Sherif Abdel-Samad bids , the khawaga of Assiut, a warm good-bye While he stayed in Assiut the khawaga, as was initially known to the locals, managed the impossible: this tall white man with blond hair and blue eyes managed to blend all but seamlessly into the fabric of the community. For, whatever he might have done, Trusheim would have remained conspicuous. Trusheim was the only Westerner living in all of Assiut, the city that prides itself on being the capital of Upper Egypt -- the more conservative and insular part of the country -- and he worked there for two whole years heading Dialogue Point, a project of the a project of the Goethe-Institute undertaken in collaboration with the University of Assiut and the Robert Bosch Foundation. The objective? To enhance dialogue between Europe and the Islamic world outside the metropolises. There are now dialogue points operating from Amman, Baghdad, Khartoum, Nazareth, Oran, Sanaa, Tehran, Tripoli, Tunis and Marrakech. A dialogue point provides German newspapers and films, language learning and study material as well as reference works; it organises cultural events, however basic they would have been in Assiut , compared to what Cairo has to offer. Life in Assiut is, after all, significantly more relaxed than in Cairo. People are more hospitable, but also more conservative; and pushing for cultural activity will never be as easy as it sounds. A dialogue point can only function in cooperation with official state authorities like the university. Bureaucracy and resistance to anything that seems "alien" are an integral component of the general attitude people adopt towards their everyday life. How did Trusheim manage it? At the Cairo café where this conversation takes place, there is a beautiful view of the Nile -- something that adds to the poignancy of this being Trusheim's last night in Egypt. The khawaga 's head hangs back, he takes a deep breath -- recalling the stumbling blocks he encountered: The screening of one movie, In July, was cancelled because it has a scene with two characters smoking a joint; the photo exhibit World Language: Football was censored, with a picture of Marilyn Monore kicking a ball, with her thigh showing, removed... Such prudery sounds alien even to Cairo, where much more provocative imagery is routine. And yet there was some room for cultural activity, Trusheim recalls. Workshops for children proved popular, so did German-Arabic projects. Trusheim even ventured as far as the village of Nekheila, where, only a few years ago, drug lords had ruled. Meetings with children and the young -- obviously innocent, easy to organise -- were the most popular of all, but literature was far from neglected. Following the Danish cartoon controversy, the dialogue point invited German author Michael Kleeberg, who a few days earlier had had a negative encounter at the Cairo Book Fair where people held every and any representative of the West accountable for offending Muslims. "We were bracing ourselves for an easily offended audience," Trusheim recalls. And yet aside from one ingenuous question about why the West was eager to destroy Islam, the event went smoothly -- evidence of the fact that, no matter how much mistrust can be played up in the hearts of ordinary people, understanding is possible. In Assuit, Trusheim was keen on pointing out, most people have never in their lives interacted with a European, any European; but he had his way of dealing with "my fellow Assiutis", as he jokingly implies he became one of them. He had studied Arabic history and culture, after all; but the key to finding his way around was his impressive command of Egyptian Arabic -- with a slight Palestinian accent. He has even appropriated Egyptian humour and will counter an Egyptian witticism with one of his own. "Mister! Where is the natiga (calendar)?" students were asking him after a literary event. Trusheim, who had already given each of them one, responded with determination: "The natiga (the word also means score) is five [goals] to one," thus making it clear that they would not get another natiga and at the same time making them laugh. The dialogue point was launched in 2005; and, though the initial idea was a year-long programme, after two years Trusheim will be replaced by someone else starting at the end of September. It seems that the Germans are keen on expanding their cultural policy in the Middle East. But regardless of the outcome of this project, Trusheim has demonstrated the capacity for cultural dialogue in a particularly meaningful way; unlike other European scholars who studied Arabic or Islamic history and travel through Arab countries every once in a while, priding themselves on being experts on the region, Trusheim managed to integrate into a conservative Upper Egyptian town and to earn the trust of many of its people. Although he experienced much frustration and disappointment in the process, he could always find a way around the obstacles. "This job requires a great deal of flexibility and patience," he says. "I met very nice people, too." But he is already lost in thought, perhaps wondering how much he will miss Egypt, while he dragged on an apple- flavoured shisha -- his favourite. As he exhales smokes he takes another look at the Nile.
