More than a Revolution

In 1952 there was a revolution. By 1956 the entire demography of Egypt had changed, as foreigners and Jews were forced out of their homes, businesses were nationalized, and land was redistributed.

When Gamal Abdel Nasser and the rest of the Free Officers movement toppled King Farouk’s government, they were celebrated for ushering in a new era of Egyptian history -- an Egypt to finally be ruled by Egyptians, one that would no longer cow to western pressure. Hosni Mubarak was part of the movement. An Air Force pilot who would rise among the ranks of the new power structure, and become its leader after the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

Why did the celebrated revolution of 1952 end in successive waves of terror? How can Egypt today be guarded against repeating its history?

In comparing the Russian and French revolution, historian Arno Mayer examines the relationship between revolution and terror. He argues that after the height of regime change, the revolutionary fervor often descends into violence, terror, and fury. When viewed this way, a revolution becomes a cycle, rather than a decisive break. There is hopeful celebration, and yet as a new state emerges, it is not free from the battling the same pressures to resume authoritarian rule that it had once fought against. The word revolution, after all, means to move around in a circle.

Egypt today continues its rightful celebration. Mubarak is gone -- something few would have imagined even a month ago. Whatever the spirit that toppled Mubarak from Tahrir Square, and Egypt’s other public spaces -- that is not the only revolutionary impulse that I hope wins the day in Egypt.

At least two kinds of solidarity formed over the last 18 days -- the vocal and public movement for democracy in city squares, as well as the more subtle banding together of neighbors and communities in defense of their homes. The combination of these two movements has led Egypt peacefully into regime change.

If Egypt is to avoid the cycle of revolution into fury and terror, then it has to continue to remain vigilant on both of these fronts. A public demand for democracy must continue, but people must also remain vigilant in the personal relationship to the state. Now that they know they can defend and support themselves, let them also defend themselves against the encroachment of new state power so that Egyptians will refuse to bend to state violence in the name of ‘security.’

Hopefully this will more than a revolution in Egypt, but a transformation.

Beit al-Umma

We walked past the former home of Saad Zaghloul on what would have otherwise been a beautiful Friday afternoon. Zaghloul was a nationalist leader in the 1910s, and a figurehead in the 1919 Revolution against the British. This house -- about a mile south of Tahrir Square -- was known as ‘Beit al-Umma’ (Home of the Nation) during the British occupation, and has become an enduring symbol of Egyptian national pride. Walking past it on January 28 was a strange sort of historical crossroads. Here was a carefully preserved site of protest against oppression, and as I turned the corner, I watched as Egyptians crowded the streets, shouting as riot police fired rubber bullets and propelled tear gas at them.

A group of us took the Metro that afternoon to Zaghloul station -- the last stop before the Metro bypassed the Sadat and Nasser stations, which fed downtown. We planned to offer some medical assistance to the demonstrators. We were supposed set up shop in an apartment nearby, and offer water, oil, antiseptic, and other remedies for those affected by the tear gas and rubber bullets.

I was drawn nearer downtown for a complex set of reasons. When we woke up that morning the internet was no longer working, and by mid-morning our cell phones were glorified pocket watches. Our only source of information was now satellite television, and landline telephones. Being cut off from information made me want to see what was happening with my own eyes.

As a foreigner, however, it did not feel right to join in the actual protests. Whatever my frustrations with the Mubarak regime, whatever my love for Egypt and its people, this did not feel like my fight. Moreover, foreigners were discouraged from participating because the government often used their presence to discredit popular uprisings. The chance to offer medical assistance seemed like the only reasonable excuse to go. If there was a chance I could help, without joining in the actual demonstrations, I wanted to be there.

When we turned that corner past Beit Al-Umma, it was clear that things were more intense than we had anticipated. The building we were supposed to use was probably 100 feet from the crowd of demonstrators. The boab (porter) wanted nothing to do with us, insisting that we leave. While we stood in the stairwell arguing with him, the riot police pushed back the crowds with a wave of rubber bullets and tear gas.

Suddenly the building’s ground floor flooded with people, clamoring to get up the stairs and escape the tear gas. The gas came with them, wafting up the stairs. We all covered our faces. We grabbed supplies and attempted to offer whatever assistance we could.

I worked as a sort of gopher -- grabbing cotton, kleenex, water, or antiseptic and taking them downstairs. I took a handkerchief from one of the bags, doused it in water and tied it around my face so that I could keep moving without also succumbing to the effects of the tear gas.

The gas takes over your sinuses. First it singes the back of your throat, and then, just as you feel the sensation of breathing it in, your eyes begin to burn. I heard a rumor that someone with severe asthma died from exposure to it -- I can’t confirm the report, but it does not surprise me.

In my memory now, the ground floor is a brightly colored blur, punctuated by faces. A man who had been shot just below his nose with a rubber bullet, and his friend applying ice and antiseptic. A middle-aged woman who staggered to stand and cried out to the people around her. A girl asking me for ‘Kleenex.’ A man, looking exhausted, face red and tear-stained. A little boy, perhaps the boab’s son, who told me his name was Ahmed.

As the riot police continued to bear down on the protestors, the wave of people seemed to dissipate. We saw some new faces after that first group left, but for the most part the crowd thinned. When we realized how close the police were to the front door, we started to fear for our own safety.

