No finger is the same

It’s been a busy couple of weeks again. I’ve done a lot of things, but the impact of the impressions are starting to weaken. I’ve become used to daily life and there is not a lot that surprises me anymore. Nonetheless I’ve done some amazing stuff. After Sharm-El-Sheikh I went to the desert to camp there and do sandboarding. On our way back we decided to go to Alexandria for a few days to relax, enjoy the beach and see what’s happening over there. The beach was actually not that enjoyable to say the least, in fact it was the most disgusting beach I have ever seen. People just throw their garbage in the sea and on the beach, which means that when you take a dive the likelihood of coming up with a plastic bag around your head is bigger than just coming up without touching anything. The past weekend I spent my time in the black and white desert, enjoying the oasis and hotsprings together with very nice company and tomorrow I’m off to Beirut to spend two nights with Nick who’s doing his internship in Amman. I realize now that the previous sentence can be interpreted in many ways, but it just means Nick will be accompanying me.

My time in Cairo is almost done. It has been a truly amazing and impressive experience. The daily life was not easy to get used to but I think I managed quite well. I leave the door every with a big smile on my face to see what the day will bring me. It’s hard to explain but I’ve grown attached to kindness and friendliness of the people. They are so easy to talk to and generally so happy to see you. It will be hard for me to go back to the more ‘closed’ society in the Netherlands. That’s for sure.

Dare to share. This is the slogan of the Nour project and it has intrigued me from day one. What does it mean? Why would I need to dare to share my culture or experiences? But if you think about it, it’s not that strange. The culture I come from is so different from the culture I’ve spent the past two months in, that it’s not easy to understand what’s happening every day. It’s really difficult to be open minded and not to judge. Taken in mind all the stereotyping that is taking place in the Netherlands it’s even more plausible to assume that one really has to dare to share his or her culture instead of just comparing.  I’ve found it very hard to share my own culture in contrast to the Egyptians, who really want to tell everything about how Egyptian society and daily life function. I realize just now that I’ve been living under the assumption that my very direct way of approaching people was normal and logical as well. In a way, I’ve been expecting that people would be the same as me in that respect. Not that I didn’t know from myself I can be very direct and this is not the norm for the rest of the world, it’s just something that you are not consciously aware of when you’re actually doing it. Interacting with my fellow interns from other countries actually made me realize this. I still need to get used to the Chinese way of responding to a question for example and it actually still annoys me every day. I think that’s why I like the Egyptians so much. In a way they are also direct and very open just like me. 

But again this is a partial ‘analysis’. Not every Egyptian is nice, just like not every Dutch is direct. I guess it’s just human nature. Some are good and some are bad, but in general the Egyptians are very good. When I talked to a guy I met in Alexandria and he asked me how I liked the Egyptians, I answered him that I love the openness and friendliness of the people, but on the other hand I strongly dislike the people who are trying to get something out of you or are constantly annoying you. He told me that in Egypt they have a saying for this: ‘no finger is the same’. People are just different and you always have to bear in mind that some of them are out to get you, but I ‘m strongly convinced that if you treat others the way you want to be treated, everything will turn out just fine. Or as we say in Dutch: “Wie goed doet, goed ontmoet”.

This will definitely be the last blog from Cairo and maybe also the last one in general. After the explore Egypt photo exhibition I will leave for Dubai on the first on August and will go to Tehran afterwards. This will be just holiday and I’m not going to really dig deep in the respective societies. I do imagine the Ramadan to have quite an impact, so if it is worth I will definitely share this.

It’s been a worthwhile challenge to share different perspectives on the world and it has benefited me in a lot of ways. This mutual sharing allows for such a better understanding of each other that I believe it could solve a lot of problems in the world, if people would just listen to each other. It brings me back to my first arrival on Amman airport two months ago. Above the coffee shop was a quote of Augustine which said:

“Life is a book, and if you don’t travel you only read a page”

I would like to finish the book, so I’m going to sleep now in order to arrive in Beirut with a clear state of mind.

All you need is luf.

Woman

The past few days I have had a lot of time to think. We went hiking in the Sinai mountains with the Bedouins and I enjoyed a day at the beach in Sharm el Sheikh with three other interns. When I mention Bedouins, I truly mean Bedouins and not the Bedouins in Jordan who had their own Wifi and sound installation. During the day we spent our time in the mountains and at night we stayed in the original camps, trying to sleep in a sleeping bag on the rocks while watching the stars. You understand this is about the best climate to experience your typical EMO, and although this was of course also the case for me, I’ve told you to refrain from emotion as much as possible so I’ll just stick to the thoughts that have been occupying my mind for a long time. I’ve referred to the position of women in Arab societies in previous blogs, but it has been hard for me to capture its essence and I’m still not sure if I can. 

