Claire in Cairo

Experts on cross-cultural living tell us to expect to have a complex progression of emotions vis-a-vis our host country; culture shock is not just limited to your initial experience in a new place but a fluxuating state of feelings and understanding.  Case and point: this week Cairo was too much for me. I was tired.  I didn’t want to grocery shop in Arabic, and I was ready to throw something at the next rude teenager to make a comment about me on the street.  I didn’t want to go anywhere by taxi, microbus, mega-taxi, metro, or walking, especially if I didn’t know the way and would risk getting lost.  Being out in the city was a burden and a threat to my confidence rather than the adventure I had often found it to be.  So I spent a lot of time at home, preferring to retreat through American movies and to substitute studying Arabic for speaking it.

What drew me out every day was my trek across the city to my Arabic class, which requires a long ride on the metro, Cairo’s subway train.  Consistent with this culture’s prevalent gender separation, there are two cars in the middle of the train set aside for women.  Women can ride on other cars, but waiting on the platform you’ll see the majority of women, especially those not travelling with husbands or families, gathered in the center to await these special cars.  The one time I rode in another car this week was an uncomfortable reminder of why I prefer the women’s car: harrassment in the form of staring, commenting, and (it’s uncommon but it happens) grabbing.

Besides this contrast of the cars, another key part of my metro experience is passing my time in the women’s car by observing Egyptian women’s fashion.  Even if all of the women are veiled, the spectrum of fashion and expression is remarkably broad.  There’s girls in jeans and fashionable tops with two-layered veils whose constrasting colors are perfectly coordinated to the outfit.  Plenty of college-age girls wear the black gown that drapes from the top of their heads and hides their shape, but around their faces and wrists you see colors and patterns of special accessories.  Less common are the all-black, face-covered niqabs, and I would guess there’s just as many women in shorter sleeves with uncovered hair.  And so on–variety, color, coordinating, utility– the point to be made here is that while intended to cover something, the veil also seems to create a whole new dynamic in these women’s personal style, in how they present themselves.  There seems to be a strong element of religious and cultural identity imbedded in the way veiled women wear the veil.  The presence of the veil tells you she’s a Muslim, but how she wears the veil may tell you a lot more.

In the intersection of these two metro realities– the gender separation and veil fashion– lies a frustration that is more about human behavior than about Egyptian or Middle Eastern or Muslim soceity but that has been brought into focus (as with so many other things) by my cross-cultural experience.  At first the existence of the women’s cars was to me a much-appreciated escape from the tension I feel in public here because of the constant threat of harrassment.  It seemed kinda neat, the combination of traditonal values with modern transportation technology.  But as I wove through crowds everyday to reach the middle of the platform, my designated “safe zone,” I grew irritated that no matter how respectable I am in dress and conduct, the only thing that really saves me from disrespectful actions is a separate space, a hiding place.  And knowing well that Egyptian women– modestly dressed, even veiled– are harrassed just as I am, I know that modesty never becomes protection.  And I hate that it feels like the existence of the women’s cars seems to provide excuse for bad behavior by some men on the other cars, like if I can’t make it down to the middle of the train and have to hop on a car full of men, they would be justified in staring or harassing because if I had wanted to be safe from it, I would have waited for the next train.

 I see parallels between this experience and the question of the veil.  The first time that I was in Egypt as a student, one important realization for me was that it was crucial not to equate the veil with oppression.  While women are too often victimized here by outright oppression as well as more subtle consequences of traditional patriarchy, I learned that it is patronizing to assume that because a woman is veiled she is oppressed– some women see wearing the veil as a religious duty that they are happy to perform out of devotion. But then arises the sticky question, applicable to so many elements of so many cultures– if societal and cultural pressures overwhelmingly enforce a certain behavior or attitude, can you really say you choose for it or against it? 