The women in our group took cover in an apartment. We could peer down from the bedroom and watch the police draw nearer and nearer. The men, meanwhile, were stuck on a sort of landing outside one of the building's windows.

The police entered the building. We held our breath, unsure of what would happen next. The ramifications of being arrested... I couldn’t think about it. If they tried to arrest the men, what would we do? What could we do? You couldn’t stay inside. Had we endangered this family that had so kindly protected us? I prayed.

Thankfully the police told us to leave. One of the men came to get us from the apartment, we quickly grabbed our things, and made our way back to the street.

I have no idea how long we were there. It probably wasn’t more than an hour. I remember standing, staring at the front door after the last wave of the protestors returned to the street, looking at the blue floor now littered with footprints. There was a sense of awe that escapes words. Perhaps it was an overwhelming sense of possibility -- that the possibility of change had been exhibited right before our eyes.

We walked back to the metro, turning the corner once again at Beit al-Umma. I could not think of a more fitting place to watch Egypt rise up against oppression once again.

History of the day-to-day, and the night-to-night

The New Yorker recently published an article about how Ma'adi remained largely unaffected by the events that have unfolded in the last week. I appreciate the author's point -- that the areas outside of town had an entirely different experience than that of Tahrir Square. In the article she discusses a variety of encounters -- a young French girl who has kept a "revolution journal," a group of Egyptian men sipping tea and describing many of the events as an American conspiracy fuelled by journalists, and finally a British couple who said nothing had happened in Ma'adi. She describes a Ma'adi theme of "passive compassion."

If the author means that Ma'adi was passive because residents did not actively participate in the demonstrations, then she is only marginally correct. I know several residents who went downtown to participate, or to deliver medical supplies, food and drink to the those protesting. Many of the foreigners did not want to actively join in the action, because they knew the government would try to discredit the movement if it appeared littered with too many foreign faces. I went near downtown myself, attempting to deliver water, antispetic and other medical supplies to the demonstrators on Friday, Jan. 29. (something I'll elaborate on later)

More than that, the article fails to capture that while Ma'adi remained quiet during the day, by nightfall it would transform. Neighborhood militias formed after that first Friday of demonstrating, when Mubarak called off the police force. Armed with clubs, tent stakes, some firearms, and even a bow and arrow, men quickly organized to defend their homes. They erected barricades and stopped cars attempting to pass through their streets after curfew. Part of the reason Ma'adi has been especially quiet in the mornings is because the entire schedule of one's day changed -- as people stayed vigilant at night, and slept at odd hours in order to be ready to stay up the next night. All of these events are worth more detailed posts. What I am struck by after reading this article, however, is that you cannot accurately assess the life of a place in the morning -- that the rhythm of night and day has to be taken into account.

Ma'adi residents rose quickly to defend the lives they were used to, and were quite desperate to return to some sense of normalcy. Perhaps part of the reason that British couple said nothing had happened in Ma'adi, was because they, like so many of their neighbors wanted things to go back to the seeming comfort of the lives they knew before. In that desire, they had not fully realized the significance of their own actions -- that whatever becomes normal as these events continue to unfold, will never be quite like it was before Jan. 25. They also have to realize that their desire for normalcy, if they are not careful, would also entail the return of Mubarak to power. Perhaps more and more of us will consider carefully the changes that have occurred in our daily lives, and see them as experiences of what remains hope for positive change.

Police Day Rumors, 25 Jan. 2011

Momentum started building in Egypt shortly after Ben ‘Ali stepped down in Tunisia. Both within and outside of the country -- the subheads in foreign newspapers commented on the potential for a similar movement in Egypt, students started organizing themselves on facebook and twitter.

The majority of Egyptians do not have a ‘weekend’ in the way that westerners are accustomed to. Most of them only have one day a week off -- Friday. Given the six day work week, any additional government or religious holiday is especially precious. So Police Day (Jan. 25) was a fitting day for the movement to begin in Egypt because everyone was available. It also allowed Egyptians to capitalize on the growing momentum on a Tuesday, rather than having to wait until the following Friday. The question was, would the protest actually happen? And would it actually make any difference?

In Ma’adi that day, things were quiet. It seemed like any other day. We heard rumors that things were going to get started, but by late morning we had yet to hear any reports of demonstrations. I had dinner that night with a woman at a boutique hotel in Ma’adi -- the Villa Belle Epoque. Stepping through the hotel’s gate is like entering a time warp -- two villas beautifully restored to the look and feel of the 1920s. They have a carefully manicured garden, and a decor intricately constructed to give the impression of another era in Egypt’s history.

Part of what fascinates me about Ma’adi’s history is that with all of its villas, gardens, and tree-lined streets -- it speaks of people in the early-twentieth century who imagined a very different future for Egypt than what unfolded in the latter half of the century. The Villa Belle Epoque captures that sentiment, sending guests back to a period where life was about going to the sporting club, playing golf in the desert, riding a bicycle around the neighborhood, and being largely removed from the events downtown.

While much of that initial charm is hard to find, on Jan. 25 in Maadi, one was still largely removed from the events downtown. I sat there with my friend, having dinner in an otherwise empty, but lavish dining room. Her father and uncle own the hotel, and while we discussed the family business and her plans for the future, things downtown were starting to heat up. When I mentioned rumors of the demonstrations, my friend was skeptical. She had gone through downtown that morning without seeing or hearing anything. If anything, things were especially quiet.