Arab societies have a man-based culture for sure. For me, this poses two questions. Where does this culture come from and is the fact that it is man-centered inherently bad? When I first arrived in the region I believed this was not the case, because I got the feeling that women were treated with respect. Actually this is still my impression, but after talking to girls from Western countries I realize it is not that easy. I’m a man and I just can’t feel what the foreign girls are feeling here. I tried, and I consider myself to be quite the empathic guy, but I just don’t notice it. That’s why I will share a few accounts of ‘girl-experiences’ now. 

Non Middle Eastern girls often feel uncomfortable when just walking the streets. This was the case in Iraq and Jordan and I’ve understood that it also accounts for Egypt. When going to Tahrir Square in the night to catch a glimpse of the protests we were with a group of two guys and three girls. I immediately walked to the centre of the square and when the others followed, a group of Egyptians came to me and told me I could stay, but it was better for the girls to leave. Their legs were not covered enough and it might become dangerous. Because of the last reason we soon left after I had a small conversation with them in private. Madita, who was one of the girls, was a bit angry with me and told me I should have left earlier because she felt really uncomfortable about the behavior of the Egyptians. I had not noticed anything at all. A few days later in the MacDonalds while we were waiting for our daily program to start, Jorgen (my roommate) came into contact with an Egyptian guy who also had done Aiesec. He asked Jorgen who was our project leader and when Jorgen told him this was Lina, the guy sincerely asked if this was working well. He made insinuations about girls having monkey brains and lacking the capacity to be a leader. Although it was all done in a friendly matter it shows that many guys at least seemingly think of girls as inferior. Something that also stayed with me was a situation at Al Azhar park where we hang out for an afternoon. There was a fountain and all the little children were playing in the water. I’ve seen it happening  a lot that little girls wanted to get to the water but that the boys (hardly five years old) were scaring the girls away. You can think what you want to think about it, but it shows that the distinction between girl and boy is already present at a very young age. Yesterday I met Sofie from Nijmegen and unfortunately she also had some bad experiences to share with me. She was followed by a group of guys in a car who were making very insulting remarks to her. They were saying things like: “all girls from the West are whores and if you look like that, you deserve it to be raped”.

It’s a struggle to me. On the one hand I believe girls are generally treated with respect, but on the other hand girls their selves tell me differently. It’s a shame I can’t really talk to the local Egyptian girls who are not from a high class, because I get the feeling they do not experience these humiliations. The only very negative stories I’ve heard were from foreign girls. 

So where does it come from? Some people say religion, some say it’s just the culture and Adhan, who is our filmmaking teacher, pointed me to the role of the military in the fifties. I’ve always been convinced that it is not religion. There are so many Muslims from which I know they treat women with respect that I think it’s too easy. I was convinced it had to do with background, wealth and education. Guys from lower social classes are generally less respectful to girls than men from higher backgrounds. That is what I believed, but it would not explain why Aiesecer in MacDonalds talked about Lina in that way. Actually I think that what Adhan told me is not that strange. I know from my classes at university that most of the Middle East was very liberal in the twenties and was even ahead of Europe. With the military coup in ’53 in Egypt by Nasser and the introduction of the military in society, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that the position of women drastically changed afterwards. It’s important to understand where it comes from in order to think of a solution. I still don’t really know. It’s probably a combination of several aspects, like it almost always is. 

When I told Mabrouk, our tour guide during the hike, about my struggle he clarified something really important to me. He pointed me to the distinction between the public and private. He explained to me that girls may seem to be treated as inferior sometimes in the public, but when you go to their houses, it is the woman who is the boss and they are actually capable of exerting a lot influence from this private place. This partly clarifies why I didn’t notice that women are treated without respect. It is clearly different from the situation in the Netherlands and of all countries in Europe, but I don’t want to judge it as bad right away. This is why I came to the Middle East. Learning about a different culture, not judging. I do condemn the humiliations the Dutch and other girls had to go through and think it’s absolutely unacceptable. However, it’s only an aspect of the way women are treated in Arab societies, so insufficient to draw a proper conclusion.  I guess I will continue my struggle. At least I tried to explain it the way I see it.

