"Fitting In"

Why does anyone have to "fit in"? Aren't we, as a culture, striving to make a name for ourselves as individuals?

But beyond that even if we are not, why should I or anyone else attempt to fit into the tiny little box everyone else tries to put us in?

Recently my attention was brought to a post by Peaceful Muslimah in which she writes:

"I recently came across a discussion by an American muslimah living in the US lamenting her “homesickness” for an Arab country she visited. Another Muslimah
from that country questioned whether “homesickness” was the correct word/concept. This is just one particular thread but I have read many similar ones over the last year that express similar ideas. Many times Western Muslims glamorize the Arab world as a place where “real” Islam is practiced and often confuse Arab culture with Islamic mandates. I’ve written about this before with regard to converts taking Arab names, wearing Arab clothes and eating only Arab foods. I thought it might be interesting to share my perspective on the issue of Arabophilia."

Of course this is a reference to my post on missing Egypt.

Now I'm not even really upset and when I left a comment it was interpreted as being defensive, but honestly my only real issue with it is that she seems to have stuffed me into the same box as so many others who do legitimately romanticize the Middle East.

However I'm not one of them. I'm not going to Egypt to "get closer to God" or "become Arab" or even "find Islam."

I found Islam, and a more truer form at that, here in the US and I am content with it.

I'm content with who I am, I love to learn other cultures and I am certainly looking forward to getting to know Egyptian culture better but not with the intention of transforming myself into an Egyptian.

I am not obsessed with other, or otherness except in the form of discovering what the "other" believes and thinks and how they view the world. It's called discourse and its my absolute favorite thing in the world.

Today I was reading Artemisia Rants and I came across what I find to be the most brilliantly explained example of how I, myself, view the world and its "other" inhabitants (except in Artemisia's words):

". . . I can see past the surface appeal of this world of ‘otherness’ however, and I have never suggested that it is ‘better’! What interests me is the point where faith and culture meet. I am a strange creature in that I don’t really
trust anything. Only Allah. I can happily love people without trusting, I can
enjoy a culture without trusting, I can move between ideas without trusting.
This tasting of experiences from everwhre is interpreted as superficial, “not
knowing what I want”, but for me, the world is superficial. There are so many
ways of understanding everything. I draw the line at oppression and abuse that
can be quantified. This is where I will stand and judge.

Usually people want to rescue me from my “confusion”, situate me within a definite point of view. But they fail to recognize that I don’t want to be situated anywhere that is closed. My openness is what allows me to float. And I hope to move towards
Allah. I see though that at the moment I am drifting. I don’t need solidity in
my world view, but I need method."

I am not obsessed with "exotica," but I am obsessed with existentialism and I certainly refuse to be fit into a box or conform myself to wear the labels others would like to give me.

I have little to no desire to "fit in."

Happyness

Usually I answer the comments on a post in the comments section, but I believe there is so much more for me to say about the comments I received on my post about missing Egypt that another separate post is called for.

Some questioned how I could miss a country I was not born to, others questioned what exactly I missed, and some questioned whether I was actually searching for a happiness I may not find there. All are valid curiosities and many are rooted in reality but, as seems to be a running theme in my life, I don't really fit into anything that makes sense.

Missing Egypt even though I'm not Egyptian, what do I miss? I have been to many foreign countries and have seen many cities and cultures, but there is something in Egypt that makes it different from anywhere else. Lets narrow this down to Cairo though, because when I talk about Egypt I am mostly talking about Cairo. What makes it different?

The life.

Cairo lives and breathes on its own as a city, it is the only place that I have been to where there is an active city at all hours of the day and night. I spent a whole day with my husband, and my brother and sister-in-law, and when it came to fajr there were still things for us to do: we sat on a bridge full of early-bird (late-nighter?) fisherman and families still in the street as we were and ate hummous. Prior to that we had been in a cafe on the nile that was filled with people at one in the morning, the streets had still been deadlocked with traffic and the bridge next to it had still been filled with groups leaning over the side. The small boats strung with lights and blaring loud music were still moving up and down the Nile until early in the morning. The city never sleeps.

