Now They Call Me Infidel Read online

  Nasser gradually moved Egypt into the sphere of the Soviet bloc, which was only too happy to cooperate in Egypt’s preparation for its next war with Israel. In exchange for arms, the Soviets were often paid with agricultural products badly needed at home by hungry Egyptians. Very little attention was given to building the infrastructure of our country to meet its rapid population growth. The inevitable happened when the economy of Egypt finally hit bottom. Yet despite the extreme hardships and poverty our society was suffering, the Egyptian media had only one agenda, and that was jihad—to destroy Israel. Rather than take responsibility for their mistakes and ineptitude, Nasser and his circle blamed the Zionists and Western imperialists for all our society’s ills. I remember cartoons depicting the blood-thirsty Jews who wanted to kill Arabs for fun. Under Nasser’s thumb, the Arab news and media outlets turned into propaganda machines of anti-Semitism that worked the citizenry into a frenzy of anger, envy, and paranoia against the West and Israel.

  Even as a child I could not buy into this mentality. I don’t know why. I grew up with anger and struggled for a long time to keep my sanity. My trust of people and sense of security had been shattered as a young child, and it did not heal. Somewhere deep down, I could not accept a culture that was willing to orphan its own children in its obsessive hatred of Jews, that was ready to sacrifice lives and the health of its family structure over a few miles of land. Egyptians acted as though the West Bank and Gaza were taken from them, even though they were never Egyptian land. However, even if I could, I dared not give words to my feelings. But in my mind, as I grew into my teenage years, I continued to question the culture of hatred that snatched away my father for nothing.

  I felt Egypt was just looking for trouble with Israel. It needed an enemy to blame. It treated Israel as it treated its minorities, as it treated its fellaheen, as it treated its orphans and even its own history. On some primal level, I related to Israel. Israel was the object of hatred, fueled by the arrogance of power and petrol dollars of the Arabs. It could do nothing to please this culture, other than cease to exist. Similarly, I felt I could do nothing to be accepted in my own culture if I didn’t hide my feelings and live to please those around me. The only other thing I could do, would be to cease to exist.

  The Soviets were only too happy to stoke the fires of Arab anger at the West. They helped Egypt build the Aswan Dam and behind it Nasser’s new lake. Construction began in 1960 when I was twelve and would not be completed for a decade. All Egyptians were spoon-fed the notion through the media and schools that the dam was Nasser’s greatest achievement. All of Egypt was expected to be very grateful to Nasser for this ambitious project that would supposedly provide all the electricity that Egypt needed to become a top industrial power. This, we were told, would solve most, if not all, of Egypt’s economic and agricultural problems. However, the hoped-for prosperity from building the dam never materialized. Egyptians even today reject the assessments of experts—predicted before the dam was built and sadly borne out by later reality—that the negative ecological results would outweigh the positive. The dam submerged most of southern Egypt’s archeological treasures, except for the collosal and magnificent temple at Abu Simbel, which was saved by the United Nations, not Nasser’s government. The huge surface of the lake allowed a significant part of the Nile’s precious water to evaporate uselessly, while the dam prevented the rich mud, called tamii, from enriching the delta soil. According to some scientists, the Nile Valley’s agricultural productivity subsequently dropped below its previous levels.

  We even began to notice the changes when we vacationed at the Miami beach in Alexandria. The beach was being eroded. The water began reaching the cabins, and the sand area was nearly gone. I was told that was because the Aswan Dam did not allow enough of the tamii into the Mediterranean, thus the sea water had nothing to stop it from expanding onto the beach.

  As Nasser moved closer to the Soviet bloc, he instituted many Soviet-style socialist “reforms.” For one thing, he nationalized all big business, and people became totally dependent on the government for employment, which led to all manner of corruption. Jobs became dependent on who you knew, not what you did. In this climate, productivity in all sectors of industry and business took a nosedive.

  Compounding the economic problems, most of Egypt’s resources were directed to the military and Nasser’s preparation for the next war with Israel. Egyptians started suffering from shortages of food, medications, and many vital goods and services. The government began rationing food products, such as cooking oil, rice, tea, and sugar. I remember craving a cup of tea one day in the winter, and there simply wasn’t any left. I took a taxi to my grandmother’s house, and she brewed me a cup of precious tea. Even wealthy families started feeling the pinch. I remember seeing food lines in front of government-run cooperative markets even though they had very little on their shelves. Egyptians were beginning to spend a great deal of time waiting in line for food.

  Nasser also enforced a harsh new rent control law in 1960. The end result was that people stopped investing in apartment buildings, and a huge shortage in rentals and housing forced many Egyptians to live in horrible conditions with several families sharing one small apartment. The effects of the harsh rent control is still felt today in Egypt. Mistakes like that can last for generations.

