First Person

Greetings From Cairo

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By Daniel Kowalsky

In case any of you were wondering, yes, I really did move to Egypt to stay in academe. As you know from my last piece, I had almost no idea what to expect as I prepared to take up this teaching position in Cairo. The only thing I knew for certain was that it would be hot. Indeed, I anticipated almost interstellar temperatures. Otherwise, I was the neophyte Arabist par excellence.

Most of what I vaguely expected to find here was based on the most hyperbolic, outdated, or misinformed warnings of people who had never stepped foot in the region. While there is no point in recounting these in any detail, they generally involved lame jokes about the quality of the drinking water.

But what do you expect? I am a modern Iberian historian whose subfield is Soviet-Spanish relations in the 1930s. And though I've done some tramping around the non-Western world, it was in the Latin tropics, not the Near East or North Africa.

And so I had no realistic sense of what the life of an expat university professor in a Muslim country would be like. At the very least, I was expecting a rough transition, and braced myself for material privation, an inhospitable climate, and a string of physical afflictions prefaced with the word projectile. But, here I am. I survived the first month. Let me tell you what the transition has been like.

On the evening of August 1, I arrived at Cairo's sweltering international airport, where I was fetched by the university's meet-and-great team. Stepping off the plane, I immediately spied a large, neatly lettered sign bearing my name. At that moment, I was briefly transported back a decade to my failed year in New York City, when I was forced to take a low-paying job picking up VIP travelers at Kennedy Airport. In truth, my ego has never fully recovered from that episode, and here in Cairo I found myself a little confused, not sure which side of the sign I was supposed stand on. For an instant I seriously doubted that the 'Dr. Daniel Kowalsky' on this placard was intended for me. Could there possibly have been another Daniel Kowalsky on the plane, I wondered? Perhaps a real doctor, a malaria specialist? I slowed my pace and stepped to the side, not wanting to block the path of this important man.

Get over it, I hissed to myself, finally approaching the greeter and extending my hand.

"I am Mr. Abdel," he announced, embracing me warmly. "Welcome to Egypt, Doctor Daniel! I will stay with you from this moment until you are at the door of your new flat."

The arrival hall was crowded and noisy, the air hot and stale. We had no choice but to move from one customs line to another. Abdel handled everything with remarkably good cheer, joking with the passport officials, the tourist police, and the baggage handlers. Before I knew what had happened, I was riding shotgun in a late-model, air-conditioned sedan as we raced through the desert toward the largest city in Africa.

"This is Cairo!" bellowed Abdel from the backseat. "And this is your resettling allowance." A fat wad of Egyptian pounds landed in my lap. I was still absorbing this windfall, trying to remember if money had ever dropped into my lap before, when suddenly the traffic picked up. We seemed to have merged into a four-lane road packed with eight rows of cars and buses.

In the next hour, I would witness every truism of Egyptian traffic: trucks loaded 40 feet high with chicken hutches, swaying precariously above our car; buses crammed so tight with human beings that from a distance it is almost impossible to tell what their cargo is; little kids on bikes, laughing nonsensically while riding the wrong way, coming directly at us on the crowded thoroughfare; and of course, swarms of people descending on our car whenever we slow below 20 mph, attempting to sell us tissues, bread, candy, newspapers, or, most often -- and improbably -- a car wash.

Then we were crossing the Nile, heading into my new neighborhood, the island enclave of Zamalek. This is considered the cosmopolitan section of town. It is one of the few areas near the city center where you can find a wide assortment of international restaurants, Western-style grocery stores, places to buy baguettes and croissants, even singles bars. The island is also the diplomatic heart of Cairo, and I will end up sharing a street with the embassies of China, Croatia, and Bangladesh. Naturally, the area is also very secure. As you drive into Zamalek you quickly feel a stronger military presence, with soldiers in full dress posted on every block.

In short order, we reached my building. Abdel said goodbye and handed me off to the head of the university housing department. Even though the sun had set hours ago, the air was still oppressively muggy, and my clothes immediately began sticking to my skin. We moved through the steaming open doorway of the building, boarded an even hotter elevator, and headed up to the fourth floor. We stepped into a dark, muggy hallway.

Now came the moment of truth. I was still not sure how this was going to play out. My handler turned the key, pushed open the door, and I was greeted by a blast of cool, dry air. In I walked -- into my new Cairo digs, into the most stunning, air-conditioned apartment I had ever seen. My new address was a six-room, recently-renovated, freshly painted neo-colonial apartment, fully loaded with period furniture, Persian carpets, new appliances, high ceilings, and a pair of private balconies. On closer inspection I found two bedrooms, two baths, a foyer, a den, a casual living room, and a formal dining room resplendent with a 10-foot-long wooden table on which some considerate person had placed an enormous bouquet of fresh flowers.

