Zyphera

Once, someone told me, “Egyptians don’t drink alcohol, they smoke hashish. They are very religious but harass women in the street. Their wives cover their heads but wear skin-tight leggings. They claim they want democracy but feel safer giving all power to one man.” Then I went, “Oh, right… I understand… Wait, no, I’m confused.” To which he said, “It’s okay to be confused. Egyptians are confused about their own confusion.”

And here we are. For almost a year, I thought I was just going crazy. I couldn’t understand why a taxi driver would jump out of his car to insult and beat another driver, only to finish the argument with “Habibi” ! What the hell! Why couldn’t he just start with the “Habibi” thing? It would avoid… well, at least a traffic jam! Then I figured it out: maybe Egyptians need all this drama just to feel alive or something.

Anyway, I did get confused. More instances kept happening: like my colleague shouting at people for being angry. Hold on, maybe she should cool down herself too, no? “Well, that is what I am thinking also” she said. Huh…

Another good one. Once, while staying at a hotel with my Egyptian boyfriend, the manager called my room three times to remind me that it was forbidden to let him enter (information he got from very cautious cleaners). In a sneaky and not very polite way, he tried to explain that the hotel doesn’t allow unmarried couples to share rooms… right as a half-naked girl walked by. Well, not half… let’s say 10% dressed, whiskey bottles at hand! Then we got it: there is a section for foreigners where morals don’t exist anymore, and a second section for Egyptians where religion is the law. Believer or not, Muslim or not: you follow the rule in that section. There are things acceptable for the “not like us” and things completely unacceptable for “us”… unless those things happen to be compromised under certain circumstances!

Then, I was definitely confused. What is allowed? What is not? And… most of all: why? That last question is not to be asked. Egyptians are very open-minded when discussing things with an ignorant foreigner. They assume the foreigner can’t understand because he or she was raised in “a little bit too free of a world.” However, their explanations were quite poor. Take the veil, for instance; I got as many responses as there were people I asked: “It’s tradition, women from the South used to wear it to protect their heads from the sun”; “The wives of our Prophet wore veils”; “It is just to protect themselves from men” (an interesting one… and completely ineffective, by the way). But the best one was: “Because this is how we do it.”

Got it. This is how you do it. Imitation. Community. Honor. These words dictate how Egyptians behave, but not how they are. When they mix behaving with being, that’s where the confusion comes in. With my very free mind, I naturally went through these conversations pointing out, “Okay then, if you don’t want to, why would you?” But living outside the community is simply not possible. They belong to it. Nevertheless, they can’t exactly say what or who they belong to.

I have spent a year and a half in Egypt now. Actually, Cairo, not Egypt. The distinction matters because Cairo is a country within a country. And like any massive, superhuman capital, things are much more complex here… making the confusion even more confusing. I never doubted people’s mental health, though. As a foreigner, I have to adapt and not question my hosts’ beliefs and habits. Still, early on, I thought I was the crazy one for not understanding the whole “I say this, but I do the opposite, and I can’t explain it because this is how we do it” mindset. Thank goodness for my friend who saved me from a mental rehab facility.

I heard so many people complaining about the country, the habits, the traditions, the people’s ways, the government, and the silent, oppressive rules. They secretly wish it would end. Somehow. But they don’t take the steps to change it. The comfort zone is always more precious than the unexpected.

I like the unplanned and the unexpected… for a few things, at least. And I can’t follow rules I don’t believe in, rules that are not mine. Am I too wild for Cairo? It sounds weird to feel too wild in a city that never sleeps, where chaos is the order, where « no rules » seems to be the only traffic rule, and where millions of people live in areas completely unplanned by city authorities. Maybe wildness and chaos are two different things.

Over the past eighteen months, I have learned to like what I usually don’t. The smell of stale smoke in cars. Men’s mustaches. The daily “Welcome to Egypt!” (Hey man, I’ve walked past your shop for a year now… I’m not a tourist anymore!). The women’s fights in the subway cars. Watching men smoke shisha in cafés that spill onto the only sidewalks in the city. Cairo has been rough on me. And yet, when I walk home at night or when Cairo lets me taste its sweetness, I think about how it brought me new challenges. It brought me opportunities to test myself. How far can I stick to my values and principles when everything around me lives and thinks differently? How much can I give to my hosts? Past travels and experiences abroad have taught me a lot. More about myself than anything else.

Right now, during my driving lesson (because Cairo requires to re-learn driving), my instructor is driving me crazy. “Yemiin” (right). So, I turn right. “Shemaal!!!” (left!!!) he shouts. After the first hour, I finally got it: when he says one thing, he means the exact opposite. A nice brain exercise. It is physically beyond an Egyptian’s strength to say “No” when they are silently thinking, “Nooooooooooo, pleeeease.”

Is this what Cairo is teaching me? To read between the lines? To understand that we don’t always say what we mean? To accept that we don’t always do what we secretly wish? Cairo confuses me because Cairo has something to teach me. And I am still trying to figure out what that is.

Ultimately, the confusion is fine, because I like Cairo just the way it is: sweet and sour.