Writing the Book

When I was in Cairo this summer, Sanaa and I met a girl about our age on the Metro. Rabab spoke way more of English than we spoke of Arabic, and after enough attempted conversation to get us past several Metro stops, she asked for our phone number - classic Egyptian hospitality. It always stunned me how genuine it was, too. That kind of stuff never happens around here. We'd spoken for a matter of minutes, and now we were the best of friends. We hurried to exchange phone information before scrambling to get off of the Metro at our stop.

I never saw Rabab again, but Sanaa got a chance to talk with her on the phone, and to visit her and be visited. It was difficult to find a time to get together because Rabab was always busy with her school work and building robots. She's really smart, beautiful in her dress and head covering, and such a wonderfully kind person. So the guy who works at the place where she gets her robot stuff from must be really lucky.

This is how kind and inclusive Egyptian hospitality can be: we were invited to Rabab's engagement party of sorts. We felt incredibly honored. These sort of celebrations are very important to the families, and for us to be invited was a huge gift. I don't know if she and the robot shop guy were actually getting engaged - I tn it was more of a marking of the beginning of an official romantic relationship.
Sanaa,
you should correct me.

An official engagement is a huge deal. The phrase that means 'to get engaged' literally means 'to write the book,' which I think is beautifully poetic. I wore a black hair tie on one of my fingers as both a backup hair tie and because it kind of looked like a ring - which had the potential of preventing harrassment in the streets. I think one of my students asked me one day if I was engaged. I recognized the words for 'to write' and 'book' and she was pointing at my hair tie ring. But we were copying down words from the board and I thought she was just asking something about that. I don't actually remember how I responded. But it only occurred to me a few seconds later that perhaps that was what she was asking about.

When a couple writes their book, the man comes to the woman's house where all the close relatives have gathered. The woman comes in with a tea tray to offer tea to the man. As he takes it, she looks up and meets his eyes with hers. It sounds rather formalized, but in a culture where men and women do not make mutual eye contact and where family is so important, it gains vitality. Small things that our more casual culture practically takes for granted are loaded with a more profound significance in theirs.

It may seem repressive, but I've got to say, there's something really attractive-sounding about having distinguished, communally recognized sets of interactions.

I couldn't go to Rabab's party because I was going to the end-of-summer-school celebration at Central, which I would not have missed for the world. But Sanaa told me about it when we both came home.
"They held hands for the first time", she said, clearly almost as excited for Rabab as Rabab must have been. "Rabab was freaking out."
They also got to look each other in the eyes. This is a huge deal. In Egypt, opposite genders do not look each other in the eyes. This was very difficult for me when I got there, having been trained from a young age that not looking someone in the eyes when speaking to them was incredibly disrespectful. That's why it was so interesting when Sanaa told me, "Rabab says that's how she knows he respects her - he wouldn't look at her."

This makes a lot of sense actually. There's something personal about eye contact, but I suppose how you interpret that depends on how your culture raised you to think of it. Several of the Egyptian girls we met were rather adherent to their practice of Islam and to the modesty that comes with that practice. In my culture, refusing to look at someone is akin to not recognizing their presence, but to Rabab's culture, I think his refusal to look at her was a legitimate respect for her values and her modesty.
There is value in this understanding.

And before you go and call that such a supressed society,
consider the weight of being able to know officially what gestures or motions have which significance. The language is there, but the words are different. I think there's something really valuable about knowing what things are appropriate when and not trying to push elements of one category into another.

I'd actually been considering continuing to wear long sleeves and not look people in the eyes, but that probably wouldn't have made any difference, and would be more confusion in this culture than anything else, since most people don't have the background of living in arab culture long enough to start thinking of it as normal.

Sometimes more culturally formalized interactions seem like they would be a better societal structure in the long run. Then people would have a better idea of what's going on. Maybe.


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It was actually a different class that may have mistaken the hair tie I wear on my finger for a ring.



This is just before Asmaa took us to see the oldest Moque in Cairo. It was built in 642 and it is beautiful. However, for some reason, they didn't think our heads were covered enough and we got to wear green robes that made us look like large foreigner leprechauns and shone like the surface of chicken noodle soup.


Here we are, dressed typically for us, outside of the Museum in Cairo. In this photo, we are making up for how we can't take the camera inside with us.


This is at the end-of-summer-school celebration at Central. Our teachers are dressed particularly neatly. It was a rather large, important, exciting event. Essentially, it was also our goodbye.


And this is the traditional garb of Americans in tourist traps.



The world might not be ready for The Beduoin Boy Band