06 Jan Learning from Egypt

We participated in The Great Convergence. I have struggled with it since before we went to Egypt, and have come through on the other side still terribly confused and unsure of my place in the world, of all of our places in the world. There has been a lot of negativity built up against the project, a project that is sponsored by Do LaB, out of CA, in Cairo. A lot of uninformed, misdirected, angry frustration. Most of the criticizers seem to not understand that Do LaB were invited by Egyptians to put the event on specifically on that day, specifically at the Pyramids of Giza. I’ve avoided a lot of it because I know that I am probably more critical than most –  I, more than anyone, have weighed in on the pros and cons and positives and negatives. Besides, this was also my wedding.

In some ways, that may actually make my viewpoint worse than most – except that I don’t believe in permanence. I agreed to marry my partner on this date, seven years ago, recognizing that my agreement was really an agreement to impermanence.

I am a critical theoretical geographer – which means that I spend most of my waking hours critiquing, analyzing, digesting, inspecting foreign policy, reactions, understandings – I am interested in the construction of the Other a la Edward Said – a Palestinian-American literary theoretician. His work opened my eyes not only to notions of Orientalism, but also of Exile – he ripped away that romantic notion of what it means to be an exile – he laid bare for me the truths of being stateless, the strain of struggling to find your home in the midst of others’ notions of Cosmopolitanism.

I also study Kantian notions of Cosmopolitanism. I am intrigued. Mostly because, as a brown woman whose features belie my actual heritage – I am mistaken for being from almost every country I visit that is not a white, northern European-populated country – I have a freedom to move, unmolested through most countries (except the actual country of my birth and of the countries that I was actually raised – where my fear of persecution outstrips my ability to cope, sometimes) – I have to question Kant’s notion of the Cosmopolitan. Where he saw a future of sameness built on Enlightenment and whiteness, I am interested in the circuits of power that are mobilized through these imaginations.

I am an academic and I am also deeply spiritual. It’s an oxymoron that does not reconcile well in in the Academy. At the same time, my academic self does not meld well with the deeply spiritual, and sometimes deeply esoteric circles of friends who move outside of the hallowed halls. In many ways, this is the bridge that I walk to understand this world that we live in – to come to grips with the multiple layers of understanding of our beingness.

Egyt is in a political turmoil that has not been seen since the late 60’s and early 70’s. While we were there, the second leg of the referendum for the Constitution was conducted. Morsy’s Constitution passed with 63% – in favor of the conservative Constitution which upheld many tenants of the Muslim Brotherhood. Only 32% of the population voted – there are questions of its validity. But more than this single vote is the question of what has been deemed, by the west, as the Arab Spring. (Never mind that there is no such thing as “Arab” or that the “Spring” was not so-called by the populations rising up in revolution. That’s another issue, entirely.)

But since 2011, the people of Egypt have been rallying against and for the regimes of power. There have been demonstrations, protests, guns, tanks, but also, in the midst of it all, and more prominent than the news would have you believe, an economic slump that has affected the livelihoods of Egyptians and the value of the Egyptian pound. Tourism, which accounted for 10% of the economy,  but also 4 million jobs has been badly hit. It has had a major impact on the overall economic production of the country. (For an interesting critique of Egyptian tourism, read Mohamed Elshahed’s article, A New Beginning for Egyptian Tourism)

We arrived at the Great Convergence to a surprised and stretched staff at the Mercure Hotel. They have faced only 25-30% occupancy rates for two years, and were pushing past 95% for the first few days that we were there. We waited two hours for our room to be readied. I felt badly that they had to deal with people who did not understand the massive surge and its impact on their ability to do their job. They were so incredibly kind and thoughtful toward us, and i will be forever grateful for the little haven they created during our trip.

The struggle I faced throughout our three days with the DoLab crew and their participants had more to do with finding that fine line between criticality and faith. It is a difficult place to find. My work as an academic tells me that we had no right to be there – our insistence on ritual theatre, on meditation, on bringing “peace” more generally (whatever that may mean in any given moment) was met with a fierce frustration at the lack of criticality and obliviousness of some of the people there. On our first trip to the pyramids, I was shocked by the rudeness of those supposedly so spiritual. I heard one woman announce loudly that “You just have to be rude to them to make them leave you alone!” and watched another woman make large sweeping motions of “releasing negative energy” from her interactions with the vendors and camel and donkey drivers at the pyramids on the 21^st of December.

