Bridging cultures one-on-one

 

Though I spent only a few hours walking with him among olive groves and peach trees, Osam—the young caretaker of a small farm in Egypt—was one of the first persons I thought of when I returned to the States. Osam probably had little or no appreciation for how his name might affect an American meeting him for the first time, but for me the name immediately imparted a special—albeit contrived or arbitrary—significance to our encounter.  But that coincidence was not the only reason I thought of him again. 

 

When I left him the afternoon we met, Osam had given me a painting he had made of an egret, a generous and touching gift, and for a few moments I could not help but believe that the problems of peoples and nations could be resolved by mutual understanding and willingness to achieve the common goal of peace.  But then at home I read that Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak had spoken of the “unprecedented hatred” of the U.S. in the Arab world.  And then, a few days later, I heard about Abu Ghraib.

 

Osam spoke about as much English as I spoke Arabic, which was a paltry amount, but with hand signals and my already tattered phrase book, we managed quite a lively conversation as he showed me around the farm.  Our dialogue began as almost all of my encounters there began, with my Egyptian counterpart saying  to me, “American?” and then expelling an accented “George Bush” followed by a grimace and a shaking of the head. 

 

Having met Osam near the beginning of my visit, I was not yet accustomed to this opening, and certainly had not yet mastered my response in Arabic.  But I would have been puzzled anyway had it been the end of the trip: Osam was a farmhand in the middle of the desert, far away from any city or any center of learning.  As one who excitedly explained how the generator ran the well-pump that fed the groves of new olive trees—as if the machines were robots that would cook you dinner—what did he care about George Bush, or international politics for that matter? 

 

Yet one of the first things he had said was “George Bush bad.”  After we walked and he invited me into his one-room quarters for tea, his comment became more understandable—I noticed the small television propped precariously and prominently on a large stool against a windowless wall. 

 

Still, what I heard later surprised me.  One of my Egyptian companions told me that Osam had said as we left: “I always hated Americans before.  Now I love them.” 

 

I was surprised, for he had not treated me as if he expected to hate me, even when I told him I was American.  I was in Egypt long enough to be ushered away from a couple of protests by the  omnipresent mix of Egyptian police and military.  In both instances, I was assured that I was not permitted to view these demonstrations “for my own protection,” a phrase that sounded eerily similar to some of the justifications for the Patriot Act here. 

 

Yet however intimidatingly stern those officials were, it had become easy to remember that there are governments and there are people, and the two are not one and the same.  For while in Egypt, I felt an overwhelming sense that I was welcome even if my government was not.  I cannot count how many times a stranger on the street exclaimed “Welcome to Egypt,” even when it was apparent that I was American. 

 

Perhaps most Americans would do the same here if they passed someone who was obviously an Egyptian visitor to America, but I’m not so sure.  I’m also not sure whether that receptiveness would be different now that more and more horrific stories of abuse in American-run prisons are surfacing every day, and now that it has become apparent that the perpetrators were not atypical brutes, but rather part of a system that seems to have implicitly if not explicitly condoned their actions. 

 

All I know is that I still remember Osam when I look at his painting, and I hope that Osam still remembers our walk among the olive and peach trees when he watches his television.