What did circulate throughout Ma’adi were the rumors. By about 5:30 p.m. word spread that 50,000 people were demonstrating downtown. You would not have known to walk through our streets. It seemed that as the action increased downtown, Maadi got proportionately quieter and quieter.

By Thursday afternoon, however, the traffic was unusually heavy. I had taken the bus to the American University in Cairo (AUC), where my archives are, and the trip home was unusually bumpy. One friend said she had tried to drive to Hedayeq al-Ma’adi, a neighborhood just north of Ma’adi, and had to turn back because she was simply sitting in traffic without moving. Maybe it was just an unusually bad rush hour, we thought. After all, it is a Thursday afternoon.

When Friday came around, the traffic subsided, and the quiet turned to something more eerie.

Dishwashing Debate: the Impact of Tunisia

It must have been the Saturday after Ben ‘Ali stepped down in Tunisia, because Mike had just returned from taking his students on a tour of Islamic Cairo. I was in the kitchen, doing the dishes, and he walked in to get a snack. He asked me if I had been following the news in Tunisia, and what my thoughts were.

We have a lot of conversations like these while one or both of us is doing the dishes. In Cairo I live with a couple -- Mike, a history professor at the American University in Cairo, and his wife Marty. They are like parent-friends to me, an ideal combination that makes living in their home the experience of community that is not quite biological family, but something very close to it. Given this setting, the mundane events of the day -- like doing the dishes -- often become the context for some of my most engaging conversations in Cairo.

What sticks out to me about this particular day was that Mike had talked to his students about the events in Tunisia, and told me that one of them quickly commented that he hoped the same thing would happen in Egypt. Mike and I were both skeptical. Could the same thing happen in our midst? After all, Tunisia had a smaller population, a proportionately larger middle class, and a general populace that was far more educated. If they had the ‘right’ ingredients for a revolution, it seemed Egypt had the deck stacked against it -- a populace bursting at the seems, massive disparity of wealth, and embarrassingly bad educational standards. So many westerners (to his credit, Mike has never been among them), claim that if real democracy were allowed in Egypt, the country would only have it once -- and then descend into an Islamist regime.

We were wrong about so many things. Why didn’t we realize that there were millions standing between Mubarak and another form of authoritarian rule? Whatever the outcome of the events going on in Egypt today, we cannot forget that the people demonstrating have stood for a peaceful transition of power, for a constitutional government, for their basic human rights. While Muslims have kneeled together to pray each day, Christians have stood guard around them.

That student’s comment speaks to all of this, however unexpectedly. AUC is a school for Egypt’s wealthiest. I’ve talked to study abroad students who don’t describe the student body there so much as Egyptian, but as a cosmopolitan blend. It would seem that their upper-class identity far removes them from the concerns faced by their fellow-nationals, and that while foreigners might identify them all as ‘Egyptian’ -- the class differences are so rigid, that they do not actually share a cohesive sense of nationalism. I certainly was among the ranks of skeptical outsiders who did not perceive a common thread that moved across Egypt.

I think, however, that I neglected to realize how the shared oppression under Mubarak’s ongoing and invasive gaze, and the violent reach of the state’s arm would shape a camaraderie that could overcome the barriers of class, confessional, ethnic, and even gender difference. Perhaps Tunisia sparked something -- it instilled a hope, shed light on that shared experience, and gave Egyptians something to respond to together, as a nation.

Around this same time -- in those days just after Ben ‘Ali stepped down, I had a conversation with someone who said that even if Egyptians were inspired by the events in Tunisia, they weren’t ‘ready’ for that kind of change. I think I probably nodded my head in cautious agreement when I heard that. But was does ‘ready’ mean? Is anyone ever ‘ready’ for a revolution?

Looking back on it, I think there was plenty of cultural evidence that Egypt was more ready than we imagined. Art, films, literature have all been subtly resisting censors for years. In December I went to the Cairo Film Festival’s showing of Microphone, a film about Alexandrian musicians who fought to perform their music for the greater public. Through jazz, rap, and even a curious female band that masked their eyes, rather than their hair and faces, they resisted the state’s demands that their voices go unheard. I left the theater with a sense of hope, quite inspired by the whole thing. Part of the film was about needing to stay in Egypt and perform, because that was the only way to affect change.

That kind of palpable commitment to Egypt was more widespread than I had realized. Certainly that commitment to democracy and freedom for Egypt lived and breathed in Cairo University, and among the students who spearheaded the initial demonstrations. Their activity spoke across society, and continues to. They continue to emphasize peaceful resistance, knowing that a violent reaction is just the excuse Mubarak is looking for, and that they need the international community’s ongoing support. All of them know Mubarak’s language, they have all lived with the same anxieties -- and it seems to have provided the basis for reacting together. Hopefully it will go a step further, and the basis for a transformed state in Egypt.

In part, I suppose I’m trying to answer a question that keeps repeating in my mind -- how did we not see this all coming? I keep thinking of 1956, where in the fallout from the Suez Canal Crisis, Gamal Abdel Nasser forced all British and French residents of Egypt to repatriate. This deeply impacted Ma’adi, which had then, as today, a large population of foreigners. Despite the anti-colonial tenor of the period, Nasser’s order appears to have taken everyone (foreigners and Egyptians) by surprise. Egypt had been demanding independence from the British for more than 30 years at that point -- did the Britons there really never think they could be sent home?

