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We affirm the rights of humanity as universal and independant of national and international systems in whatever form they may take. We refuse to allow history to eclipse our original dignity as human. To this end, we proudly take up the cause of humanity, so long frustrated by an inhuman system. We are committed to the independence of the human race from the vampire of national interests, and we refuse to allow ourselves and future generations to remain dependant upon a phantom organization, the idea of the nation, whose rhetoric is hollow and whose actual effects are the ellision of our sacred rights and responsibilities as humanity.
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Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian poet born in 1923, and died in 1998. When he was 15 his sister, then 25, committed suicide because she could not marry the man she loved. Hence his famous saying: "Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free." His second wife was killed in a guerrilla attack on the Iraqi embassy in Lebanon in 1982 during their civil war. Politics and sex become the same thing, and the prison containing love becomes a killing field for human rights. In his "Ode to The Queen of Sheba" we see all of these themes, as dashed love is twined together with a deep feeling of loss of Arab glory and unity. This poem is still studied in High Schools all over the Middle East, an expression of the frustrations of an entire people. When Qabbani died, his funeral was followed on the radio by the entire Arab speaking world.
II
It wasn't the first time that the Egyptian police had stopped me.
IV
"What is your relationship to Majid?" my friend asked. "We're friends." Saad went on: "because you treat him like shit. You've never invited him to your home. You don't call him." I realized just then how insecure Egyptian men are. I haven't called most of my friends at home. I just don't call people. But the whole Middle East is full of disempowered men who feel very small.
V
Today I moved out of my apartment. I am staying with some friends
until I leave the country. I left my copy of the Arabic Nietzsche. I
left two full bottles of water in the freezer, and some take out
menus. I left a magazine on the front table next to some nail
clippers. The magazine had an impressionist painting of a veiled woman
standing next to an unveiled woman. Now we know that the veil has no
relation to sexual harassment other than to excacerbate. In other
words, beauty should not be covered up because people are happier when
they can see beauty. Men have to create an atmosphere where mutual
respect and kindness can enter. The genders must be able to meet on
equal terms. Even extatic dances of infinite coupling must preserve
this balance of freedom and grace, dignity and pleasure. Without the
simple essence of human kindness, no political order can stand. We
must take this power in kindness from the established political order.
We
have to do it for ourselves, for any thing that we do not do for
ourselves can be taken away. The fear of that taking away is at the
root of all my nations' crimes abroad.
It has been said that you should protect and cherish. I tell you that to cherish is to let go. I tell you that a caged bird cannot sing well. I tell you that jealousy is of man, and jealousy shall be overcome with the rest of man.
It has been said that the world is one unique thing on an inevitable course toward a perfect future of technology and gods. I tell you that only today, only with us, are the gods at work. Only yesterday God has died. Only tomorrow can we be gods, at the sacrifice of our person.
It has been said that the bastard child is downtrodden. I tell you that the child raised by gods is a god himself. I tell you that the child raised by the village dances and laughs and loves freely, tossing his fate around lightly. I tell you that the child of the unitary and trinitarian coupling of God, Father, Mother, is a monster.
It has been said that Egypt is poor. I tell you that there are secret wishes squirreled away. I tell you I have made this country the flesh of my flesh and found nowhere a poor man. I tell you that their heart is good, and demand of you that you respect their hospitality. I ask you to be kind to my second wife.
I have seen the greatest country in the world, drugged and confused, failing to support civilization. Civilization it's most imperative honor! That country was Egypt, the mother of all nations.
For I have been conspired against. Forces are aligned to still my voice. They know that I have many upsetting things to say. Still I persist in the path of my forefathers: Antonin Artaud, Jacques Prevert, Albert Jerry, Guillaume Appolinaire, Eric Satie. Tous des fous.
I was swallowed by a fish, and regained land. I went to the dessert and I fasted. I told the youth about sex the divinity. I overturned the taxmen in the temple! Please agree, that I talk well of myself in such impersonal ways. After all, it has nothing to do with me how my life turned out. I felt the tug of the current, and I let go. I floated here one day, and now I am going home to take root.
I left my apartment today, hence completing the first stage of my journey home. At the fifth stage Jesus was tempted by a Roman soldier who would carry his cross. At the seventh stage I take a greyhound bus across country from New York to Memphis 20 hours. I arrive the next day by a pataphysical miracle. I gather my compatriots...
VI
Mahmoud Darwish was born in Galilee in 1941. The specific conditions we are born into is a crapshoot, and Darwish just lost. In 1948 his family fled to Lebanon. He became the poet laureate of Palestine, an expression of a dispossessed people. Like many in his generation his influences included Ginsburg and Rimbaud. In 1971 he moved to Cairo and worked in Al-Ahram. In 1973 he joined the PLO, and was hence banned from entering Palestine.
Published in 1987, his landmark Memory for Forgetfulness expresses the plight of the refugee under siege. This book is an eye witness account of the peak of shelling in Lebanon during the civil war, called "Hiroshima Day." Comparable to Slaughter House 5 or Murakami's The White Sky of Hiroshima, Memories for Forgetfulness is a coherent exploration of a life that is already forfeit, a life of isolation, injustice and alienation.
When he died earlier this year discussions were held with Israel to bury him in his home town. He was buried in exile from that home village so that he could be where all Palestinians can visit. His remains rest in Ramallah at the heart of the disputed West Bank.
Here is a short excerpt where Darwish recalls going out into the city streets under bombardment:
I was touched somehow with enthusiasm. The occupation extended over space, the sea, Snobar mountain, the first storms of anxiety, the way of Adam exiled from paradise. Many are the ways of unending exile. My country never came back to me. My body never came back. The air raids rain down hymns spreading out and conferences of the living dead in blood like light burning the cold question: what am I looking for? I fill myself with gunpowder because of repressed and compressed anger.
Missiles enter my body through my pores, leaving in all safety. What strength! I don't feel the hell spreading through the air wile I'm breathing hell and sweating hells. Yes, I sing the burning day. I want to sing. I want to find a language that will change language into steel for the soul, an anti-air defence language... shiny silver insects... I want to sing.
I want a language to support me while I support it. I want a language to bear witness to me bearing witness to this language that we have the power to overcome this cosmic isolation. I walk on.
I walk to see myself walking, taking firm steps, free even of myself. In the middle of the road, the exact middle, with the barking of a phantom airplane overhead. She spits her fire, and I don't notice. What am I looking for? Nothing. Maybe the determined hard headedness that hides the fear of being alone. Or maybe the fear of being alone. Or maybe the fear of being crushed under rubble is what drives my footfall, striking the sleeping streets.
I never saw Beirut sleep so late. For the first time I could see the sidewalks cleared of people. For the first time I could see the trees. Clear trees with roots and branches and leaves that never brown. Is Beirut beautiful in and of herself? There had been movement and speach and congestion and ll the mercantile traffic hiding away something from view, changing Beirut from a city to a given fact, a signification, a phrase, a sign. She used to publish books, disseminate media and host conferences and colloquiums on cures for the world's maladies, and she didn't pay any attention to herself. She was busy flexing a sarcastic tongue over the dust and oppression all around. She was a free workshop, and her walls encompassed the entire modern canon.
There was a poster factory. Beirut was the first city to modify poster production into daily newspapers. Her ability to express patched together variety, death, chaos, freedom, exile, exodus and peoples. She was filled with and commissioned for (fawada) every known form of expression and found in posters a way to comprehend the burden (fawada) to express the quotidian. "Poster" even became a common phrase in tales and epics designating a specialty.
Faces on walls. Fresh martyrs released from life and published. The dead repeating the results of death. One martyr covering the face of another martyr on the wall. He takes his place until another martyr buries him and then rain. Slogans inflame slogans which are exchanged and ranked according to sentimental priorities and global daily needs.
Whatever happens in the world happens here, buy involuted cand ideal currents. An argument wetween two intellectuals in a Parisian cafe becomes armed conflict her.
This is because Lebanon has to belong to and keep up with everything new, and every revived old thing, and every new movement and every new theory. Film revolutions in quick succession. Video for immediate implementation. The new leader and new star are candidates of new leader and new star in their respective fields. They jump over walls with pictures and words They salivate over bitterness behind a consciousness trading itself in. To stars their ages, riegns are shortlived.
No, the public here is sensitive. In fact, there is no public here, for the race is run in the American style even if their goals are hostile to America. There are always representatives here from every new realization and every new melody and every new enthusiasm: from the coquetish yearnings in the chest of a young woman in tight jeans indicating leftist excesses, to the one in a viel covering face and hands indicating fundamentalism, to the grasping of every fading sign of Karl Marx in his Orientalist catalogue indicating gusts of eastern wind.
Here is a central ontological transformer for everyone who is out of the race. It was popularized as an employment service for a people busy securing foodstuffs and water, busy burying their dead.
I am walking through streets that no one walks through. I remember before walking through streets that no one walks through. And I remember someone who was not with me saying:
Him: Stop this oratory and come with me.
I: Where to?
Him: To see this man.
I: What does this man do?
Him: He is going to his house.
I: But he keeps retracing his steps.
Him: That's just how he walks.
I: He's not walking. It's much better that that: he's dancing!
Him: Watch him carefully. Count his steps. 1,2,4,7,9 steps forward. 1,2,3,7,8 steps back.
I: What's that prove?
Him: That he is walking, and this is the only way he knows how to get home. 10 steps forward, 9 steps back. He still advances one step.
I: What if his mind wanders and he miscounts?
Him: Then he will never get home.
I: Are you trying to tell me something?
Him: Not at all.
(translation: Lelyn R. Masters)
Further quotes:
Why are we always told that we cannot solve our problem without solving the existential anxiety of the Israelis and their supporters who have ignored our very existence for decades in our own homeland?[35]We have triumphed over the plan to expel us from history.[36]
"I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet."[37][38]
"We should not justify suicide bombers. We are against the suicide bombers, but we must understand what drives these young people to such actions. They want to liberate themselves from such a dark life. It is not ideological, it is despair."
"We have to understand - not justify - what gives rise to this tragedy. It's not because they're looking for beautiful virgins in heaven, as Orientalists portray it. Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves."[3]
“Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile. The sarcasm is not only related to today’s reality but also to history. History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.”[5]
"I will continue to humanise even the enemy... The first teacher who taught me Hebrew was a Jew. The first love affair in my life was with a Jewish girl. The first judge who sent me to prison was a Jewish woman. So from the beginning, I didn't see Jews as devils or angels but as human beings." Several poems are to Jewish lovers. "These poems take the side of love not war,"[3]
VII
THE YEAR IS 6250
"None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world," George W. Bush said to the world on September 11, 2001. Perhaps one day the world will forget 9/11 all together. However, September 11 has a special meaning for certain Egyptians. It is the Egyptian New Year of 6250, devised by Pharaonic Egyptians millennia ago according to ancient yet advanced astronomy. From the ancient Pharaonic calendar, the first solar calendar was to be invented.
Egypt lies at the center of the world, and Ancient Egypt is called the cradle of civilization. It is the crossroads between Europe and Asia. A long history of conquest, colonial occupation and foreign influence encompasses the vast origins that comprise the Egyptian identity. When Egypt chooses, it can be African, Arab, Mediterranean or any mix of the three. Plato studied in Egypt for 22 years, it is said, and this country may rightly claim to be the origin of Western culture, philosophy and law. However, the prevailing culture in Egypt today has its origins in the Arab peninsula, in Islam. Identity in Egypt is a complex issue, brought to the recent forefront in the wake of failed pan-Arabism and the dangers posed from fundamental Islam. The newest, perhaps, player in this battle is a group calling itself El-Salon El-Masri (the Egyptian Salon), a small group of intellectuals hoping to awaken modern Egypt to its ancient past. As we shall see, the Egyptian Salon has a complicated lineage, with particular political inclinations and alliances in place long before its official beginning.
Mohsin Lutfi al-Sayyid, known as the “godfather” and creator of El-Salon El-Masri is a distinguished Egyptologist and nephew to Ahmed Lutfi Sayyid, the father of the modern Egyptian nationalist movement and a founder of Cairo University in 1908. Ahmed Lutfi al-Sayyid was a moderate, against pan-Arabism, against the Ottomans. He was also a student of Muhammad Abdu. Muhammad Abdu was the founder of Islamic Modernism, an attempt to reinterpret Islam in a modern context. The intellectual descendants of Muhammad Abdu form various disparate branches from Radical Islam to Egyptian Nationalism. Egyptian Nationalism was eclipsed for many decades by the rising star of Pan-Arabism. Pan-Arabism was attempted by Gamal Abdul-Nasser and later by Momar Qadafi. However, Pan-Arabism failed to unify the various Arab countries, and it failed to establish a Palestinian state. Pan-Islamism for many has taken the forefront of political resistance, or so the Mubarak administration would have us believe. In the wake of this political vacuum, the 1980s saw a pseudo-nationalist revival of interest in Ancient Egypt with the founding of a civic group: the Egyptian Group for Enlightenment. This group’s activities were not officially political, but at the same time Egyptian nationalism was inspiring a violent reaction. In 1992 Egyptian nationalism, as opposed to Islamic patriotism, acquired its first martyr: Farag Fouda, killed by extremists. The man who planned Fouda’s murder is Omar Abdel-Rahman, later imprisoned for life for planning the WTC bombings in 1993 and the terrorist attacks on tourists in Luxor in November of 1997. Here is extreme Islam’s view of Egyptian nationalists, the same view they have of America.
