So today I was looking over my posts from the past week, and I kind of felt the need to apologize for them being a tad unexciting. At first I thought the lack of entertainment value was due to the fact that nothing that insane happened, but I soon realized that the issue wasn't that Cairo had suddenly become less crazed (somehow I doubt that will ever happen), it's just that nothing here really surprises me anymore. The random people in the street, weaving through cars with huge trays of bread balanced on their heads - typical. The marriage proposals - to be expected. The calls of "Welcome to Egypt!" and "OBAMA!!" that follow me down the street - average. The taxis bedecked with Christmas lights, misspelled bumper stickers, and pastel-colored shag carpets - run of the mill. The hilariously incorrect and inappropriate English t-shirts that Egyptian men wear (ex: "Bite me" with a picture of a hot dog) - common. The complete and utter lack of organization or planning associated with everything - routine. The large number of cats in my creepy stairwell, eating my garbage and shrieking at each other in the middle of the night - ordinary. My roommate talking with shopkeepers, discussing how many camels she could trade me for - totally normal. As my dad would say, "usual, usual, followed by the usual."
As almost boring and run-of-the-mill as all those things seem, today I was truly surprised for the first time in a while, and by a question from one of the girls at Ana El-Masry. This twelve-year-old girl had asked sometime last week if a group of us were all Christian, and I told her that I was Jewish. Today she called me over to ask me a question via one of the staff members who was fluent in English. I knew the question would be mildly awkward from the moment she asked it; even though I didn't understand what she said, the look on the staffer's face was angry and ashamed, and at first he did not want to translate for her. Finally he apologized for having to repeat the question and said, "She wants to know why you're helping us if you're Jewish." I had no idea what to say. This is probably something I should have expected - I know the portrayal of Jews in the Arab media is not positive - but I still didn't have a good response. I ended up asking her why she thought I wouldn't want to help her, and she said something about Jews killing innocent Arabs in Israel. Not wanting to get into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at all (I had no idea exactly what she'd heard, I didn't want to explain things through a translator, and I was supposed to be somewhere else in the center at that point), I just tried to explain that Jews and Israelis are not the same thing and that Israel is a country that does things for political purposes; its actions aren't driven by a hatred for Muslims. It turned out that I'm the first Jew she'd ever met, and she said that she loved me very much at the end of the conversation, so I guess I've made a good impression. However, I'm still unsure if what I said was right, or if I should have said more on the subject of Israel. I was so surprised at that moment, that I really didn't think my answer through enough. Hopefully my actions in helping her and the other kids in the center speak louder than my words and break down the stereotypes that are ingrained in her mind already.
Hannah--Its always an odd experience when you're just going about being your complex, multiple self made up of many facets(female, white, Duke student, Jewish, American, basketball fan, jazz lover, vegetarian . . . whatever)and you suddenly find yourself in an interaction with someone that plops you into one small part of that identity. Those interactions are often confusing, surprising and sometimes painful. They also often occur in those spaces where we most misunderstand each other, act out of ignorance and lack of knowledge and exposure, and feel most vulnerable. It sounds as if it all went as well as these things generally can.
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