  My mother became a victim of that rent control. After my father’s death, she used money from a life insurance policy to build a three-unit apartment building so the rent she collected could subsidize her income and help keep us in private schools. It was the way we survived since the government shahid pension was not enough to send five children to private schools. Each apartment rented for forty Egyptian pounds per month. Nasser’s new rent control law ordered the reduction of rents to a quarter of their previous amount. Furthermore, the rent was not allowed to increase as long as the tenants remained. The law also forbade evictions. Overnight, my mother’s income was reduced from 120 to 30 Egyptian pounds a month, a devastating blow to our family’s finances. I often wondered how my mother could withstand my father’s death and all this injustice—and somehow raise five children. Despite the dark days of her reoccurring depression and the obstacles she had to overcome in a society that does not look kindly on a woman alone, she made it. She kept us in private schools. She kept us fed and clothed. She made sure we had vacations and most of the normal activities and joys of childhood. She would make sure we had access to a college education. She coped heroically amid a society and economy that was falling apart around us.

  She even sent my older sister Soheir to America as an exchange student in 1963, a gutsy thing for any Egyptian mother to do at the time. Soheir was gone for nine long months, and I missed her terribly. But when she came back she had so much to tell us, so much to share. She loved her American family and told how parents leave candy under their children’s pillows when they lose a baby tooth. Soheir came back with Bermuda shorts, T-shirts with writing on them—we’d never seen such a thing before—and records of the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Eartha Kitt, and Johnny Mathis. We loved wearing the shorts and T-shirts, and we played the music all day long. My grandfather—like grandfathers everywhere—didn’t like the Beatles. He frowned, stroked his big, meticulously trimmed mustache, and wondered whatever happened to our generation.

  As I was approaching my last year in high school, St. Clare’s was nationalized, and the government was about to begin enforcing the Egyptian government curriculum. I wanted to quickly get a British high school diploma, called a GCE, so I began attending an English school that offered classes at night. While at that school, we took a field trip to Gaza, one that I will never forget.

  At the time, Gaza was still under Egyptian rule, and many Egyptians poured into the city for shopping because Gaza had more freedom to trade with the outside world than Egypt. Egyptians who could not find necessary goods to buy in Egypt went to Gaza for a shopping spree.

  As we traveled by bus through the desert of the Sinai, I sta
red out the window at the landscape I had not seen since my last train trip eight years earlier. When we approached Gaza, the bus was required to stop at a couple of checkpoints. At the first one, soldiers came on the bus asking to see “the daughter of Mustafa Hafez.” One of the teachers proudly introduced me to them. At the second checkpoint, the same thing happened. When we reached Gaza, I asked the teacher if I could see our old home. The bus drove by slowly but did not stop. The house looked so different and so strange. There were no soldiers around it, guarding it like there used to be.

  In the hotel in the center of the city where we stayed, I was surprised when several visitors came by asking to see me. Somewhat perplexed at the attention, I received them graciously. Many people of Gaza told me that they had my father’s picture proudly displayed in their homes. I discovered there was a city square, a street, and a school named after my father.

  The next day we toured the Mustafa Hafez High School, which still exists today. At an assembly, there was a speech about my father. I wasn’t expecting it. During the speech, as I heard my father’s name spoken, I began to shake uncontrollably and struggled to hold back my tears. They went on and on about their love for him. I was filled with emotions I could barely contain. I had no idea that the people of Gaza still remembered my father, much less loved and appreciated him so much.

  They were talking about a military hero. Someone whose portrait hung in their living rooms. A larger-than-life man. A father—my father—whose memory had begun to fade into the background of my life. Until I was jolted into remembering.

  On the way out of the school, students followed me to ask: “Are you really the daughter of Mustafa Hafez?” One boy asked, “Why are you coming back to this hellhole? Living in Cairo must be much better.”

  I did not answer him. I did not explain to him that living in Cairo was not such a wonderful thing either.

  I left Gaza and never set foot in it again.

  Three

  Living in Two Worlds

  I started college in 1964, at age sixteen, when I became a student at the American University in Cairo (AUC), a small island of American education in the heart of the Egyptian capital. Most of the students were Egyptian, but a considerable number of foreign students—Americans, Europeans, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, and Palestinians—also attended AUC.

  This was yet another phase in my Western education after St. Clare’s. It presented me with a great opportunity to meet students from other countries at a time when many minorities had left Egypt and it was rare to meet non-Egyptians or non-Muslims. I am very grateful to my mother who sacrificed so much to send my siblings and me to such a distinguished university.

  I was very young when I entered the university because I had rushed to get my high school degree in order to avoid the state schools after Nasser nationalized education. I was perhaps a little too young at the time to fully appreciate all that was offered to me as an AUC student. Nevertheless, I saw a window of opportunity to look at things from a new perspective, a Western openness that did not exist in Arab culture. At the American University of Cairo, I found a respect for knowledge and a level of honesty, simplicity, and appreciation of the truth that I found lacking in my society.

  I majored in sociology and anthropology because my anthropology professor, Dr. Cynthia Nelson, was the most interesting of all my teachers. Her classes opened my mind to viewing different cultures and societies in a new light. I observed my teacher’s sensitivity and eagerness to learn about other societies that were less advanced or different from her own. Professor Nelson was equally enthusiastic about her studies of Egyptian society. When a Virgin Mary sighting in a Coptic church in Zeitun, a suburb of Cairo, attracted crowds of people nightly, both Muslim and Coptic, Dr. Nelson visited the church several times to document this phenomenon. I also visited one evening, as the Coptic church was across the street from my grandparents’ house.