I can put aside the intriguing question of choice for a great big sociological or philosophical or religios debate; a woman’s choosing or not choosing, wearing or not wearing, the veil is not what bothers me at this moment.  What I see is the ironic gulf between what the veil is supposed to symbolize, what it means to pious Musims I know, and the reality of dehumanizing attitudes and behaviors between men and women.  Harrassment on the streets of Cairo makes the veil seem like a farce.  What a sad joke, when women covered from wrist to forehead to toe are still at risk for lewd stares, comments, gestures, actions.  What a tragedy, when the cultural tones that mandate the veil also condone the irrational blame of women who are victimized, so that a girl who is assaulted or raped has to fear speaking out because she will probably be stigmatized.  Not to say that women are always innocent in these matters– isn’t the symbolic value of the veil also mocked when it becomes just part of the plumage for the strut? Is it an instrument of modesty or a servant of vanity?

I must say that I am only emboldened to be so critical as an outsider of a culture that I respect so much because I see many parallels in my own culture and broader human behavior that are to be equally criticized, of course.  We Western women are quite liberated, and while I thankfully embrace many elements of feminism, it seems that our liberation has created many means of imprisonment: body image, career, distorted ideas of equality.  Independence and a competative salary won’t guarantee me respect in Minneapolis any more than the veil will guarantee my friend respect in Cairo.  Alas, it seems that the source of our most important human traits– respect, value, humility, modesty, worth– is hidden someplace beyond the simple, practical, ostensible solutions of head coverings and separate metro cars.

I’ve just returned to Cairo from travelling around the Middle East for a month.  We went to all the places I’ve been before, all the places that continue to offer things new and interesting with each visit: Istanbul, Ankara, Damascus, and Jerusalem.  To compensate for not reporting from the road, I hope to write something about each of these places in the next week or so, in no particular order, starting with Damascus.

It was Easter Sunday (by the Western calendar), and as I walked from an Orthodox (thus non-Easter) sunday service on the Straight Street (Acts 9) I observed a remarkale range of Old City Damascus demography.  There were the classic older Arab men in checkered kaffeas, young Syrian girls in spandex and skirts, darkly veiled women, and blue-eyed brunettes that could have been either Syrians or tourists.  The activity in the streets was flavored by this special Sunday morning as many families were dressed in Easter outfits, kids were buying brightly-dyed chicks from a push cart, and the tourist-local distinctions were blurred by ubiquitous family photo shoots.  As I exited the Old City at Thomas Gate, the clamor of a holiday marching band all but drowned out the echoes of the midday call to prayer.

This Sunday marked a point in my travels I had been particularly looking forward to.  I was planning to visit an extraordinary woman at her home in the outer sprawl of Damascus, far from the picturesque winding streets I had grown accustomed to after muliple visits to the Old City.  Her name is Ahlam, and she is a refugee from Iraq.

As our taxi approached Ahlam’s apartment, the view from the window seemed more familiar than what we had seen in our travels through Turkey and Syria.  This neighborhood was more like Cairo: crowded market streets, no discernable traffic pattern, almost exclusively Arabic signs and banners.  A young girl greeted us and took us up a narrow staircase, where I almost trampled on Ahlam in the dark.  My friends fumbled to shake hands and make introductions in the shadows; they were slightly confused at first because her name sounds like the Arabic word for “hello.”  When we emerged into the sitting room lit by the afternoon sun, we sat with Ahlam while she indicated that the two teenagers that had welcomed us were also refugees and volunteers with her and the two younger children were her son and daughter.

Because it was Sunday, we were unable to meet any of the 75 Iraqi children Ahlam teaches in the flat on Thursdays and Saturdays.  They come to learn English so that they can catch up to their classmates in Syrian schools. English instruction in Syria begins four years earlier than in Iraq, so refugee children who are fortunate enough to be in school in Syria face this serious obstacle to their education and are tempted to drop out.  Ahlam is trying to prevent this because she believes education is these children’s hope for a future and a life.

