18 - 24 October 2001
Issue No.556
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 October 2001 Issue No.556 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Do we hate them?
Fatemah Farag, taking her cue from the Western media, searches Cairo's streets for expressions of anti-Western venom. She finds anger, curiosity and amusement
It is a quiet morning in Maadi, a residential section of Cairo, and a favourite with Americans. A few days after 11 September, an obviously foreign couple are walking down the street. A little boy in a mechanics shop watches them intently. After a few moments of deliberation he makes his move. Spreading his arms to mimic an aeroplane, he veers across the road in front of them. "Zoom!" he cries, before running off. He does not pelt them with stones, he does not scream abuse at them or jeer, but he cannot resist telling them that he has seen their vulnerability -- that in some perverse and obscure way they are now equal.
As Egyptians across the nation watched the twin towers of the World Trade Centre crumble to dust they were overtaken by contradictory emotions. On the one hand, pent-up feelings of humiliation and anger for all the images of Arab suffering they had powerlessly watched for years gave way to something akin to gloating. "They had it coming" and "it is about time they had a taste of our pain," were some of the catch- phrases. On the other hand, as the cameras focused on images of people hurling themselves from windows, there were deep feelings of horror and sorrow. It did not take long, either, for it to dawn that the Middle East could now be the target of wrath of unknown proportions: "it does not matter who really did it, or why, they will take the opportunity to kill Arabs and Muslims"; "look at the increase in Israeli terror against the Palestinians"; "how many will they kill in Afghanistan?"; "will we be next?" These became common refrains everywhere -- in coffee shops, on university campuses, in people's homes.
Amid the panic and confusion, the conspiracy theories proliferated. They were attempts to make sense of a world gone awry: and to leaven a US anger which the slow, painful deaths of millions of Iraqi children shows can be as inhumane and vicious as anyone's. "Bin Laden and Sharon went to school together," my friend's barber told him knowledgeably as he clipped his hair; "No Jews went to the World Trade Center that day -- so who do you think is behind it?" asked my coiffeur, as he ironed unruly hair into place. There were even the self-deprecators: "we could not have done it, we are not that organised."
Then came news of the hate-crimes against Arabs and Muslims, or anyone who looked like them. Only five days after the attacks, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based advocacy group, had documented 350 attacks against citizens whose only crime was that "they looked Arab." One victim was an Egyptian Copt; he was murdered. This week the number of incidents jumped to 785.
"Is it true?" asked Salwa, the woman who works at a dress shop in the residential district of Heliopolis, "Are they really killing and beating up Arabs in the US?" When I tell her they are, she shakes her short hennaed hair. "We have many customers here who are foreigners -- some American. They come, and we always treat them with respect, despite what their country does to the Palestinians. We would never think of hurting them. I do not understand the Americans." She is a plump, middle-aged woman, who works six days a week for around ten hours a day. She is the single parent of a young woman, a new graduate who is still looking for work. From the confines of her toils, she looks out at a world she does not understand. If she is jealous of the "American way of life," it does not show. She, like the many Egyptians horrified by the news of hate-crimes, cannot conceive of hurting a foreigner walking on their streets or into their shops.
The US government may warn its citizens living in this country, it may shut its embassies, it may close its schools. But for the many Americans who live here, the "security threat" is a construct of their government, not a feature of their lives.
(from top) Egyptian crowds give Nixon a warm welcome to Cairo in 1974: hopes were running high that an American partnership would usher in prosperity and end war in the region; almost 20 years later, these same crowds, of both religious and secularist persuasions, take to the streets expressing anger at US policy in the region; the cover of last week's Newsweek : who hates whome?
'In Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, the occupied territories and the Persian Gulf, the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is virulent and a raw Americanism seems to be everywhere. This is the land of suicide bombers, flag-burners and fiery mullahs'
(Newsweek, 15 October)
Valerie DeCasas arrived in Alexandria in July, 1967, a month after the 1967 defeat, sporting long blonde hair and a pink coat. "I was so conspicuous, like I had stepped out of a Hollywood movie," she recalls. "While hotels declined to give me a room, my future husband's family took me in and were very nice" she added.