Ahmed Lutfy Sayyid’s nephew Mohsin Lutfu al-Sayyid continued his legacy by forming El-Salon El-Masri in 2003 with the intention of organizing a group of intellectuals to combine a discussion of liberal politics with a deep meditation on Ancient Egyptian culture. Mazen Mostapha, Executive Manager of the Egyptian Salon and a committee deputy in the National Democratic Party believes the need for El-Salon El-Masri really came into focus after the US invasion of Iraq, in 2003.
“In the last 5 years, something happened, the invasion of Iraq, the question of middle eastern land, extremism. Many fundamental questions arose from this event, the most important from an Egyptian perspective being Arab nationalism, Islam and finding a ‘way out’.”
In 2005, the current El-Salon El-Masri members, along with other now disbanded members setup a political party under the name “Masr Al-Om” with the aims of bringing Ancient Egyptian ideas and teachings to the National level.
Their petition for becoming a political party was denied, as most are, but their political aspirations continue in rhetoric through the Salon. For example, the Salon believes that the best method of bringing awareness to the Egyptian public of their Ancient heritage is through celebration, specifically the Egyptian New Year.
The plan was to have a party. The Salon is keen to “hip” their image, so they intended to have a big party on the Egyptian New Year. “The easiest way to bring about this revival is through celebration, partying. With lots of time and an abundance of food the ancient Egyptians frequently held celebrations,” Mazen Mostapha explained. Unfortunately, this year the party has been cancelled under mysterious circumstances that will be discussed further on.
Often the Egyptian New Year is wrongly identified as originally Coptic, a Christian minority. The Salon, because of some of its rhetoric, is viewed as antagonistic to Islam. Others view Ancient Egyptology as neutral to all of these denominations, hence being a base for a multicultural Egypt. One thing the Salon is united on: the achievements of ancient Egypt are amazing, particularly in the field of Astronomy.
“Egyptians were the first to devise a solar calendar, with twelve months and 365 days,
the Egyptian calendar became the model for Syria, China, the Jews, Christian Coptics, and is still used by Egyptian farmers even till this day”. Mazen Mostapha further cited.
According to Egyptologists such as James Henry Breasted, wooden and ivory tablets, dating back to the First Dynasty of King Djer circa 3100BC, are the first sources of ancient astronomical data to associate the heliacal rising of the star Sirius (known as Sothis) with the coming of the New Year. The 1st of Tout (the God of wisdom and knowledge) is the first day of the first month of the ancient Egyptian calendar and occurred on September 11th of this year. The inundation of the river Nile and the simultaneous heliacal rising of Sothis was first observed in ancient Memphis circa 4200BC. This was the coincidence of three great forces: the arrival of fertile wetland, the rising of the brightest star and thus the coming of the New Year. For a historically agricultural society, even unto the present day, the idea of "three" seasons serves to divide the year into periods of inundation, growth and harvest. In 2008 (the 6250th year of the Egyptian calendar), the 1st of Tout is also 11th day of the holy month of Ramadan and for a predominately Muslim Egyptian society, the Egyptian New Year was, for the majority, merely overshadowed by another day of fasting.
“There is a conspiracy between the ruling Christian and Muslim powers, combined with the corrupted political power to veil the grave of ancient Egyptian civilization”. Sammy Harak, a former Muslim Brotherhood member, lawyer and specialist on Ancient Egypt observed.
It seems now that ancient Egyptianism has been overshadowed by the Arab-Muslim monolith. An informal poll of people in the streets reveals that the Egyptian New Year is either unknown, uncelebrated, no big deal or purposefully avoided as “unEgyptian.” After the decline of Pan-Arabism, Egyptians identify more with Islam (if they are Muslim) than they do as Egyptians as such. The Egyptian national identity is weak to the point that it now takes a back seat to Religious identity, and that identity for the majority is Islam.
Islam would seem to take a dim view of ancient Egyptian culture. “The religion prevalent in Egypt was idolatry, thus Egypt was typical idol-worshipping country in its social life in which the rulers enjoyed absolute power and besides them were the high priests and clergy, the military and the feudal lords who exercised a relative degree of power. Slavery that existed there had the most inhuman form which has ever existed in the history of the world. For every one of the stone blocks placed in the pyramids, fifty slaves lost their lives,” condemns Doctor Shaheed Beheshty, a specialist in the history of the advent of Islam.
On the other hand, there is growing tension recently between Egyptians and Saudis, the latter being stereotyped as wealthy, lazy and immoral in foreign countries. Prices in the summer time for nearly everything are high due to the inflation brought by the 6 million Gulf Arabs on vacation (bringing an impressive 6 billion dollars every year). However with the money, they also bring a stark difference to Egyptian culture, and the way Egyptian society operates. This further instills a un-easy disposition for Egyptians hanging timidly in the balance of a failing system and surviving harsh economic conditions. The Egyptian Salon believes that through the re-ignition of the Ancient Egyptian civilization in public life, many of the past failings will be replaced with a strong national pride, and a purely Egyptian national identity.
“Unveiling the grave and bringing new life to the mummy will ignite the power of a renaissance we will re-connect culturally exactly as the Italians re-connected with Greek and Roman civilization. We can kill the present medieval time”.
However the Salon’s ancient Egyptian bourgeois renaissance sings to deft ears and the middle class remains unshaken. As the majority of Egyptian youths struggle to find their identity, lost amongst the daily struggles of work, traffic and sleep; another formative Egyptian blogger, Kareem Souleiman, is arrested. Most youth inherently yearn to expatriate, to seek out the world but remain stifled by the shackles of tradition, family and nationality. For being an “Egyptian” is entirely unique.
The stories and insights of modern Egyptian literati such as Taha Hussein, Yusuf Idris and Naguib Mahfouz, ring truer with the masses than the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, though barely so in a country with high illiteracy. As civilizations are forgotten, so do modern authors descend into obscurity. For most Egyptians, the study of ancient antiquities, relics and mythology has been replaced by technology, consumerism and conceivably religion. The Salon members are secularists, but are they realists?
Is it realistic to revive the ancient Egyptian language? Despite the in-grained status of English and Classical Arabic in the economy and the culture of the region, the Salon aspires for a revival of the Ancient Egyptian language to be taught as a second language in all Egyptian schools.
The idea of an ancient language being used in modern times is not so far fetched. The Basque had a renaissance in their own language, history and literature in their quest for national sovereignty. Groups as diverse as the Irish, the Kurds, and the Quebecois have used their language to preserve their national identity. Reviving the ancient Egyptian language is only one of the goals of the Salon.
They also intend to have a secular government: free of corruption, free of foreign influence and relatively free from external religious authorities. They want heavy investments in technologies, after the same economic model as Dubai, and they also want equal rights for women. They are anti-veil. They want fair and even trading, including America, China and Russia, giving preference to none. Slavery is not part of their platform. It seems an incredibly advanced picture of a society, an Atlantis, a modern utopia.
“The grave of ancient Egyptian civilization, if this grave were to be revealed it would unveil a great great power that would spring up and give not only democracy but a national renaissance”.
Opinions are divided about the soundness of founding a modern nation on the same principles of Ancient Egypt, or exactly what changed with Islam. “The universal nature of the teachings of Islam could be the cause for its rapid spread in Egypt. Even the compilers of Encyclopaedia of Egypt have stated that the Christians of Egypt welcomed the soldiers of Islam with open arms,” rhapsodizes Shaheed Beheshty. “We believe that ancient Egyptians’ civilization was defeated and raped severely by the peoples of the desert,” offers Mazen Mustafa as counterpoint.
What is clear is that in 2008 the lack of awareness of ancient Egyptian culture is staggering. Over the centuries of Muslim rule, this ancient culture has been all but forgotten. “Ancient Egyptian history was never given its due appreciation by Muslim historians, first because they knew very little about it, and secondly that period represented, in their opinion, a period of idolatry which stood in direct contradiction to the monotheism of Islam” stated the late Gamal El-Din El-Shayyal, professor of History in the University of Alexandria, Egypt.
In fact, archaeology is often identified as a symbol of western oppression because westerners have led the way in a field that Egyptians had all but lost interest in until the arrival of Napoleon in 1798. The foremost Egyptian Muslim chronicler of Napoléon Bonaparte's occupation of Egypt declaimed the brutality of the French, but praised their intense curiosity for ancient Egypt.
At present the Salon is an “NGO and non-political peoples' gathering”, who firmly believe the Egyptian New Year gives cause to celebrate the Egyptian national identity. However, it seems that this year, the glories of an affluent ancient civilization are for most Egyptians another saga of a bygone past. The Salon’s elite is trying to breathe life into to the ancient past through online communities, stating that they had over 7000 members on their Facebook group.
When discussing plans to set up they’re website, the group immediately looked to the foreign journalists, not local Egyptians. Some friendly advice was in order. Surely they should tap local talent for this essential function. Why aren’t they reaching out to the youth? “We don’t speak the language of the youth”.
The isolation of the group goes deeper, meeting a cold reception from other Egyptian intellectuals. The issue is abstract in a country that lives on 300LE a month and 20% are below the poverty line. Ancient knowledge too vague to understand only serves to further confuse rather than assimilate a national identity. The Salon wants the people to learn ancient Egyptian. They want to learn English. The Salon wants to change the national flag from the Eagle of Saladin to a Sphinx. The majority is indifferent.
One could speculate about the Government’s stance towards the Salon from the fact that their party was canceled at the last minute. Originally the party was to be held at the Cairo Conference Center. However, the Center is run by the Military, and the Salon was denied the necessary security clearance to have an event there. So, reservations were made at the Pearl Hotel. Just two days before the 11th, the hotel canceled those reservations without saying why. According to Mazen Mustafa, they too are run by the Military. On September 11 Mazen Mustafa seemed greatly changed from the firebrand of one week prior. He clearly wanted no further confrontations with the government. “We don’t want them to think that we are angry,” insisted a meek Mazen. Then he suggested that they would appeal their case through unofficial means, maybe “Susan Mubarak” as Mazen suggests. The idea isn’t so far fetched, after all, the Salon has a board of trustees composed of industrial leaders, professors, lawyers and Ihab Kasem who is Acting Deputy for the Central Bank of Egypt.
Coupled with their lack of contact with the majority of Egyptians, this facility for back door dealing raises doubts about whether the Salon would really change the political situation in Egypt, or simply reproduce it with themselves at the top. If Mazen is to be believed, they may just relinquish their political ambitions altogether.
One thing is clear: Egyptians today are largely content to be ignorant about their ancient culture, and those who wish to teach it are disorganized and isolated.
According to ancient Egyptian astronomy, on 11 September 2009 a star “binding two lands” will reappear on the horizon of Memphis after an absence of almost one and a half millennia. That star may remind some of a time in Egypt before Monotheism. It may remind them that this was the cradle of civilization, a land of religious tolerance and law and order, but also a land of slavery. The star heralds a flood, a flood that is now dammed. Maybe next year the Salon can throw a party to welcome that star.
I
A foreigner in Egypt is a magnet for all kinds of people, some con men, some beggars, some who are just curious. An Egyptian woman can get away with a short sleeve shirt, though most these days wear long sleeves and the head scarf (shawl). On the other hand, a western woman in short sleeves can expect to be harrassed.
One day I happened to meet some women from The Czech Republic. They were visiting Cairo as part of a belly dancing conference. With a man walking with them, no one hassled them directly, for which they were grateful. On the other hand, I got harangued by guys telling me, in English, that I was a very lucky man. They said I was lucky to have two wives, and they asked me how many camels would I sell the women for.
I tried to ignore them, because the rudeness of their comments could only inspire hostility. As an American man I'm pretty sure if I got caught by the police fighting in the streets they would probably not have any problem taking me to jail, and beating me a few times on the way. So I walk by, swallowing my pride.
As a foreigner, I belong to the public sphere. I, and my foreign companions as well, am part of the world at large for which the majority of the people of Cairo feel no responsibility whatsoever. I am the Other. Just as the people here have no political power, they likewise feel no responsibility to the public space. When I first got here I always tried to put my cigarette buts on the tray the waiters brought me, out of respect. They yelled at me that this was offensive, and told me to throw them in the street. In the west there is also a hint of this, but here in Egypt it is quite pronounced; in the west too people who don't feel they are a part of the official social and political process tend to act with a lack of responsibility.
One false move and these people are likely to swarm on me, with all the hatred they bear for America and Israel.
So I'm trying hard to not get into fights here.
I was walking through a busy intersection one day when a man asked me, in English, do I need directions. I guess it's really great that people are so helpful here, but I didn't need help so I told him in Arabic "no thanks."
But this guy was on some kind of a mission. " I can tell you the way." "No thanks." "You look lost." "No, I'm not lost (this time in English)." This whole time I have my back to him, and I'm walking away yelling at him over my shoulder. Then he tells me "Oh, you know everything." "Yeah," I said "I know everything, how about that?"
As I'm trying to navigate through the crazy traffic he yells out to me: "Where are you from?" That was too much. I turn around. "How about I'm from none-of-your-fucking-business."
So he follows me out into the middle of a very busy intersection.
I turn on the Arabic, so the guy knows I'm not some tourist. I ask him why is he talking to me. He tells me in English (this guy is talking down to me at this point): "I want to help you." I tell him to get the fuck away from me, because I don't need help and don't want to talk to him.
I move on, and he shadows me. So, I stop at the first cop I see and tell him that this man is following me and that I want it to stop. This is how I take advantage of the fact that I'm American, rather than letting it ruin me by being stupid.
This guy (still in English!) tells me there's no reason for me to be rude, that in Egypt they respect other people. He tells me that my behavior is unexpected because I'm "not a woman that I would want to fuck!" Well, thank goodness for that.