Ahlam is from a village outside of Baghdad and has been in Damascus since January 2005. Her six siblings are still in Iraq with her mother. They have come to visit her, but she cannot go back because her life has been threatened by extremists, presumably for her involvement with foreigners before the war as a human rights worker and translator. She explains the chaos and violence in Iraq not as a sectarian issue, but as competition between people vying for power in an unstable environment, for whom it becomes advantageous to accentuate ethnic, religious, tribal, and familial differences.  Rejecting the sectarian paradigm, she now identifies herself not as Sunni or Shia Muslim but as “Sushi,” and she does not endorse a federal state with specified Sunni-Shia-Kurdish areas.  Although a victim of an international political disaster, Ahlam is fiercely apolitical.  When we met in November, she insisted that it doesn’t matter who the next U.S. president is, and on Easter no one mentioned the question of American withdrawal. She seems to have accepted the chaos of war, not in fatalistic resignation with the courage to get up every morning and pick up the pieces.

There is no institutional support for the work Ahlam does educating children and documenting refugee families, but she does have the help of a handful of young Iraqi volunteers and foreigners.  This woman gives me hope- in one sense because she seems like quite the potential leader for her community in Syria.  She is articulate, insightful, hardworking, disarming, and creative.  She understands what Iraqis face and what they need, what their lives are like here, and she’s constantly seeking to increase that understanding in practical ways.  She has worked extensively with foreigners and in cross-cultural, international contexts. When you listen to her, you sense that she could be a great spokeswoman and organizer.

But Ahlam also gives me hope without the elusive notion of “potential.” She is living and working, here and now, as a blessing and a salve to those who are vulnerable and hurting.  She doesn’t need institutions, policies, even money to do good.  She is immersed in resilience– the resilience of the children she cares for. She told us that when her two children paint pictures, they immediately draw date palms and trees, rivers and the sun.  “There is no violence in their pictures, thank God,” she said.   As with other extraordinary individuals I’ve met in the Middle East, I left my time sitting at Ahlam’s feet with my chest throbbing with grief and hope.

One of the things we do as part of our program is arrange encounters between our students and young people from Egypt and the region — students and young Coptic Christians here in Egypt, as well as university students in Turkey and Israel.  In Egypt, we meet with two Muslim groups that represent very different, and perhaps very telling, phenomena in the Middle East: Al-Azhar University and Islam-Online.

When I visited Al-Azhar with our students for the first time last fall, I was really excited to finally have personal exposure to what is supposedly the most significant institution in Sunni Islam.  Given its historical prestige (one of the oldest operating universities in the world and alma mater of multiple giants in Egyptian history), I wondered at how we were able to gain access at all, and I hoped that our students would realize what a privilege they had been given.   Perhaps such high expectations magnified my disappointment, and I adjusted accordingly for the next meeting months later, which was much the same.  Before being able to meet with Islamic theology students, our students sat through an hour-long repetition of various vague and bland versions of the idea that Christians and Muslims should try to understand each other, repeated with flourish by a school official in response to questions he was never going to answer.  On my second visit, I got to hear this lecture again. The most insight-yielding statement came when he happened to comment that Al-Azhar is funded by the Egyptian government.  Ahh, epiphany.

While many of our students, justifiably so, would not dismiss their time spent in small groups with Al-Azhar students as entirely wasted, the most it seemed to accomplish was a diplomacy of presence.  These students are brought to Al-Azhar from all over the Muslim world– Nigeria and Indonesia, for example– ostensibly to be trained as future religious leaders.  Some of them had never met Americans, and so maybe it meant something to them that a group of Americans was learning about Islam and wanted to hear from them about their religion.  But the language barrier was pretty severe, and thus the conversations didn’t get very far.  The whole meeting, both times, was tainted for me by an undeniable sense of farcical emptiness.  For example, when asked why the institution doesn’t have Christians and Jews teach about their respective religions in order to gain “insider” perspective and confront misrepresentation (a criticism that could also be offered to many Christian colleges), the official extended a dramatic offer on the spot for my boss to come give a guest lecture on Christianity.  This offer has been pursued from our end but has been met with silence and backtracking.  Maybe this shouldn’t surprise us.  Maybe this sort of lackluster pretense is what we all should expect from Islamic academic institutions, especially in the Middle East.  For those of us having respect for Muslims in general and for the capacity within Islam for genuine intellectual pursuit, our experience at Al-Azhar was a tragic confirmation of the many accusations of backwardness we try to confront.  It was also a perfect illustration of the reality that Muslims in Egypt and other Muslim-majority, authoritarian states don’t have to take inter-faith or cross-cultural dialogue seriously simply because they are the majority.