"I worked at AUC, taking the train every day from Maadi to Bab El-Louq. No one ever bothered me. I was a free agent and over the years I have never felt a moment's stress for being American." The DeCasas family never identified their new American member as an "enemy." They were more fearful, like everyone at the time, of more domestic dangers. "The family would only speak of politics in hushed tones. Not because of me, but because those were times when the "walls had ears"," she remembers.
Abdel-Hadi is a fifty-something carpenter from Mansoura. When we met, he had just been interviewed by an American journalist. The foreign correspondent was one of many who have flocked to Cairo since 11 September. "He asked me why we hated America, which was not a very good question because I am not sure it is true," said Abdel- Hadi, giggling a little with nerves. "I told him, I will tell you what I think of American behaviour but you must not be offended. Then, as we drank our tea, I tried to explain that American policy in the area is aimed at creating fear and that fear creates feelings of anger and eventually hate." Those two men talking over tea may serve as one of the ironic images of our time: one searching for evidence of Arab hate; one patiently trying to communicate the complexity of his feelings while hoping not to offend a guest he is supposed to loathe.
I had met that foreign journalist a few weeks back, when he first arrived in town. After announcing that he was "no stranger to the region," he asked, "Where is the terrorist neighbourhood in town?" This, in all seriousness. I told him there was none, and I swear his look was one of disbelief. A day or so later we met again. "Whenever I get into a taxi, the driver makes a point of asking where I am from. I tell them America, and the first thing they say is that they are sorry. It is incredible."
But for all the astonishment of foreign reporters, the American press is still desperate to construct an enemy; they claim millions hate the US and, at least by implication, these millions must be hated back. The arguments go something like this: they are jealous of us because we have a higher standard of living; because we have democracy which is alien to them; because we are civilised and they are barbaric; because we feed them and they are ungrateful. Dozens of editorials, opinion pieces and features in the media, as well as in the mail sent to theWeekly, parrot that same view. "But we are so good," said US President George W Bush a few days ago, to which the obvious flipside is: "they are so evil."
But do we hate them? As he recounted his interview Abdel-Hadi posed the question: "What do they [the Americans] think? They think they will terrorise people and then what? It is not that anyone wants to hate them."
That is not what you would think if you followed the US media. Take an article by Fareed Zakaria, the cover story in last week's Newsweek. The title was innocuous enough: by today's standards. Why they hate America: The roots of Islamic rage -- and what can be done about it. In 20 pages, interspersed with photos sporting captions such as "raw hatred" and "know your enemy," Zakaria explains the "origins of a culture of conflict." "They [Bin Laden and his followers] come out of a culture that re-inforces their hostility, distrust and hatred of the West -- and of America in particular. This culture does not condone terrorism but fuels the fanaticism that is at its heart.
"Only when you get to the Middle East do you see in lurid colors all the dysfunctions that people conjure up when they think of Islam today. In Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, the occupied territories and the Persian Gulf, the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is virulent and a raw anti- Americanism seems to be everywhere. This is the land of suicide bombers, flag-burners and fiery mullahs."
DeCasas begs to differ. She draws attention on the street because, "Egyptians are simply astonished by our look; we thoroughly amuse them."
What resentment there is does not, as the lemmings of Newsweek would have us believe, stem from inane, inherent loathing of US consumer gluttony, "fueling the fanaticism at the heart of Islamic culture." Rather, it has to do with specific grievances at US foreign policy's dismal maltreatment of Arabs. According to Walid Kazziha, professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, in a post-cold war world, "the Arabs have suffered not only the neglect of America but have been severely hurt by it. The only deal they are willing to offer the Arabs is on US and Israeli terms. If we do not like it we are told to 'bang our heads against a wall.' That kind of policy results in resentment and hate. And so, in my opinion, the [11 September] attacks were embedded in US policy in the Middle East and Central Asia."