During the day you hear the traffic, the ubiquitous junk dealer leading his donkey up and down the streets yelling through an ancient amplifier that muddles his words into a garbled mess of noise. No one could really tell me what he was saying but everyone knew that he would buy your useless junk. And the donkeys, oh the donkeys; next to the blare of car horns the second most common sound in Cairo is the braying of all the donkeys. What about the carts of neatly stacked watermelons? Everywhere just waiting even stacked on the sides of the road as we drove between Cairo and Alex.

The million restaurants, the ring of the koshary shops, buying cheese and foul sandwiches at two or three in the morning. The bazaars on every corner selling everything you could imagine. Or the tiny carnival I once spied while with my friend Merhan and her cousin and them taking me to it and paying for us to all drive bumper cars.

The smiles of the bumper car crew who grinned and welcomed me to Egypt. The smiles of everyone in the street, the warmth and passion with which friends argued, gestured, laughed, talked, cried, and watched everything that went on around them. Even though I didn't know them they were connected to me, to eachother, and to others they didn't know. Life, while poorer economically, was lived fuller for its very tenuousness. The food tasted stronger, the colors brighter, the air thicker even if it was with pollution, and I felt a million times more alive. Pain, love, happiness, and sadness were felt more vividly.

Thats what I miss, and moreover it is so different from anything else I have ever felt. When I walk through downtown Minneapolis now I get a wiff of that same feeling. Not as bright, nor vivid, nor passionate as Cairo, but for a split second I feel a bit more alive. And the fact is that despite being surrounded by people I am completely alone. No one is connected here, friendships are not expressed as fully, no one smiles, no one laughs, no one sits and talks just because they can. Here life is about point A and point B, in Egypt life is about the trip between the two. Thats what I miss.

I've been to other ginormous cities. I've walked the midnight streets of Madrid and never found what I found in Cairo. I've walked the midnight streets of Paris and not found what I found in Cairo. I've been to Istanbul and found that people affect the same coldness and individuality of Europe and America, and while in Athens I found the same sense of living life as I found in Egypt, but I could not stand the rudeness; while close to Egyptians in passion the culture was still basically different and offensive in many ways. The Greek were passionate but almost eager in their passion to offend you.

Everyone I have ever met who has been to Egypt returns saying that they had never met a culture so warm and welcoming. Thats what I miss. Smiles, I miss. Laughter, I miss. Being hugged to the bosom, of a matron I had just met, with joyous abandon, I miss. Being handed babies to kiss like a presidential hopeful on campaign, I miss. Listening to the curses and shouts and laughter and arguements of those around me and those in the street, I miss.

Sitting here staring out into an empty street, shuttered houses of people I've lived next to for six years and still never met, knowing that unless I go to the house of friend I will not be greeted with anything but wary aloofness, I feel completely alone. The sense of belonging to a whole, I miss.

And that has nothing to do with not being born in Egypt, and everything to do with finding a home there anyway.

And my pursuit of happyness; sure I am a person who can never be 100% happy in one place and its a curse (?) that I've dealt with for a long time in my life. When I lived in Minnesota I ached to be somewhere else, when I lived in Arizona I love it but missed Minnesota, in Minnesota again I ache for Arizona. When I am in Cairo I am sure I will miss both places at the same time. Do I think I will find some happiness in Cairo? I am certain of it. Do I think I will find the be all and end all of happiness there? I doubt it, but I am open to the possibility. I am a wanderer by nature, I don't know that this will ever change. And I don't find that missing someplace detracts from my enjoyment of being where I am at the moment. In Arizona I found a happiness I could only find in Arizona and I partook of it wholeheartedly, and in Minnesota now I find so much fulfillment in my family and friends and wonderful ummah here even though I miss Cairo and Arizona that my desire to be elsewhere does not keep me from enjoying the beauty I have here.