I let the guy have it, verbally. I tell him that he is not a real man, that he is not free because his family and relatives dictate to him every decision in his life. I tell him that I am free because I will not tolerate people butting in on my private affairs, as he is trying to do. Then I tell him to go away because I am staying with this police man until he leaves. His nonsense continued until the cop convinced him to leave.
Later, some Egyptian friends of mine confirmed the guy was probably a pimp or a drug dealer trying to bait me. They taught me some choice Egyptian phrases for the next time it happens.
I had had enough. I had to get out of Cairo before I did get into a fist fight. So I decided to go to Port Said, which is much more peaceful. The people here are respectful when I tell them I don't need help and that they don't need to know where I'm from.
But the trip was not without incident. The guy I rode with had a sedan filled with people. He wanted me to pay 40 pounds (8 Euro). I said "okay." But then his car broke down on the way, and the other passengers and I were obliged to push the car to the nearest mechanic. He still wanted 40 pounds. Also, never mind that the Egyptians were paying 20. I told him no. There was a big argument, and the guy threatened to kick us all out of the van he had found for us. The other Egyptians stuck up for me; one woman even giving me 10 pounds to pay the man with. So I give the guy thirty, which he accepts, and I pay back the woman once we've left the guy with his broken down thirty year old taxi. Maybe that was his livelihood. Maybe he has children at home. I really don't care.
II
The older expats have told me to take it easy. Egypt can be laid back if you let it, so these days I spend alot of time hanging out in cafes.
Many times no one talks to me. I sit and drink my tea. Children pass by alone or in groups. Men carry groceries home. Old gentlemen sit and play backgammon. Women walk by vieled or not, often carrying large bundles or jugs of water on their heads. I pass live sheep, goats, cows, chickens and fresh fish. The market nearby is filled with stalls selling every kind of fruit and vegetable, many of which are unknown to me.
The corruption of the government and all of Egypts sorrows seem very far away indeed.
A few minutes walk from my appartment puts me far away from the tourist industry. Tourism in a poor world generates alot of crooks, but the places I frequent now are for locals. They treat me with the same respect they would any other man. These cafes are for men. All the lonely men; all the retired men; all the widowers who do not remarry out of respect and love for their lost wives.
No one understands why I came to Egypt. I came to Egypt to work and live, while the whole world is trying to get into my home country.
But I suppose it's very Egyptian of me to have a mad fate. I graduated from college and, not finding a job, I joined the Navy. The only good thing I got out of that was a good education in the Arabic language. I knew that I had to come and live in the Middle East, not as a part of a military force, but as a civilian, as a man, as myself.
So we sit and smoke Sheeshah, me and the old men whom fate has played with in one way or another. I tell them impossible things like: you are lucky to live amongst this beauty. But they have ambitions. I tell them that though it is know America has lots of money, the reality is that money has America.
These mornings I sit in cafes eating beans and falafel, I still hear the ringing in my ears of the Muslim preachers I watch with interest on TV as I smoke my morning cigarette. They extol hard work, generosity, fidelity and submission to the will of God. Of course this is all very constraining, and in the night all manner of evils have their way with people but always in secret. This is a country of secrets. One day a man told me a secret that I will pass on to you, my dear reader, because I love the truth more than my own good name.
He knew a woman who wore the Niqab. All day long she would babble on about what God allows, and what he does not allow. One day the woman knocks on his door. They sit on the balcony in plain view to have tea. She leaves. She returns. These meetings continue. One day the couple are sitting on the balcony, and the woman goes inside. This man calls to her, and he enters to find her on his bed. He sits and drinks his tea. She says to him: "Aren't you a man?" He says that he is a man, but he doesn't know if she is not also a man(!) She shows him. He agrees to sleep with her, but only if she wears the niqab during the act. She asks why? He wants to fuck this hated symbol. She says he is a devil, but she wants him. She takes him. During the act he asks: "Do you like me?" She says "yes, very much." "Do you like me better than God?" "Yes, when you are inside me I feel like I am praying, and you are much better than God."
This is a country full of secrets, and what is hidden will persist until it comes to light. On that day when a country regards itself truthfully in the mirror, a terrible change will occur. Much that is ill will pass on, and much that is healthy will ascend. But this is not an observation about Egypt, this is an observation about the entire human race. The margin will invade; the truth will prevail. Until then, I'll be taking it easy, drinking my tea and appreciating this peace Cairo keeps hidden deep in its ghetto, deep in its troubled heart.
III
I get welcomed to Egypt everyday about five times. I believe these people are sincere, and that like every human they sincerely wish to be understood.
A little further conversation and sometimes a different attitude is perceptable.
There is something I've been pondering, and that is the effect of the desert on people. Friendship, family ties, the tribe, honor, hospitality, all of these things are much more important in a hostile landscape like the desert than they would be in an abundant setting like North America where independance and resourcefullness are primary.
Algebra was invented by Jewish Arabs living in Iraq about twelve centuries ago. The Arabic word "Al Jibra" was original used in a medical context, primarily for the resetting of a broken bone. Two forces aligning, and the point where they meet and are resolved: x and y axis, America and Egypt.
"Welcome to Egypt." The words ring in my ears throughout the entire day, through every trial, joy and misunderstanding.
The other day a man upbraided my Egyptian companions: "Why are you talking to this American? Don't you know that the CIA pays these people to come over and gather intelligence?" Well, I suppose that what he said may be true, but I corrected him in very clear Arabic about my own personal status: "Hey man, I am not an undercover agent!" We had the length of two sides of a triangle before us, and I needed to find out what the distance of the third side, the side we had to travers to understand each other, what that distance was.
He asked me what I was doing in Egypt. Well, that's a pretty common question, and I'm never really quite sure what a good responce is. Why am I here? That's a pretty heavy question, a real quandary for a Philosopher. In a way it's an attack on my presence here.
"I am here to work," that's my usual response. "Can't you find work in America?" "Probably." "What are you working on?" "Right now I'm working on a translation for the Egyptian Right To Education group."
I come here to find work; Egyptians go to America to find work. Everyone goes to the Persian gulf to find work at different levels. Squaring the root of our most pressing needs. Right at that moment my most pressing need was to understand why this guy was trying to ruin my image in my own neighborhood.
He asked me where I was from. I told him I was from the Southern US. He said that racism there is all powerful. I told him that in some places yes, just as racism is present in Egypt. He asked me why don't I solve my own country's problems before I butt my head into Egypt's problems?
The math was getting harder, but my Arabic was working allright that day. I told him: "I am not responsible for every bad thing that America, or the American government does around the world. I am a citizen of the world, and it's sorrows are my sorrows. I am here in Egypt to be marked by the same conditions Egypt is marked by. Everyone benefits from a richer understanding between cultures."
"Bullshit," he shot back, "you are protected by the American Embassy, right?" That was true. Then my landlord, who was sitting back taking all of this in, told me with a wink to ask him for his passport. I asked the man to see his passport. "I'm not happy to be an American!" he said to me.
I said, then you are protected by the Embassy too. And there we were. Impasse. We knew the equation, but we had no idea what the value was of any of the variables. All we had was each other, and we had no idea what that would mean.
Whatever anyone tells you about Egypt, it is undoubtedly true, and it is almost certainly false as well. This is a land of secrets, and facades behind facades. Welcome to Egypt. We don't want you here. Welcome to Egypt.
IV
A woman falls in love with a man her family does not want for her. She sleeps with this man. She is discovered. Shame descends on her and her family, and so the family moves to another village, the woman in Niqab. She continues to write to her lover. When her father discovers this coorespondance he kills his daughter.
This is the plot of an Egyptian movie. What then is it's claim to truth, if any? Well, for one thing, it correctly portrays the attitude of Egyptian society about sex before marriage. What then, is it's real aim? Let us distuingish between the content of a movie, and the attitude it suggests for its audience. The portrayal of violence against women in cinema is not a justification of the same, rather an accusation.
In the final scene of the movie I was just telling you about, the father carries his daughter through town, and the village gathers around to watch. Killing his daughter has brought shame upon the father, at least within the logic of the film and its presentation of events.
I don't want to pass judgement on how Egyptians treat their women. That effort would be the job of Egyptians, but even a superficial view of Egyptian society will reveal tremendous unrest and a desire for change.
Let me give you another example of how a lack of personal sexual freedom spreads suffering.
A woman falls in love, lets call her Fatima. Let's call her boyfriend Abdul. On her way home she walks in on her mother and her mother's lover. The father of the house wakes up and finds the three of them. (when I tell this story to Egyptians I don't have to tell them what happens next) The mother tells her husband that she discovered their daughter fooling around with this man. Now, in order to save the honor of the family, the man is obliged to marry Fatima.
Finally, Abdul comes to ask Fatima to marry him, only to find out that she is betrothed (to her mother's lover!).
The cinematography tells us how to feel. When Fatima's true love asks her to marry him, she is speachless. She turns away from him and towards the camera, tears filling her eyes. She is powerless and abject. Her fiance enters from the right side of the screen, explaining to the young man with a self content sneer that Fatima will marry him instead.
Read the images, and you see a society deeply displeased with its traditions.
I could go on and on with examples, but I won't.
Someone will suggest that the problem isn't the traditions, but the attempt to import new social forms (i.e. dating) that is problematic. I would say that people here want real freedom in every form, and that there is overwhelming social pressure against it. The victims of this conflict crowd imaginations and streets and cafes and songs and lonely rooms where fate laughs, cynical.
I will finish here with an analysis of a picture I took of Cairo, which is here on my blog. It's a picture I took of two women walking down the road carrying full bags on their head. It is a mother and her daughter. They know that I am taking their picture. They know that a white man is taking interest in them, and recording their image to share with god knows who.
Notice that neither one of them is smiling. Neither one of them is happy about being noticed for whatever reason. Nevermind whether or not they think I find them beautiful, or whether or not I find it interesting that they would carry bags on their heads. It is as if I have broken a rule.
The mother is scowling at me, and the daughter is very intently and intentionally registering no emotion whatsoever. This is revealing to some extent about the attitude of women here about men, especially foreign men. They are trouble. They can mean you no good. I hope their husband/father didn't hear about me taking their picture; who knows who that man is or what he would do to them?
In this place a glance is flirting: a picture of women fully clothed is pornographic. And the women here will fight for the safety of their chains.
V
I met Spartacus when I first got to Egypt and was looking for a job. She is an imposing personage. I tend to have a different experience of Egypt from her, for reasons you will no doubt understand from the following excerpt of an interview I held with her about three weeks ago. Obviously, we are touching here on issues of gender and race. Whereas I agree that one shouldn't generalize to the point of being prejudiced, I do hope the reader will be open minded about the events here related. Every truth is partial, and there is much truth to what Spartacus has to say. She has been living in Egypt, off and on, the majority of the last decade, and by that very fact she deserves the respect of anyone who seriously wishes to understand this deeply troubled country.
???: Do we have to use my real name?
Lelyn: We don't have to use your real name. What name do you want to use?
???: Spartacus, that's my stage name.
L: Tell people a little bit about your background.
Spartacus: I'm from Chicago. I've been in Egypt four years. I own a language management company. I'm here with my three girls, ages 21, 11 and 6. It's been a trip. The two youngest are home schooled, and the oldest is fluent in Japanese. She lived in Japan; she's going back this year to open a branch of our office. Pimpin' international. I've quit more jobs than most people have interviewed for. I've been teaching for about 20 years. I've lived in six countries. I speak five or six languages: life is a trip. I don't know what else to say.
L: You're from Chicago, um, you're an African American woman.
S: Sometimes.
L: When you want to be.
S: (laughs)
L: Sometimes when you don't want to be.
S: I am who I am. I'm always me. People try to pigeon hole me. "Oh, she's got an afro. She's pretty. She's got a big booty." My name is still Spartacus.
L: What was your life like in America?
S: Damn, I don't know how to answer that. What was my life like? It sucked.
L: Well, how old were you when you got married.
S: Eighteen. I was in love!
L: What did he do?
S: To me? or...
L: For a living.
S: He was in the Airforce, and now he's a cop in Chicago. But he's a professional asshole.
L: When did you get to Egypt?
S: The first time I came was in 2001. I came with the French boy friend. I was here for eight months, as a tourist. I was just getting the lay of the land. I needed a break. I had just come from the Dominican Republic and Chicago again. I taught at a university in Chicago for three months, and figured out that I was not cut out for living in the States and reinsert myself into this shit we call living. So I took my youngest at the time and I moved to France. From France I moved to Egypt in 2001. I was here during September 11.
L: Where did you live?
S: I lived in Dahab, on the Red Sea, in the dessert. Hanging out with Bedouins and fighting cats for chicken. You ever been to Dahab?
L: No.
S: They have more cats than people in Dahab. I bullshit you not. So if your sitting in an outdoor cafe, your sitting on the ground. The cats will just come and snatch your food off your plate. They were that bold. So, anyway, as I said I was fightin' cats in Dahab.
L: So what was it like on September 11?