For the foreigners who lived and continue to live through the events in Egypt today, won’t the future ask of us - did you really not see this coming? Did you really not think that after 30 years of authoritarian rule, the people would know the kind of rhetoric, the kind of movement that would bring Mubarak to his knees? At this point, I am quite happily humbled by the events I have seen transpire before my eyes.

A Garden City

(From the December 2010 issue of the Maadi Messenger)

We can thank Charles Dickens for associating Christmas with the story of a man named Ebenezer. His classic A Christmas Carol gave us the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, whose life is transformed by visits from the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future one fateful Christmas Eve. Through Ebenezer’s humbling confrontation with eternity, he turns away from bitterness, becoming renewed through benevolence and generosity.

Given that Christmas is just a few weeks away, December seems a fitting month to explore the story of another Ebenezer who contributed significantly, albeit unknowingly, to both the design and governance of Maadi. Howard, however, had quite a bit more in common with Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit, who was also a clerk of humble means.

Born in 1850, Howard was the son of a London shopkeeper. He completed his formal schooling at 15, and began work as a clerk, teaching himself shorthand in his spare time. At 19-years old, he travelled to the U.S., spending time as an itinerant preacher in Howard, Nebraska and later resuming office work in Chicago. While he left the U.S. in 1876, his time there instilled a certain idealism in Howard. “If Chicago did not fill his pockets with gold it did something better: it fitted him for world citizenship,” his friend and biographer Dugald MacFadyen later wrote.

Though Howard resumed work as a clerk in England, he also passionately pursued a scheme for addressing the challenge of rapid urbanization. Howard saw the current situation as lose-lose, where growing cities produced slums, while migration to urban centers depleted the countryside. He began a plan for harmoniously wedding town and country into a “garden city.” He explained that this third type of space would offer “the most energetic town life, with all the beauty and delight of the country.” Howard’s idea would go on to influence everything from railway satellite towns like Maadi, to public housing projects like the American Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The garden city was not intended to be a suburb, nor was it a method for managing urban sprawl. It was created through the purchase of a large plot of land that would be centrally controlled by a company. The company managed the design of the town, its services and utilities, and acted as both a municipal governing body, and landlord to residents. Agricultural land would be secured by a green belt surrounding the town, which would simultaneously create a buffer around the town and prevent overgrowth. If the town needed more space--another garden city should be founded.

The town’s interior was divided into various wards, with industry near the outskirts, and commerce, culture and religion nearer the center. The rest of the space was arranged into residential plots. Homes necessarily had yards, rather than being stacked on top of one another. All of these standards were to be preserved by the company that controlled the municipality.

Maadi bore all of the major hallmarks of Howard’s garden city scheme. Road 9 was the designated commercial space. The streets were laid out in a series of circular midans, so that green, public space remained central to the town’s aesthetic. The land surrounding Maadi was purchased by the company but left empty, insulating it from its surroundings. The Delta Land Company enforced these standards, and others pertaining to the design of homes and gardens, so that the company--in step with Howard’s recommendations--served as both governor and landlord.

The company and the broader public were aware that Maadi put Howard’s scheme into practice. Delta Land manager Tom Dale regularly referred to the town as “Maadi Garden City” in his correspondence. By 1920 one columnist wrote of Maadi, “Didn’t know we had a garden city in Egypt, did you? Well, we have. And about the dinkiest one ever.”

Christmas in Maadi may not have the cold weather, roast goose, and mulled cider that Dickens describes. But no matter the season, the influence of a different Englishman is never far off. We feel Ebenezer Howard’s impact every time we come upon one of Maadi’s circular midans. While they may not be a straightforward grid, that was the point. The garden city was supposed to foster community through design. The centralizing trajectory of Maadi’s streets was similarly intended to bring residents together.

Sidebar: It appears all of Cairo was affected by Howard’s scheme for carefully planned cities. At the same time that the Delta Land Company purchased the area south of Cairo and began developing Maadi, two other companies set to work on Heliopolis in the northeast, and the aptly named Garden City immediately south of downtown. Like Maadi, these areas were owned and designed by foreign land development companies, which determined the areas’ aesthetics. Perhaps the irony is that Cairo’s Garden City conforms the least to Howard’s ideals. It is part of the city, rather than serving as its own entity. Rather than marrying the virtues of town and country, it is a neighborhood among many, and very much part of the booming metropolis.

Founding Ma'adi

(From the November 2010 issue of the Maadi Messenger)

It takes a stretch of the imagination to conjure up an image of what this place called Maadi looked like a hundred years ago. Taking a backwards glance in time, you have to remove piece by piece the things we now take for granted. First, take away the billboards and brightly colored signs that line the streets. Then take out the cars, and all of the noises that come with them. The trash piled up at the corner, and its scent are gone too. Finally, remove the walls, fences, all of the buildings, the paved streets, the gardens. Watch the pavement beneath your feet dissolve into desert.

The sights, sounds and smells of Maadi have transformed in the last century. It was a not a tree-lined suburb, but the village Maadi al-Khabari, where inhabitants lived in mud-built homes. Today, little remains of that early existence, apart from the enduring Nile, the dust, and a railroad line running south of downtown Cairo to Helwan--once itself a resort for Egypt’s royal family.

