The Story of 3 Muslim-Americans in Egypt

A Muslim-American in Cairo
by Tasneem Chithiwala

“Ya Gamila! Come here sexy,” the men clucked at us in Arabic as we pushed our way past them toward class.
Every day we walked the back route in hopes of avoiding the hoards of men that congregated on the sidewalks to smoke.
And yet, every day dealt with them and closed our ears to the unrelenting provocation.
As a Muslim woman studying abroad in Egypt, I had anticipated this type of behavior, but every encounter still proved demeaning and exhausting.
I prepared by packing clothes that would not elicit unwanted attention, in anticipation of the cultural differences I might encounter.
I even toyed with the idea of wearing the hijaab, a traditional head covering, while I was there but ultimately chose not to.
Though I consider myself a religious person, I’ve never chosen to wear a hijaab in the United States, so I felt that using it in Cairo would be an unfair representation of who I really am.
When I go to the mosque in California, we are required to wear it, and I’ve always donned the hijaab out of respect.
I admire my friends who have chosen to wear one in America because I can understand how difficult it must be.
The hijaab, a symbol of modesty and honor, is often misinterpreted as a means of oppressing women.
On the contrary, many find that wearing it empowers them.
During my four-month stay in Egypt, I learned that wearing the hijaab there went beyond modesty and honor.
It was a shield.
It seemed that the women in this environment were forced to choose to cover their heads to protect themselves from harassment and even then, it still occurred.
And because I looked like I could easily be Egyptian, and most certainly a Muslim, society expected me to cover myself too.
Even women would make comments about my lack of covering and, of course, I got the brunt of harassment from men compared to my white American counterparts.
Though I made the decision not to wear a hijaab every day, there were still occasions, like visiting the mosque for prayer, when I had to wear a headdress.
During those times, I found no difference in how I was treated.
The catcalls didn’t cease, and I was still leered at.
Men showed the same disrespect to a covered woman as they did to any woman in a t-shirt and jeans.
Though I continue to respect the women who wear a hijaab in this country and in others, finding a reason to wear the headdress will always be a struggle for me.
Tasneem Chithiwala is a senior at Northwestern University majoring in journalism.
She studied abroad with American University’s program in Cairo (www.aucegypt.edu) during the fall of 2005. Tasneem can be reached at

[email protected]

[email protected]

An American in Cairo
by Timothy Gutmann

I have always had an interest in Arab Muslim life.
Islamic heritage and my own Western ancestry have been closely intertwined.
Historians have often portrayed each as poised to destroy the other in some eras; at other times, indistinguishably connected.
The relationship between faith and intellect fascinates me.
To these ends, I took a few years of Arabic to get closer to the culture.
At Boston University, I studied Islam and the history of its ideas.
I had a rudimentary understanding of Egyptian politics and I knew the historical timeline, but there was nothing like seeing those underlying factions marching in the streets.
For all the use of distant observation, I simply needed to go there.
So I enrolled for the summer of 2005 in the American University program in Egypt.
I lived in Cairo, properly al-Qahirah— literally the city “victorious.” In a sense, the place has been victorious over the ages.
The hourglass has worn down and destroyed many a lesser city and civilization, but Cairo has persisted in its uniqueness.
Everything there is different.
The space is different.
The time is different.
Egyptian society is unambiguously authoritarian.
The Middle East in general, and Egypt specifically, has weathered 30 years of religious revival.
Knowing this, I expected people in Cairo to lead a dull, pious existence.
Instead, I found chaos and intoxicating vitality—something no amount of holy water can sober.
The physical Cairo is stuffed to the brim.
Its 15 million inhabitants overwhelm whatever semblance of order the socialists in the 1950s ever imagined.
Hectic souqs, shouting students, and foreigners pack streets devoid of any sort of traffic
regulation, mocking the watchful gaze of black-clad political police with berets and submachine guns.
The mua’zzin’s calls to prayer are easily heard but sometimes compete with European techno music for the very air of the city.
Women wearing the traditional hijab sometimes sit next to hipsters in miniskirts on the Metro, a transportation method that the government insists on segregating by gender.
In Cairo, I once saw a woman on the Metro get stuck in the subway turnstiles.
She was clearly having trouble and a few men gathered to try to help.
But according to most religious conservatives, men and women are forbidden to touch in the public sphere.
So, the gentlemen could do nothing but stand there and empathize.
This unnerved me.
Of course, this was no more than a feeling, expressed by little real experience of Arab life, culture or Middle Eastern sexuality.
However, that was just the surface of life in al-Qahirah.
In dark overhangs and in corners of the Nile esplanade, couples hold hands and occasionally dare to go for a bit more.
The space of Cairo defies any sort of regulation, even its own.
Egyptian politics, too, revealed themselves to me as incoherent, yet undeniably forceful.
Against the best advice of our program’s directors, several of my friends and I went to watch groups protest the Mubarak regime.
Such events often turn violent, and Egypt’s security forces have vague directives and no democratic supervision.
They exercise authority almost at their own discretion.
The protests I witnessed occurred before the country’s historic 2005 elections, which finally saw limited but true competition—a first in the region’s history.
While I was studying abroad, though, President Muhammad Husni Mubarak’s face looked aloofly out from buildings everywhere in framed pictures and hand-drawn posters.
Three years of university life in Boston had accustomed me to view protest as a form of self-expression. But often, American protests have struck me as insincere or even a little lazy.
These demonstrations in Cairo displayed a sense of urgency unlike any I had ever seen before.
Protesters crowded the neighborhood surrounding the Sayyidah Zainab mosque, a rougher part of town. Heavily armored police surrounded the protesters, but the number of cameras present prevented any real violence.
The protestors presented the cops with a firm front, and the crowd shouted, “Down with Husni Mubarak, down with George Bush, down with Tony Blair.”But a closer examination of the situation showed less of a united effort.
On one end, the protest’s sponsors included the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative organization that called for the right to run for office and the implementation of strict social and sexual regulation.
On the other, college students and well-heeled liberals demanded openness in government and freedom of the press.
Truly looking at the protestors gave me a better understanding of who they were and where they came from.
I traveled wanting a truly cosmopolitan perspective, to learn to relate to each person as an individual.
I understood that this required uncovering as much as I could about cultural politics and historical communication.
What I learned along the way was that passing through another culture involves confronting prejudices.
This experience was only the beginning to what I see as a lifelong pursuit: experiencing the wide world.
Timothy Gutmann is a senior at Boston University where he majors in history and philosophy/religion.
He studied abroad in Egypt last summer at the American University in Cairo. Contact him at [email protected]