Bridging Cultures One-on-one
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Though I spent only a few hours walking with him among olive groves and peach trees, Osam—the
young caretaker of a small farm in Egypt—was one of the first persons I thought of when I returned
to the States. Osam probably had little or no appreciation for how his name might affect an
American meeting him for the first time, but for me the name immediately imparted a special—
albeit contrived or arbitrary—significance to our encounter. But that coincidence was not the only
reason I thought of him again.
When I left him the afternoon we met, Osam had given me a painting he had made of an egret, a
generous and touching gift, and for a few moments I could not help but believe that the problems of
peoples and nations could be resolved by mutual understanding and willingness to achieve the
common goal of peace. But then at home I read that Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak had spoken of
the “unprecedented hatred” of the U.S. in the Arab world. And then, a few days later, I heard about
Abu Ghraib.
Osam spoke about as much English as I spoke Arabic, which was a paltry amount, but with hand
signals and my already tattered phrase book, we managed quite a lively conversation as he showed
me around the farm. Our dialogue began as almost all of my encounters there began, with my
Egyptian counterpart saying to me, “American?” and then expelling an accented “George Bush”
followed by a grimace and a shaking of the head.
Having met Osam near the beginning of my visit, I was not yet accustomed to this opening, and
certainly had not yet mastered my response in Arabic. But I would have been puzzled anyway had
it been the end of the trip: Osam was a farmhand in the middle of the desert, far away from any city
or any center of learning. As one who excitedly explained how the generator ran the well-pump
that fed the groves of new olive trees—as if the machines were robots that would cook you dinner—
what did he care about George Bush, or international politics for that matter?
Yet one of the first things he had said was “George Bush bad.” After we walked and he invited me
into his one-room quarters for tea, his comment became more understandable—I noticed the small
television propped precariously and prominently on a large stool against a windowless wall.
Still, what I heard later surprised me. One of my Egyptian companions told me that Osam had said
as we left: “I always hated Americans before. Now I love them.”
I was surprised, for he had not treated me as if he expected to hate me, even when I told him I was
American. I was in Egypt long enough to be ushered away from a couple of protests by the
omnipresent mix of Egyptian police and military. In both instances, I was assured that I was not
permitted to view these demonstrations “for my own protection,” a phrase that sounded eerily
similar to some of the justifications for the Patriot Act here.
Yet however intimidatingly stern those officials were, it had become easy to remember that there
are governments and there are people, and the two are not one and the same. For while in Egypt, I
felt an overwhelming sense that I was welcome even if my government was not. I cannot count
how many times a stranger on the street exclaimed “Welcome to Egypt,” even when it was
apparent that I was American.
Perhaps most Americans would do the same here if they passed someone who was obviously an
Egyptian visitor to America, but I’m not so sure. I’m also not sure whether that receptiveness
would be different now that more and more horrific stories of abuse in American-run prisons are
surfacing every day, and now that it has become apparent that the perpetrators were not atypical
brutes, but rather part of a system that seems to have implicitly if not explicitly condoned their
actions.
All I know is that I still remember Osam when I look at his painting, and I hope that Osam still
remembers our walk among the olive and peach trees when he watches his television.