How does a village on the outskirts of turn-of-the-century Cairo become a modern suburb, now encircled by the city’s ongoing sprawl? It began with a railroad and a business transaction. Had you picked up a copy of the British daily Egyptian Gazette on March 26, 1904 you might have missed the headline. A notice on the middle of page three announced the creation of the Egyptian Delta Land and Investment Company Limited, for the purpose of purchasing, developing, and selling land adjacent to the rail line--the same line now used by the Cairo Metro.

The company was created in association with the similarly named Egyptian Delta Light Railways Company, which a month later would purchase the railway adjacent to Maadi al-Khabari. That village would become Delta Land’s primary investment and hallmark development project, but only a privileged few knew as much at the time.

The newspaper’s larger headlines carried more pressing reports than the creation of this new business. The Russo-Japanese War waged in the east, threatening the balance of power on a global scale. Within Egypt itself, health crises were wreaking havoc at human and economic levels. The country was beset by the growing challenge of cholera and bubonic plague, as each day the Gazette reported more cases of both. Agriculture faced cattle plague and a wave of locusts that destroyed rural areas. The plague and cholera forced Egypt into a state of quarantine, hindering cross-Mediterranean commerce--a major source of profit.

In the face of such pressing issues, the creation of this land development company seems of little significance. It was just this kind of subtle news item, however, that indicated a new trend in the geography of Cairo, a trend in which residents in the 21st century continue to participate. Maadi’s story cannot be told apart from the creation of the Egyptian Delta Land and Investment Company. That unremarkable notice on page three was the first among many subtle decisions and developments continued to shape the formation of what we know of as Maadi.

The Delta Land Company did not purchase land at Maadi Al-Khabari until 1907. Soon afterward the company’s directors began the creation of a carefully laid out suburb. It was supposed to recall the atmosphere of a small English town, with residential streets arranged in a grid, intersected by larger avenues that radiated out from a series of midans. A year later, ground broke on a handful of villas that were Maadi’s first homes.

Each month this column will undertake a different journey into Maadi’s past. It will examine the intent behind the suburb’s creation, and the reasons for its various quirks, charms, and challenges. The Delta Land Company is one among many factors that informed the creation and development of Maadi. My hope is that by giving readers a richer sense of the area’s history, it will inform Maadi’s present life, offering an enriched sense of the place’s previous existence, and the lives of its former residents.

Trip to the Sewq (1 Oct. 2010, cont'd)

In addition to that first venture into the garbage village, we also went shopping at the Sewq al-Arab. I was with my friend Marty, my “mom” in Egypt, who has taken me under her wing in just about every way. We visited the sewq (market) to find clothes for Mohamed -- a deaf boy from the garbage village, who Marty was enrolling in a special deaf school. We went to the market with Mohamed and his mother Um Mohamed (meaning mother of Mohamed--her first name is Samah), in search of a uniform.

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The whole reason we went to the garbage village that particular day was to pick up Mohamed and his mother, and enroll the boy in a deaf school. Marty had been working since April to get him the right kind of education. She first met Mohamed because there is a school for the handicapped within the garbage village. While most of students are well into their thirties, they are developmentally at about age five. Being deaf, Mohamed was also attending the school. But having no mental handicap, he was bored and, in turn, disruptive.

It was supposed to be Mohamed’s first day at a deaf school in Bassatine. When we arrived, however, they wouldn’t allow him to begin classes without a proper uniform. So we went shopping.

In the sewq, we walked from clothing booth to clothing booth, past fruits, vegetables, all manner of meat, including a numerous fish sellers. The smell of unrefrigerated fish hung in the air, and seemed to stick in my nose the rest of the day. Um Mohamed wanted Marty to buy her nearly everything we saw. And Mohamed was the same. We walked past some small carnival rides, which he decided he had to ride. He cannot speak, nor does he cry loudly. But he stood there pointing at them, then crouched down in protest, until he realized that his fit was to no avail -- and there was no ride for him today. Marty bought him new pants, and new underwear -- he doesn't own any. He refused the first pair of boxer shorts she showed him, though, because he didn't like the pattern. Between Marty and I, we could have bought them anything they wanted. We could have sent them home with bags and bags of clothes, and food. Mohamed could have ridden the carnival ride all day if wanted. But to what end? Only to return home to he garbage village. What would they do with so many things? Isn't that just it -- these are all things. They do not resolve poverty. Things do not bring justice.

The need is so much greater. Um Mohamed, a 28-year old mother of six, is herself totally without an education. In the car she was giving us directions to get to the sewq and she did not know the words for right and left -- they meant nothing to her. She said she never learned them. The need for education is profound. Without it, what can you do with things, but consume them? Not that anyone might blame Um Mohamed for consuming these things, or wanting them -- that is what most of us do - consume, and obey the call to continue consuming. We expect the poor to have some larger vision, to see their need in perspective, and understand that what they really need are not things, but access. Things cannot be converted into opportunities, into choices.

Marty said the other night at dinner that poverty is defined by the inability to make a choice -- not for lack of capacity, but for lack of access and opportunity. I chose which pair of shoes to wear today, and which shirt. The impoverished have no choice, for they have no shoes - or if they do, they only have one pair.