S: I was terrified. I was at the beach. You know, I watch TV, and I think all muslims are fundamentalist freaks, all tryin' to kill us. I'm here on vacation. I hear a bunch of cheering, and I thought it was a soccer game at 8 o'clock in the morning. That's how smart I was. I was like: "what the hell are they doing this early, whatever!" One of the owners of this shop told me to come into this secret place. He said "Madam you have to come with me." I'm like: "get your hands off me, shut up and get me a drink." I'm at the beach chillin'. He's like: "no you have to come with me now." I had no idea. So I get upstairs in this freakin' tower where we used to watch movies, and the room is full of white people. I never saw so many white people in one place: it's Egypt! I make a point of not talking to them, because I'm in Egypt and I don't want to be bothered with Americans. So, I'm like what, and they're all crying. I still didn't get it. Then I saw the TV, and one of the towers fell. I said "it's not time for the movie! Why you showin the movie so early?" I'm the dumb person in the room. But the news was in English, and then I got this feeling like "oh shit" something is going down. The guy was talking about the towers and blah blah blah. Man! That was one of the scariest points of my life. I really thought it was a Jihad. And people were cheering and they thought it was funny. They were saying "America's dead!" I was thinking: "you have got to be kidding! Of course this happens when I'm here." The whole town was in the streets: "America's dead!" Anyway, I took my daughters; we all went to an internet cafe. Everybody was doing everything at the same time. We had Swiss, French, German, but only a handful of Americans including me and my daughters. There were a total of 15 or 20 foriegners. I was black, so I could blend in. And I told my daughters: "Speak spanish. We don't know them. Stay away from the white people." So we took stock of who was there, who had their passport, who needed to go back to their room. The Americans organized everyone else. That was the first time I felt like an American, and I was 34 years old. The first fuckin' time! I was like: "Oh, you done come to our house trippin'? It is on! Wait til' George Bush get on TV." And so anyway we ran to the internet cafe. The whole town was lined up outside the internet cafe. There's no back door, so we were like "it's going down." And I read too much and watch too much TV, so I'm thinking about the mass murders. We're standing there lookin' like if ya'll are gonna do this, let's do it. Fuck it, let's get it on. And they didn't. (laughs) But in that moment of waiting... It probably wasn't that deep, but in my mind... You know how you get so scared all you hear is your own breathing and your heart beating in your ears? We stood there facing them, and they were facing us. Just waiting. I just knew we were going to be hacked to pieces or something. It didn't happen. We cussed they ass the fuck out. I was going to take the bus back to Cairo, which is a nine hour trip. A friend of mine who was a bedouin said: "don't take the bus. I just got back from Cairo. They're dragging British and Americans off the buses, taking their passports and beating the shit out of them." So I had to stay. And one of my friends had a ticket for the next day. We had to pay 200 pounds Sterling, Sterling, to get from Dahab to Sharm. Let me tell you what the hell that was like. When you think dessert, you think sand dunes. That's where the fuck we were in a black and white taxi! My life sucked. It was like 200 degrees. I was scared. I didn't know if I could trust this fool. So one of us sat beside him, and the other sat behind him so we could put his ass in a choke hold and drive off in his car. Man it was... no one was talking. There was this bus that had broke down with three Australian chicks on it. They were the only white people on board. Everybody knew what had happened, and everyone was trying to get out. Everybody on the bus was just standing there, and there were these girls with all their stuff just going "oh shit!" We drove past and they just screamed at the taxi "please stop!" I said "don't you dare stop." But then I thought, if that was me, what would I do? So we went back. We picked them up. There wasn't enough room in the car, but we had to do it. I couldn't leave them out there. They looked scared. We got to Sharm, and we stayed there for two weeks. One of the proudest moments of my life as an American, it was some dumb shit but whatever: when George Bush came on TV and declared war on everything that thought it might want to be a terrorist. I remember everything about him, the suit, the hair, everything. He was the most presidential that day. When I heard him speaking I yelled: "that's right, we're coming to get your ass!" I forgot that I was in a Cairo cafe. (laughs) That I shouldn't have been in because I was a woman. I said "yeah!" Everyone in the cafe looked at me like... I said: "in about twelve hours I want to hear you say 'America's dead.' We're gonna get your ass." Man! It was my first time feeling patriotic. And, lo and behold, soon after that...boom. So anyway, that was the most terrifying moment of my life, the first time I was in Cairo.
L: And then you left.
S: Yeah, I left, and I went to Italy.
L: That's were you had your car accident.
S: Train accident!
L: Oh yeah...
S: I had a train accident, and uh, that was a damn trip.
L: So, fast forward, how long was it between then and when you got back to Cairo?
S: Six years, five years. I got back in 2004.
L: Why did you come back?
S: Because there's a market for what I do. Language management. I teach business protocols. I mean, there's no costumer service here. These people need training to compete. The GATT (General Agreement for Tarrifs and Trade) provisions needed to be implemented by 2005, and I knew that. It means everyone has to change the way they do business if they want to compete in a global economy. So Egypt had to come up. I was studying it for two years, while I was recuperating from my accident. I couldn't walk for two years. I didn't have shit to do but read. I built my company while I was recuperating. I targeted this region. So I did extensive research. It's cheap to live here. I have three kids. Well, four, but only three with me. I just thought, it's easy. I don't have Willy Lump Lump the drug dealer hanging out on the corner trying to sell me a bag of weed. There are no school shootings here. I don't see Chester the Child Molester riding down the street trying to snatch kids.
L: Generally it's a very safe city.
S: It is.
L: Amongst the big cities in the world, this is the safest.
S: I've lived in many big cities around the world, and this is the safest I've felt. People piss me off, but I don't feel unsafe. Egyptians have limits. There are some things you don't do. I can get down with that. The economy is conducive to what I do. They need me. I'm here. And we can still eat and live in doors, and we can go out.
L: But what happens with Egyptian men?
S: It depends on what they want. They usually think I'm a prostitute. Because I'm African. Most of the Sudanese women here are prostitutes. They make them prostitutes. That's the only job they can have. For someone who was a civil libertarian and an activist my whole life, I moved to mysoginist hell. No, mysoginist and racist hell. I mean this is the worst fucking place on earth. Seriously, I've gotten into more fist fights because Egyptian men think that they are destined by God to subjugate my black ass. So my nickname is either Sharmuta (whore) or Aswad (nigger) or Hamar (donkey). And they wonder why I beat their ass. In 2001 it was funny. I almost went to jail the first time. This guy punched me. Now, I'm 6'1", 200 pounds. I'm a big woman. You're gonna hit me? And then what? And the fool was short. So he missed, and he hit me in the chest. I beat his ass like he owed me child support. I broke his nose, and cracked three ribs. I almost threw him through a plate glass window, but I didn't want to go to jail.
L: This was in Tallaat Harb (a large and busy intersection in Cairo)?
S: Yeah, right in front of Groppi, the most famous restaurant in Cairo. And of course, Egyptians watch everything, and so hundreds of people came around, mostly men, which scared the shit out of me because I'm from the land of bumrushing. I'm from Chicago. Once they get you down, they bumrush you. That's what we do. So you got the police there aiming their rifles at me, not him because he's the one that's bleeding. Everyone saw him hit me, but because I'm just a Sudanese whore it's allright for him to hit me. I whooped his ass. "Where are you from?" I said "I'm from the earth." "Where's your passport?" I said "Yo' mother's got my passport. If you're man enough to get it, come and get the motherfucker." You know? I'm a woman walking this earth, and you're all dogs. None of you are Muslim, because you let that man hit me. You have to protect me, because your god tells you to. So what is it about me that tells you that you don't have to do this?
L: They still thought you were Sudanese at that point?
S: They were convinced. I said: "yeah, I'm Sudanese, and you just got a Sudanese ass-whoopin', get the fuck on!" The police were going to arrest me. I said: "the first one of you man enough to do it, put the cuffs on." I thought my ass was kicked anyway, so whatever. And you know I had timed how long it takes to get from Tahrir to the embassy? That was the first thing I did. I wasn't going to make it that day from Tallaat Harb. So the men here are convinced... I mean, they treat their own women bad. But at the same time, it's wierd. I don't see women suffering the humiliation of child support court. That was the most humiliating thing I ever went through. What, you get me pregnant in the back of a chevy? I can't tell you what that felt like. Here is someone that you've built your life around, and they're treating you like some ho that wants her change. You know what I mean? I do not see women here doin' that.
L: But you got away from the cops in front of Groppi?
S: Oh yeah, I left. I told them to get out of the way and I just walked.
L: So they realized that you were American?
S: I think they must have, because I was actin' a fool. I started screaming in English. They said "whoa, Hia Amerikia." Everyone just did this uniform "back up." Then I really snapped. Oh, it's not that you respect me, you're scared of that white man that's gonna come behind me. I was more pissed then. You can't respect me as a human being, you respect that white man who you think is on his way.
L: How many fights have you gotten into since you got here the second time?
S: Oh man, I get into three fist fights a week.
L: Is it always guys hitting on you?
S: No, their just rude! The electrician threw the bill in my face. I kicked his ass and threw him down the stairs. I can understand that people are pissed, but just because I'm a black woman I'm beneath him! The rule is my house is Chicago. Welcome to America. Telephone man, kicked his ass stuffed him in the elevator, told him that if I saw his ass on the street I was gonna beat the shit out of him. The neighbors were like: oh my god, she's a savage. I had to beat the hell out of the Bowab, both of them. No, I beat their ass. One taxi driver, I almost broke his legs trying to pull him out of the window. The fucker yelled at me. When I first got here it was hard. I hit them in their mouth. They want to yell at me? I understand they're men, they're stronger, but to me it's worth the asswhoopin. I did not come 7000 miles to be fucked with. I came here to build a life. I respect people. I say "Salam Alaykum." I do what they do. You are going to respect me. But for some reason, they have some preordained psychosis to where they're not going to respect me because of the color of my skin and my gender. I am obligated to kick their ass.
L: They're also pretty sex starved.
S: They think they are, but they've never had it so they don't know. This country is inundated with two-pump chumps. So how would they know? 80 percent of men here have sex with other men.
L: It's a way of advancing in society.
S: It is. But you see the concept of sexuality or sexual orientation is a political construct of the west. There is no such animal in Africa. There is no "homosexual" or "lesbian." People do what they do; they don't have to define it like that. The whole homosexual/gay thing came with westerners, and I think it's a mistake to classify people like that.
L: There's alot of things that go on in secret.
S: Of course, Cairo is a fascinating city in that everything here has another side to it. If you listen to the nuances of the conversation, there is always something else going on. And once I learned that, life got a lot easier. This is a country of compulsive liars. They lie just because. The shit doesn't even profit them. We were talking about America the other day, and how awful it is. I said "you're right, but it works for us. We are whoopin your ass because it works. Our psychosis works for us; yours doesn't work for you." Here's a woman with dirty feet selling kleenex for 25 piastres (ten cents) and she's got two babies on top of her head (a common sight in Egypt). And she's wearing all that shit (Niqab, Higab, etc.) in 200 degree weather! So, where are the men she's wearing that shit for? They're not respecting her. They don't respect her enough to have a clean street for her to sell her kleenex on. There are too many religious people here for the streets to be this dirty. The women work too hard, for the men who treat them like dogs. I always ask them: "what are you wearing that for? Where is the man you're respecting? Because, see, you are in a Microbus with ten bags and two babies. Where are these men that you're wearing this for? Everyone has their own thing, and I can dig it. But it has to be reciprocal. Women are chattel in Africa. Like I said the first time I met you, the best thing that happened to me was slavery. I don't want to be from here! This is some sick shit. Every African woman my age I see looks like she's got somebody's foot where she don't want it. They look ten or twenty years older than me. They are downtrodden.
L: Except for the rich families.
S: But even in the rich families, people have to take shit just to be rich. They live by the leave of their men. She just ain't scrubbin floors and ho'n for a living, but she's serving her father and her brothers. And she will marry whoever the hell they tell her to. So it doesn't matter if they have money. They still don't belong to themselves. You can't even live by yourself. I got a friend she just moved out; she's thirtyfive. What's up?! But I tell women, "you are the problem because you keep doin' it." And they say "well, you know..." And I say "no I don't know, because I've had to fight for everything I have."
L: What is the size of the feminist movement here?
S: What is feminism? No, there is no resistance here. No, because they want to be kept. There's another side to it. They don't want to go to work. They want to be pampered. They want to have the maids and the nannies. If you want that, you have to put up with this asshole on you for two minutes. Because they're lazy. I tell em' all the time. The first thing they say to me is: "you're beautiful, why don't you get married?" I tell them: "Why should I get married? I don't have to get married to have sex." They say: "but your life is so hard!" I say: "my life is alot better than yours. I work for a living. My children are healthy and happy. What makes my life hard? I have to work, so what?"
L: But this family structure isn't really Egyptian culture.
S: Then what is it?
L: It's a conservative construct that gains force from time to time, but you know like I know that people don't really live their lives that way. They're just keeping up an image.
S: The sick part is that they think that they have to keep up an image. They're keeping up the image of chasteness, when they're not. They're getting jiggy withi it at four in the morning. Why are they hiding it? That's what's sick. If they were really serious about it, why wouldn't they be out in the open about it? Why would you get married at 25 so you can have sex, when it's understood between you and your wife that you're going to have a mistress? I have so many friends who do that. They got married because their parents told them to. So now Fatima stays in the house, covered. She never goes outside. You got two misbehaved kids because they eat sugar all day. They won't sit down; they can't shut up. She's harping at his ass on the phone because he won't let her out of the house because she represents his honor. But then after work he hooks up with his girlfriend. What kind of shit is that? And they want to act like they're normal? That shit's not normal. They try to say "we like the American lifestyle." But you don't have to like it. It's not about judgement. They try to act like they do it too, but they don't. Because they have to hide it. Why couldn't you just marry the woman you love? Because his father told him to marry this one.
VII
Yesterday I started my new job as an Editor of the Gamhuria Gazette, the oldest English language newspaper in Egypt. Yesterday I quit my new job at the oldest and worst English language newspaper in Egypt.
