Some Impressions of Egypt and Jordan
I did promise to blog about Kendell's and my trip to Egypt and Jordan, so here are some impressions of what we saw:
Egypt looked and felt a lot like India: the unrelenting crowds, the anarchical traffic (no traffic lights and people ignoring the lanes painted on the asphalt), the pollution, the poverty, the livestock in the streets (no sacred cows in Egypt, but plenty of zebaleen with their carts pulled by donkeys and horses), the ubiquity of motorcycles and scooters, the women in long robes, the auto-rickshaws, the trucks decorated with hand-painted psychedelic designs of a thousand colors.
Jordan, on the other hand, felt like what a Nordic country would be like if it happened to be located in the Middle East and populated with Arabs. By which I mean, it was clean and orderly, with abundant traffic lights and drivers actually staying in their lanes. The Jordanian dinar was stronger than the dollar -- it was on par with the euro or the British pound. The souvenir sellers were not as desperate to get tourists' attention as they were in Egypt.
Both countries had a strong cult of the state. When we toured an Egyptian elementary school in Aswan, we found photos of Mubarak and his wife taped up in nearly every classroom. And in Jordan there was no escaping all the posters showing King Abdallah II in every conceivable sort of costume: Bedouin robes, white naval dress uniform, green camouflage fatigues, Western business suit, etc. We even saw music videos showing him on an official inspection tour of hospital facilities and of military units.
Speaking of music videos, they were playing on the TVs of every public place we went in either country. The music definitely had a modern feel to it -- synthesizers and vocals with attitude -- but the rhythms and melodies were all distinctly Middle Eastern. It was great to see that the Arabs haven't just adopted Western music styles wholesale and thrown away their own styles.
And before you say, "Well of course they kept their own music styles, Brad, they're not exactly in love with the USA", I should point out that all the songstresses in these videos were dressed with Western abandon. No veils or abayas for these houris: they were in tank tops and mini-skirts, with their long tresses being tossed about by off-camera fans. There were even plenty of videos where a young man and woman sang their duets while grinding away provocatively. I can't recall if we saw any videos in which there was any kissing, though.
Speaking of kissing, I was surprised to see in both countries that men who knew each other would greet each other with air kisses on both cheeks. Sometimes they even walked hand in hand down the street (a thing I've seen in India, too). Kind of a paradox: can Arab men really be less homophobic than American men??
Getting back to music videos and women, if you only watched those videos, you'd think all Arab women dressed like they were going to a nightclub. But we hardly ever saw any women who weren't in several layers of clothing and head-scarves or veils. Any women without head-coverings were more likely to be Christian.
Some days, though, it felt like we just didn't see any women at all, like they were all home in purdah.
Occasionally we saw women who were so heavily covered up that the eye-slit of their veils even had a small piece of fabric to cover the bridge of their nose. And some women even wore a gauzy layer of fabric under this eye-slit. Often they wore gloves, too. All this in hundred-degree temperatures!
It was funny to see mannequins in women's clothing stores wearing short dresses. It would have been more accurate for those mannequins to be wearing jeans under their dresses, as the one always went with the other in practice. (Only young women, of course, wore such outfits.)
It was also strange to see how damn many lingerie stores there were in the malls -- three or four per floor. There were also plenty of "Islamic clothing" stores as well, naturally.
As far as men's clothing goes, I was surprised to see how many men wore the traditional galabiyya (a long robe). It did seem more common for the upper classes to wear Western dress; but still, there were so many more Arab men wearing their traditional garb than, say, in India.
(A final note: it was interesting to learn that Lower Egyptians pronounce the word as "galabiyya", whereas Upper Egyptians pronounce it as "jalabiyya". I've never heard of dialects exchanging the "g" and "j" sounds before.)
Egypt looked and felt a lot like India: the unrelenting crowds, the anarchical traffic (no traffic lights and people ignoring the lanes painted on the asphalt), the pollution, the poverty, the livestock in the streets (no sacred cows in Egypt, but plenty of zebaleen with their carts pulled by donkeys and horses), the ubiquity of motorcycles and scooters, the women in long robes, the auto-rickshaws, the trucks decorated with hand-painted psychedelic designs of a thousand colors.
Jordan, on the other hand, felt like what a Nordic country would be like if it happened to be located in the Middle East and populated with Arabs. By which I mean, it was clean and orderly, with abundant traffic lights and drivers actually staying in their lanes. The Jordanian dinar was stronger than the dollar -- it was on par with the euro or the British pound. The souvenir sellers were not as desperate to get tourists' attention as they were in Egypt.
Both countries had a strong cult of the state. When we toured an Egyptian elementary school in Aswan, we found photos of Mubarak and his wife taped up in nearly every classroom. And in Jordan there was no escaping all the posters showing King Abdallah II in every conceivable sort of costume: Bedouin robes, white naval dress uniform, green camouflage fatigues, Western business suit, etc. We even saw music videos showing him on an official inspection tour of hospital facilities and of military units.
Speaking of music videos, they were playing on the TVs of every public place we went in either country. The music definitely had a modern feel to it -- synthesizers and vocals with attitude -- but the rhythms and melodies were all distinctly Middle Eastern. It was great to see that the Arabs haven't just adopted Western music styles wholesale and thrown away their own styles.
And before you say, "Well of course they kept their own music styles, Brad, they're not exactly in love with the USA", I should point out that all the songstresses in these videos were dressed with Western abandon. No veils or abayas for these houris: they were in tank tops and mini-skirts, with their long tresses being tossed about by off-camera fans. There were even plenty of videos where a young man and woman sang their duets while grinding away provocatively. I can't recall if we saw any videos in which there was any kissing, though.
Speaking of kissing, I was surprised to see in both countries that men who knew each other would greet each other with air kisses on both cheeks. Sometimes they even walked hand in hand down the street (a thing I've seen in India, too). Kind of a paradox: can Arab men really be less homophobic than American men??
Getting back to music videos and women, if you only watched those videos, you'd think all Arab women dressed like they were going to a nightclub. But we hardly ever saw any women who weren't in several layers of clothing and head-scarves or veils. Any women without head-coverings were more likely to be Christian.
Some days, though, it felt like we just didn't see any women at all, like they were all home in purdah.
Occasionally we saw women who were so heavily covered up that the eye-slit of their veils even had a small piece of fabric to cover the bridge of their nose. And some women even wore a gauzy layer of fabric under this eye-slit. Often they wore gloves, too. All this in hundred-degree temperatures!
It was funny to see mannequins in women's clothing stores wearing short dresses. It would have been more accurate for those mannequins to be wearing jeans under their dresses, as the one always went with the other in practice. (Only young women, of course, wore such outfits.)
It was also strange to see how damn many lingerie stores there were in the malls -- three or four per floor. There were also plenty of "Islamic clothing" stores as well, naturally.
As far as men's clothing goes, I was surprised to see how many men wore the traditional galabiyya (a long robe). It did seem more common for the upper classes to wear Western dress; but still, there were so many more Arab men wearing their traditional garb than, say, in India.
(A final note: it was interesting to learn that Lower Egyptians pronounce the word as "galabiyya", whereas Upper Egyptians pronounce it as "jalabiyya". I've never heard of dialects exchanging the "g" and "j" sounds before.)