If we think of wealth and poverty in terms of choices -- a qualitative approach, rather than a quantitative formula -- then perhaps we can begin to think about what justice is. How often am I like this deaf boy in the market -- asking for, hungering for everything I see, throwing a fit when I do not get my way, failing to perceive the larger picture? If I were somehow to get everything I asked for, would it be just? Of course not. Such an overabundance would be disgusting. Yet we spend so much time searching after things, and in our hunt to consume them, are the ones consumed.

If I feel compelled to walk humbly, in light of the opportunities I was born into, then perhaps I can better see my own life in terms of choices and opportunities, rather than things. Perhaps I can then see the chances to pass those privileges -- the true privileges of my life -- onto those I encounter. Helping to meet those life-sustaining needs--giving food, water, clothing, shelter--might then open up the doors for people to make more choices for themselves.

I am so grateful for the people I know here, who so actively and tirelessly work to make choices available to those in need. That I could only be more like them...

Cairo Dairy, 1 Oct. 2010

I wrote the following shortly after returning to Cairo in the fall of 2010. It relates my reflections after my first trip to Torah -- an area about nine miles south of downtown Cairo. Once largely agricultural land, a prison was built there in the early-twentieth century. Now the area near the prison has become a garbage village. Half-built apartment buildings that were left as hollowed-out brick structures are now home to the Zebaleen (garbage collectors), who bring the city’s trash to the area, and live there, sorting through it and supporting themselves on the recyclables they can exchange.

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It hasn't even been two weeks in Egypt, and yet I feel like I've been here for much longer. Part of me feels live I never left, and another part of me feels like I'm seeing things anew. There is something powerful about returning to a place. I feel such a stronger sense of myself. When I think back on how I felt a year ago, I remember a sense of excitement, a raw energy, but underneath that enthusiasm was a kind of weariness. Cairo can make you weary. But I think the internal depletion I felt last year came upon me despite being in Cairo, rather than because of it.

We carry ourselves wherever we go. We cannot experience a place without also contending with the internal dynamics of our own minds, hearts and souls. All the emotions, the feelings, the history--they are a kind of baggage. They become a set of rules, driving our reactions. Because of them we so often react to things that physically are not there, but remain all too real because we brought them with us.

Sometimes, however, your self protects you. I had this sensation yesterday. It is like being enclosed in a bubble, and within that bubble was “home.” At the time I thought of it as “America”--associating with it my own sense of comfort, familiarity, and access. My physical surroundings, however, were total poverty--the cave-like structures of an apartment complex in Torah where the building project was never completed. These bear brick buildings have been converted into a garbage village, where the Zebaleen sort recyclables, and live amongst the trash. Babies without diapers amidst discarded cans of tuna, edges sharp and raw. Razor blades, broken glass, flies--so many flies.

I could see all of these things, but it was like part of me could not access them. To actually process them would have been too much for my meager psyche, and so instead, my self enclosed formed a kind of forcefield defense. Perhaps the self forms this protective barrier because such profound inequality, disorder, and difference are too much to process. However protective that sensation of enclosure might have felt, though, it also carried the sensation total uselessness.

What did I do to be born into a middle-class, white, American family? Nothing. How, then, can we get our minds around the inequality we seem to have no control over? If you have an answer, please let me know. The only thing I can think to do is attempt to write honestly about my own struggles with it.

What is the appropriate response? If I did nothing to be born into my current position, then it would be faulty and ridiculous to feel guilty for my own existence. This privilege is not a 'fault', but it is uncomfortable in the face of so much need. It is humbling, if not humiliating -- what can I do but to walk humbly? Conscious of my inexplicable privilege, and willing to help address the needs that confront me -- a drink of water to the thirsty, food for the hungry, clothing and shelter for the cold and naked, a friend to the lonely. Perhaps that is all any of can do, despite the positions we are born into.

By Foot (the sidewalks essay)

On my second day in Egypt, I energetically disembarked from my flat in Hedayeq al-Ma’adi, intent on acquiring a mobile phone. I promptly got lost. But after righting myself, I found the blue pedestrian bridge that crossed the Metro tracks, and made my way among the brightly colored kiosks and shops that comprised the market, and onto Road 9 – Ma’adi’s “main street.” Hedayeq el-Ma’adi, often referred to as just Hedayeq (Arabic for “gardens”) is a poorer section of town that sits on the northern edge of Ma’adi, a district which during the twentieth century gained a reputation as home to expatriates and Egyptians alike—the history of which I came to Cairo to study. On this particular day it was mid-September, Ramadan, and upwards of 100°F, yet I felt compelled to walk the two kilometers to central Maadi and begin taking in my surroundings.

One of the first things that struck me on that walk, and would continue to confront me over the next three months, were the sidewalks. I had been to Cairo before – about ten years earlier, to visit family. I saw then how adept Egyptian pedestrians are at sharing the streets with cars, motorcycles and bikes. So on my little venture to Vodaphone, seeing people walking primarily on the street was no surprise. Even Lonely Planet instructs visitors to “walk like an Egyptian,” and move about on the streets. What surprised me was that the sidewalks did in fact exist, and for a good part of my walk they were quite nice, yet largely unused.