I was editing a piece on fashion. Egyptian youth these days are, apparently, wearing low-rider jeans and tight fitting clothes. They claim that this is a personal expresion of freedom. Their parents are terrified. What?! Their daughters want to look sexy? Their sons admire gangster rappers?
I have to say, I'm not much impressed with the youth culture of America that these Egyptians, especially the priviledged, are taking on. What I don't like is that rap culture, at it's most shallow, gives the appearance of rebellion without really providing any sort of social criticism. Of course there is great American rap, but it's not usually on the radio or TV.
On the other hand, the kids who spoke up in this piece about fashion were quite articulate. They knew the code, and they knew very well the message they were sending. I really admire that.
The article ended with some college professor saying that "Freedom" couldn't mean the same thing in Egypt because here people have to uphold "traditional Eastern values." I wonder if China is involved somehow in these so-called "Eastern values." Two main problems here: (1) traditional western values don't teach us to wear provocative clothing (anyone remember the bonnet?), and (2) "traditional Eastern values" have fluctuated wildly over the course of the last few centuries and the last few decades. Of course, what this professor, and the parents in the article, meant by "traditional Eastern values" is obedience to authority. I can't imagine anyone in their right mind calling blind obedience "Freedom." I mean, this is the kind of crap my country's government says!
In the end, I was proud of my contribution to the article. The editor did not approve. Mr. Ramadan, chief editor of the Gazette, had a few minor problems with my composition. Okay, no problem, I still think he was wrong, but I was more than happy to make the changes. Then he told me to lie.
I asked him three times just to make sure.
At issue was a particular line which read: "some girls wear pants so tight that they have to put on a bikini underneath just to hide their lady parts when they sit down." He objected to the word "bikini," saying that it must mean shorts. I offered to show him the Arabic original which clearly stated "maillohat" which is a word borrowed from French to mean "bikini" or "bathing suit." He insisted. I told him that I wasn't going to distort some poor young lady's statement. I told him that he had no integrity or regard for the truth. Then I told him to go to hell.
His paper is notoriously conservative, a real tool of the government. He was going to lie so that he could avoid embarrassment, and so that he wouldn't embarass Egypt. It's that very embarassment about sex, and the inability to discuss sex frankly in the media, that maintains ignorance and conservatism.
Let me make myself clear: I don't care how Egyptians dress. I don't care if Egyptians have casual sex. I think they should, but who am I to say? I just think that their attitudes should be fairly portrayed in the media. I wasn't about to sell my soul for some flatulent and ignorant civil servant masquerading as a journalist, dear Mister Ramadan.
This happens just on the heals of a survey conducted by Dr. Aliyaa Shoukry regarding sexual harassment. The study found:
· 31.9% of women who reported sexual harassment were dressed like figure 1, wearing a blouse, long skirt and veil. 21.0% of women were wearing a longer blouse, pants, and veil like figure 3. Figure 4 was third, where women were wearing a cloak and veil (20 %), then figure 6 (19.6%). These results disprove the belief that sexual harassment is linked to the way women dress (women are sexually harassed when dressed "indecently" or are not veiled – in the words of some participants), since 72.5% of victims surveyed were veiled.
· This confirms that the stereotypical ideas of a patriarchal culture that blames women even if they are victims, is opposite to reality...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
As it turns out, the problem isn't with women showing off their beauty. The problem is that men are insecure and feel threatened by the beauty of a woman.
One more word before I finish. No doubt the Egyptian government will crack down on sexual harassment, especially against foreigners. Egypt is protective of it's tourism dollars.
But the real problem is that people in this country have very little space, almost none at all, for men and women to meet as equals. The veil is just a cover story. What's at stake is the place of women in this society, in this world. Until men and women are equal, sex will continue to be taboo, unsatisfactory, violent and patriarchal.
VIII
And so, Egypt puts on a show of reform. They allow western NGOs to operate in Egypt, of course only so far as the Mubarrak administration will allow them to. What's more, these NGOs that are often foreign funded but locally manned, tend to reflect the local political mess. Islamic NGOs don't cooperate with Coptic NGOs who don't cooperate with secular NGOs and so on. The end result is a near perfect mirror of the official system of political (lack of) power, reproduced at great foreign expence. The NGO shadow helps the Egyptian government to project an image of reform, without having to deliver real reform. The situation is a sick passion play of charlatanism on one side and ethnocentrism on the other. Everyone has their egos stroked.
I content myself with reporting the facts, and with passing on what I think is an accurate portrait of Egyptians' attitudes about Egypt. Egypt is passing a period of insecurity.
As for Obama, and his foreign policy of financial aid vice warfare... George W. Bush increased financial aid to Egypt alone ten times what it was at the beginning of his first term, from 5 million to 50 million. Money has always been a means for domination, and the potential Obama (or McCain for that matter) administration will be no different. Obama has no idea what is going on in Egypt, what programs are doing what, nor did George W. Bush, nor has any other American president. And this financial aid has no connection to military efforts in the region other than as a bargaining chip for local cooperation; that is to say, the money goes to causes in no way coordinated with the military effort. The money is blind, often working at cross purposes. Imagine a human rights watch funded by America no doubt, established to fight the use of torture in Egypt; meanwhile, the American government depends upon intelligence gathered by Egyptian intelligence agents who regularly practice torture. The left hand cannot see what the right hand is doing. Egyptians see it for what it is: a stupid game that they can win or lose, having nothing at all to do with real or lasting change.
China and America and the Islamic Brotherhood and Isreal and the Egyptian people and all other actors upon this stage are skillfully played against each other by the Mubarak administration, which is very smart in the way it adopts liberal and Islamic rhetoric depending on the occasion.
Foreigners living in Egypt have rights. Egyptians do not. This is one of those ironies inherent to the global scene, just as pets in America eat better than humans anywhere else.
A recent movie had a great joke. A policeman reports the death toll of a riot: 57 dead, but thank god no foreigners were hurt.
Guilty pleasures are to be had in the foreign sections: drugs, alcohol, pork meat, sexual freedom and books. And so long as this group brings money and causes no scenes, they can continue to live in wonderland. Of course, they will complain every time they have to actually come into contact with Egypt. Afterall, they like that feeling of superiority.
IX
I know some of you must be wondering how I'm weathering all of these trials and tribulations. Now, I'm just a poor boy from a small town in Tennessee. Despite my parents' efforts to give me every advantage, I chose not to pursue material success, but rather to wander the earth doing good deeds. So here it is, a resume of my recents activities (or, what I'm going to tell the federal agents about what I was doing in Egypt).
(1) I helped an old turkish nun cross the busiest road in Cairo at Tahrir Square. She looked like my grandmother and didn't speak Arabic very well.
(2) I refused all beggers with rare exceptions where I gave enormous sums.
(3) I discredited the Gazette.
(4) I translated the original plan for a citizen watchdog group for oversight for the final exams of Egyptian high schools.
(5) I showed a British girl where Cilantro was, and I didn't even hit on her.
(6) I danced with Dunia.
(7) I taught Rana the difference between a complex, compound subordinate clause and a participial phrase.
(8) I spoke the truth, losing friends and enemies.
(9) I was patient and respectful when I argued with Egyptians, but I still argued!
(12) I foreswore my name for the love of Juliet.
(13) My love of truth was stronger than my fear of death.
(14) I communicated the following revelation: that the death of the soul is the worst of pains, that the artist seems ill but is pregnant, and that the death of God is the liberation of divinity.
(15) I found change for a five pound note for Mohamed, a street kid on a bicycle, at three in the morning.
(16) I drank my wieght in salt.
(17) I faced my transversal sins.
(18) I gradually stripped myself of all history.
(19) I quit more jobs than most people have had.
(20) I was true to the tradition of cosmic outrage.
(21) I followed the logic of Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish, who loved the sidewalks that we feared and for whom nothing existed except the absence of his Joshua tree, 2AM 24AUG08.
(22) I found Ossama Bin Laden inside myself by fate on the occasion of my birthday 11SEP08. I killed him. I woke up dead of body but reborn of soul.
(23) I fed several cats on various occasions: tuna and chicken.
(24) I lived by involuntary spasms.
(25) I was committed to impossible causes, and I believed in beautiful gestures in the void that birthed us and will swallow us again.
(26) I was not afraid of Omar Suleyman, nor of those who lie.
(27) I was never an American Gladiator, my war was not televised.
(28) I heard Doctor Saad when he told me that history was dirty, and I knew Foucauldian purity.
(29) I did not harass the women of Egypt. Instead I met them briefly at social functions, wondering the next day why they had given me their phone numbers if they weren't going to call me back.
(30) I got up this morning.
I
A foreigner in Egypt is a magnet for all kinds of people, some con men, some beggars, some who are just curious. An Egyptian woman can get away with a short sleeve shirt, though most these days wear long sleeves and the head scarf (shawl). On the other hand, a western woman in short sleeves can expect to be harrassed.
One day I happened to meet some women from The Czech Republic. They were visiting Cairo as part of a belly dancing conference. With a man walking with them, no one hassled them directly, for which they were grateful. On the other hand, I got harangued by guys telling me, in English, that I was a very lucky man. They said I was lucky to have two wives, and they asked me how many camels would I sell the women for.
I tried to ignore them, because the rudeness of their comments could only inspire hostility. As an American man I'm pretty sure if I got caught by the police fighting in the streets they would probably not have any problem taking me to jail, and beating me a few times on the way. So I walk by, swallowing my pride.
As a foreigner, I belong to the public sphere. I, and my foreign companions as well, am part of the world at large for which the majority of the people of Cairo feel no responsibility whatsoever. I am the Other. Just as the people here have no political power, they likewise feel no responsibility to the public space. When I first got here I always tried to put my cigarette buts on the tray the waiters brought me, out of respect. They yelled at me that this was offensive, and told me to throw them in the street. In the west there is also a hint of this, but here in Egypt it is quite pronounced; in the west too people who don't feel they are a part of the official social and political process tend to act with a lack of responsibility.
One false move and these people are likely to swarm on me, with all the hatred they bear for America and Israel.
So I'm trying hard to not get into fights here.
I was walking through a busy intersection one day when a man asked me, in English, do I need directions. I guess it's really great that people are so helpful here, but I didn't need help so I told him in Arabic "no thanks."
But this guy was on some kind of a mission. " I can tell you the way." "No thanks." "You look lost." "No, I'm not lost (this time in English)." This whole time I have my back to him, and I'm walking away yelling at him over my shoulder. Then he tells me "Oh, you know everything." "Yeah," I said "I know everything, how about that?"
As I'm trying to navigate through the crazy traffic he yells out to me: "Where are you from?" That was too much. I turn around. "How about I'm from none-of-your-fucking-business."
So he follows me out into the middle of a very busy intersection.
I turn on the Arabic, so the guy knows I'm not some tourist. I ask him why is he talking to me. He tells me in English (this guy is talking down to me at this point): "I want to help you." I tell him to get the fuck away from me, because I don't need help and don't want to talk to him.
I move on, and he shadows me. So, I stop at the first cop I see and tell him that this man is following me and that I want it to stop. This is how I take advantage of the fact that I'm American, rather than letting it ruin me by being stupid.
This guy (still in English!) tells me there's no reason for me to be rude, that in Egypt they respect other people. He tells me that my behavior is unexpected because I'm "not a woman that I would want to fuck!" Well, thank goodness for that.
I let the guy have it, verbally. I tell him that he is not a real man, that he is not free because his family and relatives dictate to him every decision in his life. I tell him that I am free because I will not tolerate people butting in on my private affairs, as he is trying to do. Then I tell him to go away because I am staying with this police man until he leaves. His nonsense continued until the cop convinced him to leave.
Later, some Egyptian friends of mine confirmed the guy was probably a pimp or a drug dealer trying to bait me. They taught me some choice Egyptian phrases for the next time it happens.
I had had enough. I had to get out of Cairo before I did get into a fist fight. So I decided to go to Port Said, which is much more peaceful. The people here are respectful when I tell them I don't need help and that they don't need to know where I'm from.
But the trip was not without incident. The guy I rode with had a sedan filled with people. He wanted me to pay 40 pounds (8 Euro). I said "okay." But then his car broke down on the way, and the other passengers and I were obliged to push the car to the nearest mechanic. He still wanted 40 pounds. Also, never mind that the Egyptians were paying 20. I told him no. There was a big argument, and the guy threatened to kick us all out of the van he had found for us. The other Egyptians stuck up for me; one woman even giving me 10 pounds to pay the man with. So I give the guy thirty, which he accepts, and I pay back the woman once we've left the guy with his broken down thirty year old taxi. Maybe that was his livelihood. Maybe he has children at home. I really don't care.
II
The older expats have told me to take it easy. Egypt can be laid back if you let it, so these days I spend alot of time hanging out in cafes.
Many times no one talks to me. I sit and drink my tea. Children pass by alone or in groups. Men carry groceries home. Old gentlemen sit and play backgammon. Women walk by vieled or not, often carrying large bundles or jugs of water on their heads. I pass live sheep, goats, cows, chickens and fresh fish. The market nearby is filled with stalls selling every kind of fruit and vegetable, many of which are unknown to me.
The corruption of the government and all of Egypts sorrows seem very far away indeed.
A few minutes walk from my appartment puts me far away from the tourist industry. Tourism in a poor world generates alot of crooks, but the places I frequent now are for locals. They treat me with the same respect they would any other man. These cafes are for men. All the lonely men; all the retired men; all the widowers who do not remarry out of respect and love for their lost wives.
No one understands why I came to Egypt. I came to Egypt to work and live, while the whole world is trying to get into my home country.