  My sociology and anthropology studies at the American University were in sharp contrast to my own culture, which was judgmental and intolerant of non-Muslim countries. I began living in two worlds: the world of American education advocating tolerance, respect, and understanding; and the opposite world outside the campus, a world that blamed all its misfortune and shortcomings on Istemaar, meaning imperialism, and especially our arch-enemy, Israel. All of the Western world—essentially all non-Muslims—were viewed as people interested only in occupation and tricking Arabs. Even buying products from the West was a sign of weakness and shame. Outside the university walls, I lived in Nasser’s Egypt, an Egypt that was saturated with propaganda, misinformation, and hate mongering. The bulk of that hate was focused on one small country—Israel. Hatred of Israel and the Jews has become part of the identity of being an Arab. This hatred was just a reflex, something that no one thought of questioning. We knew nothing about Israel, its society, or the Israeli point of view. Even at the American University, Israel was a taboo topic never to be discussed, probably so as not to upset the Egyptian government. But even though Israel was never discussed in my classes, in my mind I was curious about this country that my culture demonized and blamed for all the world’s problems. I started looking at this hatred of Israel more objectively and from a new paradigm. I looked back at my family tragedy, my father’s assassination because of the jihad against Israel, my mother’s unhappy life, and my brother, who was having to grow up without a father. I loved my younger brother dearly, and I often felt deep sadness for him as I watched him enter his teen years. It is especially hard for a boy to be without his father’s guidance at this time in his life. I too missed my father, his guidance, and his mere existence in our home. What did he die for? Arab hatred of Israel and Jews was destroying so many lives. Why? I started questioning anything and everything said about Israel, with the benefit of my university education, analyzing the hate speech, the racism, and the anti-Semitism. What was wrong in allowing a few million Jews to live among us in peace? Arab land was plenty. They had only a small sliver of land, in some places only thirty kilometers wide. But the hatred and anti-Semitism was frighteningly prevalent in our society.

  At the time I did not know—no one in the Arab world did—that Israel had a history on that small strip of land going back thousands of years. Nor did we comprehend that Jerusalem was the point of origin for two great religions, Judaism and Christianity, religions that had existed long before Islam even began. This was not taught. We were taught that Muhammad was the final prophet and that Islam was the true uncorrupted religion, unlike Judaism and Christianity. We were taught that “Zionists” were foreign infidel invaders bent on taking Muslim land and our destruction, and that they must be destroyed.

  It’s strange, actually, for Egyptians in general did not trust their government or believe their media. Yet, paradoxically, they kept repeating the government and media lies they were fed since they had no other sources of information. It was all they had learned, even though it often made no sense.

  Even misunderstandings and disputes between Arab nations were blamed on a Zionist conspiracy. In his speeches broadcast on the radio, Nasser inflamed the public with his defiance and ridicule of the West. Egypt’s problems were regarded as a result of the evil of the outside world. Egyptians were never told it was their responsibly to solve their own problems. The villain was always an outside force. This scapegoating was true on the national front and it was true on the personal level as well. The concept of taking responsibility for oneself was completely foreign. To admit one’s flaws and errors and to correct and repent challenges a person of any nationality. In Muslim culture, however, it is inconceivable. To acknowledge one’s shortcomings or errors was a sure way to invite severe punishment, shame, and dishonor. In our culture, those who admit fault, even unintentional guilt, are regarded as naive or foolish. Avoiding taking any responsibility has thus become part of the national character. The phrase malish dawaa or wana mali, which means “none of my business,” has become the all-purpose excuse, the ready explanation for not invol
ving oneself in solving problems that might get a person in trouble.

  Nasser’s vision for Egypt and his obsession with the elimination of Israel was initially very popular among the rest of the Arab world as well. He worked to bring everyone on board in his plans to eliminate Israel. He railed against the Istimaar, the colonialists and their agents, the Jews represented by Israel. He saw Jews as the only barrier to the dream of a United Arab Republic that would include all Arabic-speaking countries, and that was why they had to be eliminated. Nasser in fact relentlessly attacked Arab leaders who did not follow his political line. King Hussein of Jordan, who maintained ties to the West, as well as the Saudi kings, were among those Nasser criticized and ridiculed in his speeches. I remember listening to one of his speeches in which he was chanting “taale lommo,” meaning King Hussein was “his mother’s boy” or “like his mother.” In the Arab world, it is a big insult for a man to be like his mother and not like his father.

  In this climate, war to eliminate Israel was the highest priority and became the national goal in and of itself. No other topic was allowed to even get close as a priority—not the economy, education, or political system. Everything was on hold until Israel could be eliminated.

  And so, as I attended classes at the American University, immersing myself in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of other cultures, on the outside where I actually lived the war drums were beating with euphoria. Everything was leading up to war.

  I remember a discussion I had with a young navy officer who was the son of a family friend. He was very excited and happy about the impending war to get rid of Israel. I told him that I did not feel good about this war and that I thought Egypt and the other Arab countries would lose. He laughed at me and assured me that I was wrong.