Where are you from?

Where are you from?

Its a pretty common question foreigners get here. From cabbies, from the barber, from the touts. From other expats over a beer at Horreya. From the hoards of school children on field trips to Luxor Temple, more interested in getting photos with the white guy with freckles and the goofy hat than the ancient ruins.

“Ana min Amrika.” I’m from the United States.

Responses after this from Egyptians typically incorporate at least one of the following three items:

1. Ah! America! Good people, good people. This is undoubtedly the most common response. Most Americans in Cairo know that our government’s Middle East policies are not appreciated here. Most of those do not agree with U.S. government policies in the Middle East themselves. But most Egyptians recognize the difference between the individual citizens and the people running the country.
2. Obama! This started well before the election results were in. There seems to be a pessimistic optimism in the air… a hope that Obama will help make things different in the region, but a certain reluctance to hope. Still, there is so much excitement that things will change.
3. Where in America? I have a cousin in Nebraska, in Omaha. This one comes up surprisingly often. Again, I see it as an attempt to connect… to have a common base. The world is a big place and knowing someone who live in someone else’s country is a like a little proxy. I’ve only been to New York twice, but I still ask where in New York people are from and will respond either, “You’re from the city? Yeah, I have a friend who grew up in Queens” or “Upstate, huh? I have a friend who is from Olean”

Whenever someone gets curious and starts asking a lot of questions (Why are you here? Where in Cairo do you live? How long are you going to be here? Do you like Egypt?), I am reminded of the curiousity of my father-in-law. He meets someone new and within 10 minutes knows their life history, what their father does for a living, and can list three names of people he knows from their hometown.

When Lusenda and I were waiting in the train station in Luxor, waiting for the train back to Cairo, I was approached by a shoe-shine guy. He first looked at my shoes, but alas, they were simply worn sneakers not worthy of a shine. Instead of moving on, however, he smiled and started asking questions. Where are you from? Do you like Luxor? I tell him, I’m from America, I live in Cairo, This is my sister.

10 minutes later, he is still making the rounds, looking for someone to shine their shoes. He approaches an American guy who has sat down next to me and starts asking him the same: Where are you from? The guy shruggs. You’re an American? Maybe, he says in Arabic.

WTF? How asinine can you be? Are you really such an asshole that you can’t tell the shoe-shine guy what country you are from? And, by your refusal, he infers (correctly) that you are an American. Congratulations, you have successfully reinforced yet another stereotype.

I just don’t get it.