But I suppose it's very Egyptian of me to have a mad fate. I graduated from college and, not finding a job, I joined the Navy. The only good thing I got out of that was a good education in the Arabic language. I knew that I had to come and live in the Middle East, not as a part of a military force, but as a civilian, as a man, as myself.
So we sit and smoke Sheeshah, me and the old men whom fate has played with in one way or another. I tell them impossible things like: you are lucky to live amongst this beauty. But they have ambitions. I tell them that though it is know America has lots of money, the reality is that money has America.
These mornings I sit in cafes eating beans and falafel, I still hear the ringing in my ears of the Muslim preachers I watch with interest on TV as I smoke my morning cigarette. They extol hard work, generosity, fidelity and submission to the will of God. Of course this is all very constraining, and in the night all manner of evils have their way with people but always in secret. This is a country of secrets. One day a man told me a secret that I will pass on to you, my dear reader, because I love the truth more than my own good name.
He knew a woman who wore the Niqab. All day long she would babble on about what God allows, and what he does not allow. One day the woman knocks on his door. They sit on the balcony in plain view to have tea. She leaves. She returns. These meetings continue. One day the couple are sitting on the balcony, and the woman goes inside. This man calls to her, and he enters to find her on his bed. He sits and drinks his tea. She says to him: "Aren't you a man?" He says that he is a man, but he doesn't know if she is not also a man(!) She shows him. He agrees to sleep with her, but only if she wears the niqab during the act. She asks why? He wants to fuck this hated symbol. She says he is a devil, but she wants him. She takes him. During the act he asks: "Do you like me?" She says "yes, very much." "Do you like me better than God?" "Yes, when you are inside me I feel like I am praying, and you are much better than God."
This is a country full of secrets, and what is hidden will persist until it comes to light. On that day when a country regards itself truthfully in the mirror, a terrible change will occur. Much that is ill will pass on, and much that is healthy will ascend. But this is not an observation about Egypt, this is an observation about the entire human race. The margin will invade; the truth will prevail. Until then, I'll be taking it easy, drinking my tea and appreciating this peace Cairo keeps hidden deep in its ghetto, deep in its troubled heart.
I
I made it to Egypt, finally, and I survived the first 48 hours. I haven't really studied Arabic much since I graduated three years ago, but I am happy to report that apparently I know how to speak Arabic quite well.
I won't be staying in Cairo. It is far too expensive to rent an appartment here in the summer, so I am moving to Alexandria where there are fewer Saudi tourists who inflate the price of everything.
I am busy making friends, but as I don't know anyone in the University system it is somewhat difficult. All in good time.
First impressions:
(1) Traffic is crazy. There are no traffic lights. There are no lanes. There is no speed limit. There are no seat belts.
(2) Everyone here makes their living on tips, and every ten feet someone will try to sell you something you don't need. If someone takes your bag to carry, they must be tipped. If someone gives you directions, tip. If you buy a soda, tip the cashier. If you eat in a restaurant, tip. And if you don't know what to do, tip. If someone on the street suddenly wants to be your friend, they are probably selling homemade perfume. They are very persistant, and you really do have to just walk away. (I am becoming a real jerk because there are many things I won't tip for, and I have limited resources. What am I? Some jerk tourist? An easy mark? I don't think so.)
(3) People have no problem asking questions about politics and religion within the first few minutes they know you. Everyone knows who Obama is. No one understands what an Atheist is. Mostly I tell them I'm Christian, it saves time.
(4) Egyptians love life. I see them everywhere, dancing and singing in the streets. Children climb on top of each other. In the mornings each shop keeper will sweep and mop the sidewalk in front of their shop. Trucks come by with sand, then they dump it on a corner, then men fill sacks with it. The sand is used to fill in holes in the sidewalk. Several times a day prayers in Arabic are sung over loudspeakers throughout the city. Everyone is busy all day long respecting each other and showing love for the world. There is bonecrushing poverty here: it is as if the people had nothing to survive on other than the beauty of their city.
II
"This place is ready to explode," she said to me with great relish. Her name was Karen or something, and I stood there having a nice conversation with her and her fiance. They were from northern California. At that moment we were in an art gallery during the opening of a new collection of photographs of grafiti. She was really excited by the idea that Cairo was on the verge of violent revolt.
I am not convinced. However, I left her with her enthusiasm. People need drama. They really will die without it. Have you ever met someone without any sense of passion or imagination? Zombies are real.
Cairo is so bright and hot. The hungry masses stalk the streets. They know the system is corrupt. They know that Islam is the answer. I am not convinced.
But what alternative? Young men in fancy Dolce And Gabana shirts harass the girls, pick pockets in the subway, run around on drugs, swaggering down the street like some kind of mix of Omar Sheriff and Tupac. No wonder they hate American culture. Look how we are represented to the world. Soulless wonders. Zombies.
But I have discovered Abdul Rahman Bedoui, who is a great commentator of Nietzsche in the Arabic language. Perhaps he places too much emphasis on the idea of the Superman, but at least he knows that human values must be central, must be primary to economic values. He writes in the context of revitalizing Arab culture. This one book, this one writer it took me years to find, and for which I had to come here to the other side of the world.
I see a lot of religious nuts here, same as in the US. But I also see a lot of moderates who are scared to death of what might happen in an Egyptian theocracy. Will it be the same as in the Sudan, where overnight Sharia became law and everyone selling alcohol was taken directly to jail?
I cannot foresee what direction this country will take. But explode? Let's not exagerate.
III
Why was Mohamad the Prophet so important? First and foremost he was important economically. He made the world honorable. Merchants from Lebanon could travel in their boat, traversing half the world, to Morrocco and sell their goods there for a good price without being hassled, robbed or otherwise fucked with.
The modern traveler to the middle east must re-enact this epic connection of trust and bravery. He is the prophet Mohamad, calling the faithful to a trusting relation. Today I signed a contract for an appartment. I found a Samzar, and together we contracted a bowab. I will come back to this.
Today, as I awaited the Samzar, I read the words of Hosni Mubarrak. He was replying to loud declamations that Egypt was corrupt and incapable of supplying the basic needs of its citizens. His responce: there are too many people here. Every newspaper ran the headline: the large growth of the population has not kept pace with the material growth of the country. Malthus all over again.
And that got me wondering: is Islam making people have lots of babies, in some lame attempt to take over the world?
But as always, conspiracy theories are abundant, and conspiracies are lacking in organization.
It's not that Islam makes people get married and have babies. It's just that in order for a young man to have sex, he must be married. You can't even talk to a woman in public here. That's how bad the conservatives have made things. I used to smoke at my window. The woman across the way was cooking dinner. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She saw me and waved. She disapeared. She came back wearing a viel. That's how bad the conservatives have made things.
So I sat in a cafe this morning and I asked this retired gentleman, Hassan, who sat next to me if Islam says people must marry. He said no, that people don't have to marry. He himself married at the age of forty one. That was his generation.
I met a cab driver recently who had to get married. He was not happy. He said "there is no happiness in Cairo." And then he laughed. (Cairo is always full of joy). My friend in the hotel must get married soon, although he knows he shouldn't. As a young man, he should be out having adventures. But if he does not marry, his religion will not sanction any kind of sexual activity. This is his generation. Moors have become much more strict.
So anyway, it is my beliefe that if sex outside of marriage is allowed, people will have fewer children. If marriage is the only way to have sex, people will have lots of children. Why use birth control if you've allready "bought the cow," so to speak?
So anyway, I asked Hassan if this weren't some government ruse to hide its incompetence. They can't even put up traffic lights, so they blame the increase in population. What the hell happened in Egypt?!
And this guy tells me that all the Jews left, and then all hell broke loose.
I had never thought of it that way.
Jews had been here in Egypt since before the prophet. When Israel declared its existence in 1948, suddenly Jews were unwelcome throughout the Muslim world. Is that the fault of Islamic extremists, or of the Zionists who illegally stole Palestine? I don't know. What I do know is that it is extremely sad that Jews who had lived in Egypt for a Millenium had to leave because a few European Jews decided to make their own little colony in Palestine. But that's how it happened.
What I didn't figure, and what Hassan was telling me, was that the loss of these Jewish people directly affected the ability of Egypt to manage its affairs. Without Jews a huge sector of trade had left the country. Alot of proffesionals went with them. Essential services were no longer to be found. The country has not yet recovered. This is what Hassan was telling me.
Then he told me how Abraham came to Egypt. Then he told me that Joseph came to Egypt, and that he was the one who put Potiphar's house into order. Then he told me that Moses was an Egyptian Prince, who was forced to leave because of Pharoanic oppresion. The Jews had the true religion, and the Egyptians (the Pharos) refused it.
At this point I realized that I would never understand Egypt. Who gives a fuck about all these ancient religious types? Well, they are remembered in egypt.
I came to Egypt like one sold into slavery, like Joseph, and today I tried to get an appartment.
A Samzar is someone in charge of a neighborhood. He finds an appartment for you, and connects you with the Bowab. You sign a contract with a Bowab, and then you pay both of them.
My deal was good, but not as good as I wanted. It took me hours walking through the streets and waiting in cafes to find a Samzar. Then I had to haggle for the appartment. I haggled the price down to half of what was originally demanded. I was Joseph. I was Mohammed.
Then, since this is a cash economy, we scoured the city for an ATM. For hours we walked. In the heat. Extreme heat.
I mean it was hot.
None of the ATMs was working. So I called my bank, while the Samzar waited. Did I mention that the Samzar is very important?
The bank, in America, told me that I had exceeded my daily allowance. I thought that was interesting, since I hadn't taken any money out. They had a record of money coming out. No money had come out.
Just then I looked up and saw: a sign advertising prosthetic limbs. This family had set up a little shop where they constructed prosthetic limbs for people. This was their family profession. In every neighborhood you have a butcher, a baker, and the guy who makes fake legs to replace the legs you've lost. It was moment of pure terror. What will these guys do if I can't pay?
Well, I filed a claim with my bank, and apparently there was a problem with all the ATMs associated with Bank Misr (Egypt Bank). I paid the Samzar what I had on me, half his fee, and he explained to the Bowab that I would pay him tomorrow.
Hopefully the ATMs will work tomorrow. Hopefully they will sort out the fact that they have recorded 350 dollars coming out of my account, that I did not recieve. Somehow, I managed to sort all of this out in Arabic.
Some Mohammed I turned out to be.
Why can't the Egyptian government take care of its citizens? Why is the traffic so fucked? Why are people having so many children, and so little sex? Why is it so difficult to rent an appartment in Cairo? Why are the ATMs messed up? Why have the Jews left? I blame a hatred for life. Time and again people react to suffering with foolishness. Well, not me. I am happy. I am living the dream. I am in Cairo. And tomorrow I will have an appartment, instead of this crap hotel room I've been living in. I am Mohammed. I am Joseph.
IV
There were recently demonstrations in Perls against a law that was passed against people making bread in their own homes. This is an example of the governments new "business friendly" attitude. Apparently the Egyptian government thinks that privatization and the "free market" are the answer to their problems. The socialist party is impotent after multiple failures to provide basic services, and after the collapse of the Soviet Blok there is increasing doubt in the world that the socialist model is manageable.
I figured out why you don't drink the water in Cairo. The pipes are largely leftovers from the British colonialist period. After water goes through the treatment center it goes through these lead pipes which in many places are completely destroyed. The water then runs directly through the ground, picking up impurities and amassing underground. The water wells up to the surface from time to time causing major flooding in public thoroughfares.
In Perls the local fisherman eat what they fish out of the Mediteranean. This food is now illegal. Business is the new king, and capitalism is in direct conflict with local traditions. Last year there were also demonstrations in the same area, leading to violent confrontations with police. People are starving because there are no jobs, and now their only method of getting food is against the law.
Egypt is currently privatising its health care system. They are setting up a system of outsourcing to private health care organizations in an attempt to improve service. How they are going to avoid the kind of corruption that plagues other systems of the same ilk is unclear.
People here are poor, so the government is selling the country to Europe.
Huge public works projects are in the works to improve the infrastructure, like better roads. The streets of Cairo are lacking in traffic signs and traffic lights and lane demarcation lines. The rising price of oil is inflating the price of not just gas, but other services as well which also depend on the oil industry, everything from electricity to manufactured goods. Saudis are making more money, so in reaction the market raises the price of food, rents and bottled water.
The people here are poor, and Egypt is trying to become a part of the free market. If you are visiting here from abroad you will pay twice as much for a ride in a taxi. The driver knows that you are inexperienced and that he will never see you again. He has every reason to rip you off. And so, when I'm out and about on the town it is not unusual for me to get into a yelling match with one of these con men.
Last night I went to a night club. You should have seen it. It cost 50 bucks to get in the door, not counting tips. This country is poor. The room was packed.
The singer drenched his voice in echo effect. The rhythm section was huge, I mean about twenty dudes with doombeks and hand drums. There was an accordion, an Oud, and a synthesizer set so high Soft Cell would have blushed. Professional singers.
Included in the price of entrance is a fruit plate with watermelon, grapes, apples and something the locals call "Cantelope" but you and I know that it's really Honey Dew Mellon. If you show any interest in it at all your waiter will come over, put some fruit on your plate and then cut it into even smaller pieces. Every time you lift a cigarette to your lips he will rush over to light it. If you try to pour yourself some water he will rush over and grab the bottle out of your hand to pour it himself. I mean this country is poor.
