Beauty in poverty

I think of Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. No matter what her parents gave her, it was never enough. She always wanted more; she was always looking for the next thing, the next toy, the next pet, the next ‘high’. She never took even one moment to be grateful for what she had – and she had a lot! Pretty much anything she asked for.

And even though she was an outwardly pretty little girl, she was truly ugly. Insufferably obnoxious, and petulant to the point of being aggressive. All through no fault of her own – I mean, if you’re conditioned to be an ungrateful wretch since birth, there’s little hope of you being anything else.

In an ironic and beautifully synchronous twist, I just read an article about Suri Cruise, who was spotted boarding a helicopter in Jamaica carrying a new $900 designer handbag (just what every 3-year-old needs!), a drop in the ocean of her alleged $3.5 million wardrobe. At the end of the article, the following question is posed and readers are invited to have their say in an online forum: Do you think Suri Cruise is over-indulged by her parents? What a ludicrous question. Is it really necessary to have an online forum to determine something that is blatantly obvious!? The answer is YES!

There is such poverty consciousness in the West. To a ridiculous extent. People living in million-dollar homes, running multiple cars, buying designer clothes and iPhones, who actually think they have to be careful with money. People who think they need to tighten their belts. Here’s an idea: don’t tighten your belts; tighten your expectations. Downsize a little. Take off the mask you’re wearing and stop trying to get stuff just because everyone else has it. Stop trying to be someone you’re not just for the sake of appearances. Nobody really gives a toss anyway. Really. It’s like when you go to a gym class and you worry if your legs look too fat or your bum looks too big: nobody is looking at you! Everybody else is only worrying about how they look!

When I was a child, we lived down the road from the local postman. He only had two children who weren’t, as I recall, any larger than normal. And yet, he built a MANSION to live in. Not a house, not even a large house, but a MANSION. Two stories. Several living rooms. Superfluous bedrooms. It was truly absurd. And for what? All I can think is that someone has to clean that house, and I’m glad it’s not me.

When I think of all this, I see a certain beauty in poverty. And while those who are up to their necks in it would no doubt disagree, there is beauty in poverty because there are fewer masks. Who can be bothered donning a mask when they need to get the next meal on the table? Who has time for pretense when their children are hungry? Who will go to the trouble of wearing a mask if they are truly happy, truly sure of who they are?

When you have no expectations, the simple things mean a lot – and there is a very specific kind of beauty and honesty in that. I’d much rather hang out with Charlie than Veruca.

God is God

Many many years ago, the first time I stepped foot in Cairo, I met someone called Ibrahim. He wore a suit and tie, had a shortly clipped beard and moustache and, with his precise enunciation of every English word, sounded more Indian than Egyptian. He was one of those people who had the ability to talk at length about any subject even if he knew next to nothing about it – a skill that is even more impressive in a language that is not your first. He would speak to anyone for hours on end about any number of things and his English, along with his grooming, was impeccable. On top of that, he was the only local I had met who was not a chain-smoker. He was well travelled, perceptive and had many things to say that were worth hearing.

And then there was his friend Medhat, who was like a roll of sticky tape whose end could never be found. Such a peculiar soul. So many different people rolled into one body.

The day I met Medhat, I had been sitting in Amira Coffee Shop (which no longer exists) deeply engrossed in conversation with Ibrahim who, although I had met him only the day before, already considered himself to be in my inner circle of friends. That’s what it’s like in Egypt… strangers in the morning, close friends by evening.

“Medhat,” said Ibrahim as he introduced us, “can read your palm.” So I shrugged and held out my hand. Medhat called over the waiter and asked for a pen, which he used to scrutinize my hand without having to touch it and possibly cause offence.

More than two hours passed before Medhat dropped his pen and declared he had finished. "You are an open book to me. You think you have secrets, but I see everything. I see thoughts you do not even realize you are having." Okay.

Talking about life and fate and choices, our conversation soon steered towards their religious beliefs. Medhat and Ibrahim wove their words together as though they were one person, finishing each other's sentences with ease, each picking up the other's explanations and elaborating on them.

The cornerstone of their life, they said, is their unquestioned belief in one God. For them this was not just a belief but an undeniable fact. Alternatives were never pondered. "Christians use the word God, Jews use the word Yahveh, Muslims use the word Allah," said Ibrahim. "They are just three different words for the same being."

Just as water is still water whether you call it water, maya, agua, eau or something else. It doesn’t change what it is. Water is water. And God is God.

“God,” said Ibrahim, “is still the same God, no matter what name you use, no matter what religion you follow."

I asked them many questions, and for each one they had a detailed and eloquent answer. “Islam,” Medhat stressed, “is not just a religion. It is a way of life. If you accept that you also accept that Allah controls the fate of the universe and everything in it.”