Later, talking to other participants, I learned that many of them had chosen to be oblivious. They had walked through the crowds of people, desperate to make money on what was, for many of the group, a highly spiritual day, ignoring the plight of those around them. I watched Egyptian military bound, angrily, across huge slabs of the pyramid, screaming and yelling at those who had the audacity to sit, lotus-style, on the pyramids on the 21^st of December. We were told that “making meditation is expressly forbidden today” – only for that single day. There was a massive disconnect – a deliberate ignorance of the political, economic, and social upheaval of an entire nation and of the importance of this day to millions of people world wide. It was a willful ignorance that sprang from both sides, unwarranted, unpleasant, but worst of all, for me in that moment, unkind.

Let me be clear – this was not universal by any stretch of the imagination. We had a wonderful tour guide who kindly talked us through keeping up appearances… when the group became too contemplative, he would gently remind us to “Pull out your cameras. Take pictures. You are tourists!” Many of the people we were with were very patient and kind, stopping to speak to people offering services to the groups. They bought trinkets and postcards from as many people as possible. They learned a few Arabic words to be able to gently say no. They did their best to be present and mindful.

I get it. I understand the notion that it is possible to give back to the world by creating beauty. But I also understand the frustration over the lack of consciousness of what is the reality of 82 million people. How do we walk that fine line?

I thought, in my earnest Pollyanna-ness, that participants would see – clear the fog, lift the veil, peer around the corner –actually see what $2 billion in USAID aid gets the actual people of Egypt. $1.3 billion of which has been military assistance, to “maintain peace with Israel” – whatever that means.  Egypt is the second highest recipient of USAID funds. Did they know that? Did they understand what that means? Could they see the outcome of their tax dollars? I did – in the Russian sub-machine guns and riot gear that the police on Masr AlKadimah sat behind on the other side of the gates outside the Coptic Museum and the St. George Church. Instead, many found a way to maintain that obliviousness.

This is not a rail against anyone. What it is is an earnest recognition in my participation in studied oblivion. Had I been less selfish, I would have arrived a few days earlier and given talks about what Imperialism means – asked to speak to participants at their most vulnerable – made space to discuss their ignorance of what it means to be Americans and other foreigners in a country in turmoil at that very moment. Had I thought just a few seconds outside of myself, I would have realized what an amazing opportunity it was to remind people that their frustrations and vulnerabilities are honest reactions to what they don’t understand.

We struggled, Jason and I. We waivered between oblivious experiencers in the midst of chaos and being tourists. We struggled with our privilege and our actual poverty. We stretched ourselves well beyond our means to go to Egypt. We were counting dimes the entire trip. We have skipped coffees and sandwiches for months now. We have lived with family members and been helped beyond measure. My wedding dress was paid for by my colleagues at university. My shoes and hat were cheap and bought at open air markets. We paid for the hotel and airplane tickets with credit cards, adding to the 100’s of thousands of dollars of student debt we already have. Yes, you read that right, 100’s of thousands of dollars.

We struggled multiply with the desperation of many of the hawkers. We reminded each other, constantly, that what we found difficult in dealing with other people, was really their daily lives – that we didn’t have the right to feel negativity. We held each other up as we grew exhausted from the constant haranguing for money. We tried to understand what it was that we felt at the end of each day – guided each other to remember our training as critical thinkers and spiritual people. We faltered, we were pained, we slept.

And we hated ourselves for feeling all of these feelings. There is no way to express the confusion of battling our privilege coupled with our poverty – our lack of control over every moment. But we struggled – and for that I am grateful.

Someone said to us, on one of our first days, that you may come to Egypt for one thing, but Egypt always has something else for you. Ours was not just a marriage between us, a union between two people who are learning to come into balance with each other – but a marriage of our inner selves. It was about a marriage of our critical and spiritual selves. Our best moments were in our questions and discussions. We allowed each other to grow frustrated and cranky, and helped each other  move through those moments. We allowed each other to help each other. We came to understand what it means to allow ourselves to be quite complicated – that all is not well and beautiful in the world, but that we have a great privilege to learn to bring our selves into communication in service of others.

I will never be able to express the gratitude that we both share, that I have, for all of the generosity and honest-ness that has been shared with us – from the organizers of the event, of the participants, of my colleagues in grad school who rallied to help me feel like a bride, of the people of Egypt, of our tour guides, of the sellers we met at sites, of the security people, of the many, many service industry people who helped to make our stay just a little bit brighter.

I am, mostly, simply grateful for the privilege of being grateful – for the privilege to be allowed to struggle. And all i can hope is that the damage (as Ivan Illich would call it) we caused is minimal…I’m not sure we will ever be able to have given as much as we received through this experience.