Everyone is always pursuing happiness but, with the exception of when I first went down to Arizona, I don't believe that a place will ever bring me a peace I can't find where I am. My peace, my home, my happiness exists within me and I carry it wherever I go. And I think I am blessed to have pieces of happiness waiting for me wherever I end up.

That being said Egypt is my home as much as Arizona is my home and Minnesota is my home, and all for very different reasons.

That is, I guess, the nature of my own happyness.

Dialectic Discourses

While searching out new things to read I stumbled quite innocently upon prominent Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz and decided to check out all the books the library had by him. I am very intrigued by his ideas and by his writings. Some of you may know of him, maybe for his incredibly blasphemous story The Children of Gebelawi (أولاد حارتنا/translit: Awlad Haretna) which won him a Nobel prize and put him on top of some extremists' "to kill" lists. He was stabbed in an attempted murder, but he survived. And yes, the story is VERY MUCH anti-religion, but it is also an existentialist work of art.

Here's where I clue you all into my very dialectic personality. For most of my life I've been like two people in one body (blame my Gemini birth sign if you believe in such a thing) but I have always straddled two worlds. This extends even now into being both an American and a Muslim and I would like to think that I, and most other converts, are living proof that these two things are not mutually exclusive, though they can often be quite thoroughly at odds with each other. As for myself I am very religious and I love my religion. But I also am very existentialist and very interested in existentialist discussions/writings. I am a firm believer in true discourse between people of opposing ideas without clashing and without compromising each other's ideals.

So I am reading, at the moment, Adrift on the Nile and I am fascinated by the way Mahfouz's main character Anis contemplates life, existance, and the possibility of people existing in multiple lifetimes at the same time. But there, do you see, is where others of a more conservative persuasion get a bit twisted in the knickers.

Blasphemy, cries my religious self. Art, cries my internal author and existentialist-junkie. That side is the one that accepts all ideas and believes fully in artistic freedom and which cannot fathom condemning some for not following the guide lines of religion. Of course the things Mahfouz's characters do, think, and expound on are truly against Islam. But some (or most) of his writings are pure genius.

Let us look more closely at The Children of Gebelawi. Uff, but it really is against ALL religion (not just Islam) and Mahfouz insults God and all the Prophets in it (Moses, Jesus, and Mohamed.) So how can I call this a work of art? Here is a brief synopsis of the story: Gebelawi has five sons of which he favors Adham (Adam) above the other four Idris (Satan,) Gabal (Moses,) Rifa'a (Jesus,) and Qasim (Mohamed.) Gebelawi's house is basically a very fabulous garden and when Gebelawi informs all his sons that he has chosen Adham to take over the management of the garden, Idris becomes angry and is banished by Gebelawi. He goes on to tempt Adham (through Adham's wife of course,) from outside the gates, to flout his father's wishes and Adham and his wife are soon banished. Time moves along to where only corruption and greed rule the garden until the offspring of each son- beginning with Gabal, then Rifa'a, and then Qasim in sequential order- uprise against the abuse to bring peace for a short time before failing leading to the next offspring uprising. In the end the protagonist Arafa (knowledge in arabic but symbolizing science) comes and kills Gebelawi.

Of course the allegory is obvious, and its statement is obvious. Gebelawi is God and in the end science/knowledge kills God (astughfurlillah.) This is not much different from whatever infamous person declared that God was dead however many years ago (does anyone know who declared that and when?) It is blasphemous, but the way in which it was written and the allegory used and the statement made, if you look at it from a literary perspective, is true artistic genius.

My author half (greedily existentialist) marvels at the story and wants to read it and anything like it, while my religious soul shrinks from even the idea of what is written there.

I believe that things like this can be read and discussed and contemplated while the real difference would be my understanding that while this may be one person's idea of what is true, it certainly is not MY Truth and therefor is not True for me. But this would not keep me from sitting and talking about and learning more on what they believe. This is dialectic discourse.

And so while I continue to wade my way through some of Mahfouz's other works (which I'm sure are written in astounding arabic but are often translated into unweildy english) I will continue with my own dialectic discourse between the two halves of myself.