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Published: January 30th 2006
For one week during my semester in Cairo, my class dispersed throughout ‘Real Cairo’ for a weeklong home stay with a Muslim (most of us) family. By ‘real,’ I mean that it is off the typical tourist path of and I got the impression that many young kids in the area had not seen a westerner in person before. The neighborhood that I was ‘assigned’ to was off limits to our program’s students just a year ago due to ‘a strong fundamentalist militant presence.’ None was observed, but there is no doubting that there was a strong traditional bent in Ambaba.
My adventure here started with a bit of uncertainty, which stemmed from uncertainty regarding my home stay actualizing. The week was to start with a party where all the host families gathered to pick up their student and mingle with other families from the area. Well, my host didn’t arrive until almost everybody else had left and kept me wondering if I would be joining someone else for a home stay. However, as luck would have it, just as the home stay coordinator was about to leave, Adel arrived to pick me up. After a quick cup of coffee, we
Friends from Ambaba
R to L: Adel (host), the brother of the mechanical reprair shop, co-owner of computer repair shopset out to see a neighborhood that was far more typical for the country than the one our program was situated in.
In typical Egyptian fashion, the fact that we left the Middle East Studies Program villa at 10pm did not signify that we would be going to bed anytime soon. Adel worked as a computer technician at Al-Azar University, and also co-ran a computer repair shop a couple hundred yards from the apartment he shared with his mother. Thus, after arriving in the locale of Ambaba around a half hour later, we went to the computer repair shop in order to check in on the day’s business. For the next few hours, I became acquainted with the various shop owners that surrounded his, and found myself to be far too much of a novelty for my own comfort. The men were subtle with their curiosity, while the children displayed less masked interest corresponding to their respective ages. After hours of getting acquainted with everybody on the street, we headed back to his apartment. I was beat and my host obliged my faltering attention span. Speaking of being ‘beat’, this reminds me that since there is no ‘p’ sound in
Arabic, saying my name was a bit of challenge. B is subbed in for P, which left my options at ‘beater’ or ‘beat’. Due to some difficulty in conveying the shortened version, I went by ‘beater’ for the week, and also for the duration of the semester whenever I was with Arabic speakers.
As with any traditional Arab street, the women were in the apartments while the men gathered around shops. Over the course of the week, I became acquainted with the grocer, household item mechanic, and corner store operator who were all situated across the street from the computer store. The two boys who operated the phone booths (since many people do not have phone service in their homes, various phone booths are operated throughout town, that, for whatever reason, are not automatically operated) were also situated across the street. I couldn’t help but think that the days of them being employed in this capacity had to be limited. The emergence of smart chip phone cards in Egypt had already started. This and a fact that one of the booths was destroyed during a fight… Speaking of this, maybe it was due to the population density, end of
'Cooking' Turkey Jerky
My young friend Mohamed was horrified at the thought of me eating meat that I had brought with me from America three weeks ago, but figured that if he cooked it first that I would at least live through the experience. So, he brought a propane stove over, put my jerky in water, and boiled it for me. Next thing, bread appears and people start offering me all kinds of food. All I wanted was a little snack of jerky
a hot summer etc. But there seemed to be a lot of fighting out on the street. One of them gathered about a hundred onlookers to watch a mostly yelling (but some hitting) altercation between a middle aged man and 15 year old boy (the one being hit). I was never told the cause of any of these arguments, which I attribute more toward not wanting me to know than any language barrier. One time, when a young woman was being dragged down the street by her hair, I was ‘moved’ to the inside of the computer store. Not to say that I felt like I was ever in danger. 99% of the time it was all quiet in the area. Everybody was very friendly and welcoming, especially the shopkeepers across the street. Due to my limited Arabic and their even more limited English, most of the interaction between these men and I were pleasantries combined with their non-lingual hospitality.
The individual that I spent the most time speaking with was a retired Egyptian Air Force Officer who had spent time in USA as an attaché (Texas and Florida, he preferred Texas.) His impact on my stay was actually
rather profound. Due to the fact that he had actually been to America, liked it, and didn’t bash George Bush, I encountered the least amount of generic anti-Americanism (of all the places I visited in Egypt) here on this street. In truth, it was not a love fest either. Many people stated that it was not Americans they disliked, but rather the actions of the government.
Since the computer store was not large enough to really sit in and chat with more than one person, the majority of my time was spent sitting in front facing the corner store, phone booths, grocery and mechanical repair shop. This vantage point allowed me to get a decent sample of life during my stay here. My only regret was that this home stay experience came so early in my study of Arabic that, while I did improve, I felt that it may have been helpful to have had stayed here once my vocabulary had expanded a little. This aside, I came away from this brief glimpse of everyday Cairo life knowing that I had faces and personalities to give to the generalization of ‘Egyptian People;’ and I hope that I left the neighborhood
with a counterbalance to the growing fanatical dogma coming from some radical clerics throughout the Arab World. When America is portrayed as the ‘Great Evil,’ maybe they will remember ‘Beater’ and realize that it is really not all that bad.
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