Back in My Day...

Some of the most memorable conversations I have had in Alexandria have been with taxi drivers. At times this city (and Cairo) feels like New York because of the ubiquity of taxis – a fact that has its benefits (easy to get from place to place) and its drawbacks (congestion, congestion, more congestion). Driving a taxi is a job that is readily available and doesn't require much skill other than knowing how to work a stick shift. In a sign of the economic reality in Egypt, however, many of the taxi drivers actually have college degrees but are unable to find work in the fields they specialize in. I have been driven around by Agricultural Engineers, Philosophy Majors, and a man who used to work in the oilfields of Iraq. Some of them are quite uninterested in their passengers and simply drive us from point A to point B, but others want to hear our entire life stories (or tell us their life stories), discuss politics with us, or try to convert us to Islam. While taxis are somewhat of a luxury for your average Egyptian – most people in the lower and middle classes prefer to take the cheaper, but slower, public microbuses – we Americans love being able to get almost anywhere in the city for just about $1. I average between 2 and 3 separate taxi rides per day, so you can imagine the variety of drivers that I have met.

Today, I had two unique experiences with taxi drivers. I usually try to strike up a conversation with the driver, and we almost always go through the basics of where I am from (America), why I am here (to study Arabic and learn about Egyptian culture), what my opinion is of Egypt and Alexandria (حلوة (hell-wa) which literally means “sweet” in Arabic but is used in everyday speech to mean “nice” or “cool”). After that, I generally ask the driver about his background and the conversation goes from there. This driver was from Alexandria, born in a working-class neighborhood in which I have spent some time exploring and found to be full of color and life. So I asked him one of my go-to questions: “How has life changed in Alexandria from your childhood until now?” His answer was a classic “back-in-my-day” response: “Life is so much worse now than it was before. The biggest change is all of the congestion on the streets, which didn't exist when I was younger. On top of that, nobody respects anyone anymore. On the streets everyone drives like an animal, and the veneration that the younger generation used to have for the older generation is gone. In the old days, when a student saw his teacher in the street he would cover his face and look the other way out of respect for him (an odd way of showing respect, if you ask me), but nowadays the students have no morals and they make fun of their teachers when they seem them in the street. No one has any morals.” I had heard versions of these gripes before, almost all of them from older taxi drivers, and my next question always revolves around the causes of these changes. In the driver's opinion, “The root of the problem is that there has been no change in peoples' salaries for a really long time, but the cost of life has continued to rise. The population keeps on growing, but there is no corresponding economic improvement. Furthermore, this society has moved away from Allah, no one is a true Muslim anymore.” I then asked him who he blamed for the mess “الرئيس (al-raees) – the president!” So I then asked him how he viewed his current situation, and his response: “الحمد لله (hamdullah) – Praise be to God, I'm doing fine because I have stayed close to God.” “So what is your opinion on the solution to this problem? How can Egypt improve itself?” “The people have to find God again. Allah is the solution.”

That was the end of our conversation, as we had reached the dorms. The driver's answers, however, are representative of the views of a sizable portion of the population here (or at least those I have come into contact with). Everyone acknowledges that Egypt has problems, they identify President Mubarak or the government in general as a source of the problems, but the biggest issue, in their eyes, is that people have strayed from religion (which is the true solution). What is odd about this answer is that Egypt has become a much more overtly religious society over the past 30 years. Despite a secular government, the tide of a “tightening” up of the country's interpretation of Islam is manifested in the hijabs that almost every woman wears, the niqabs that some of them wear, the usage of religious phrases in everyday speech (which, to be sure, is a natural part of the Arabic language but one that in many instances has been taken to the extreme), and, to cite an example from taxis themselves, the fact that about 75% of the taxis that I ride have their radios turned to 90.1, the “all Quran, all the time” station. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am very interested in the contrast between Egypt's move toward a more outwardly evident form of Islam, but at the same time an decrease in the quality of life and a more self-focused, consumerist view of life. Make no mistake, Egypt has found a way to balance religiosity with consumerism. In many instances the hijab appears to be more of a fashion statement than an indication of modesty, and I know many people in the dorms here who pray five times a day and can also reel off more lines from famous American movies than I can. Of course it is prudent to realize that these generalizations about Egyptian culture are not fully sufficient to explain the current situation in the country. There are dozens of exceptions, and I can think of many people who don't fit my previous characterization of the country in the slightest. But the question that I am left with at the end is “where is this country headed?” In all honesty, I haven't the slightest idea.

