Now They Call Me Infidel

by Nonie Darwish

  As to Egyptian media, it was more of the same. With all that is going on in Egyptian society—unemployment, pollution, extreme poverty, the rise of Muslim Brotherhood radicals, not to mention fraud, mismanagement, and corruption in government and business—all I read and heard in the Egyptian media was blaming the West, propaganda against Israel, and encouragement of jihad and martyrdom. For instance, in a front-page article, an Egyptian newspaper said that Israeli Viagra was flooding all over Egyptian markets in order to sterilize Egyptian men! Arab use of hashish was also blamed on an Israeli conspiracy to spread drugs in Egypt. A foreign girl was being accused of being a spy for Israel. But at the time the really big news story was about a Druze Israeli man who was arrested and convicted of espionage by writing in secret invisible ink on women’s underwear! His Egyptian attorney was harassed and ostracized by the law community, and shouting against the Druze man was allowed in court. It was more of what I’d witnessed years earlier. The distraction has to constantly be maintained.

  Egyptians newspapers ran many vulgar and tasteless articles against Westerners. For example, I read an article lambasting the American ambassador to Egypt simply because he was Jewish. He was transferred from his post in Egypt, and the article bid him a “good riddance.”

  Egyptian media had also recently revived my father’s memory. My mother proudly showed me what she called “a great article” about my father, entitled: “The assassination of the Egyptian head of the intelligence right before his appointment.” The article featured many of our family photos and pictures of my father in his military uniform. I told my mother, “They are trying to use his story to promote the good old days of jihad during Nasser’s time.” I did not like my father’s memory to be used in that way. Those were the days just after the 1948 war; now there is supposedly a peace treaty with Israel.

  During my visit, I heard rumors that the Muslim Brotherhood, which was gaining in popularity, wanted to take over power and cancel the peace treaty with Israel. Even though Mubarak was not an ideal leader, he was much better than the Muslim Brotherhood. I wondered, Why don’t Egyptians learn from their long history of pain and suffering?

  Driving around the terribly crowded streets of Cairo, I saw Saudi Wahabi mosques, “King this” and “Prince that” scattered everywhere, named after their benefactors in Saudi Arabia. These radical mosques represented Saudi money in action to strengthen radical Islam’s grip in Egypt and perhaps help bring about the Muslim Caliphate they want to build before the oil dries up.

  I heard that Saudi power reached into many unexpected areas of Egyptian society. For instance, they paid millions of dollars to some famous belly dancers to quit belly dancing and renounce this form of entertainment as un-Islamic. Naturally, the belly dancers took the generous offer of an early retirement, embraced their newly found virtue, and I personally saw them on TV covered from head to toe advocating that other women follow their example.

  The plight of the Coptic Christians, which had already been bad when I left in 1978, had grown even worse by 2001. I heard rumors of Saudi funds being used against Egyptian Christians. According to complaints to Egyptian police by several Copts as well as audiotaped confessions, radical Muslim students were given monthly salaries to seduce Christian girls—with the help of Muslim girls—and convince them to marry Muslim men. I heard of Christian girls who were even kidnapped and drugged and ended up in forced marriages to Muslim men who were then rewarded by Saudi funds designated for reducing the number of Christians in Egypt. Some of these stories were reported by the Egyptian media when the Coptic leadership and parents of kidnapped girls made formal complaints.

  My children immediately noticed how class-conscious Egyptian society was. They witnessed for themselves how badly waiters and maids were treated. While slavery in America was once based on race, in the Arab world it is based on class. And it seemed to my American son and daughter that while slavery of another race was condemned, enslaving someone within the same race was somehow justified by Egyptian society. In restaurants they saw men and women mistreat waiters by yelling at them and sending them out to buy them cigarettes. Poorer classes were called fellaheen, the derogatory expression for peasants. My children asked me: “How can the word ‘peasant’ be an insult when the majority of Egyptians are peasants?” They also asked me how the lower classes could just accept their inferior status without complaint. I told them, “Welcome to the Third World.”

  The trip was indeed an eye-opening experience for my kids.

  After thoroughly touring Cairo, our family visited other locations there, starting with a city that did not exist when I lived there, the beautiful resort Sharm el-Sheikh. Developed into a world-class resort by the Israelis, it became Egyptian property after the peace with Israel. In fact, Sinai, which was now a demilitarized zone, was booming with lovely resorts and thriving towns on the Red Sea in the south and the Mediterranean coast in the north. We loved the water and all the amenities of the beautiful resorts and hotels, most of which are unfortunately financially out of reach to the average Egyptian. One morning my family and I were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant when I saw a man seated nearby who was obviously Arab but not Egyptian—he was wearing a type of Arab headscarf that Egyptians do not customarily wear. We could not help but notice that he was uncomfortable because the waiter was totally ignoring him. After he left the restaurant, the Egyptian waiter told me “That son of a —— has an Israeli passport, let him get good service there!” I was shocked at how Egyptians view Arab Muslims who live in Israel. In the old days we never met or saw anyone who lived in Israel.