If you ask where the bathroom is, a man in a very nice suit will walk you to the bathroom. In the bathroom a couple of teenagers will rush to give you kleenex. Take it, as there is no toillette paper in the stalls. When you come over to the sink, squeezing your way past some Emirate prince and his bodyguard who think they're some hip-hop Elvis, the same teenager will turn on the faucet, spray soap in your hand, give you more Kleenex to dry your hands, take the kleenex to put in the trash, and spray your hand with disinfectant. I know this country is poor, but who the fuck asked this street trash waif to clean my hands for me?! He must be tipped a buck, or all hell will break loose. On your way out don't forget to tip the cleaning ladies.
The show really is magnificent. A belly dancer of indescribable beauty comes out. Sometimes you won't be able to see her because of all the waiters and security. The Saudis are out, and they are throwing money around. I mean literally, every now and then the Saudi princes in the front row will take a big wad of cash and throw it up in the air. This is a poor country. Those Saudis walk around like God's own children, like their shit don't stink. For the cash they throw the people on stage come over and sing just for them. The dancer takes them up on stage and dances with them "leaving room for Jesus." I mean a hundred bucks at a throw. And this goes on all night long. The waiters are there to pick it up. I saw it as beneath me to grope after their money, and so did all the good Egyptians in attendance.
I can't help but think that embracing the free market, and inviting the investment, and hence ownership, of Europe and the US, will only deepen the divide between rich and poor.
V
My appartment has two bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen and a bathroom which not only has a proper toilette, but also a bedet. The paint is sloppy. There is a strip of blue at the bottom of the walls in my living room, and there are blotches where the yellow dripped down. The appartment is full of clues about the life the previous tenants led.
Epypt is so poor that a local villager, at the insistance of his Samsar, sold his kidney for 3000 dollars. When his father found out the man was disowned because selling your own kidney is against Islam. Then for months no one would employ the man. He is quoted as saying: "I would sell my heart for a decent job."
My appartment is eight stories up, and the bathroom is chastly located on the interior. My balcony overlooks a park and the Abdeen Palace. Two doors lead out to that Balcony, one from the Parents room, and one from the Children's room. The Children's room has two beds and a window. The parents must have been scared to death that their children would fall out. They must have strictly forbidden the window being open. I'm certain the children would wait until the parents got to sleep so that they could open it, and then maybe spit just to watch their saliva fall down to the sidewalk. The parents, in turn, were waiting for the children to fall asleep so they could enjoy their marriage, so to speak. No one was getting any sleep.
Egypt is so poor that there are syndicats for beggers. People send their children to work for these begger networks. The syndicat will very often maim a child to increase profits from begging, taking an arm or a leg or all of the above. At least the parents don't have to do that themselves, as is done in Iraq.
I don't think the father was very liberal in his conception of women's rights because the little butain flask that feeds my stove leaks gas every time I use it. If the man of the house had ever gone into the kitchen he would have smelled it, and he would have fixed the leaky connection, as I have done.
But what is most impressive about my appartment is the state of the bathroom. The small shelf on the bathroom mirror is broken, with only sharp shards of glass sticking out. The sink was broken at one point and glued back together. The lintel inside the door frame is broken where the deadbolt might lock, as if the door had been busted into from outside. Indeed the door bulges in. This was the site of battles. This is where the woman went to cry, where the boy went to masturbate. This is where they went to get away from the man of the house.
I geuss in rural China the men would sometimes kill one of their small children so that the others could have meat, but that is not something an Egyptian man could live with.
Egypt is so poor that recently there have been a handfull of cases where men have come home one night and cooked poisoned rice for their family, to kill them whom they could not support. Mercy killing. That's how poor this country is.
There was a newspaper left for me in the appartment that was dated the 20th of May, 2008. The headline read: Government Committee Established to Research Monetary Resources for Improved Infrastructure. Is this a clue, a message from hell? Did money trouble break this family?
There are cracks in all the furniture, and it makes me wonder.
VI
97 percent of women in Egypt have had some sort of genital mutilation. The majority of these cases are type 1, clitori..omy, involving the removal of the prepuce (clitoral hood). A smaller percentage involve complete removal of the clitoris, and an even smaller minority involve the removal of part or whole of the labia. According to polls, this practice is embraced by men and women of all races and religions in Egypt.
Five years ago almost no women in Egypt wore the headscarf (hijab). Now they nearly all wear it. A man cannot address a woman in public. Marriages are arranged, and the couple usually meet under parental supervision. Women are subordinate to men, and a woman whose honor is in question, through infidelity, rape or pre-marital promiscuity, may be killed by her family so that they save face. Without honor, a man cannot find work, and his entire family will bear the shame.
In 1979 a law passed to protect women's rights made it more difficult to marry several women, and more difficult to divorce. In 1985 another law reversed the earlier 1979 law. But I ask you, is a law that protects a woman's right to an inherently one-sided relationship really a protection of her rights? It still remained nearly impossible for a woman to ask for a divorce.
Although many women these days go to University, many others are taken out of education early to protect their honor by limiting their exposure to males. Others get their degrees only to find their employment options limited by segregation in the work place, or by the demands of their husbands and fathers.
I really try to be open minded, and I really try to not pass judgment on difference, on cultures that have different rules than I am accustomed to. But seriously, WTF?!
Here there are women who are killed when on their honeymoon the groom finds out she is not a virgin. Many doctors perform surgeries to restore apparent virginity.
So here's my question, and I don't think it's too ethnocentric: is anyone happy? Someone will say that there is a different conception of happiness that is fulfilled with arranged marriages. The couple may never know the burning pang of love that we in the west seem to covet, but they are often comfortable with each other. And they have avoided the hell that westerners put themselves through while seeking a mate.
So maybe it's not about happiness. Maybe what I really wanted to say was: didn't you ever do something just because you wanted too? And I can ask that question of Americans. Society gives you a bunch of ideas about what you should have in your life: a car, a house, a degree, a wife and kids. So, did you ever in all your life even once DO something just because YOU wanted to?
And if someone did step out of line a little, should that person die, or be excluded from the cares of society? I would say no, and I don't think there's any way to convince me otherwise.
I came to Egypt to learn about humanity, and to see a different way of life. I wanted to see an alternative way of dealing with modernity. However, the more I learn about this country, the less I want to know. I don't want this country to dissappoint me anymore than it allready has. Which leads me to another issue: corruption. But that will have to wait for my next installment.
VII
I talk to alot of cab drivers. I talk to alot of people about cab drivers. Usually before I go to a new place I will ask a local I trust about how much the ride should cost, and I demand the price a local would pay. After all, I am living here with a permanent adress and everything. Most cab drivers feel they have to take advantage of foriegners in order to make a living, or maybe just a little bit better. Most cab drivers have college degrees, often in engineering.
So, why are they driving cabs? Well, I geuss it's because there are no jobs. Here's my question: how come the Egyptian government hires a French company to build their subway when they have so many engineers driving cabs? It's not like they can't do without a few cab drivers.
Likewise: how come they have to hire a French company to clean the streets of Cairo, when everyone I know is complaining that there aren't any jobs? Why don't they get organized and do it themselves? Don't they know that everything a foriegn company does for you leaves you in their debt? Do they really want France to own their subway?!
I have made some good friends here, and one of them suggested to me the other day that Egypt should hire a foriegn CEO to act as President of Egypt. It would be someone who wouldn't hook up his family over anyone else, someone somewhat above corruption. And if that person did a bad job, they could always fire him. Sounded good to me, and I intend to call my congressman as soon as possible to ask for an Amendment to our constitution so that we Americans can hire a foriegn president.
But that's just the problem: corruption. Instead of hiring someone who is good for the job, people here hire their close and distant relatives and friends. It's pretty much accepted common practice. They have no word for nepitism. They call it wasita, and it carries no negative connotation.
Instead of public works they spend billions of dollars on expensive parties (no exageration). They pacify the poor, somewhat, by subsidizing electricity etc. But the kernel of all this corruption is the education system.
Children's parents often pay teachers to pass the children each year, while they never once go to class so they can help support the family (probably by begging). This has become normal. There was recently a huge scandal, with new details coming out daily, about the final exams from High Schools. This test is like the ACT, the SAT, or for you French types, the BAC. It determines your fate.
Students were having nervous breakdowns because the tests were too hard. So the government got involved and found out that teachers were selling copies of the test with the answers just a few hours before the test. There are even claims that teachers were having sex parties with their students in exchange for good grades and test answers.
So these bonehead kids couldn't pass the test even though their teachers had given them all the questions and all the answers. Forsooth, many of the questions were poorly worded. One Algebra question for sure, we know through later analysis, was badly translated from Arabic to French, which was the language that test was taken in. It is almost certain that as this thing continues more and more structural problems within the tests will surface, proving the suspicion that the test is in need of revision.
But also, there is the brazenness with which the test copies were sold. People stood out on the sidewalk in front of the schools yelling out the tests they had and how much it would cost to get a copy, as if they were selling the morning newspaper. Others were caught because they faxed the tests to someone who then turned them in. Fax numbers are traceable, duh! Whoever did that one probably paid their way through school.
So, back to my original question: why can't Egypt make its own subway, why can't it clean its own streets, why can't it fix its own pipes? Given it's huge work force and all the people with degrees driving taxis, this should be easy.
The answer is: (1) the government is too busy spending money on secret police and cocaine parties, and (2) even the people with degrees can't do it, because they never really got an education. That means that even the local "experts" are incapable of functioning in the fields they are supposed to be knowledgable in because the education system is corrupt and has been for decades.
Which brings me back around full circle to taxi drivers. What is money? To them, money is something they are handed from the sky. The service is not worth 5 pounds or 20 pounds, its worth whatever they can get from you. Money should be the expression of an honest good or service that people need and that is given to them. That is what I would call an economic event: value is added to human life. Not to these taxi drivers, to them the service they offer has no relation to the money they get.
So if Egypt needs new subways, no one is thinking: what a great way to stimulate the economy and get people to work. They are thinking: we don't have the money. Don't they see that making something of use is what generates money?!
As in education, they would much rather just pay and have someone else do it for them. And that is why Egypt will always live off of tips.
VIII
Everything in Egypt starts from impossibility. That's what Doctor Sa'ad told me. The government is trying to privatize education. The way they are doing this is by not building enough schools, so that people are obliged to send their children to a private school, if they send their children to any school at all. So they pay the school, and then because the classes are devoted to preparing the children for the test (via memorization of past test questions and answers) to get real learning the parents must pay the teachers for private lessons. These are the same teachers who work in the school, and they must charge for private lessons in order to feed their families.
In short, the Egyptian government is treating education as a service, not as a right.
So, we start from impossibility, and the plan is to first challenge these practices in the courts.
I have decided to volunteer my services at The Right To Education, Cairo branch.
It took me three hours to find the place. I took the subway for an hour, and then a microbus. I didn't know that there was no official busstop at my destination, so I would have to tell the driver when to stop. Fortunately I expected a problem like this, so I asked my fellow passengers. Because no one understands classic Arabic (especially when spoken by a foriegner), I had to ask several people. Then I finally arrived at Salaam. On one side of the street is Musakin al-Dubat (Officers' Quarters) and on the other side is Sof al-Dubat (Enlisted Quarters). I didn't remember which was the one I needed, but I knew I had to find building 26 where I would meet the boss Abdul Hafiz.
Naturally I picked the wrong side, and I found a building 26 where another man named Abdul Hafiz lived, and he didn't know anything about Education Rights. So I continued.
I was ready to give up when I saw a child waving to me from the window of an appartment on the seventh floor. I wove to him. He started yelling at me: "ya Habibi!" (My dear friend!) Then I couldn't give up. That kid could be the next Naguib Mahfouz! They had me again.
I went on. My Abdul Hafiz was going to Alexandria to challenge the teachers' union who was only allowing people from the Muslim Brotherhood into the union. The law states that to become a member you have to be a citizen of the "United Arabic Republic." The UAR was a short lived experiment where Syria and Egypt were made into a united state. After two years the Syrians felt dominated, and they broke with Egypt. So basically, no one is a citizen of the United Arabic Republic, and therefore no one has the right to be in the Teachers' Union. The rule is ignored whenever it suits the purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood. If The Right to Education group can challenge this practice in court, then the administration of the Union will be taken over by the Ministry of Education, which is something that no one wants. So this is their bargaining chip.
That day there was to be a meeting in Alexandria, and Abdul Hafiz wanted me to come along. At the last minute the Union refused to let an American enter the meeting, so I stayed in Cairo and hung out with the Acountant for Education Rights, my friend Islam (that was his name).
He payed for the cigarettes and beer; I payed for the burgers.
Islam was a moderate Muslim. You can tell if someone is moderate by which verses of the Koran they choose to quote. I let him know that though I respected people's religious beliefs, I was an Atheist. He quoted the Koran "You are all different, for thus have I created you." He went on to quote the Prophet "If you trespass against anyone, then you are trespassing against me." He was telling me that it was okay. I was accepted.
We shared alot in common. We both loved Italian Neorealism. We both found the American spirit of independance admirable, and the prideful ethnocentrism of its foriegn policy reprehensible.
I told him the story of how I once went out with a girl only to find out she was the sister of a good friend of mine. Those were the days when I was a real slut, and I didn't have anything to give to a good woman. I never called her again, out of respect for him. To this he replied that I was not American: I was Egyptian.
Then I told him how I was a donar insemination, that I was raised mainly by my mother's fourth husband. This was scandal to them. An Egyptian woman cannot easily get divorced, and if she does she cannot find a husband again unless she is very beautiful. They told me that in Egypt a woman is like a bag of potato chips, you can only open it once.
After all, we were very different in some ways.
