American Movies

Egyptians love American movies. A lot. Our friend Mohammed who cuts our hair down the street was just telling me that he noticed a couple of things in American movies and wanted to know if they reflected American society. The first is that there are a lot of gangs in America, and the second is that if people are fighting in the street, for example, no one pays any attention. He must have just seen Goodfellas and Bad Boys 2.

Anyway, the point is that Egyptians get a lot of their ideas about America from our movies. Movies are very popular here, and most Egyptians do not read books. They read newspapers, but that's about it. I can talk more about this later, but let me just quote a statistic from my professor who is an Arabic literature critic. He said that the greatest number of books sold in Egypt in one year written by Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian and possibly the most well-known Arab writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was 3000 copies.

Many Egyptian movies are pointed expressions of Egyptian society. For example, we just finished watching a movie starring Adel Imam, one of the most famous Egyptian actors, in which he plays a business man who at one point buys some poems, releases a book of these poems under his own name, buys all the copies of the book, and then pays some people off to win Egypt's best poet award. The film of course deals with corruption.

So when Egyptians see American movies, they often think they are a direct reflection of American society. Needless to say I told Mohammed that the mafia and gangs are not really the biggest problems facing American society these days, and that although people do not help each other enough, its not as if it never happens.

I'm not sure he was convinced, but he loves Sly Stallone.

Egypt's Top Judge

My program was fortunate enough a few weeks ago to secure a meeting with Egypt’s top judge, Zakaria Abdel Aziz, head of the Judges Club. The Club is an institution to which all Egyptian judges belong, a type of judicial union/syndicate in Egypt, though I am not sure its exact legal status. Regardless, Abdel Aziz came to speak to us about his experience leading this group, his unprecedented legal opposition to the government (Unlikely Reformers: Egyptian Judges Challenge the Regime), and about women's legal issues in Egypt, an Egyptian man just being put in jail for sexual harassment in a landmark case(Egyptian Gets Jail for Sex Assault in Milestone Case).

Abdel Aziz began by giving us an interesting history of the Judges Club. He talked about when it was formed, how it works, and how it has historically dealt judicially with Egyptian politics, through times of both relative freedom and of intense political oppression. He was supposed to also speak to us about women’s issues in Egypt, but after giving the history of the Club, instead opened the floor up to questions. A student asked about the relationship between Egyptian law and Islamic law, called Sharia. A very good and fair question, as Egypt’s law is commonly known to be a mix of French civil law as a result of France’s colonization of Egypt, and elements of Sharia law, as Egypt is a Muslim country. Apparently the common knowledge in this case is wrong, as the judge explained that Sharia has nothing to do with Egyptian law. This is plainly false. Even my professor was surprised by this answer.

Abdel Aziz

The judge then went on, frankly to an astonished audience, explaining how although Egypt does not follow Sharia law, it is the best and most advanced type of judicial system and, yes I am serious, would even be a good system for the United States to adopt. He explained that the Jews failed morally under laws given to them in the Torah, and hence God sent another messenger to his people, Jesus, to give them new laws to follow. The Christians, of course, failed in this respect as well, leading God to send the Prophet Muhammad with the laws of the Quran. His proof of this was that it says in the Quran that Muhammad is the last messenger of God, bringing God’s final and complete message.

Slightly shocked, I thought I might change the subject and ask him about something we were supposed to be discussing. My question was “Do you have a comment on the recent ruling regarding the sexual harassment case, and what do you think is the future of this issue in Egypt politically, culturally, and socially?” I received a two part answer. The first part was that yes, there is a problem with sexual harassment in Egypt, but there are these same problems all across the world. In fact, there is an international phenomenon of moral decline, which is causing this problem. Even in America you have these problems. Next, he told me that if I go up to a woman on the street in Egypt and say something to her such as “oooh, you are so pretty,” or hiss at her, then I will get thrown in jail for a week because that is Egyptian law. Sexual Harassment in Egypt really deserves its own post, in fact, one could write an encyclopedia about it, but let me just say that it is sometimes the police officers here who are doing the harassing, and when my classmate got spit on the other day, and my other classmate got her crotch grabbed multiple times in broad daylight, no one went to jail.

