Coming Home..
‘Coming home…’
Flying from Chicago back home to Cairo is always exhausting. However a few hours in Heathrow airport always manages to rejuvenate me.
London’s airport is ideal for frivolous spenders and is home to overly-ostentatious boutique stores and my all-time favorite Caviar House. Perfect! I made excellent use of my 6 hour transit and boarded the flight just in time.
My flight from London was smooth and for once, just a little interesting to say the least. I got seated in aisle as requested next to a middle-aged man from Ismaliya and a young Asian woman. The man from Ismaliya had the window seat so I was naturally more inclined to speak with my next door neighbor.
As I started to flick through British Airways’ in-flight magazine, I couldn’t help but overhear the Asian woman explaining to the man next to her that he needed to switch off his cell phone as the plane was about to depart. I felt obliged to interfere as the man’s English was mediocre and the woman was growing impatient.
The man was taken aback as I interrupted the conversation. After I told him that she was informing him to switch off his phone, he immediately asked me, are you Egyptian? With a gentle chuckle, I told him that yes I was – born, raised and bred. He was surprised since in his opinion, I looked ‘foreign.’ This didn’t come as a surprise to me. The majority of people I meet would never think that I am Arab. I briefly explained that I obtained my fair features from my father’s Palestinian/Jordanian side of the family. After our brief exchange, I decided to take a nap.
An hour later, I was woken up by the Asian woman next to me. She wanted to inform me that dinner was being served. I started to speak with her. She was a Biology PhD student at Oxford.
‘So…what brings you to Cairo?’ I asked her curiously. I was surprised to see many foreigners on the flight in light of the recent Taba and Sharm El Sheikh bombings over the last years. ‘Well, my parents just moved there and I am going to visit them!’ she responded enthusiastically. ‘Ideal target,’ I murmured to myself, I always felt a need to promote Egypt and what it offers.
My sense of nationalism had grown exponentially over the last 4 years. I was not attracted to the WASPian mid-Western culture that the city of Chicago offered at heart. Drinking copious amounts of beer and watching the Super-bowl did not appeal to me. Instead, my years at the University of Chicago made me realize that I was an adamant Egyptian/Palestinian who was urgently concerned with Egypt’s future and the viability of a Palestinian-Israeli road-map to peace.
It had been a little over a year since I had been home. As the plane started to descend, I felt very emotional. I had only two weeks before I had to return to the US.
Despite my prolonged and continual absence from Egypt, I still consider myself a social butterfly in Cairo’s ‘glamorous’ night-life scene. Thus, I was excited to re-discover, to follow the trend-setters and find out what is making the city tick during the last weeks of 2005.
Flying from Chicago back home to Cairo is always exhausting. However a few hours in Heathrow airport always manages to rejuvenate me.
London’s airport is ideal for frivolous spenders and is home to overly-ostentatious boutique stores and my all-time favorite Caviar House. Perfect! I made excellent use of my 6 hour transit and boarded the flight just in time.
My flight from London was smooth and for once, just a little interesting to say the least. I got seated in aisle as requested next to a middle-aged man from Ismaliya and a young Asian woman. The man from Ismaliya had the window seat so I was naturally more inclined to speak with my next door neighbor.
As I started to flick through British Airways’ in-flight magazine, I couldn’t help but overhear the Asian woman explaining to the man next to her that he needed to switch off his cell phone as the plane was about to depart. I felt obliged to interfere as the man’s English was mediocre and the woman was growing impatient.
The man was taken aback as I interrupted the conversation. After I told him that she was informing him to switch off his phone, he immediately asked me, are you Egyptian? With a gentle chuckle, I told him that yes I was – born, raised and bred. He was surprised since in his opinion, I looked ‘foreign.’ This didn’t come as a surprise to me. The majority of people I meet would never think that I am Arab. I briefly explained that I obtained my fair features from my father’s Palestinian/Jordanian side of the family. After our brief exchange, I decided to take a nap.
An hour later, I was woken up by the Asian woman next to me. She wanted to inform me that dinner was being served. I started to speak with her. She was a Biology PhD student at Oxford.
‘So…what brings you to Cairo?’ I asked her curiously. I was surprised to see many foreigners on the flight in light of the recent Taba and Sharm El Sheikh bombings over the last years. ‘Well, my parents just moved there and I am going to visit them!’ she responded enthusiastically. ‘Ideal target,’ I murmured to myself, I always felt a need to promote Egypt and what it offers.
My sense of nationalism had grown exponentially over the last 4 years. I was not attracted to the WASPian mid-Western culture that the city of Chicago offered at heart. Drinking copious amounts of beer and watching the Super-bowl did not appeal to me. Instead, my years at the University of Chicago made me realize that I was an adamant Egyptian/Palestinian who was urgently concerned with Egypt’s future and the viability of a Palestinian-Israeli road-map to peace.
It had been a little over a year since I had been home. As the plane started to descend, I felt very emotional. I had only two weeks before I had to return to the US.
Despite my prolonged and continual absence from Egypt, I still consider myself a social butterfly in Cairo’s ‘glamorous’ night-life scene. Thus, I was excited to re-discover, to follow the trend-setters and find out what is making the city tick during the last weeks of 2005.
posted by The Egyptian Observer at 2:43 PM
1 Comments:
Remember the time we were walking near the bazaar and these kids began talking about your hair and saying we must be Italians. All it took to reign in their comments was for you to simply say, "As-salamu alykum."
Your Oxford PhD companion seems a bit officious. I guess I've forgotten the ways of the West where everyone is overly concerned with the rules and believes the safety hype. In Lebanon, anything goes. Everyone keeps their mobiles on (which is not, in fact, dangerous). Everyone jumps out of their seats as the plane is still taxiing to the gate. No one wears their seat belts in cars, and everyone smokes in elevators.
I was surprised to see that there are "No Smoking" sections all over the place in Iraqi Kurdistan. Unlike Lebanon, in Iraqi Kurdistan there actually are places where you cannot smoke. I've never seen anyone ever get asked to stop smoking in Lebanon. No smoking hotel rooms here are just smoking rooms with the ashtrays removed.
Egypt has a much better tourist infrastructure and appeals to Westerners. In Lebanon, we only care about the khaliji. Asians are routinely asked if they are Filipina and treated like housemaids.
It must feel pretty odd hearing Egypt made out to be more civil than Lebanon (note that I did not say civilized - there is a distinction).
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