On our way back downtown our microbus was stopped. Traffic had to wait while Mubarrak's car returned home. Once he had passed we waited for the cops to let traffic go through. Everyone was honking their horns like crazy.
You have to understand, dear reader, that the horn is the only traffic law in Egypt. Cars will not stop to let a pedestrian pass, so they honk their horn in warning. Where traffic lights exist, people don't stop at red lights, they honk their horn to let people know they are coming through. They slow down a little on a green light, and honk their horn to let people know they are coming. When there is a traffic jam the honking is unbelievable.
This honking is the cry of the people for passage, for order, for justice, for the future.
Sitting there in Heliopolis, waiting for the President to pass, the people of Egypt voiced their discontent with their car horns. It was the mother of all horn honking.
IX
I live on the eighth floor. I walk down crumbling stairs, past wild cats. I tell the daughters of my Bowab good morning, and then I'm out in the street. Trash doesn't pile up in my neighborhood, but it threatens to in some places. The sun hits you like a cinder block. As I leave my apartment building and look to my right a man is lifting up a skinned cow which he butchers right there on the sidewalk.
I think about the words of Zaki Nageeb Mahmoud. He says that once upon a time freedom was envisioned as a liberation from colonialism. The debate about freedom in Egypt never got any further than that. Then came the current era, a time of strong internal chains.
No one walks on the sidewalk because it's too uneven, too crowded with men drinking tea, men welding, men reupholstering car seats, men assembling chairs, beggars doing their best to communicate their desperation. We walk in the street, barely beyond the path of oncoming traffic. All too often cars will drive in the opposite direction down a road too narrow for two cars. A teenager rides his bike in and out of traffic, a five foot by five foot tray piled high with bread is balanced on his head.
Mahmoud goes on to say that in Egypt people put a great deal of value into the authority of men. A minister or a general does not have to wait in line. If no one of importance is present, then there is no line: there is a crowd all surging forth at once.
He once saw a rich man's son cutting down a tree, and so he asked him why was he cutting down this tree. He said to the boy that he should let the tree live, so that the two of them could grow up together and so that when the child becomes a man he can rest under its shade. The boy said: "Are you a soldier?" "No." "Then it's none of your business."
In a nearby garden children are playing football. Others are wrestling on the sidewalk. Others are having a parade, aping a military march or a political demonstration. Everyone is singing.
Egypt is a great big musical, or an Opera even. I look into a pasta shop to see that the cook is waving at me singing some Arabic song. I can't understand the words to the songs here, but they all sound like impossible love. Egyptians sing while they play chess. They sing while they are driving. They sing in between sips of tea. If the conversation lags for even a few seconds, you can be sure that someone will start singing.
Mahmoud goes on to elaborate what Egyptians must do to be free. (1) They must break their reliance on western science by participating in it, by adding to the progress of science rather than being dependant on it. They own cars, but they cannot design their own internal combustion engines. (2) The individual must stop submitting itself to public opinion. Society must be tolerant of difference, or no one will be free.
Further on the traffic has been completely stopped. On the passenger side of one taxi a door is open. The driver in the taxi next to it reaches over and closes the passenger side door of the first taxi. The driver smiles and thanks his compatriot.
So I notice that the acceptance of Difference, Mahmoud's second point, is directly related to his first point, the need to be masters of science. Difference is the engine for genius, for success, for invention, for mastery. In this Otman is calling for a scientific attitude towards human identities, and a cultural participation with the rest of the world, as rivals and not as slaves.
I ask the way to the post office, and the man I ask takes my hand and walks me three blocks away to my destination. When I try to tip him he refuses.
There is so much good in the Egyptian national identity, so much bravery and willingness to live, even the hardest of lives.
Eliot's Mess
The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
By Greg Palast
Reporting for Air America Radio’s Clout
March 14th, 2008
[To hear the Podcast of Eliot's Mess read by Palast, click on the link below…]
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.
Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.
The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.
Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’
Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota.
Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.
But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.
But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.
Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called “securitization.”
What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinning's, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into “tranches” of bonds which were stamped “AAA” - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).
When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.
But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.
Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.
The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bailout. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.
Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.
And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.
Do I believe the banks called Justice and said, “Take him down today!” Naw, that’s not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press – one was “Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer” - made clear to Bush’s enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn’t Bin Laden.
It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:
“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”
Bush, Spitzer said right in the headline, was the “Predator Lenders’ Partner in Crime.” The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.
Spitzer wrote, “When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably.”
But now, the Administration can rest assured that this love story – of Bush and his bankers - will not be told by history at all – now that the Sheriff of Wall Street has fallen on his own gun.
A note on “Prosecutorial Indiscretion.”
Back in the day when I was an investigator of racketeers for government, the federal prosecutor I was assisting was deciding whether to launch a case based on his negotiations for airtime with 60 Minutes. I’m not allowed to tell you the prosecutor’s name, but I want to mention he was recently seen shouting, “Florida is Rudi country! Florida is Rudi country!”
Not all crimes lead to federal bust or even public exposure. It’s up to something called “prosecutorial discretion.”
Funny thing, this ‘discretion.’ For example, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him in diapers (ewww!), yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him.
Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer – rarely done in these cases - was made at the ‘discretion’ of Bush’s Justice Department.
Or maybe we should say, 'indiscretion.'
************
It was a heavy night, and there was nothing to do but try and shake it off. Jimmy and Steve called Jenny and Suzy, and Bill wandered by. They pooled their resources. Twenty-something’s with jeans on, they didn’t bother to comb their hair before they left the house.
The night was warm. The girls were pretty, but not so pretty that they made the boys nervous. They quested amorously for each other with a particular blend of experience and naivety. Some kind of loud music was playing on the radio, and none of them had ever heard anything like it before.
There is something garishly beautiful about the American night. Neon lends a squalid splendor to run down hotels, gas stations and bars. There is a never-ending string of billboards, and even if they don’t entice a boy to buy in, they certainly give him an appetite. Possibility hung in the air, and it was intoxicating though illusory. No one would ever escape the Law, but some would at least try. And who knows? Maybe anything could happen out here. At least they were going to make their connection.
Suzy pulled the car into the driveway, and got out. She would go around the back alone while the others waited. Several minutes passed. Jimmy became restless, and got out of the car. He lit a cigarette. He took a piss in some bushes. What the fuck was taking so long? Finally Suzy reappeared.
Bill was the master blunt roller, and the night became hazy. Everyone was in college. Everyone had just met. Conversations that had been going on for at most a month were continued. Someone’s teacher was a dick. Someone else was going to start practicing Buddhism.
They drove around until the quart of whiskey ran out. Then they retreated to someone’s apartment.
Steve put on a movie to avoid the uneasy silence that was developing. It was a terrible comedy, and they all soon lost interest. Steve was putting his arm around Jenny. Jenny was trying to find some excuse to move away from Steve. She began to look around the room.
Jenny noticed Suzy wasn’t moving. “Let’s have some fun,” she said, and she went into the kitchen to look for a marker. “What’s going on?” slurred Steve. “I’m going to draw a mustache on Suzy!”
No one wanted to notice that Suzy wasn’t breathing anymore.
They started by drawing, with thick, rich, black magic marker, a big curly circus mustache on Suzy. Then they drew a penis with big floppy balls on her left cheek, complete with precum just touching her lips. Then they shaved her head and posed her in various sexual positions while Steve took pictures.
Then things went further. They stripped her naked and wrote on her bare chest where no air was moving in and out “kill the rich” and on her ass where no blood pumped “the poor find comfort here.” They drew a yin/yang symbol on her back. Her belly read: “Al Qaeda is my baby’s daddy.” It went on and on until she was covered from head to toe. Then they carried her to the car and drove to the park downtown. They tied her to a tire swing, legs duct taped open, arms taped up on the cold steel chains. She was someone’s daughter.
This is where the neighborhood children found her. This is how their parents saw her soon thereafter. This is how the police left her as they roped off the crime scene. It was one hell of a gag. The coroner’s office marked her cause of death as accidental drug overdose. No one ever knew just who it was that had vandalized her, or if that had happened before or after her time of death. She would never graduate from college, never have a job interview, and never raise children. The others would. They would multiply, and cover the earth with their shame and mockery.
He is hung over, which would be fine if everyone would stop screaming. They are losing their minds outside his apartment, banging on the door, screaming and yelling, choking and running. For half an hour this goes on, and he is just too lazy to go outside and tell them to shut up. He thinks it will end soon, but it doesn’t. He gets up, trying not to wake up too much. He unlocks the dead bolt and opens the door just as far as the chain will let him.
Outside is some woman with a face and large hands wearing a floral print as she bangs on the door, bangs on his consciousness, poking her little needle into his hangover.
“Mister! Dey’s a fire!”
“So, fire somewhere else!” he yells back, closing the door. He lies back down.
He has to pee. He sits up. He is hungry. He leans way over to grab a cigarette. The bed tips over a bit. He doesn’t know how to fix it, how to fix anything. The smartest thing he has ever done is to accept the disorder of the world. He catches his fall with one hand, the other extended towards the cigarettes. He can’t reach. What the hell? He lets himself fall, finally reaching the cigarettes. He lies out on the floor. He lights a cigarette.
Did that face just say “fire?”
The phone rings. He stretches out, reaching for the phone. He can’t reach it. He hoists himself up. His phone is buried under unopened mail. Credit card applications. Charitable organizations looking for contributions. Chain letters. Desperate souls. Unpaid bills. A Christmas card from his mother. It took a full minute for him to find his super slim cell phone. Outside sirens were blaring way to close. He pushes the green button, speaks into the phone just in time to hear the person on the other end hang up.
Are people dying better today, than they did one thousand years ago? Probably not.
He slides open the window curtain. Yup, there’s a fire truck. There’s the ambulance. The patrol cars. The woman hollering about her insipid spawn.
Ashes to bile
That I should live the day
When they bury my child
He slides the curtain shut again. Maybe it’s on the news. That would be neat. He turns on the TV. The sound still doesn’t work, and the local news can barely be made out on the screen for the static.
“Oh shit,” he thinks, “I had a dentist’s appointment today.” He looks at the clock on his microwave from across the room. Nine forty-five. He is forty five minutes late. No wait. He never set the clock back for daylight savings time two months ago. He can make it if he hurries. Fuck, he might as well. He grabs his keys and leaves, forgetting his driver’s license, his cell phone, his sunglasses and a long crooked trail of broken hearts.
So hello everyone, this is Lelyn. I'm back from my deployment to the Persian Gulf. I had a moment out there where I wasn't sure I'd make it. I cracked up. There was no possibility of seeing a doctor, so I just stuck it out.
We saw alot of ports, and were extremely limited in what we could do, where we could go, and who we could talk to. We spent alot of time out to sea. I feel like I just got out of jail. When I go to work (basically one day out of three now) I cannot believe that ship was my entire world. My coffin rack was my personal space. The bridge was my occasional outing. Aux 1 was my home. I feel wounded. Maybe I've always felt that way, but I really feel like going on deployment took something from me. I know it gave me alot back too. A couple of days ago I went to art crawl. I started crying because I saw that alot of art and thought had been going on while I was gone.
And now my country is facing presidential elections. Every four years we indulge in a little hope that things will change. Here's my diagnosis: nothing is changing. Hillary is funded by beer, cigarettes and weapons, just like Mccain and just like Obama. Don't expect truly dynamic change from any of those people. Don't get your hopes up for this country.
As for me, well, I geuss I'll never change. I'm still writing and making music. I got myself a drum machine and a printer for my computer. I quit drinking and started trying to get published. Yes, I'm actually submitting my poems and stories to literary magazines and publishing houses.
Four months from now I will be expatriating to Egypt. Not for good. I'm not deluded into thinking that Egypt is better than America (I'm speaking in terms of justice and human rights). I want to go over there and see what new human technologies the Arab can give us. I do believe that the middle east is different. That's my new project. Actually, it's been a dream of mine for a long time, and now I can see myself actually doing it. I haven't had hope in a very long time. I like it.
They are burying my Grandmother, and I am not there. I used to spend my summer vacations and every Christmas at Grandma’s house. My mother and I led a nomadic existence while I was growing up, and so Grandma’s was the only “home” I had. They sold the house, located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, after Katrina came through. Once they put my Grandparents in a rest home, the decline had begun.
I didn’t visit often enough, and not as often as I could have.
When I think of my Grandmother the first thing that comes to mind is not her face. Instead I imagine her kitchen. I liked helping her cook and bake. I didn’t like helping my Grandfather in his shed or in his den with his computers. There was something mean about my Grandfather that seems to have faded over the years. The next thing I remember is my Grandmother sitting quietly as Grandpa yelled at us for leaning forward to eat our soup. Nothing was ever good enough for him, and that is why I stopped going to visit. I can’t help but wonder what she could have done without him.
Some have said that we do not mourn so much the passing of a loved one, as we grieve our self going on without them. There is some truth to that. I know for certain that my Grandmother lived the life she wanted to and that she died without any regrets. She was the gentlest person who ever lived. She made flower arrangements for the church she went to. Every time I visited she always asked me how my bowel movements were. I imagine the topic embarrassed her as much as it did me, but she had to ask because she cared for my well-being.
Perhaps she should have left my Grandfather, but that choice isn’t ours. It was hers, and she chose to be loyal. People today prize independence over loyalty, and I can’t help but think that it makes us a bit lonelier. I meant a lot to this person. She loved me better than she loved herself. Goodbye Grandma, I love you too.
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trec said:
How long have you been writing this article? read more
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I have came across to it somewhere... read more
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This is very moving and sweet. You learned good lessons from her. read more
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