, a sense that leaving the country or leaving the culture is the only way to move up in life. Some reject these ideas, some chase them vigorously, but Colonialism is living.

Mt. Sinai

Mt. Sinai. Gabel Moosa (Moses' mountain). This is supposedly the mountain that Moses climbed to get the commandments. The mountain covered in cloud where God stayed and talked to Moses, told him what to write. Its in a beautiful red mountain range. Usually people climb it at sunrise or sunset. At the top sits a mosque and a church next to each other. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe that Moses was a prophet. This mountain is one of the top religious tourism destinations in the world. The bedouins in the area have set up quite a business with hotels, guides, selling overpriced chocolate bars, camel rides, charging for tiny huts to go to the bathroom in on the mountain face, books and souvenirs.

I've climbed this mountain three times. It has meaning, that is sure for anyone who climbs it. The meaning can be so many different things. The first time I climbed it was two and a half years ago as a study abroad student. Like everything the whole semester I was thinking to myself, "This is so freakin cool! I'm walking where Moses walked maybe! I have to tell my friends, my family, random strangers about this!" As I walked through several switchbacks I started to mellow and truly tried to feel what Moses felt as he climbed. How scared did he feel? How special did he feel? How excited? Did he ever succumb to pride that he was the one hanging out with God? Or is that why he was chosen, because he was entirely humble?

The second time I climbed was a couple months ago with my family. This time the meaning faded into the sociologist, academic part of me. I was thinking, all the way up and all the way down, about how this felt to religious tourists. Interesting I don't consider myself one of them although I probably am. I started trying to empathize with the hymn singing, horn blowing crowd, started thinking how they would remember this place when they went back home. What will it mean to them?

This third time, this weekend, I was used to this mountain. I know how long it takes, how hard it is, how dark it is, generally how to avoid getting run over by a camel, and I just wanted to climb the mountain. I started thinking, the beauty, the meaning of this mountain is that its a metaphor. The endlessly climbing up to meet God, the knowledge that God is there to meet us. The call to "rejoice my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything," has an experience to match it when you think of this mountain as life. We are always climbing, climbing, but why? Because we meet God at the top, and because we are on holy ground. We know that climbing the mountain is tough, but somehow enjoyable. We know, without seeing, that what we see at the top will be more beautiful than we can imagine. And then, we get there, and it is.

Here I am reminded of a conversation I had with two good friends the other day in which we discussed miracles. Miracles, what are they? Why do they seem not to really happen for us anymore? At least us Western Christians seem to have accepted that the age of miracles is over. We say that this saddens us, we say that if we just all saw miracles all the time we would be so much more able to believe, like during the early days. But what's to say we aren't all seeing miracles? What's to say just because something is common in our lives, something is ordinary in that it happens all the time to all kinds of people, that it isn't a miracle. Birth, sunrises, singing, flowers, acts of mercy, floating on water, mountains. And what's to say that seeing God makes life easier? The burning bush ruined Moses' life. But he ended up on top of Mt. Sinai, where his life no longer mattered.

On the ledge

Tonight, after a lovely night of sipping a massive yogurt, fruit tower beverage with my roommate in the romantically lit hookah / coffee shop, I made my way home feeling a little adventurous, a little sick of my routine. So my first few steps into the house I immediately have the idea to climb the rickety winding staircase only used by the garbage man up to the roof. The roof is covered in old cement and wiring and a giant satellite dish.

I ducked under a wire to sit on the ledge at the edge of this roof. Its quiet up here. By this I mean, the horns and shouting are muffled because I'm several stories above it all. I lay down on this ledge, somewhat carefully. To my right, one of the giant mosques of Cairo is visible a few miles away through the gap between the other high rise buildings next to ours, a Christian family with religious art posted all over their room visible through a window, the satellite dish looming over my head. If I roll or fall over to this side, I would land on the roof, safe.

To my left, a much larger portion of the skyline is visible. The trees on the side of the Nile, the medical school, a lit up building that looks like something important in Washington D.C., and the Islamic moon (a crescent that looks kinda like a boat) above it all. If I roll or fall over to this side, I fall at least a couple stories before I hit a balcony, potentially to the ground.

I try to keep my weight shifted to the right side as I lay balanced on this narrow ledge, one shoulder blade on each side, my hood beneath my head, my legs crossed. I feel a little precarious here as I look up at the few visible stars and shift my head slightly to see the Islamic moon.