"Will this be adequate, Doctor Daniel?" my host asked with a smirk, knowing full well that he was showing me a very swell flat.

I was speechless, and could muster only a muted if emphatic, "But it's -- it's a palace!"

"No Doctor," he replied, putting on a poker face. "Come with me." He led me out onto the balcony and pointed across the street to an ornate villa, festooned with arabesque spires and surrounded by palm trees. "That," he corrected, breaking into an enormous grin, "is a palace." We shared a spontaneous laugh and then he departed, leaving me alone in my new Egyptian flat.

Following that heady introduction, I explored much of the city on my own, picked up some survival Arabic, learned how to barter for vegetables in the market, and how to negotiate the city's famously treacherous streets. I visited the major antiquities, the Egyptian museum and the better-known mosques. I was introduced to scores of new colleagues, the university staff, and the few undergraduates who had already returned from summer break. On campus, I learned to my surprise that the students here would be calling me "Doctor Daniel." True, this merely conforms to the Arab academic custom of using a single name, but to my ear it is a wonderful mix of familiarity and respect.

Having looked around the place a bit, and settled into my accommodations, you might wonder how my now informed impressions have cleared up any earlier confusion. Let me start by saying this: in general, on campus or in town, everyone I've encountered has been enormously, almost heart-breakingly, generous, kind and patient. I have experienced not a shred of anti-American or anti-Jewish hostility, and let me point out that I am not bashful about declaring where I'm from or to which of the three monotheist religions I belong. True, there is the heat and humidity, but Cairo is actually far milder than the place I lived last summer: St. Louis, Mo. Oh, and I've been eating everything in sight and am yet to get sick, so there!

Looking back, it seems very odd that, before my arrival, it did not occur to me that I was moving to what now seems to be the most extraordinary place in the world. Of course, I did read up on Egypt, and I went through a lengthy interview process with people who had extensive experience in the country. Still, nothing quite prepared me for the visuals, the smells, and the sounds of Cairo; the donkey carts, mango stands, or sunset glimpses of the silhouetted pyramids.

If I have any lingering second thoughts, it's because my new lifestyle here is paradoxical on any number of levels. To begin, there can be no doubt that I live better than 95 percent of the people in Egypt, the percentage somewhat higher if we were to consider all of Africa. I have ambivalent feelings about this, and they extend beyond the typical white man's guilt. I consider myself largely defined by my strapped upbringing. Remember, in my boyhood home, milk didn't come from the farm or cow or even the fridge; it was a powdery substance that you mixed with tap water and then drank; a free lunch was never a metaphor, it was a federal program that fed me and my siblings at school. My parents, as you might well imagine, were at the heart of the '70s counterculture and by any measure, economic underachievers. They instilled in me a contempt for conspicuous displays of wealth that to this day has stayed with me perhaps more than any other lesson.

Simply put, my ideological background stands in stark contrast to the way I am living in Cairo. Yes, I am experiencing culture shock, only not on account of the hardships, but the opulence. Even worse -- and this may seem antithetical -- living in the lap of luxury is cramping my style. I am supposed to be the scrappy, pulls-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps, lovable underdog. I've made a minor career out of getting people to feel sorry for me. All of that is now threatened by my newfound position of prestige and comparative wealth.

This leads us to a related incongruity. My position here at the American University is a two-semester contract. That means I have no real job security and no idea where I will be living nine months from now. I'm not even certain if I'll have an academic position at all. Indeed, as I write this I am scanning the fall job ads, preparing new cover letters, and updating my CV. In some ways, nothing has changed. I am the same old insecure, self-deprecating Danny Kowalsky, wondering whether I was a fool to ever think that a kid from Sweet Home, Ore., could storm the gates of academe.

But here's the problem: given my current setup, don't these apprehensions seem a little disingenuous? After all, I drink my coffee on a balcony that offers stunning views of Cairo. I've hired a maid and a cook. I take a taxi to and from work. I have my own tailor and laundry service. I belong to a very upscale gym, where I swim and play tennis alongside high-level African diplomats. Underdog? Let's be honest: In a matter of weeks, I've transmogrified into the sort of person my parents warned me about.

On the other hand, sometimes I think that this move is just what I needed -- to face reality, that is. Even before I began this Merchant-Ivory routine in Cairo, my connection to those ragtag origins was wearing a bit thin. Maybe I should just shut up about it. When you are having drinks with colleagues in a 10th-floor garden penthouse overlooking the Nile, seriously discussing the pluses and minuses of hiring a butler, it is time to admit that the pattern of poverty has been broken.

At the same time, I refuse to forget where I'm from, and in that spirit I am imposing certain lifestyle limits. Just today, for example, I decided not to buy a camel. Anyway, the bottom line? This job is quite simply the best thing that's ever happened to me. So long from Egypt. Until next time. Salaam!