But just because they don’t have to doesn’t mean none of them will.  I gratefully received evidence of this in the form of another encounter event, this time hosted by the staff of IslamOnline (islamonline.net), which is based in Cairo.  We have had events with IOL before in the form of movie viewing and small group discussion.  Since these events, IOL staff members have approached us proactively to initiate events, forums, online dialogue, and even possible internships.  Yesterday we had a panel discussion at their office, attended by our students and their staff as well as Egyptian students, covering social and religious topics such as polygamy, apostasy, and democracy.  Of course we didn’t make any great leaps towards reconciling East and West or towards political reform in the Middle East, but I was greatly encouraged by the difference in general atmosphere, in the feeling of genuine interest and desire for progress, that distinguished this meeting from the one at Al-Azhar.  We were able to see some ways in which IOL’s staff represents diverse views within Islam.  As a member of the panel I felt that I was listened to and that my questions were at least taken seriously.

Reflecting on how the internet and globalization have impacted Islam would be far beyond what I can do here, besides saying that IOL seems to be a significant player in  the resulting transformation.  Anway, there are many who have done such reflection seriously and with much more insight than I can offer.  What I will say is that my experience with these two faces of Islamic thought and authority (many Muslims across the globe consult IslamOnline for religious guidance) has confirmed some of the stereotypes I hate as well as given evidence for what I hoped for: Muslims working towards beneficial dialogue and understanding consistent with the demands of the world today even when the “higher” institutions of their societies are failing miserably.

I was having trouble conjuring up energy and excitement for what would be my third time travelling to the Sinai Peninsula and climbing Gabal Musa- the traditional Mount Sinai.  The students I was leading would be making the journey for the first time; many of them were suffering through the last stages of a nasty virus (acquired on one of Egypt’s infamous Nile Cruise boats the previous weekend) for the sake of not missing this trip.  Exempting my triad as highly unusual, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So as I put on every piece of warm clothing I brought to Egypt, I tried to take off my “been-there-done-that” attitude.

Up and down, the third time. I now appreciate that each of the three had something unique to distinguish it from the others. Three years ago, it was the low clouds settled between the peaks in the shine of the rising sun.  We didn’t realize at the time what a rare phenomenon that was. Last time, it was my personal experience of long-forsaken quietness, shared with the group that lingered at the top after the sun had risen.  Descending down the “stairs of repentance” rather than the walking trail, I saw a different side of the mountain. This time it was the moon– so bright during our pre-dawn ascent that we didn’t need flashlights until we came under the shadows of parts of the mountain, the darkness of which accentuated the incredible brightness of the moon. And maybe it was its brightness that made it seem lower. At one point I looked and it seemed that the zenith of the zig-zagging trail came right under the large low orb, like I could climb to a narrow summit and poke the moon.

When the horizon began to glow pink with the coming sun, we noticed an especially bright star or planet hanging between horizon and sky. As the colors changed, the pink at the sky’s base glowed more red as the dark blue receded upwards, chased by a lighter, clearer blue until it overtook the bright point and the stars disappeared. The light came and we could see, but the sun did not emerge for minutes still.