But I stay on this ledge, and I think about the whole concept of ledges. My life feels this way at the moment. With two months left, I am balanced here between Egypt and America, belonging and being an outsider, investing in friends and pushing them away.

But the stars are still there.

And then, I walk down the rickety, winding, garbage man staircase, push open the door, and its like the Wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I see the kettle on the stove in our lighted kitchen, and its a different world, my world here, opening up before me. Its still there, somehow completely separate from the world above that I've been visiting.

And everything comes down to these ledges, these boundaries between worlds again, but what is it that pervades all these worlds? And what is it about laying balanced on a ledge that's so exciting and stressful at the same time?

A sinking feeling

It's a sinking feeling to know that your home has been attacked. I was about to head from a restaurant to Hurreya (the bar I mentioned in my previous post) not to drink but to socialize and people watch, when my roommate R gets a call, she puts her head down and starts saying, "O my gosh."

She looks up and tells us. "A bomb went off in the Khan el Khalili."

Bombs don't happen here. Not in a long time. Look through my pictures on facebook, the Khan el Khalili features prominently. We went after work almost every week the first few months I was here, I've gone there to personally shop, got lost in the alleyways, taken all my friends who have visited to see it, see the huge, old beautiful mosque there.

My stomach starts sinking and we start walking faster and faster home. Suddenly the streets that have absorbed me as a member of this society seem a bit hostile and scary, as they never have before.

We get home and read a little more. It turns out that two people in full woman's Islamic dress threw something like a hand grenade near a hotel and mosque and the market. 1 French woman is dead, French, Germans, and Egyptians are wounded (around 17 people I think). Check out NY Times, its on there.

Anyway, I went down to get ice cream to calm all our nerves and had a talk with my buddy the supermarket man. He was watching the news on TV. I could hear certain words like "bomb", "mosque", "hotel" and "America", "Iraq." The screen alternated between the throngs of people and the cordoned off areas next to Hussein mosque and ambulance lights, and the political analysts in a well-furnished room talking about why. Who the hell knows why? Evidently something about America and Iraq.

Grocery store man has a very rare stony expression. He tells me, "I'm sorry," informs me how it happened and draws me a diagram, makes sure I've called my mother to tell her I'm ok. He says he's very upset. We talked about how it was next to a mosque, how can they do that?

And the jittery feeling is starting to ware off (maybe the ice cream helped) but I am angry and I'm sad. How could people do something like that? It helps no one. People are dead, the economy (about 75% based on tourism) of Egypt will be severely hurt, and a kind of depressive fear has settled over this city, and now how will I convince all the already prejudiced people that Egypt and the Middle East are full of nice, welcoming, non-violent people. Although ya, as my friend M pointed out, much more people die in drive by shootings in Chicago probably in a month than have ever died in terrorist attacks in Egypt, that is not going to matter to the majority of people. A bomb is a bomb and somehow much scarier and much worse and much more memorable. And we have to keep on living as if it doesn't matter, kicking at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Hurreya

Hurreya means freedom. It is the name of one of the only Egyptian bars here in Cairo (cheap Egyptian beer, tea with crusty spoons, moldy-looking walls and open windows and always crowded). Hurreya is something I have thought and talked about a lot here. Its somehow probably the thing I love the most and miss the most here. I have the freedom that comes with being so far from home and not even knowing how to conform even if I wanted to, but I also have less freedom that comes with the society in general and my own very visible place as a representative of my country and religion.

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My friend O asks me, "Its true that everyone in the U.S. must have sex by the time they're 15 right?"

Me: "Um no O, you don't have to, its your choice. That's the idea in the U.S., you have freedom."

O: "O FREEdom, yes, haha" (evidently its a funny idea of us Americans)

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My friend F: "Its ok for girls and boys to do really anything in America right?"

me: "well it depends, but usually yes, its the choice of the boy and girl what they do."

F: "So the society doesn't have morals. There are no morals. What do you think is better, Egypt or America?"

me: "well, I think ya maybe the morals of America are bad, but I think if you choose to be good, and its not because you have to do something, that means you're really good. I think this is good, to have the choice."

F: "Hmm I think maybe you're right, if you choose to be good when you have freedom, you are better, but still, many people don't choose good if they don't have to."

