Egypt Part 2

The next events that we experienced fulfilled the highest goal of traveling.

Trans-culturalism
The first thing we did after the aforementioned events of the day was to engage in a very informative and interesting dialogue with a group of Arabs.

The events unfolded like this:

We were on our way to a perfume shop (which was odd, since none of us particularly wanted to go to a perfume shop) but before we could enter we were hailed by an "intensely warm" (in the words of Jeff) group of Arabs inviting us to partake in the ritual smoking of the hookah pipe. The instigator, a 6:4 or 6:5 Arab with gray hair, a friendly smile, and near perfect English, quickly began by asking us where we were from and when Jeff told him that he was from California, he swiftly produced his own California driver's license. He causally asked us if we wanted one for $100 or a passport for $100 with just enough seriousness that it made us ask him several times if he was joking. He was. I think.

All the while the hookah pipe was passed around with varying degrees of success. Jeff inhaled a little bit too deeply and a quickly and began coughing. Joel inhaled a little bit too expertly, and was the ridicule of a few friendly jokes. And I didn't inhale too deeply, so I saved my lungs (although the Hookah pipe supposedly is a lot safer because fruit and spices are usually mixed together with the tobacco) and engaged in a very important cultural activity.

After that, the brother of the man who invited us to join them took up the heated thread of politics. He began with the unforgettable line, "Do you want to know what I honestly think about George Bush?" And from there began a very well-informed (at least of the basics) attack on how President Bush was not someone he disliked personally, but he thought his politics were not only destructive for the Middle East, but also for America. He then supplied us with completed statistics about how much money President Bush was spending on "Occupation type military activities." From there he jumped into current events and boldly (yet still nicely) proclaimed that Blair and Bush had orchestrated the whole scare in London to boost approval ratings (this was just days after the thwarted attack). They all showed great indignation that Bush had, in their mind, called all Muslims (1.3 billion people) fascist. (This was a little bit of a stretch, what Bush actually was trying to say was that the terrorist who were trying to pull off the London bombing were “fascist Muslims”, but evidently that doesn’t translate very well.

At this point, Jeff paused the conversation (although all through the conversation we had been asking questions and clarifying) and he asked how many of the 10 or so spoke English. They replied good-naturedly that “they were not as stupid as they looked” and all but 1 person spoke at least 2 languages and some spoke 3 or 4.

From there the conversation moved to the nefarious topic of Israel and how it was a terrible situation with Lebanon. This is when their politics were revealed and it showed exactly where their sympathies lay. They definitely sided with Lebanon who had no standing army and they felt the people were being victimized by Israel’s over zealousness. In many ways they blamed America just as much as Israel for the tragedy, because, as they were always quick to point out, America was Israel main supporter and the one who sold them weapons, but were hypocritically calling for a cease fire. They followed with a series of logical question, which when taken from an Arab’s perspective were hard to deny. The most interesting one was comparing to how America and Israel had made a very huge deal about Iran selling weapons to Hezbollah and had in essence equated Iran with Hezbollah as responsible for the horrible atrocities, yet we do not understand how Arabs consider every act of Israel to be an act of America, because America had sold the bombs to them in the same way.

And interestingly enough (in retrospect at least), he went from the war in Lebanon to the ubiquitous and always controversial topic of 9/11. He agreed first and foremost that it was an extraordinary tragic event for both America and Muslims alike and he wanted to make it clear that Egypt and Arab nations had suffered from Al-Qaeda and other similar groups, but he then went on to express his doubts that Al-Qaeda could plan and pull off such a huge attack as 9/11. He first noted the general ineptness of Osama-Bin-Laden and the puzzling fact that none of the gargantuan planes which take thousands hours of flight hours to fly were able to send out a distress signal. At this point, Jeff went right out there and asked if they thought America had done the attack. They all dismissed it as nonsense. But they did strongly hint at someone else’s intelligence, which we didn’t really press at the time, but later we realized it was a thinly veiled accusation that Israel did it.

Which is exactly where the conversation led back to. They claimed with great sincerity that they did not in any way hate Jews, but rather the harmful policies and choices of the State of Israel (which granted not one foul or anti-Semitic word had been said). And in the same way, they in no way hated Americans, but they felt that some American policies had some very negative consequences, and they hated them.

After that, Jeff asked them who they thought were Egypt’s closest allies. Somewhat ironically, they listed America as the most important and without a moment’s hesitation. The others they listed were: France, Jordan, and Syria.

Our conversation then came to an end because we had to go, but not before they gave us an intensely warm and friendly farewell full of handshakes and blessings and pictures.