‘Woman’. It’s my favorite John Lennon song. This story is not about John Lennon, but I guess it ís about imagining. Imagining a world in which everybody is equal and where women enjoy the same rights as men. 

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will live as one”.  

Maybe it is about John Lennon after all.

High Hopes

A lot has happened. My internship definitely took a turn for the better. We have been going to art galleries, we had workshops on photography and video making and perhaps even more interesting we attended a presentation about the Revolution by the co-founder of the April 6 Movement; the youth movement that was responsible for organizing the Revolution. Next week we’ll go out in the field to take pictures of beautiful sites in Egypt, starting off with a hike in the Sinai region. I can’t wait. That’s just the internship part. I’ve paid a visit to the Swedish Embassy to follow a seminar on anti-corruption. I met the minister of finance of Egypt and enjoyed other benefits of this networking experience; we’re invited to come by the independent Egyptian tv channel 25, got the business card of an Egyptian working at UNODP and besides, it was nice to enjoy some luxury drinks and snacks of course. Yesterday night I visited the US embassy, had a cigar and some Heinekens with the marines. Afterwards I paid a small visit to Tahrir Square which was peaceful, but we were advised to leave because of possible violence further that night. I’ve been in a car accident and I was in the stadium during the biggest football match in Egypt covering my Ahly outfit, because we ended up at the Zamalek side. And even more importantly, I was hit on by a beautiful Egyptian girl in the supermarket, but I looked away because I got a bit afraid. I guess you just lose it after a month in the region.

After two weeks in Cairo I think I’m able to make a preliminary assessment of how this society functions. There seems to be some kind of vacuum. The duality that was present in Kurdistan also seems to be applicable to how some aspects of how life functions over here.  I came to belief that this can be captured through describing the role that taxi drivers fulfill. Taxi drivers here have the reputation of never stop talking and be annoying, but there are good and bad taxi drivers. This accounts for their driving as well as their character, but all of them will try to get more money out of you if they can. In my previous story I already told you about the taxi driver who tried to raise the price up by putting on the radio, airco and pulling a sad face. Well that’s one category. Some drive a different direction, some try to give back less change and some do a trick with the meter. But there’s far more to say about taxi drivers than just mentioning their hustling capabilities.

Next week Jurgen and I are going to drink a cup of coffee with a taxi driver. The conversation got off because Jurgen had memorized this sentence in Arabic: “Sorry can we go back, I forgot my underwear in the metro.” It turned out the guy spoke fluent English and we had a long a conversation about life and all the things that come with it. I asked if I could interview him about the Revolution and he agreed if we would pay him a cup of coffee. He even called Jurgen a few days ago to ask if we hadn’t forgotten. During the presentation about the Revolution I found out about another role taxi drivers play in Egyptian society. It seems they were the one who spread the word. When I asked the question how it was possible get so many people at Tahrir, it turned out the role of facebook was only a minor one. The organizers took strategic places in the city to talk to taxi drivers and spread the word. Mouth to mouth communication is by far the most effective strategy in Cairo to inform people and taxi driver are like the glue that binds all of the people together. By the way, another reason why the protests got so big, was the fact that Mubarak shut off the internet and telephone providers. Parents couldn’t reach their children anymore and got worried, so decided to go to Tahrir their selves to see where their kids were. Never thought of it in this way.

So what does this all say? It’s of course impossible to hang up a whole society on the functioning of taxi drivers. However the duality that is also present in this society can be exemplified through them. My laundry story in the previous story shows people will try to hustle you, but also shows the commitment of others to help you and undo the bad act of the other.  People are proud of the Revolution, but on the other hand are very uncertain about the future and the current regime. They’re talking about improving the environment, but don’t throw their garbage in a bin. Girls flirt, but can’t follow up. Taxi drivers talk a lot and might be annoying at times, but were one of the main reasons that the Revolution succeeded. Taxi drivers will try to hustle you, but are also so kind to tell their life story and even make time to drink a cup of coffee and talk about the Revolution. It’s because of these reason that I got the idea of making a documentary about taxi drivers. I think it will be fascinating to follow a specific taxi driver for one day and see what a typical day involves. I’m also convinced that this will give a great insight in the functioning of daily life in Cairo.

In the beginning I mentioned the vacuum. The current protests show this. After the success of the Revolution it has proven very hard to move on. A lot of people say there’s no way they’re going to go back to how things were before, but it seems that there are some mechanisms working in that direction. After a month in the Middle East I therefore think it’s now appropriate to mention Pink Floyd:

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some sleeping tide

…

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There's a hunger still unsatisfied