Kamilla Khabibrakhmanova

Dr. Mehrez

October 31, 2007

A Foreigner in Cairo:

Adjusting to Life in the Big City

"I against my brother, I and my brother against my cousin, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors, all of us against the foreigner". This Bedouin proverb holds true for most of Egypt, not just desert tribes. In the literature of Cairo, one sees the same mentality, where survival depends on the ties you are able to forge with those surrounding you. Most people in Cairo are lucky enough to be born with certain ties already in place, such as family and neighbors. All they have to do is maintain these ties and their reputation. A foreigner who moves to Cairo, however, starts from scratch and must find alternate ways to forge links for safety and survival.

This "foreigner in Cairo" experience is explored through the main characters in two works of Cairo writers: Thieves in Retirement by Hamdi Abu Golayyel and “The Siren” by Yusuf Idris. The two main characters are very different: one is a new bride, her head filled with stories of the wonders of Cairo, following her husband as he moves from the village to the city ; the other is a poor Bedouin who leaves his wife and tribe behind to try to provide himself with a better life. Despite their different expectations and experiences, the two characters end up taking very similar steps in their process of adaptation and assimilation into the culture of Cairo.

As in most countries, the rift between villagers and city dwellers in Egypt is great. Villagers have their image of sophisticated, cultured individuals living a life of beauty and ease in the exciting cosmopolitan. What they do not realize is that all Cairo consists of “two distinct physical communities”, “a manifestation of the cultural cleavage” (Abu-Lughod 230). They imagine the rich, European section in Cairo, when in reality those who move there end up in the poorer, “Egyptian” half. When Fathiyya marries Hamid in order to move to Cairo, she dreams of the city whose “splendour and luxury peeled away the deposits left by squalor and abuse and transformed those who lived there into men and women of class”(Idris 104). Her very first impression does nothing to disprove these hopes-she is amazed by the lights, the noise, the number of people outside, the mere spectacle of which makes it seems “as if it were a saint’s day or feast” (106). However, by the second day she realizes that her initial reaction was a bit naïve, in fact Cairo is filled with people “properly poor, and hungry, and beggars; even in their village itself poverty did not exist in such extremes of ugliness” (106). Instead of beginning to resemble a European, “Fathiyya, beautiful in their [her] village, appeared strange in Cairo” (105). Before she can come closer to the Cairo of her imagination, Fathiyya has to learn to adjust to the reality of the city.

Fathiyya’s first reaction after she sees the real Cairo is to draw back in fear. Her withdrawal sounds exactly like that of an animal being plopped into a strange, hostile environment: she “shrinks back” behind the half-open door to their room and observes Cairo from a safe distance. As the city flows by, she is stuck inside, thanks to “chains of her own making” (108). Little by little, Fathiyya is able to unlock the world around her until the entire street is open to her. She quickly learns the importance of information about other tenants-or gossip-in this new place. Her position in this respect is powerful-as the wife of the doorman, she witnesses the entire flow of the building, and can accumulate more information on the tenants than anyone else. She soon begins to take advantage of this, and notices “the scandals and intrigues that took place constantly beneath the respectable affluent surface” (108). As she accumulates more of these secrets and intrigues, she becomes an integral part of the community. The inhabitants start to depend on her as a source of information and, at the same time, realize she has a certain amount of power over them because of what she knows about every one of them.

But Fathiyya is still not really part of the bustle of city life. Instead of swimming in the sea, she is stuck at the edges, either on the surface or on the bottom. When she tries to join Cairo life, she decides that the secret “must lie in learning how to float” (110). So she beginnings floating, letting life take her wherever those surrounding her direct the current. When she encounters an element of sin in her path in the form of the “Man in the Suit”, instead of plunging into the sea itself, she simply sinks to the bottom. She becomes a creature of the world below, until she resembles more a “snail than a human being” (113). The layout of the building itself symbolizes part of this, as she lives at the very bottom, and can only watch as people pass by on their way to the homes above. She is still afraid, and draws back from the “treacherous sirens calling to her, smoothing the way for her to plunge in” (108-109).

In order to become a living part of the city, Fathiyya must accept all the realities of Cairo, including the slimy, sinful ones. The sinful aspect presents itself in the form of the “Man in the Suit”. He sees himself as a liberating force: “There was no cure for her introversion, for her fear of him and of Cairo and the people there; but perhaps if he went to her, and had her, then she would stop hiding away, and learn to associate with her fellows in the city” (Idris 112). Fathiyya, deep down, desires to become a true part of the city-after all that is why she married Hamid and left the village. However, this fear of the sinful city keeps her from embracing Cairo in its entirety. She spends so much of her energy on fighting these two opposing forces, that when the “hyena” finally enters her room, she is too weak to resist. In the middle of the ensuing scene, she recognizes that she is about to be freed: “She had often dreamt about this smile, as she had dreamt of the outstretched hands inviting her gently but insistently to leave the safety of land and plunge in and sink down to the shadows and slime” (119). Immediately after the act, she is finally part of the Cairo she has dreamt of: “Smooth handsome faces, elegant clothes swam before her eyes, perfumes that aroused and lulled her…” (120).