On the way down the mountain, one of my friends observed that even if no one makes the trek to see it, the sun rises over Sinai every morning.  I have witnessed three different versions of this daily drama: three out of thousands upon thousands upon thousands.  It reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton writes in Orthodoxy (one of my favorite books), when he speculates that perhaps the repeated rhythm of the world is not evidence of a distance or absence of God from a mechanically rotating universe, but rather an ecstatic encore born out of infinite creativity and joy.

Here I am again for my regrettably infrequent once-a-month, realizing that it’s especially difficult to write for others while neglecting to write for myself.

One of my friends here often echoes some sound advice he received– “find what you love about Egypt and love it well.” He asked me what I love about Egypt, about Cairo specifically. As in many moments, at that one the city itself was too exhausting to consider.  So I thought about the people.  “The people” would be a trite answer; I needed to penetrate the viscous entity of culture to find what it is I can really say “I love” about the people.  I spoke an answer, not immediately realizing how much it would occupy my thoughts in the following days: resilience.

One of the most instructive aspects of living abroad has been witnessing what others endure while my country prospers (at least, the certain segment of my country’s society that I belong to).  What is truly remarkable, however, is not what they endure but how they endure it.  Most Cairenes are poor and all but a few live in the shadow of a bloated and unjust system of coercion otherwise known as the governmet.  They have for centuries. As Max Rodenbeck says in his history of the city, “Cairo is a place where people learn early about the hazards of arbitray power.” Through one friend’s tragic experience of torture, I have seen how the infamous police state I’ve read so much about destroys lives.

And yet, it does not destroy them. Maim, yes– and perhaps current conditions keep the wounds just open.  But under the shadow of the colossus, Cairenes laugh. It is not the laugh of those confident in justice, unfortunately. Cairo nurtures no illusions of life’s fairness. Rather, it is a laugh of people who seem unable not to laugh.  They love to laugh.  It seems that a sense of humor– “light blood” as Egyptians call it– is both inestimably valued by Cairenes and absolutely necessary to navigate the tensions of an ancient and fluxuating culture. 

When I laughed with my friend (the one who had been victimized by the police) over a silly joke I made recently, it struck me as endlessly remarkable.  That anyone who has endured such things could find something to laugh about afterwards, to maybe for a moment feel released from pain, to me is a monumental testimony to our being made to be resilient.  Because of historical-social-economic circumstances it is more evident to me in Egyptians, but I also see it in the students I work with.  Some of them have faced tragedy– perhaps more delicately personal than that inflicted by the state upon Egytians, but no less real and painful– and still they exude joy.  It baffles me sometimes.

There have been some subtle indications lately that against my would-be savvy-cynical expectations, I have become more entrenched here than I thought possible.  Maybe 10 months seems a long time to be abroad- I suppose it’s a long time to be gone, but it’s not so long to live somewhere.  Actually, it’s remarkably short.  But even from within this brevity I am experiencing symptoms of a rooted life here.  I wish I could say one of those is language, but it is not so much.  What is?

It is raining tonight, and the sound of the rain is strange.  The first sight of moisture on the ground begs another explanation.  Just a few minutes ago, a solitary boom of thunder reminded me that I have not heard thunder since last summer.

One of my comforting indulgences from America is watching The Office (American) on DVD.  My last few viewings have left me feeling somewhat like a cultural spectator, in small ways at least.  Things like driving, or being inconspicuous in public.

Tonight I listened to a speaker with the students, and one of his principles for cross-cultural living was to ”live locally” - to be intentional in location, committed to a location, and thoroughly, personally invested in a location.  One of the stories I tell about myself to those I meet here is how last year I began to think of Minneapolis as my home, as a place I would make my home, having come to the area for college somewhat arbitrarily.  I cling to no illusions that after mere months I am truly rooted in Minneapolis any more than I am truly rooted in Cairo– but I dream of deep roots, of commitment.  Perhaps it is just the overanxious imagination in me, but I already see an approaching relocation in my life with both anticipation and grief.  The anticipation is both that of a return and of an excursion.  Still a long way off, but seemingly imminent.      