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Me: "I can't believe that woman on the beach! She was practically naked and that random guy was giving her a massage and they were like making out in public. She ruined right there any progress I've made in convincing people foreigners aren't all sluts."

My brother: "Kirsten, you can't judge her like that, she should be able to do whatever she wants to do without people passing judgment on her."

My mom: "Kirsten, what happened to you? You never would have said that when you were in highschool."

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My Egyptian mama: "Egypt is better than America because here boys and girls can't just walk around together. If they want to be together they love each other and they get married. This is right."

Me: "they can't be just friends?"

mama: "no, not close friends. Maybe see each other in church or something, but you can't just go around together. In America this is normal right?"

me: "yes its normal."

mama: "boys and girls can do anything without marriage."

me: "well it depends. People who are very religious say no. But it has to be inside your heart, not the government or people in the street telling you what to do. There is more freedom (feeh hurreya akhtar)."

mama: "America is unlike Egypt completely."

me: "yes, very different."

mama: "Egypt is much better, people are good here."

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This weekend started off with a foggy Thursday morning. You know those days when everyone's a little subdued, everything's a little quieter because this kind of dense cloud has descended, and its kinda exciting almost. Especially here where every day is sun in the desert, fog is cause for celebration.

So anyway, I'm walking down the alleyway to the metro, past the duck cages and kleenex vending women with their babies and the vegetable stands and the house where the crazy man sometimes yells as me in Italian in this foggy calm and I come to the major cross street and I look up at the foggy sky above the buildings and I suddenly feel that I am not being pushed around by rushing time and circumstances, but that this world is open. I'm not trapped underground but free to wander or march or walk where I please at whatever speed under an endless universe.

Its strange that this sense of freedom comes along with my current state of having absolutely no money and the restrictions that that brings. Now I've always been bad with money, but I've always been rich at the same time. In that sense I mean I have never really felt like I missed out on anything because of money. Yes, I'm kinda spoiled. Now, however, with no daddy to call when I mess up and a struggling non-profit salary that really does not provide for luxuries, I don't have these options. If I buy a coat, I don't get to go out for dinner. If I go out to dinner, I don't get to go out next week, things like this.

Currently I have budgeted for myself less than $1 / day to get me through the month. This means I am taking up the Egyptian practice of sneaking two people out of the metro on one ticket (to save 15 cents or so), not being able to drink anything but water, I am not even able to help anyone who asks me for money, and waiting for two hours for my friend so that she can pay for our taxi home.

During these two hours of waiting I sat along a wall alongside the Nile because paying for a drink in a cafe was definitely out of the question. I watched the rich Egyptians on the sunset dinner cruise yachts go by. I was thinking, hey I used to be like that, private yacht parties, private beaches, things of this nature that go along with prep schools in southern california. However, with all these "opportunities" and conveniences that seem to be taken from me now that I don't have money flying around me, there comes a certain freedom. I am free to sit in the sun on the edge of the Nile and not worry about what people are thinking, because really I don't have a choice. And really, the sun and the Nile with my feet dangling over the wall, listening to the mingling music from the falucas makes me happier than the stuffy cafes with overpriced cappucinos and elevator music any day. Even when teenagers somehow managed to dangle over the bridge directly above me to hiss and yell at me about what I'm writing, even then.

So anyway, hurreya, its a great word, and these are my thoughts.

amusing

I was crossing the crowded Qasr el Aini highway near my house with my roommates, on the way to church. We sort of gaged the fact that a horse cart was crossing the highway behind us and the cars rushing towards us, picked up the pace a little and my roommate A barely missed being hit by the cart. While we emerge safely on the other side of the road, we hear a "BABOOMP BABOOM BOOM!", followed by collective sounds of surprise from the hundreds of men sitting around on the street. We all turn to look behind us only to see a horse, legs flailing in the air, on top of the hood of a car. We collectively draw in a shocked breath, before we can exhale, the horse is on its feet and cantering the rest of the way across the street... And the whole street breaths a sigh of relief and laughs at the same time. Yep, that is my first witnessing of a horse-car collision.

Humanity

I spent my first few months here observing the differences between America and Egypt, being amazed at things I would absolutely never see back home. I was particularly prone to thinking of all the ways that Egypt was better than America, partly because it really is an amazing place, but also partly because I was trying to remind myself why I traded home for this craziness.