“So there’s no freedom of choice?” I asked. Maybe this helped explain the general laissez-faire attitude I had seen around me.

“Everything that will happen is already written,” said Ibrahim. “But people are still free to make their own choices.”

This reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend Adora a few days ago, about how difficult it is to marry these two concepts of pre-destiny and free choice together. We came to the conclusion that perhaps it could be that while the destination is already written, the journey you take to get there is your free will and depends on the choices and decisions you make along the way.

Growing up, Islam had always seemed so complicated and inaccessible; a strangely cultish religion that had no point of familiarity for me. Years later, when I met these people, I realized that the source of my impressions had been nothing more than a knowledge gap.

The more they told me, the more I understood the way my new friends lived their lives. When you see Paradise and Hell as tangible places and know to your core that the true rewards come after death, it’s not difficult to forfeit a little in this life. The promise of no earthly limitations for eternity makes any restrictions during the physical years seem a small price to pay. And yet around me I still witnessed a sense of general restlessness and frustration. The belief that fate is decided for you in advance by a force that surrounds you, watches you and, it seems, inhabits your very soul, seemed to often manifest as a lack of purpose and searching for anything else.

But obviously I was seeing them through my eyes - and it made me wonder how I was viewed through theirs.

Strong arms to steady him

“The spirit of a boy is too great for just a family to contain, and his horizons are wider than a family can provide for. By mid-teens, a boy wants to leap into his future – but there must be a place for him to leap to, and strong arms to steady him. This means building community links in order to help boys. In many ways, the women’s movement has dehumanized men, reduced them to stereotypical two-dimensional caricatures. If we want good men for the future, we must start with the boys." (Steve Biddulph, Raising Boys)

Another noteworthy day of dichotomous extremes for me in Cairo yesterday. It started with an interesting conversation with a taxi driver who randomly asked me if I got hassled a lot as a foreign woman in Cairo.

I had to laugh, and told him that this phenomenon is not exclusive to Cairo. Go to any city in the world and you’ll find a carbon copy of the same thing. That I actually feel safer in Cairo than any other city in the world that I’ve lived in or visited.

I told him that yes, sometimes I get hassled, but over the years you develop some sense of how to avoid it, such as wearing dark sunglasses, not catching people’s eye, not being too friendly (how sad is that?), looking like you have a destination to get to. He told me that men like to look at women, that it’s hard not to if they’re right in front of you, that it’s human nature, but that it becomes a problem when it goes beyond an automatic glance when someone or something inadvertently enters your field of vision. And he’s right. It is human nature, and women look at men just as men look at women. Just as one would glance at anything interesting or attractive or unusual that they come across. Unless people walk around with blindfolds on, it’s kind of hard to avoid. But as he said, a look and a leer are two entirely different things.

Later in the day, I took a stroll down the street with my kids to celebrate Egypt’s nail-biting victory in the African Cup. They wanted to wave flags and shout “Masr!” (Egypt) at the top of their lungs. So we bought flags, waved them, felt the excitement, said “mabrook” (congratulations) to a few people and then headed home. Crossing the street, we passed by a group of mostly teenage boys, a few older, and they slapped the kids’ hands happily. It was all fine until one of them grabbed me and I swung around and shouted, but there was no way of knowing which one of them it was. I snatched the kids’ hands and kept walking, with one or two of the group saying to me, “We’re sorry, we’re really sorry” and “Who did that? Who touched her?” I guess in the end it doesn’t matter—it generally only takes one person to brand a group. I got home, incensed, infuriated, ropeable. But appreciative of those who had stood up for me and apologized.

And I thought, That’s going to be my boys. They’re going to be among the ones who protect women and show them respect and know right from wrong. The ones who don’t follow the pack mentality and think that disrespecting any women is okay. Because the people in their lives will make sure of it.

Some fortunate boys learn through osmosis, from being around good men who treat women as they should be treated. Some are just lucky to be born with an ingrained sense of what is right. But either way, boys need to be taught right from wrong when it comes to how to treat people, especially girls and women. Parents, and anyone else who is around boys, need to take every opportunity to reinforce this and bolster boys’ integrity and self-pride so they don’t feel the urge to verbally or physically take their frustrations out on the first unsuspecting female who crosses their path.

Boys the world over have, in many ways, been kind of overlooked. They are often expected to be ‘men’ too early, before they are ready for it, and when they are ready for it, they don’t know how; they are often conditioned to repress their emotions, to hold back their tears when they feel sad. But little boys are just as delicate a creature as little girls, and they need just as much nurturing.

It can be a fine line between growing into a good man and growing into one of the others, and all boys walk this tightrope. There are lots of good men out there, and they are what little boys need as role models and mentors to make sure they become one of the good ones.