Being Egyptian

I was sitting with my old friends from college: B and M. We were in
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, one of the many fashionable coffeeshops
dotting Cairo's well-off spots. M was in mid-story.

He was at a scientific conference in Canada and he'd run into our old
colleague, T. T's mother is Russian, his father is Egyptian; his full
name is very Muslim. M approached T to chat; T's name label said he
worked as faculty in one of the US's better universities. M spoke to
T directly in Arabic. To his surprise, T pretended he did not speak a
word of Arabic, had never been to Egypt, and was, apparently, a
Russian-American. M would not stand for it, but T was pleasantly
adamant, so M left.

Later, T is approached by D, a girl who also used to be in the same
circles back in Cairo. T spoke with her in Arabic. Spotting this, M
did not let it slip. He went right back to T, said hello to D, and
now confronted T. How come he could now speak Arabic? Red-faced,
T claimed he suffered from Alzheimer's and tried to pretend like
he suddenly remembered everything.

At this point, both myself and B said in unison: "if he doesn't want
us, we don't want him". We were so angry.

M went on to say that he'd researched T's web page and found that T
had written Egypt out of his CV. T claimed going to schools in
Russia, university in Russia, and to speak only his mother tongue:
Russian. We were just appalled.

B was reminded of when he used to go out dancing in various parts of
the world: his Lebanese friend would call himself Juan or Antonio and
claim to be Cuban. B told us he never hesitated to give his full
Muslim name and say he is Egyptian. And if the girls were not
going to like him, well they can go to hell.

In Egypt, everybody agrees that the country's system of government is
stagnant, that change is needed, that it will take a long time to
come, and a long time to really change things, that everybody's
meanwhile looking after themselves, and that most people
understandably want to go abroad and earn a decent living. But like
the Irish and the Italians who emigrated to the US because they had
to, loyalty to the motherland is beyond dispute.

A taxi driver, a man I have no qualms about describing as simple and
not particularly knowledgeable of world affairs, was telling me about
his Saudi Arabian passenger. The Saudi passenger got a bit lippy
about Egypt: crowded, some people are unscrupulous, disorganised,
etc. The taxi driver told him: "Your country may be wealthy now, but
it was not too long ago when you awaited our largesse. It used to be
that Egypt was the centre of the world, and the day will come again
when it returns there." The Saudi passenger replied: "I hope this day
never comes." The taxi driver pulled over and told him to get out.