I thought about how one need look no further than the lining of Cairo’s streets to see evidence of Egypt’s history and the different directions past planners had attempted to guide the country. Right here on the street, one could see the residue of alternative visions for Egypt’s future. Perhaps colonizers laid these in hopes of fashioning a lively, yet safe street life in the area. If they were part of Europeans’ intentions, had they been discarded by Egyptian’s in the 1950s (a turning point I would come back to again and again)? Did that make walking on the streets a sign of post-colonial resistance, now so embedded in the culture that it was an way of life? And was it even possible to make such a clear distinction between European and Egyptian intentions, when they seemed so often intermingled?

As these thoughts formed in my mind, I also questioned my line of thought. Perhaps I was inflating sidewalks’ significance. Yet, in the U.S. the value and safety of a neighborhood is signified by the existence of sidewalks. Could they really be that fruitless a point of observation when there is an entire body of scholarship on dirt in South Asia and beards in Central Europe? (As the sidewalks continued to resonate with me, I observed that dirt also played a key role in their maintenance, a point I will return to later.) My mind bounced around these thoughts as I passed the point where the market ended and the Road 9 officially began. Here the street widened, and more easily accommodated two-way traffic. Until now the western side of the road was primarily sand and ash, occupied by a line of parked cars. With this wider street, there were now sidewalks on either side, with all manner of traffic moving about in between.

The further south I moved, the nicer the area became, and as the shops displayed more wealth, the sidewalks also became nicer. I didn’t notice until later that the path varied slightly in front of each shop. And it wasn’t until I reached the center of Maadi, nearer the Metro station, that I observed the careful attention shopkeepers paid to keeping the space in front of their doors clean.

It took another six weeks before I realized that what I called “sidewalks” might be something quite different to many Egyptians. I had decided to make the trek to Heliopolis on one of my days off from class. Again referring to Lonely Planet, I took the Metro downtown and then boarded a rickety tram to Misr al-Gadeeda (New Egypt), as Heliopolis is called in Arabic. (I later learned that I could have stayed on the Metro the entire way, and saved myself at least an hour of travel time, but that is beside the point.) I spent the afternoon walking around the area, strolling past Hosni Mubarak’s residence, and narrowly escaping the confiscation of my camera when the secret police caught me snapping a few shots of the palatial estate. “Asafa” (I’m sorry), I muttered, and darted down the street, thankful to look like a tourist.

Along a commercial street I observed the building of a new shop, which was nearly ready for opening. One could not get close to it, however, because an entirely new sidewalk was being laid out in front. I had to get a picture of this curious bit of construction. It felt like my chance to get a few answers about why these sidewalks seemed so important, and yet underused. I watched as the workers carefully fit together octagonal red bricks, filling the gaps with fine sand.

Here it occurred to me that what I considered a walkway was actually more of an entryway. Rather than being a public thoroughfare, it was an extension of the privately-owned shop behind it. Traversing it, then, verged on initiating a business transaction, or at least piquing the shopkeeper’s attention. It made sense. After all, so much of Egyptian social life occurred in the spaces between doors, rather than behind them. Here neighbors sipped tea, cheered on their favorite soccer team, or just watched the people pass. This was where grocers displayed their freshest produce and other shops paraded special items of interest. These spaces were not so much intended for people merely passing by, as they were for more intentional meetings of shoppers, business colleagues, and friends.

My observation was only reinforced when I considered the daily labor that goes into keeping these entryways clean. It rarely rains in Cairo, yet the streets of Maadi and other areas are usually wet. The water comes from the seemingly endless labor poured into cleaning the sidewalks. One would be challenged to walk down Road 9 and not dodge at least one shopkeeper hosing and mopping the bricks or stone in front of the store. The attention is deliberate, and personal. This is not a public sanitation project. It is part of caring for a business. Foreigners are quick to describe Egypt as dirty (and when it comes to garbage collection, this is an easy accusation to make), yet one cannot deny the careful attention paid to maintaining the cleanliness of the entryway. Considering all of this work, seeing these areas as walkways underestimates their more complex role.

Egyptians don’t have an exact word for “sidewalk.” When I asked my language teacher, she referred to it as the “platform,” and seemed surprised that I was even asking. Whatever I might have observed about the use of these spaces does not resolve questions about the intensions of past builders. It does, however, speak to the multiple uses and meanings that coexist in the present.

Egyptians, particularly those in Ma'adi, seem aware that Westerners see their entryways as places for walking. How much that understanding goes the other way, I am not sure—foreigners are, however, familiar with and often quite fond of Egyptian street culture. For me, this observation offered a personal lesson on coexistence and multiplicity among the seemingly mundane. It reinforces my interest in the significance of daily life. And it makes me wonder how negotiations over the meanings of policy and other ostensibly important deliberations fail to recognize the ongoing, and unspoken negotiations that go on beneath of the feet of every Cairo resident.

Good Victorians

A friend of mine, we’ll call him Charlie, returned to Cairo because he fell in love with an Egyptian girl while studying abroad a year and a half earlier. For so brazenly pursuing a relationship with an Egyptian, I was always surprised by how disdainfully he talked about the country. To him it was a regressive place. He asked me once if I thought a culture could be immature. We started talking about the attitudes of young Egyptian men, many of whom hiss and cat call after women, especially foreigners. Charlie attributed this behavior to a kind of societal sexual frustration. He explained that in his opinion because the majority of women were covered, and the sexes forced to lead separate social lives, this isolation kept the men from fully maturing, so that even the adults behaved like adolescents. This trend reproduced itself with each generation, thus affecting all of society, or so he argued.