The rape scene also transforms the relationship dynamic between Fathiyya and her husband. He has been slowly being feminized by the city, because as a doorman he simply acts on the building inhabitant’s wishes. He is unable to muster the strength to kill his wife after her betrayal and when she tries to speak she realizes she has become too powerful for him: “…when she opened her mouth to plead, a shout like the roar of an angry lion rose up, and she was transfixed where she lay” (121). Fathiyya realizes that she is too strong to simply succumb to the will of her husband and return to the village. So she decides to slip away from him “back into Cairo of her own free will this time, not in response to any siren’s call” (122). Her newfound strength and freedom will now allow her to create the Cairo experience she has been envisioning all along.

The expectations of the Bedouin narrator in “Thieves of Retirement” are a little more realistic as he enters the city. He arrives knowing very well that he will just be a construction laborer, but he is very proud of the “splendid-looking successes” he creates (Golayyel 55). Instead of being disillusioned himself, he creates disillusionment by making his situation seem much more impressive to the members of his tribe. He admits that this is the only reason he is looking to rent his own place: “I had been so fixated on improving my life, once I was on the city, having left the Bedouin settlements truly behind, that I had lied about a few things, especially my material circumstances. So it would have been inconceivable for them to imagine I would live in such a rundown place.” (56). The narrator cannot admit that his flight from the tribe and family resulted in material circumstances not much better than he had enjoyed before. Instead, he continues the myth perpetuated by generations before him: that moving to the city is a magical transformation that makes people happier, wealthier, and better off.

Unlike Fathiyya, the Bedouin narrator does not crouch back in fear when he recognizes his new surroundings. He immediately accepts the existence of sin and learns to use it for his own benefit. When forced into a sexual encounter with Sayf, he doesn’t draw away in fear. Instead, he uses the definite information he has gained about Sayf’s orientation: he now possesses yet another secret that will help him become a part of the “family” of his building.

The building the narrator decides to inhabit is presented like a piece of wilderness: “The façade was green and marked out by ornamental squares of a more intense green. The strategic zone had been sprinkled down, and against the wall was tipped a chair befitting a fairly commanding backside. From above the door stared the head of a wild animal, its mouth open in a savage grin, its teeth so sharp you couldn’t but feel that the blood still ran streaming through its veins” (Golayyel 57). In such an environment, the main goal is to survive, and protection is bought in the form of secrets. The narrator quickly begins accumulating these, giving his prey a false sense of trust and warmth as he quietly pries valuable information from them. The right story can mean expulsion from the “jungle”, as is shown in the example of Shaykh Hasan, who confesses to sleeping with his mother-in-law and is expelled from the building. “…Every household knew exactly how far the secrets of every other household went and kept them carefully under wraps. No one had the slightest tolerance for a stranger entering their midst to create scandal in this way” (48).

The only way to enter the building is to fulfill two conditions: the person must be from the Said, and he or she must have some affliction, “which category could include a woeful mistake that person might have happened to make” (50). This insures that the owner of the building, Abu Gamal, always starts out ahead of his residents: he knows their secret before they even move in. With the narrator, the “affliction” that afforded him entry was not that great: “he [Abu Gamal] had diddled with the rental contract with my [his] apartment in a way that made it very easy to throw me [him] out” (50-51). The narrator knows he must tread very carefully if he wants to stay in the building. He safeguards his space from thieves by using an “electric wiring scheme” (76). The narrator admits that he is not looking to catch an everyda burglars, but rather a true thief: “a conceptual thinker, a true intellectual, indeed a genius of a thief whose only motive is the pure pleasure of setting in motion and seeing through his shrewd schemes which require efforts far beyond the value of whatever it is he is bent on receiving” (76). This stress of intellect suggests that perhaps it is not his physical possessions that the narrator is worried about. Rather, he is worried that someone will steal his secrets, just as he has been stealing those of the other dwellers.

In the end, Amer is killed by the security wiring that the narrator had installed. The narrator comes out victorious in the environment of the building: his valuables are protected and Abu Gamal can no longer easily kick him out, since, as he points out, “it would be shameful for him to throw me [him] out of the building” (126). At this point, the narrator knows too much about the residents, while Abu Gamal knows too little and now has no power over him. Whether Abu Gamal likes it or not, the Bedouin narrator has become a member of the family, a replacement for the son who has just died.

Fathiyya and the Bedouin move to Cairo in hopes of a better life, but soon realize that there is a cost for all the wonders the city may have to offer. They cannot partake in the full life of the city until they can accept the sinful, dirty aspect of cosmopolitan life. Once accepted, they are able to use this sin to their advantage. For no one in Cairo wishes to expose the sinful part of themselves. Instead, they will do anything to contain these secrets within their building, even if this means accepting a stranger into their family.