Introducing the Conscientious Orientalist

Cairo, they say, is the mother of the world. Her children are a strange bunch.

Since I first came to Cairo three years ago, I’ve done pretty much everything a foreigner with a bachelor’s degree can do in this town.

For a while, I studied Arabic at the American University. I stood in the cafeteria line behind rich Egyptians with ray-bans and gym memberships, and attended class with other Americans who would act defensive and entitled when they ate McDonald’s for lunch and edgy and “authentic” when they didn’t.

Eventually, I left AUC. I enrolled in a smaller school across town, tucked on a side street beneath large shade trees in a neighbourhood where class was frequently disrupted by the braying screams of over-worked donkeys. It was easier on the wallet and lighter on the attitude.

For a while I taught English at a school for refugees, but I am not a teacher at heart. When that gig ended, I started working as a free-lance journalist, mostly because I did not want to leave Egypt. I have had mixed success in journalism, although my plan not to leave Cairo has been wildly successful.

I came to Cairo to learn about the Middle East. But as my original plans for a three month stay slowly evolved into a two year residence, I started to see and do and think about all kinds of things that I’d never expected.

Which brings us to why I decided to join the blogging masses.

I am starting this blog because I think that writing down and reflecting on Cairo life will help me make sense of it all, or at least help me better appreciate what that life means. I hope any readers who have something to say will do that too – that’s why the good lord invented the comments function, guys.

Maybe thinking about what it means to be foreigners in Cairo will make us all more conscientious orientalists.