Through the eyes of his children, Amr Hamzawy* reflects on Egypt and Egyptians My two children (Louai is seven and Nuh is four) have just started spending their summer vacations with me in Cairo. For the rest of the year, they live with their mother in Germany. This was their second summer in Egypt, and they are already excited about everything they see and do. In Germany, they read a lot of children's books about Pharaonic stuff, but none of that prepares you for the complexity of real life in this country. Last year was all spent in fun and entertainment, not much social interaction. This year, I was determined to give them a real taste of the country, so I had them spend considerable time with the children of family and friends. I wanted them to have an insight into the lives of ordinary Egyptians, the life that children's books -- and even the stories I tell them -- are not enough to convey. They loved it. The first few days they spent with their peers, they binged on television and video games -- stuff that Louai is only allowed in small portions in Germany and Nuh is not allowed at all. Then Louai started to notice something. Something that was missing from the homes of friends and families. The children didn't have any books. They didn't read for their parents, and their parents didn't read for them. The habit of reading to children or watching them read has apparently disappeared from at least a good proportion from Egyptian homes. On the second day of vacation, Nuh came running to me, carrying a football bearing the FIFA emblem. He wanted me to buy him a ball that looks like this "original ball", which he informed me was "made with laser". I told him that this ball was no different from any other except in that it was too expensive and I wasn't going to buy it. He didn't like that and took his laser ball to another room. Then I started telling family members a story that -- I must admit -- they didn't seem too eager to hear. It was about a campaign for consumer protection that I followed up closely in Germany. The campaigners urged consumers to refrain from buying the recent World Cub ball because of its excessive price. They wanted the ball's maker, Adidas, to bring the price down, which the company eventually did. Then it was Louai's turn to complain. He has a friend who apparently knew everything there was to know about sports clothes and had every type of designer sports clothes in his wardrobe. Louai only owned one item from one known brand: sports shoes from Adidas. I told Louai that when he was only two his mother removed all the designer labels from his clothes, saying that we shouldn't be promoting peer pressure at his school. It was something I admired and respected. This was my answer to his request, and I am only hoping that it made some sense to him. Louai is a big football fan. He goes to a football school in Germany and wouldn't miss a chance to play. So I sent him to football practice in Cairo. Another cultural shock awaited him there. In Germany, the coach gets the players to play as a team, passing the ball fairly quickly to other players, and maximising their chances of winning. This wasn't the case in Cairo. The other players, whether in his team or the other side, played a highly individualistic game, apparently not thinking of what this may do to the team's overall performance. So Louai asked one of them what that was all about. "If you play as one person, you may score one goal, but if you play as a team, you'll score many goals," my son argued. The friend shrugged, offering his point of view. "You sound like the coach. I like to manoeuvre the ball and go past other players. I cannot stop myself from doing so, regardless of the outcome," the friend said. Soon afterwards, Ramadan was upon us. Family and friends started having religious discussions and Louai got interested. He wanted to know more about fasting and why we do it and how it relates to praying and engaging in charity. He was really impressed with the free- for-all Ramadan banquets and spent some time comparing it with other charity events in Germany. What shocked Louai most, however, was the nation's collective commitment to fasting in Ramadan. He hasn't seen anything like that in Germany and the sheer volume of this collective behaviour struck him as unusual. "Are you all Muslims?" he asked family and friends on more than one occasion. His query invited a flood of reverse questions about his knowledge of Islam (the general verdict being that I failed to teach him about religion). Unfazed, he answered with arguments culled from things his mother (Christian) and myself (Muslim) had explained. He said that he would decide about religion when he comes of age and that he would make up his mind without anyone coercing him to go in any particular direction. I supported his argument (which confirmed my guilt for not insisting that my son should follow on my religious path and for leaving him prey to the misguidance of other creeds). These are some of the remarks and observations that came up during the summer vacations of my children in Egypt. As they devise their own way of reacting to things Egyptian, I watch them with interest. Their learning curve may be steep, but mine is -- astonishingly enough -- not less so. * The writer is research director and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Beirut.