In other news, I had one of my odder interactions later today with another driver who asked my friend and I whether we were Muslim or Christian. Of course when we answered that we were Jewish we readied ourselves for the inevitable debate about Israel and Palestine, but both of us were completely taken off guard when the driver let out a laugh of joy and told us that he thought that the Jews were the best people in the world. My friend and I exchanged perplexed looks, and then listened to him continue to tell us that he hated the Palestinians and thought they were bad people because of their use of suicide bombers. He then added that the Jews had an absolute right to Israel because the land was originally Moses' land. After the first moments of confusion, we tried to to take the middle ground, pointing out that it was incorrect to characterize all Jews as great and all Palestinians as terrible. There are good and bad people on both sides, we said. But the driver was determined not to deviate from his initial assertion, and he dropped us off at our destination with a hearty good-bye, and we were left shaking our heads in disbelief as he drove away. The lesson to take away: in an Egyptian taxi, anything is possible.

The Egypt Syndrome

It's hard to believe that we will finish the program here in Egypt exactly one week from today. The semester has flown by! I have fallen a bit behind on the blogging front, mostly because I've been quite busy with school, teaching, and also trips to Cairo and various other spots in Egypt over the past few weekends. Two weekends ago in Cairo, we visited most of the major spots in Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo, and also managed to work in a trip to a camel market that was one of the craziest experiences I have had in Egypt to date (more about that later).

But first, I want to talk about something I have decided to call the "Egypt Syndrome." Having been here now for four months and having visited most of the major tourist sites in the country, I have developed a very skewed perception of time as it relates to history. In the US, just about the oldest buildings you'll find were built in the 19th century and a few still exist from the 18th century (in Boston, for example). In Egypt, however, I have now come to feel normal when I walk into a building or a mosque that was built over 1,000 years ago. It goes without saying, of course, that the Pyramids trump everything else in this country in terms of grandeur in relation to age. I cannot even begin to comprehend that those majestics structures were built over 4,000 years ago. Seriously. The Pyramids aside, however, Cairo is littered with ancient buildings that are still being used today. We visited the Hanging Church in Coptic Cairo, built sometime around the 4th Century (!) AD, and early in the day we walked around inside the Ibn Tulun mosque, the oldest in Cairo, that was built in 876 AD. Less than 300 years after the death of Mohammed!

After becoming used to seeing those ancient sites all over the place, buildings built in the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Period, or the Ottoman Period just don't seem that old. Don't get me wrong, I still love to visit them, but I enjoy them more for their architectural intricacies or stories about past events that happened there. Whereas a building built the 14th century in the US would probably be known primarily for its age, the 700 year old Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo is famous because of its role as the focal point of Islamic study in Egypt. People know that the mosque has been around for ages, but that fact is simply mentioned in passing rather than emphasized.

I have heard many people here in Egypt (and in Syria and Lebanon) refer to the country as "Um al-Dunia" (mother of the world), and I can say with certainty that Egypt definitely deserves that title. Everything here is extremely old, but the grandeur and architectural genius of those old structures have preserved them very well. Therefore, when you walk around the Pyramids or climb the minaret of Ibn Tulun Mosque to get a panoramic view of the city, you might try to get your head around how long of a period 1,300 years(in the case of Ibn Tulun) really is, but ultimately you will find yourself simply unable to comprehend it.

For anyone wanting a funny description of what happened on our trip to the Camel Market outside of Cairo, take a look at this post on my friend Emily's blog (we shared the unique experience.)http://emilyisinegypt.blogspot.com/2010/05/hit-and-run.html