Those first "Lessons from Egypt"

What follows (posted above) are my reflections on the three months I spent in Egypt during the Fall of 2009. In them I attempt to capture the questions I confronted, and describe the way I wrestled with these challenges historically. I tried to use my own scholarship to find answers, or at least mitigate a tenuous resolution that eased the ups and downs of daily life.

My biggest challenge was the immense disparity I observed between the wealthy and the poor, and the sense of inadequacy I felt in facing what appeared to be an insurmountable problem. As a western foreigner, I found myself somewhere in the middle of two polls, because the wealthiest and the most impoverished were both Egyptian. My research seemed connected to this problem, for a complex set of reasons I have yet to fully unpack, but at least in part because those writing in the first half of the twentieth century did not appear to anticipate the circumstances of the modern “third world.”

I kept asking myself, what led to these present circumstances? Or, more honestly, what went wrong? Was something taken away from this place? Or lost? If so many different people had hoped so optimistically for this country at the dawn of the preceding century, what undermined Egypt’s security and wealth? And, as I suspect, was part of the reason for so much destruction actually embedded in those hopeful visions for the future? If so, what lessons might there be for today’s reformers?

If my questions seem misplaced for a historian, that is because sometimes the harsh reality of the present prevented me from maintaining a seemingly safe and academic distance, where clear observation might at least feel possible. I hope, however, that my more awkward questions actually carry the opportunity for fruitful history. They expose, in my opinion, the ways in which insecurity cleaves to truth claims, however flatly and misplaced some of those conclusions might be. The desire to know, to claim certainty, and in so doing attempt to grasp stability and control—that experience provides a basis for empathizing with the seemingly misguided thinking of a historical subject. Those truth claims are often an attempt to bridge an uncomfortable cultural difference and explain it away. At those insecure moments it is so much easier to turn one’s back on difficult circumstances, poverty, of just differences, and place a broad label on them. The real work is allowing those challenges to expose weaknesses and strengths, and work to find how that contact might benefit all of those engaged in the now unavoidable global connections of our world.

(originally written 6 February 2010)