Over the last two hundred years, how many foreigners in Egypt have posed similar theories? Charlie could have been a member of Lord Cromer’s staff at the turn of the twentieth century – hypothesizing on the best method of “dealing with the natives,” and paying particular attention to protecting white women’s bodies. If there is any continuity, perhaps it is Western fascination with Arab-Muslim sexuality (not that all Egyptians are necessarily Arab or Muslim – but that is an issue for another essay, because most foreigners forget about the significance of Egypt’s Coptic population).

During the conversation, I found Charlie’s blatantly hierarchical language off-putting. To me, good history is a lesson in humility, that prevents one from labeling something as better merely because it is different. Yet, I had also been wrestling with some of Charlie’s frustrations. In the days leading up to this conversation, I had been thinking about what enlightenment meant—what does it really mean to think for oneself? After all, weren’t enlightenment ideals the basis for Western society’s emphasis on civic duty and civil society? And one of the things that frustrated me most was how wealthy Egyptians did not seem to identify with their impoverished countrymen, or feel a sense of obligation towards them. I saw so many foreigners dedicated to helping the poor, yet where were the Egyptians—of course, the foreigners get more recognition for this kind of work, while Egyptians remain far more invisible in the process. Still, wealthy Egyptians seemed painfully aloof.

On Oct. 12, I wrote in my journal: Complaints about Egyptians… There are many—you hear them regularly, but they are coupled with a desire to explain the reasons for them—usually described as a lack of basic skills Westerners begin learning from an early age. –[One American friend of mine] was talking yesterday about a woman who works at the church whom she asked to help paste some pictures on paper—in the time [the American woman] did seven, this woman had done one—but you learn basic motor skills at such an early age back home… what happens here instead? …

The problems for Egyptians are very real—and would prevent working in a job that could not ultimately be replaced by a machine. The wealthy see the problems and send their children elsewhere (usually to international schools, and then abroad)—the class divide is striking. Is it the middle class that envisions society as corporate—that draws the interests of the high and low together? It seems without its existence real power remains in the hands of foreigners—in terms of government and economy. And at the same time, on a very local level, foreigners here comprise the middle class.

For all the moralizing, self-righteousness and false consciousness that the middle class has been accused of, one has to think that at least they tried to direct their energies toward the less fortunate, examined their position, and sought a method of betterment. They shared some sense of identity that tenuously crossed the class border—while that crossing ultimately reinforces the border—it establishes a connection, a link in a network—and it would appear that for civil society to exist, such links are a necessity.

It would be easier to invoke Mary Wollstonecraft, and claim that the middle-class is simply more natural and that is why Egypt needs a strong one. To do so would prove the larger point of my essay, that at the very point where our understanding runs out we feel compelled to make blanket statements and simple diagnoses. I find Charlie’s observations misguided, and my other American friend’s sentiments somewhat discomforting. But they are both honest and real attempts to deal with a system, or network of systems, that they see as producing inequality. In doing so, they expose the border between the foreign and the local—they see a way of life at work, but they do not know what rules it operates by, and are struggling to justify it to their own norms. There is something valuable in the attempt, because if sought in earnest, it can foster greater understanding, however awkward. It seems like a lot more can be said about being different, and accepting it as such, rather than attempting to justify every curious variable.

Instead these differences are often instances where clashes between cultures produce truth claims that are then used in the construction of hierarchies. But if they are viewed as points where once kind of cultural understanding runs out and another begins, they are also places of great opportunity, particularly for a historian.

Historians’ material is loaded with statements like those made by my friends—many are far more provocative. These materials have fruitfully been “read against the grain.” A related, but slightly altered approach would treat these sources as half of a dialogue. When these broad, generalizing claims surface, they can be read as incomplete or inadequate attempts to speak for both sides of the interaction. Looking at them this way helps show the kinds of questions the person is wrestling with, rather than focusing on the conclusions they draw. This interpretation focuses on the interaction between cultures, and helps show how connections are formed.

I would argue that reading against the grain, while useful is some respects, treats the producer of the source as too stable. It is not just that the source should or cannot be read for the colonized person’s agency, but that such readings can be taken a step further. The interaction between people should be treated like a relationship—something that shapes both sides.

One of my sources is a gardening book written by an English woman, and in it she makes recommendations for the best way to treat the Egyptian gardener. This source can be read to understand the gardener’s role in an English household in Egypt, and his (they were and still are exclusively male) agency in shaping the place. But taken too far, the author of the text starts to disappear. She and the gardener are no longer equally human, because she becomes more lens than reality. A sensitive reader can see where her comments push on the borders of her own understanding, and these points show not only the gardener’s agency within the home, but also how this interaction shaped her and became part of her story. Such a reading takes both sides into account, and requires being able to address both English and Egyptian sources. This is something I hope to do in my own work. More than that, however, I hope it will be the way forward for future research on the history of empire. These interactions need to be examined for their mutual influence, and show the formation of connections—whether or not those relationships ended in violent opposition is secondary, but such results cannot be assumed a priori.