This might in part explain the definite change in street sentiment towards the US since the Gulf War in the early 1990s. "Ever since I was little I have seen, known and heard that the Americans give Israel the weapons, that the Arabs get killed and no matter how just their cause, they lose," Attiya, a young man of no more than 18, told me as we walked out of a movie on Nasser a few years back. As he spoke, tears streamed down his face.
Ever since the Gulf War, and now with the failure of the "peace process" and the outbreak of the Intifada, the mood on the Egyptian street has shifted dramatically. Egyptians have not been collectively turned into human bombs waiting to be hurled at US targets -- but they have become more aware of their Arab/Muslim identity. Hence, an increasing number of peaceful demonstrations at university campuses and syndicates against US policy, a successful solidarity movement with the Palestinian Intifada and the inevitable claps and cheers at the cinema when a pro-Arab or anti- Israeli scene is part of a feature movie. But what of the enthusiastic crowds that in 1974 welcomed then US president Richard Nixon in Cairo? Where was Islamic culture's supposedly "inherent hostility" to the West, then?
"We, as a people, have always been well- disposed towards the West," argues Kazziha. "We continue to be fascinated by them, which is why people here would never hurt a foreigner: be it those who live here among us or when we go to live among them. We wear their clothes. When we travel abroad we go West, not East. We eat their food. There is a contradiction between the political position of the Arab towards the West and his position vis-à-vis all the other aspects of Western life."
It is an ambiguity that has existed since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. A great and conquering empire died a slow death, and the imperial powers of the West stepped in to colonise and modernise. The historian Abdel-Rahman El-Gabarti chronicled the French occupation of Egypt, reflecting both admiration and non-acceptance in his account: those mixed feelings still exist today. Later, such thinkers as Rifa'a El-Tahtawi and Mohamed Abduh tried to formulate the ambiguity expressed by El-Gabarti in comprehensive and coherent paradigms. "Ever since the early 19th century, the West has posed a challenge," explains Kazziha. But never something to be rejected entirely. Anti-colonial Arab nationalism, in its secular forms, such as the Baath, the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) and Nasserism, readily adopted Western ideas of statehood, and western paradigms such as socialism.
"But the terms of the challenge are no longer the same. At first the West came as coloniser, but a coloniser that had a stake in our development. A coloniser that also had his positive side; namely education and modernity. Today, the hegemony of the West, specifically the United States, has not recognised that stake and so it is merely brutal and oppressive," says Kazziha.
Ahmed is a young man active in anti-US/ Israeli protests, mainly at Cairo University. We have an appointment; he wants to pick up my Miles Davis Bitches Brew CD for his girlfriend; later they are going to see "American Sweethearts". "It is not that I, or any of my friends, or the people I have met during our demonstrations, are not interested and curious about American culture. We wear jeans and learn a lot from their books. We could not possibly hate US culture, which explains why we don't hate American citizens as individuals. I have met some who are very critical of their government's policy in the Middle East. What we are so vehemently against is the double-standards of American policy, and their view that Arab lives seem to have no worth."
Perhaps it is not Americans in the Middle East who should worry. Erika Antaki, a Swiss national who has lived in Egypt since 1949, is anxious for her grandson currently studying in the US. "On the day after the attack his fellow students harassed him, sneering that he was an Arab and a Muslim. At the general assembly he was allowed to speak and he told them who he was; he told them that he is not an enemy of the US. And it is true." Erika herself does not know what a racial hate-crime feels like.
"For all my years in Egypt, I have never felt uncomfortable. Really, never a bad incident. Even my mother came to live in Egypt for 20 years and she loved it. All it takes is to smile into people's faces here and they are bound to smile back. That is all."
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