Now that I've been here awhile, I guess that I'm not seeing things as strange anymore, as I said in my last blog, the romanticism is gone, everything seems so freakin' normal now. I guess this is good. One thing that it has allowed is my finer perceptions to come out. Another thing it has allowed is me getting the urge that its time to move on again. When things start to get boring or difficult and I start putting down roots, my instinct is to leave. Fortunately, I don't have the money for that to be an option, for once in my life. So I'm here for another three months, despite my instincts to cut and run.

Another thing that this has allowed is me to start to see the similarities, the universals, that pervade cultures and places on this earth. Seeing these similarities has sometimes made me so ridiculously happy to be a human being at times, and at other times, particularly recently, made me angry and depressed.

For instance:

1. All human societies set up some sort of hierarchy, some sort of way that certain groups are higher than others (in America and even more so in Egypt, its all about class, with other hierarchies thrown in). Everyone fights for the top positions (to stay or to get there) and everyone avoids getting to know people in other groups too well because then it would be more and more impossible to keep fighting without sullying your conscience. Every society has rich people and poor people ghettos, so that rich people can keep themselves and those under them believing that they are normal, that there is nothing else to see in life but how they live.

Today I left Maasara, a crowded, noisy, lower class area with trash mountains in the dirt streets and I entered Maadi, the rich, foreign enclave suburb of Cairo. It was beautiful, green trees, mansions, sprinklers, birds chirping, quiet. I loved it. The occassional begger broke my seemingly heavenly world outside of Cairo and I was glad I left my wallet behind so that I had nothing to give and therefore didn't have to feel guilty about refusing. When I started to walk to the edge or caught a taxi out of this area, I sighed in sadness that the trash and poverty and face of normal Cairo were showing once again. I say that I hate the class system, the isolation of the rich from the rest of the world, and yet this is how I think, how I act, what I appreciate. How depressing.

2. People are afraid so they protect themselves and those they love from exploring. Why does this so often seem to be the overtly religious people too? Is it that these people are scared that they are wrong, that God really doesn't exist the way they think he does, that he's really not that powerful and true and so therefore they make a big show to convince themselves and others of the truth of their statements, and then go about protecting themselves and others they love from anything that might challenge their fragile faith?

My sister here burst into tears spontaneously today and I could only figure that it had something to do with being trapped in her house, not allowed to walk to streets, have any communication with the opposite gender, ever oppose her family or disobey an order. I wanted to cry with her. Then I tell my Egyptian mother and father that I can't come next week because I'm going to the Cinema with friends from work. Father says: "who, are they girls or boys?" in such an insistent way that I just say girls, even though I'm really not sure of the gender make-up of the group. He nods his head and says yes. Mother says: "Jesus will be angry at you for going to the cinema."
WHAT?! I ask,"why?" She says, "because." I inquire, "because of the film or the cinema?" She tells me both. At this point I just am itching to fight. But at least I can fight, and I don't have to listen to these things, for my sister, this kind of thinking is her reality, and I can see her not liking it.

Why is it that my Muslim friend here is told by several of her friends that she should stay away from me because I'm a Christian and I'll try to convert her. I won't, but even if I was trying, so what? If you really believe your faith, people with other ideas and opening yourself up to see the world can only strengthen it. A pursuit of the truth will unveil truth. God's truths should be stronger than the worlds' lies.

3. People judge people artificially. We look at a person's skin, the sound of their voice, the place that they live, the tightness of their clothes, the group they belong to, and the money they make and we categorize them. We fit things into boxes, that's how our brain works, so we fit people into boxes for reality to make sense.

4. Injustice. Life just isn't fair. Life is fraught with double standards, hypocrisy, betrayal, prejudice, inequalities and the like. I, as an upper class, well-educated American citizen, have seemingly everything. I have freedom to go almost anywhere in the world, get a good job, be respected and well-fed, live according to the moral standards and faith that I choose. These things are categorically denied to most of the world, for example.

But then I look at this and see the other side of the coin. Humanity, along with acting and thinking and living unjustly, also shares a sense of justice, and an idea that it should be pursued, that its the way things should be. We share love, we share humor, and we share beauty and the acknowledgment of beauty in a deeper way, and although we are often selfish, we also sometimes act with self-sacrifice. And so perhaps there's hope for us that we can someday live not like this.