  We noticed something curiously unique about Egyptian hotels. Sitting in strategic locations in all areas of the hotels were idle-looking workers situated at doors and in hallways—for what reason I do not know. I suppose there is no need for an electronic security system when you can have eyes everywhere. What bothered me was that these idle workers expected a tip every time you passed one of them.

  After Sharm el-Sheikh, we visited a resort west of Alexandria, the Northern Coast Hilton. It was beautiful and my kids loved it. While there, I joined my brother-in-law (my deceased sister’s husband) for a dinner that included a large number of Egyptian upper-class elites. It was during the time of the Palestinian intifada and an Egyptian doctor at the table casually mentioned that he had visited Jerusalem and said that the place is simply the holy land of the Jews and Christians, and all Muslims have there is the mosque. That statement did not go down well with a woman who then began defending the intifada against Israel. I chimed in, “But if the Palestinians really want their own state they now have a chance to get it and they are blowing that chance by blowing up old people and children in pizzerias in Israel.” The woman’s reaction to me was arrogant. She answered, “So?”

  Another woman, probably intending to compliment me, said: “Americans are the true Muslims because they are good people.” I then asked her: “Who are we ‘Egyptians’ then?” She said: “We Egyptians have not applied Islam right.”

  Having heard this absurd argument too many times, I couldn’t let it pass. “Neither have the Americans,” I replied. “Americans are ninety-five percent Christian and built their country according to their Judeo-Christian heritage and not on Muslim principles. They are Christians and we are Muslims, and we should not confuse the two,” I further explained. “To call Americans good Muslims just because they have succeeded in building an orderly society is not giving due respect to their religious heritage.”

  A third woman then asked me how long I had lived in the United States. When she learned that I had not seen Egypt for twenty years, she immediately said, “How could you do such a thing, don’t you have a family here?”

  Suddenly I was jolted back into the same old shame game. At the individual level, Egyptians can be very mean and disrespectful, yet at the same time also charming and funny. It is a culture of such contrasts and contradictions.

  The next morning I was sitting on the beach in my on
e-piece conservative bathing suit when the same group of Egyptian doctors joined us. One of the women wore a head cover, and as soon as she saw me she gave me a dirty look and then demonstratively looked the other way. Whenever I talked, I noticed she would turn her head away as if I did not exist. I got the message.

  When my children and I went to swim in the beautiful hotel pool, I was the only woman in the pool. The pool was full of kids and surrounded by tables with mothers sitting together. Many of the women were covered from head to toe on this very hot August day. I felt uncomfortable when I saw them looking at me. I remembered the old days when my mother would sit on the beach in Alexandria with other Egyptian women, wishing she could take a dip with her daughters. I felt some of these women were wishing the same thing as they looked at me enjoying myself. I was sad for them and sad for my mother.

  A friend took us to visit a famous fishermen’s town east of Alexandria called Aboukir, where Egyptians like to go to enjoy a fresh fish restaurant meal. It was the site of a historic battle between the French and English two hundred years ago during Napoleon’s time. That once wonderful little village has now been transformed into a torn-down, neglected town—but not because there was a shortage of men to work. Instead, the town’s men sat in cafés, sipping their Turkish coffee and smoking their shisha right next to piles of garbage, oblivious to the blight around them. I saw women busily heading to the markets to take care of their children and homes. But men sat doing nothing with the famous Egyptian wana mali (“none of my business”) attitude. The friend who took us to Aboukir was embarrassed at the deterioration of the village and said that he had not been aware of it.

  My husband and son left to go back home to the States, and my two daughters and I stayed until September 10, as planned. However, we were getting bored and wanted to go home earlier. But as the penalty for changing the ticket was so expensive, I decided to just stay.

  After my husband left, one of my cousins, who is a physician, chose to visit me. When I opened the door, I did not recognize her because all I saw was a woman covered in black from head to toe. I could not even see her face, eyes, hands, or feet. She had covered every inch of her body. She even wore black gloves despite the heat of an Egyptian summer. When I learned who she was, I was very careful not to show my surprise at the great change in her appearance. I wanted her to be comfortable with her new appearance in front of me. Back in 1978 when I left Egypt, she had worn Western-style clothing—even sleeveless, short dresses—during the hot Egyptian summers. When her dress became the topic of conversation, another woman in the room told my cousin that Islam does not demand covering of the face. My physician cousin assertively answered, “I am following the example of Muhammad’s women, who did cover their faces.” (She said “women” not “wives,” since Muhammad did not marry all of his women; the malak yamin, meaning “owned slaves,” did not count as wives.) I thought, They probably did cover their faces because of the sandstorms they suffered from living in the open desert in tents! Of course, I did not say that out loud.