My friend Steve and I spent the week before Christmas, the week of the Islamic Eid al-Adha, in Siwa Oasis. Siwa is a town of about a quarter-million residents in the farthest stretch of Egypt’s western desert, about 30 km from Libya. We covered this stretch of land by public bus, sleeping as much as we were able to tune out the incessant blare of recorded mosque sermons from the speakers. 

We chose to go to Siwa because we wanted to get out of the city for a while, breathe some clean air, hear some silence, and visit the family of our friend Ismael during their holiday. Ismael is Egyptian bedouin- his ancestors settled in Siwa and his family of 11 speaks both Arabic and Siwi (their native berber language) and lives off of date and olive crops from their garden. On our first day in Siwa, Ismael introduced us to his grandfather, who is 105 years old and still rides his donkey cart from his house in town to his garden to harvest olives and dates. We visited the gardens, which were beautiful even in the death and rot of winter.  Catching a ride back into town in the back of a truck with other Siwans, we shared the truckbed with sheep that were likely being taken home for slaughter the next day: the Feast.

Eid al-Adha is the largest Muslim holiday of the year and commemorates what the Quran describes as Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Ishmael.  Every family who can afford it slaughters a sheep, goat, or cow, feasting and visiting with family, neighbors, and the poor. We slept through the early morning prayers, but rose soon after to celebrate with Ismael’s family. We witnessed the slaughter of their goat, helped prepare the meat, and ate well with them.  Ismael borrowed his grandfather’s donkey cart (which is faster than his father’s) so that we could visit his favorite island on the large salt lake that separates the oasis town and the desert.  That night, we listened to Siwan music by a fire beside the legendary spring known as Cleopatra’s Bath.

My privilege as a guest in Siwa extended even beyond the gracious hospitality of Ismael’s family.  Within two days, I was able to take part in two social events, one of which no Siwan woman will ever participate in and one of which no Siwan man will ever join in. The first was simply sitting and drinking Siwan tea (a delight in itself) in the town square with Ismael and his friends, all boys of course. Siwa is a traditional society, and the women are only ever briefly out in town and then covered completely in distinct black veils and blue embroidered drapes.  The women may be hidden away, but even as a western woman, unveiled and imposing on a traditonally males-only activity, I was treated with respect and kindness. Curiousity, of course, but not the leers common in Cairo.

The day after the Eid, I attended a party thrown in honor of a woman who had just given birth. It was tense and awkward at first, being the only foreigner among families and neigbors and feeling like I was drawing attention away from the honored woman. But playful and clever girls came to my rescue, practicing Arabic and English, dancing and laughing, and decorating my hands with henna. Ismael’s sisters were the ringleaders- Amna with her mischeivous looks and laughs, Soffeya with her shy smiles, and Sommaya with a quiet air of loyalty, like she would sit by my side all day and require nothing.  There were at least thirty women in the house, and the girls were wearing stiff, colorful dresses with hands and feet covered in henna and hair full of barrettes.

Siwa is fascinating in its cultural distinctness from the rest of Egypt, but like the rest it is being transformed by tourism. Two years ago the only notable traffic was donkey carts and bikes, but now cars are ever more frequent. There are tourists year round, and an airport is in the works.  It seems like some historic stage of the place is in its twilight. Our lingering there was precious and memorable, especially experiencing it alongside a native Siwan and his family.

Usually, going out in this city feels like subjecting oneself to an assault - it is visually and audibly overstimulating and the pollution accompanies you like you’re own personal, unchosen smoking habit.  Last weekend I was in the desert at a Coptic retreat center for end-of-the-semester debriefing with students, and as we drove back into Cairo you could see as we approached the city its cloak of haze.  The sky above us transformed from clear blue to inpenetrable gray, and I mourned for my own lungs and wondered how long this city can continue as it is– all crowds and dust and smog. 

