When Austin Purnell ’08 decided to study abroad in the Middle East—“[in Cairo,] a place where nobody really chooses to study abroad”—he did not expect to employ the Japanese that he had learned in high school. His campus, the American University in Cairo (AUC), was a hotspot for upper-class Egyptian and international students, so Purnell hardly spoke Arabic outside of classes.
“Before I went abroad to Egypt, I thought the world was pretty similar in terms of culture,” he said. “But Egypt was a complete reversal of everything.”
Besides spending time with people who were fluent in Japanese, Purnell met Europeans for the first time, and he said that their friendliness helped dispel his intellectual bias against the “Old Continent.”
For Purnell, Egypt both broke stereotypes and made them. Although Africans are treated as second-class citizens in Egypt, he said, he stood out for speaking English and the fact that he had money.
“If I wasn’t African, I was either 50-Cent or Jay-Z to the Egyptians,” Purnell said, noting that he was called a certain racial epithet numerous times.
Similarly, Ian Renner ’08, developed a cultural sensitivity to the differences in education and political discourse in Egypt. Renner studied abroad at AUC for one year and wrote for The Daily Star, Egypt’s independent, English daily newspaper.
“I had to be very careful about who I let know that I was Jewish,” he said.
A tense moment arose when two members of the local Muslim community invited him to their Nile delta village. Renner, who was told by friends that conservative residents of the village would kill him if they discovered his Jewish identity, went with great trepidation. He said that his hosts were very generous to him, but that the experience was nevertheless a grave reminder of the tense political backdrop of the Middle East.
“The region is a place where American college students have to contend with vastly different attitudes towards practically everything from gender and sexuality to education,” said Director of the Office of International Studies Carolyn Sorkins. “Experiencing first-hand the reality of others is essential to understanding why national government or other state or non-state actors make some of the decisions they make.”
Despite similar cultural and political adjustments, Matt Ball ’08 was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness he saw in Yemen, a nation in Southwest Asia, where he spent his summer several months after the fall semester in Cairo.
“Everyone’s in the streets all the time and I could never go somewhere quiet,” Ball said. “My tall, white presence always drew people to ask me, ‘What is your name?’ because they wanted to practice the only English phrase they knew.”
During his time in the Middle East, Ball realized that Americans were typically more judgmental as a society than the citizens of this region. He noted that Egyptians distinguished him from the U.S. government and always asked him for his political opinions.
“In contrast, the Middle East is frequently portrayed as George Bush versus Iraq or Osama Bin Laden over here,” Ball said.
Similarly, Zoey Farber ’08 came face-to-face with the complex reality of Israel in her time working and traveling there last semester. She was surprised by the number of Israelis, especially those in the army, who opposed the nation’s occupation of Palestinian areas.
Like most of the Israelis she met, Farber became frustrated and eventually resigned about the apparent lack of solution to the dilemma faced by intersecting neighborhoods of both Israelis and Palestinians. She arrived back in the United States feeling even more confused, realizing that there are no concrete “rights” or “wrongs” regarding Israel and Palestine.
“I saw these thriving, beautiful cities and wondered how one can uproot all of this, but I guess that’s what happened to the Palestinians,” Farber said. “I don’t understand it.”
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