Cairo

It's been over a week since I returned from Cairo, and I think I'm finally enjoying enough of a reprieve from midterms and papers to sit down and put my thoughts on Egypt on paper at length. As I'd previously mentioned, my main surprises at Cairo were, first, how historically rich the city was and, second, how socially conservative it was. My impression of Cairo before visiting was that, despite its long history as a cradle of civilization, the modern city of Cairo was something of a recent boomtown akin to say, Lagos or Jakarta or Mexico City. I expected a city that had a few pretty government buildings and historic mosques but was overwhelmingly littered with postwar concrete apartment blocs and ramshackle slums in a maze of poorly-planned and congested streets. At the same time, my preconceived notion of Egyptian culture and politics was based on the tradition of Nasser: a secular country that emphasized Arabism over Islamism as the foundation of its identity, even if that nationalism was a bit dated and had failed to provide much in the way of economic development. After all, Egypt is a secular state that recognizes Israel and maintains close ties with the US. I figured the portion of society that relied on Islam to define their identity and structure their life was basically the minority that supported the Muslim Brotherhood politically.

On the first account, I was very pleasantly surprised. Although Cairo doesn't date back as far as Istanbul or Damascus, it is still a historic city. Contemporary Cairo dates back to the Fatimids, a Muslim dynasty who established their capital in Cairo and ruled from 969 to 1171. Islamic Cairo, the oldest intact part of contemporary Cairo, is crowed with Fatimid mosques and is still surrounded on one side by a Fatimid city wall that's far better preserved than the Theodosian Walls in Istanbul. Also like in Istanbul, the city's center gradually drifted away from it's oldest quarter. In Istanbul, this happened somewhat organically, and resulted in a new center (north of the Golden Horn in Taksim) that is almost as tangled and labyrinthine as the old city. In Cairo, the contemporary downtown was constructed by Ismail Pasha, the ambitious modernizing king who ruled from 1863 to 1879. He was inspired by the grand boulevards in Paris that were constructed through the tangle of medieval alleys by Baron Haussmann at around the same time, from 1852 to 1870. Downtown Cairo is filled with wide, linear streets, public plazas, and nineteenth-century European architecture.

Unfortunately, while Cairo has the potential to be beautiful, that potential is rarely realized. I certainly did not expect Cairo to be an immaculately clean city, but I was surprised by the extent to which the once grand apartments are universally shabby, decaying, and in desperate need of renovation. My friends live across the street from an ornate mansion formerly occupied by the archaeologist who discovered the Rosetta stone, but now unoccupied and covered in graffiti. Although cultural attractions and some government buildings still remain, wealthy residences and many private businesses are fleeing for more distant quarters of the city. The constant filth in the street doesn't help, either. Cairo has no public trash cans. Instead, the streets are cleaned by a class of streat-cleaners known as Zebaleen. Cairenes simply throw their trash on the street and wait for someone else to sweep it up. It's a fascinating system that provides employment and a measure of social support for part of Cairo's underclass, and is ostensibly much more better than Western waste companies at recycling and reusing waste material. Needless to say, the system is grossly inefficient. It seems like it would make more sense to create public trash cans and a municipal waste collection authority, and employ the Zebaleen to power wash the inevitably sandswept buildings of downtown.

On the second account, I was surprised at the extent to which society in Cairo seems to have slid from Nasserite nationalism to Islamic fundamentalism. I understood that Islam in Cairo would be practiced more strictly in Cairo than in Istanbul, and knew that Egyptian women generally wore headscarves. But I was not prepared for how socially conservative Cairo was. I saw virtually no women working anywhere, and very few young Egyptians in mixed-gender company. The niqab (full black veil with only a small opening for the eyes) was also a common sight. Although I have no problem with headscarves and respect the right of others to dress as they choose, I find it impossible to reconcile the niqab with gender equality or individual liberty: it's a garment that covers a woman to the point of obliterating her individuality and therefore objectifies her. Sexual harassment of women is a common occurrence, perhaps because of the segregation of genders and the inferior status of women. Although the government recognizes Israel, hostility towards Jews is still widespread and copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are commonly circulated. In a metropolitan area of 17 million people, there are few bars that aren't located in Western hotel chains and populated by expatriates. There are a handful of nightclubs in the city, but only enough clubgoers to fill one of them at a time. You can buy alcohol, but only cheap Egyptian brands; there's not enough of a market for importers. In general, religion in Cairo seems to regulate people's daily life - who they associate with, what they wear, what they do on a Saturday night - to an extent that Islam in Turkey or Christianity in the US do not.

Three or four decades ago, women could go uncovered in Cairo, but today doing so would be an anomaly. My friend explained to me that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a relatively recent phenomenon caused by the perceived failure of Western-oriented modernization, and I think this highlights a key difference between Turkey and most of its neighbors to the south and east. Modernization in Turkey has its discontents, of course, but in general it has produced a prosperous society that has benefitted most people; even in the southeast, which remains underdeveloped, the negative side effects of globalization have been minimal. By contrast, economic modernization in the Arab middle east has yielded less growth, probably because these countries do not enjoy Turkey's integration into European markets, and because in many cases they lacked Turkey's long tradition of urbanization and commerce. Meanwhile, while Turkey was content to play a low profile on the international stage and cooperate with world powers, the assertiveness of Arab leaders on the post-War World 2 international stage often lead to rejection, humiliation, and defeat by Western powers who continually supported Israel, propped up corrupt conservative dictators against reforming nationalist, and demanded subservience in exchange for aid. Part of this responsibility lies on the West for not appreciating the sensitivities of other cultures, recognizing the legitimacy of some differences in values and interests, and demanding liberalization when it did not align with immediate US interests. This trend in American policy towards the Middle East continues into recent years, for example, with the American rejection of Khatami in Iran and our rejection of democratic elections that brought Hamas to power (although accepting Hamas's legitimate victory should not imply condoning their use of violence). Looking forward, one of the challenges of American diplomacy in the region must be to balance the three goals of promoting immediate American self-interest, promoting a broader attitude of liberalism and pluralism, and respecting the legitimate cultural values and aspirations of the Middle Eastern people. How to strike this balance is a more difficult question.