So unfortunately, what could have been an incredibly rewarding discussion on the challenges to the judicial system in Egypt turned out to be, for lack of a better term, complete and utter bullshit. My classmates and I were not only disappointed, but angry as well.
What the judge talked about is indicative of a lot of social and cultural problems in Egypt. First, the view that Islam is the be all and end all, that is has the answers to everything, and that one is silly not to embrace it, is manifested in a myriad of contexts and as this educated, influential judge has proven, at all levels of society. Second is the lack of responsibility in Egyptian culture. Even in the Egyptian dialect, one does not say “I missed the bus.” The actual translation would be “the bus missed me.” The judge, who of all people should be willing to take responsibility and admit that Egypt has a problem with sexual harassment, blamed it on the rest of the world and of course, which brings me to my final point, brought the US into the discussion. I realize that because I am American, Egyptians may whole-heartedly want to discuss America with me, or relate what they are saying to the US because they think it might be useful for me or help elucidate a point. But even though the sex that Egyptians see in US movies certainly has an effect on their sexual behavior, it really is not an excuse for the terrible sexual harassment problems in Egypt.

It is a sad state of affairs in my opinion when the man who should be representing rule of law, accountability, and the democratic process refuses to deal with important issues facing his country and preaches his religion in place of a constructive discussion on the role of the judiciary. Not to mention he didn’t answer my question.

Iftar at Amani's

Today the roommates and I went to iftar at our landlady's home in 6th of October City, about a 20 minute car ride Northwest of Cairo proper. Iftar is the meal traditionally eaten to break the fast during Ramadan, and it is common to invite friends and family to one's home or to eat at a communal meal (some of which are subsidized) at a mosque. Our landlady, who I am happy to say is very nice and easy to deal with, which is not usually the case in Cairo, had invited us a long time ago to come to her home for a meal and to meet her family. She lives in a beautiful, modest (but quite nice by Egyptian standards), white stone house which was actually designed, both inside and out, by her husband, who is a doctor. They grow olives, mint, and hibiscus at the house and have a pool and a quiet back porch with a wonderful breeze that, frankly, makes you forget you are in Egypt.

Her family was of course very nice and she has two married daughters, only one of whom we met, who like most upper class Egyptians her age is well educated and fluent in English. The food, shown below, was completely home cooked and delicious. And as usual in Egypt, they pretty much forced us to keep eating. I had 3 bowls of soup and 1 and a half plates of everything else and now I feel sick. It was well worth it, though.



We also had an interesting conversation with our landlady's daughter, Pakinam, and her husband, Ahmed, who is also well educated and fluent in English and who does advertising for Coca-Cola. Our landlady's grandmother was Turkish, and she gave her kids, Pakinam and Ingi, Turkish names. Pakinam asked us what we thought of Egyptian culture, on which I happened to have many opinions, so we all got into a discussion about it and it was very interesting. I won't go through the whole discussion now, but I wanted to share Ahmed's thoughts about American culture as he has lived and done business there. Ahmed said that Americans are generally very straight forward and helpful and they are willing to help strangers unless they are given a reason to mistrust them. I asked him for some negative impressions and he brought up an issue which I often hear Egyptians talk about which is Americans' ignorance regarding world affairs.

I think this is a fair criticism of American culture as there are way too many Americans in my opinion who know nothing about what is going on in the world and yes, who do not know where Iraq and South Africa are and whatever it is that woman said. However, what I do object to, and I don't think Ahmed really meant it this way, is when people from other countries call Americans ignorant as if they are more ignorant on average than people from other countries. That is ridiculous. Just because way too many Americans do not know where China is on a map does not mean that fewer Americans than say, Azerbaijanis, do not know, for instance, the square root of sixteen. It seems to me that Americans are often chastised for their lack of geographical knowledge. This is no excuse, but in the Middle East for example, geo-political issues are much more domestically salient than they are in the United States. It makes more sense that the average person in Beirut would know something about what is going on in Amman, for example, than an average person in Salt Lake City would know about what is going on in Guatemala City. What is happening in Amman is more likely to have an effect on someone in Beirut than what is happening in Guatemala City would have on someone in Salt Lake City.