Enta Masry (You’re Egyptian)

I just came across the recent post on Sexual Harassment in Egypt. Reading it brought back a flood of emotions for me, and decided to go ahead and try to share. (note: these are solely my experiences, and I don’t want to pretend to speak for everyone else):
I lived in Egypt, enrolled at the American University in Cairo, when I was 19, in 2005. My boyfriend also went, and for some perspective, I’m a small white female, and he is a “brown” biracial male (of Pakistani descent).
My time abroad, generally speaking, was a complete mix of ups and downs, and most of these peaks and troughs were directly related to my gender. But the one that is both easiest, and yet most difficult, to recall is my close experience with deeply seeded sexism in the country.

Prior to this one experience, I certainly had other encounters with sexism and inequality. I saw Egyptian women being harassed from on the streets. But I don’t want to paint a misleading picture: Not all of them took to being ogled and berated passively; many of them verbally fought back, scolding random men on the street. Additionally, it was nearly impossible to purchase tampons unless a woman could show that she was married. I’ll tell you, I bit my tongue hard on that one many times, trying to balance cultural differences with what i considered innate facts about female equality.
But a couple months into being there, I was riding the shuttle from the dorms to the campus. I was sitting next to my boyfriend, which I often did, when he said something funny. I remember laughing out loud and then for a minute resting my head on his shoulders. I also remember that a minute or two later, our shuttle had stopped and the driver had gotten out, and was cursing in arabic, but it was nothing I could make out. Eventually the guards around my school had to restrain him, because he was getting angrier and angrier and out of control. I didn’t think anything of it for a while.
For the next couple of weeks, my roommate kept telling me that while I was out of our dorm room, a couple of people kept stopping by who said they “really needed to speak with me.” Since I wasn’t ever around when they came I pretty much ignored it, until one day, when my roommate looked a little frightened and let me know that they had come back and had threatened that if I did not come speak with them immediately, they would “kick me out.”
I just remember being sure that they had the wrong person because I never did anything that was against the rules. I kept no alcohol in my room, I wasn’t noisy, and my boyfriend had certainly never snuck into the “girls” dorms (that was a grave offense, we knew!) When I went to the office, they sat me down and said that I had “upset” one of the bus drivers with my “overt display” of “inappropriate sexual behavior”. Apparently, he wanted to start a riot. I told them they had the wrong person until I remembered that day on the bus, and realized that it probably had been me. I started to think of all the looks I had been getting lately from the staff, and I pieced everything together and started to cry. The woman who was talking to me felt bad for me, and tried to explain things further.
She said that she believed I hadn’t done anything blatantly inappropriate, but that many of the staff hired around the dorms came from a lower socioeconomic class, that tended to be very religious and very conservative. They tended to misinterpret “innocent” things, and sometimes could make up things they didn’t see when they were feeling uncomfortable. I knew the rules about PDA and kissing; my boyfriend and I definitely respected the rules. But I didn’t know that something as little as flirting or the slightest bit of affection would be the offense that would have gotten me kicked out.
When it all came together and I gathered myself, I got angry. I said that, if there were 2 parties involved in this offense, why were they not threatening to talk to my boyfriend? The woman just gave me this look that was somewhere between sternness and pity, and I guess I should have known better. The men aren’t held responsible for acts like that; I was entirely to blame because of my sex.
I was angry and sad for a while after. Staff in the dorms or shuttles would shoot me looks or snicker. Every time men looked at me on the street I wanted to both cry and lash out. Harassment that I had never really thought about before was suddenly at the center of all my days. Ogling wasn’t just ogling, I knew that they were thinking “whore” and “slut” and “tramp” and I hadn’t ever really felt like that before. I couldn’t put on ENOUGH clothing to make me feel okay. I felt ashamed to be a woman. No one had made me feel like that up until that point. There was really no place to direct my feelings, because I was embarrassed, and because no one was going to hold them accountable anyway.
After time and more positive experiences, the feelings mostly faded. My boyfriend took me to see the whirling dervishes in this really unique part of Cairo and I just remember watching them dance and it was so beautiful and I felt calm again. I began to appreciate all my other experiences there and got my feminist ya-yas out in courses like Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East & Women in Egyptian Society.
There were a lot of good things about my time there, relating to women. I remember sitting in a cafe, reading a textbook on Egyptian law, when a woman in hijab leaned over and asked if she could talk to me. She was a lawyer, and wanted to talk to me about the differences between female lawyers in the States, and in Egypt. She was intelligent & interesting & insatiably curious.
Then there were the feminist and women’s studies courses. I learned from reading Lila Abu-Lughod, Huda Shaawari, Nawal El Saadawi. I learned from the professors and students. They were male and female, arab, white, persian, and african, and each one had such a unique perspective, though all commited to improving the status of women, in Egypt and abroad. I learned so many interesting things that have entirely altered my perspective on international feminisms and equality. These are strong men and women, braver than I could be, who are not apologists, yet they listen to the voices of women, and don’t just to conclusions without regard to cultural practices. My debt is to them.
Whenever I see articles that seem to be phrased in a way that makes Arabness, or Egyptianness, or “brownness” scary, or patriarchal, or oppressive, I find that very difficult to stomach. I want to explore these things deeper and not assign labels right away. There are so many prejudices that exist in the States, even with liberal, educated people. But at the same time, I know things need to change. In many ways, Egypt has inculcated its women with feelings of guilt or shame, and the article Jessica posted certainly reflects that. It isn’t okay, but I do think that it can change. It can change through education and time, and Egyptian or Muslim feminists, and through understanding.
lo sa’altak, enta masry!