The common third culture

On my first visit to the Middle East in 1993, in a rural village near Tanta in Egypt’s north, I saw a framed photograph on a blue-washed wall in a house with well-stamped-down dirt floors. The photo was of a man and a woman on their wedding day. The groom wore a white suit, the bride a meringue-style stark white wedding gown, her hair ornately done.

The photo surprised me – a reaction which, when I considered it later, somewhat perturbed me. What surprised me was that this couple looked no different from any Western bride and groom on their wedding day. And the similarities went beyond their mere physical attire. Both were bursting with pride and happiness, big smiles lighting up their faces. If I were to use this photo and nothing else as my yardstick, I could have been anywhere in the world where love between a man and a woman, if even for a moment, transcends everything else.

Once I had waded through my preconceived notions of how such emotions were infused through cultures alternate to my own, I realized that one such moment was captured inside that photo hanging on the wall. It unnerved me to think how close I had come, while believing myself to be open-minded and impartial, to not even seeing what is such an undeniable natural law.

It was a graceful and unexpected lesson that we are not as dissimilar as we think we are. It is a fact that seems blatantly obvious, yet is hard to appreciate until experienced first hand. And it is something we need to constantly remind ourselves of. Simple and seemingly innocuous assumptions can be completely wrong. Seeing that photo was a gift that made me appreciate that.

When living in a cross-cultural world, you take from the other culture the aspects of it that make sense to you and enrich you, while at the same time dealing with the challenges that arise because of it. Language is one area that both exhilarates and frustrates. Two Arabic examples that touch the tip of the linguistic iceberg are the ubiquitous Asalaam aleykum (peace be with you) that accompanies every situation, every hello, every goodbye. And the customary Aiza haga? (Do you need anything?) that concludes any meeting or telephone conversation with family, friends or even distant acquaintances. When first living in Cairo, these two simple phrases, among many others, made an immediate impression on me, while at the same time highlighting one of the differences between Eastern and Western culture. Why, I wondered, did we not think to do it here? Wishing someone peace or asking if they need anything now seems like such an obvious thing to do, but it is not something we in the West do as a matter of course. Unless, for example, we are invited for a meal at someone’s house, at which point it would be polite to ask if we can bring anything. But it’s generally a cursory offer. Our watered-down - and rather insipid - version would be ‘drive carefully’ or ‘take care’. The fact that these phrases did make such an impression made me realize how insular we have become in the West.

This extends well beyond mere language, which is only one outward manifestation of a trend that has spread to plague-like proportions in the West: the general absence of any real sense of community. Certainly, there are exceptions to this rule, particularly in smaller communities where people tend to interact more. I have lived in a good spread of cities around the world, including Sydney, London, Los Angeles and Cairo. If someone were to ask me what is the common element between the first three places, the answer would be unequivocal: no real sense of community; at least in my experience.

This changes briefly and dramatically in times of crisis, such as a natural disaster, when people come together because they suddenly have something in common that binds them at the hip, if only for a short period of time. I was living in Los Angeles during the earth-shattering (funnily enough) 1994 Northridge earthquake. Immediately after the big shake, just after 4:31 in the morning, all the neighbours stood together in the communal courtyard of the apartment complex, swapping stories and feelings about what had just happened. By 5:30 someone had set up a makeshift coffee urn and had hotdogs and biscuits laid out, and everyone was chatting as though they had been friends for years, even though most of us walked past each other every day barely exchanging more than a polite nod. It was fantastic, and the buzz running through the air was palpable. The feeling of oneness with the neighbours, that we were ‘all in this together’, lasted a few weeks before it fizzled out completely and people got back to ‘normal’. During the six years I lived in L.A., this was the only time I really spoke with most of my neighbours, other than a cursory hello when passing them.

In Western countries, your home is not only your castle, but also your fortress. People are a lot more reluctant to let their guard down and let people in, both figuratively and literally. By and large, life is more measured and considered, from how you behave towards your friends to how you bring up your children. The ‘pop in’, for instance, is not really the done thing. Visits to friends and even family must be organized and scheduled in advance, not made impulsively or with a quick phone call half an hour beforehand.

Of course the pop in is not unheard of, just very out of the ordinary. Because, as a general rule, life in the West is ultra-planned and ultra-structured; days, evenings and weekends mapped out, often weeks in advance, with military precision. The resulting lack of spontaneity seems to have resulted in an insidiously dwindling appreciation for life’s simple pleasures. Somewhere along the way our culture has lost sight of the important things and, in doing so, we have lost something far greater: kinship and a cooperative spirit. Every man, it seems, is an island.

In the Middle East, life is more interactive. You sit on the balcony with a cup of tea and wave to your neighbours. If your car breaks down in the street, people rush to help you push it to the side without being asked. When you bump into a friend in the street who you haven’t seen for a while, chances are they’ll insist you come to their place for coffee immediately, without whipping out their day planner to see when they might be available at some point in the unforeseeable future. Life is lived far more in the moment – not in the future or in relentless preparation for it.

When straddling two cultures, it is often the simplest things from the other culture that make the most sense and seem to be obvious common sense. Such as two children sharing a plate of food and, as a result, learning how to share and consider another person without having to be told in words. Or tying one end of a rope to a basket (sabat), attaching the other end to the balcony, and using the basket to pull groceries up into your flat.

Negotiating the waters of another culture is often a delicate procedure. For example, the Arab hospitality code is so strong that for a foreigner such as me it is best to consume whatever refreshments are offered at a very slow pace. This way you don’t put yourself in a situation where you must decline to accept what is offered - an action which may very well cause offence. During my first visit to a friend’s family home many years ago I learnt, after my third refill, to sip my tea at very irregular intervals and take very small bites of my food.

Perhaps surprisingly, spirituality is one area where I have found a significant overlapping of ideas. The belief that everything is preordained by a higher power is a principle of many faiths, whether they be an organized religion or a looser version of spirituality. Everything is written… Whatever is meant to happen will happen… Everything happens for a reason… Fate… Destiny… They are all versions of the same thing.

In this day and age particularly, it is normal to aspire to certain things in your life and pray (in whatever form) that they will happen, whether it be a house, car, child, job, relationship, holiday or any other multitude of things. Often, people would be willing to sell their soul to have what they desire, and be devastated if they do not get it. If, on the other hand, you believe that what you have desired does not come to you because it is not good for you or will cause something negative in your life, disappointments are much easier to deal with. Knowing, conversely, that if something is good for you, it will come to you if and when the time is right.

People can have approaches as different as chalk and cheese but still end up at the same destination with very similar ways of thinking. As a Westerner, I have learnt a great deal from the Arab culture and I hope that my Arab friends have learnt something from mine. The trick is to consider yourself fortunate enough to be able to take the best attributes from both worlds and incorporate them into your life.