  Women and men in the Arabian Peninsula dressed appropriately for a severe desert environment. There was no privacy at the water well, around which everyone lived. There were no trees or mountains to hide behind, and they were all totally dependent on one another. Women and men both had head covers for protection from the sun as well as to protect the face when the severe desert sandstorms erupted. Women’s flowing loose robes also gave them privacy. They could literally squat and relieve themselves while covered from view. This same dress—which existed out of necessity long before the emergence of Islam—is now regarded by Muslims as Allah’s divine choice for women. The pre-Islamic clothing of the past, which was simply a product of the Saudi desert physical environment, has now been codified for Muslims around the world, regardless of environment, climate, or geography.

  Contrary to popular belief in the West, very few Muslim governments actually force women to wear the burka. When I left Egypt, my cousin was a modern-looking physician. She had chosen to wear this on her own. She was always aloof and unfriendly—that was her personality—and the burka gave her the freedom to live in isolation within an angry restless society that she felt was not Muslim enough. As we women sat around and talked, she had taken the covering off her face, but when my fifteen-year-old nephew came into the room, I saw my fifty-five-year-old cousin quickly cover her face. In that moment, I felt I had landed in Saudi Arabia and not in Egypt. Her husband never asked her to do so. On the contrary, she was his inspiration to start praying, fasting, and reading the Koran. Strangely enough, the medical schools of Egypt have produced the most radical of Muslims; famous among them is Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command in the al-Qaeda organization. Contrary to what many liberal activists believe, it is neither ignorance nor Third World poverty that produces radicalism—the extremists from middle-and upper-class families coming out of Egypt’s institutions of higher learning and medical schools prove that.

  Covering up has become the new identity of Muslim women around the world. That is not just men’s doing, but also women’s. Teenage Arab girls are often criticized by older women who want them covered from head to toe. After all, it’s a great idea for solving the problem of competition among women! The burka is now the great equalizer in the Muslim women’s world.

  Women have been taught to view their bodies as nothing more than an object of seduction that causes men to commit sin. Think of it, the message is: I am a piece of meat tempting all men, and I have to carry and cover my shame all my life. They have to hide from life and from the cruelty and injustice of Muslim society toward women. By hiding her face, a Muslim woman is telling the world: My individual identity, my comfort, my personal freedom, my body temperature in hot weather, and my choices come secondary.

  When I was about to leave, my cousin’s gift to me was a prayer head cover along with her exhortation to cover up in America with pride.

  I felt that all the years of Arab women’s hard work for advancement, legal equality, and economic parity with men was eroding. What I saw in Egypt and what I knew was occurring throughout the Arab world was very depressing. Newspaper articles were promoting jihad even for females. Saudi money was pouring into impoverished neighborhoods to build mosques, not to feed the spiritual needs of the flock, but to further radicalize the vulnerable poor and turn them against their moderate governments. Verbal and physical attacks on Christians and Jews were increasing, and hatred speech openly blared from the loudspeakers of mosques. I heard that many Christian churches had been burned to the ground, and Christians were being fired at on the street and killed while their attackers went unpunished. Because of this increased pressure on non-Muslims in Egypt, the Christian Arab population was shrinking even more. I noticed that Egypt now has very few minorities and has become almost all Sunni Muslim.

  A man we know told us a story that sheds light on the treatment of the weak and poor minorities. He said that his landlord illegally evicted an eighty-year-old woman after her son, who lived with her, died. She was born in Cyprus but lived all her life in Egypt, most of it in the same apartment and had never missed a payment. But a vacant apartment in Egypt is like a pot of gold because of rent control and shortages. Therefore, the landlord, with the help of the building’s Egyptian Muslim tenants, moved the old woman from her apartment to a room on the roof. She was the only non-Arab and non-Muslim in the building. The old woman, who had no other family, was forced to live on the roof of the building until the day she was found dead there. When I asked that man if it would be fair for his wife to be treated like that, he answered: “We kept her on the roof and gave her food; she’s just a woman from Cyprus.”

  I missed the United States and my home, and I no longer cared to pay attention either to the examining eye or the evil eye. This time I was just a visitor in Egypt and no longer felt the pressure to please as I once did. And what a relief it was to not have much concern about the watchful eyes around me. In Egypt’s August heat, I openly wore a
bove-the-knee shorts, jeans, and T-shirts much of the time. Because I carried myself with confidence, I did not get in-my-face criticism for my clothes. Some people presumed I was just an American who didn’t know better, and they did not bother me. My American husband, of course, had to say he was a Muslim when asked. My own family never put that pressure on him. But a few friends did, and Uncle Abbas introduced my husband several times as a “convert to Islam.” My husband was extremely uncomfortable with that, but we let it go, since there is no need for defiance about such a sensitive subject in the Muslim world.

  A taxi driver I was with once started cursing Jews and Christians. I told him I was offended and to stop, and amazingly, he did. Moments later during the ride, he pointed out to me several apartment building complexes that were left unfinished for more than eight years because of building violations and corrupt contractors. I asked him, “Were these contractors Jews or Christians?” His answer was, “No, they were Muslim.” I told him, “Thank you.”