Every once in a while, though, a breeze comes through; it seems to clear the sky and blow the haze away. Today I enjoyed just such a breeze as I played frisbee at one of Cairo’s sporting clubs.  As the sun sank behind high-rising domestic stacks and neon billboards, the normally dreadful clouds glowed beautiful reds and pinks.  With the oncoming dusk and night they returned to their hazy gray, but we were thankful and stunned by the imposition of beauty on just another day in the city.

A month of travelling through some of Egypt’s closest geographic and cultural neighbors provided contrast, contrast enough to cause a little shock upon re-entry and contrast enough to wonder again about my current home. Friends of mine who have been studying in Jerusalem are now here for a visit, and I have felt what other Egypt-residing friends have expressed as a responsibility to show visitors a more genuine face of Egypt, which includes but surpasses the pyramids, the mosques, the citadel, etc.

So we went to Garbage City.  Garbage City is a community built around the task of processing Cairo’s waste. The stages of this process are everyday aspects of the landscape: overloaded trucks and donkey carts coming and going, men stooped among ceiling-high piles of metal cans in workshops, women weaving recycled t-shirts into beautiful rugs.  Inhabitants of Garbage City are mostly Christian, but they could be very (surprisingly) wealthy or very poor or somewhere in between.

 Being culturally curious, my friends were glad to see a part of Cairo that few tourists get to, and to meet a gloriously Egyptian family that my coworker has been practically adopted into.  There’s a satisfying sense that we’re seeing “real Egypt,” while the rest of the tourists are just missing it. But- I wonder if any particular niche of Cairo could boast of being the “real Egypt.”  Around here we joke about parts of Cairo that we consider to be definitely NOT real Egypt– like Maadi, the suburb-style neighborhood where many embassy staff and expats live.  But- I know Egyptians that live in Maadi, and they’re as Egyptian as the rest.  Now that I’ve met Turks, Kurds, Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians, there’s no doubt to me how Egyptian they are.  As we were walking through Garbage City, just a day after I had been in Maadi to go to church, I wondered what I would point to and say, that’s really Egypt.

Here’s the best answer I’ve come up with.  My friend Nisma consults with our program to help us arrange homestays for students.  She is from a big family living in one of Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods; she is Muslim and is one of the most devout people I have ever known.  Her fervor for her religion is as evident as her sweetness and generosity.  When she comes to the office and shares an animated and extended and warm greeting with my coworker, who is a Egyptian Protestant living in Maadi and has the unique fortune of being very well-educated and employed by an American company– that’s real Egypt.  There’s a dynamic in their conversation, a conversation between people of vastly different backgrounds, that is not easily labelled but is more easily seen in contrast.  To me, this dynamic is more thoroughly Egyptian than any one economic class or city niche could claim to be.

Halfway through a month of our program’s travel component, and I have finally made my way to an internet cafe in Amman, Jordan. I have ridden on a bus through Turkey for the second time, had an entirely different experience than my first time in Damascus, and in 2 days will head west into one of the Middle Eastern countries I haven’t visited yet.

Turkey is beautiful. As soon as I can I will put pictures online to prove it. From the dreamy, leafy, rainy fall of Istanbul to central southern mountains, I usually couldn’t stop staring out the bus windows during our long treks. Turkey is also fascinating- a case study in apparent paradoxes: Muslim country, secular state; unrest, prosperity; East, West.

The experiential highlight of the past two weeks was coming face to face with women from two countries I long to understand in more depth: Iran and Iraq.  These meetings happened through friends of friends and chance encounters– Mariam and Athem are in Instanbul with their husbands who teach in an Iranian school, and Ahlam is a refugee from north Baghdad now living in Damascus, teaching English to girls from her homeland.

I’ve met a lot of heavy hitters in the past two weeks — people whose lives and stories tend to make my head whirl with dreams of ambition and vocation and adventure.  Americans living in Afghanistan, human rights lawyers in Turkey, and suprisingly candid diplomats.  This hardly suffices for an update or a reflection, so I hope to be more thorough in the future. I’m just trying to find my place in the Middle East, collecting others’ stories and wondering a lot about my own.