A Selfish Altruism: The Strive for Pirated Perfection

By Layla Tamer

In the streets of Cairo, Egypt during the Holy Month of Ramadan, it is unseemly for a young single girl to walk through the streets in a short skirt without the slightest bit of humility. A woman is supposed to keep her head down and show the least amount of skin so as not to tempt ‘unavailable men.’ Those who dare look attractive enough to attract attention are given silent, or sometimes not so silent, criticism.

I had lived in America for 10 years when my parents decided to move to Baghdad and I left to live with my Grandmother, Aunt, two cousins and a maid. Left isolated in a third world country I had only remembered from short two week visits I found myself immersed in a culture entirely different from anything I had ever known. From the first day I found that I seriously had to limit what I said, did, wore or even how i ate.

During my first Ramadan there alone I was touched by the thoughtfulness of strangers giving to poor. My family would set up a table outside of the house and the entire apartment would bring down food for the beggars in the street to eat. But underneath all the kind actions and gratuitous donations I found that people were only satisfying their need to feel proud of themselves.

The first morning I noticed this I had woken up from bed late, grabbed some breakfast to go, threw on my school uniform and ran out the door. It was the first morning of Ramadan and people were cranky from no food and early prayer when I noticed disapproving shakes of the head and cursing in Arabic. Then an old veiled crone walked up to me wagging her finger, yelling an Arabic, and reached out to literally pull down my uniformed knee-length skirt. She yelled at me and called me the equivalent of a ‘tramp.’

Disoriented I continued to school to try and salvage what was left of my dignity, little did I know what surprises were in store for me. It started at the end of the Fourth Hour (4th pd) when lunchtime rolled around. Life was buzzing through the halls and the visible crankiness of starvation brought a damper on even the most optimistic people. My peers stared as I scarfed down a large slice of cheese pizza, all the while judging silently with their eyes, clicking their tongues, and shaking their heads at my refusal of societies customs. I rolled my eyes and kept on with my routine but it became harder and harder for me to understand how a custom of acceptance could turn into a requirement.

At the end of lunch I could hear the singing of the local Mosqueman chanting prayer and the Muslims of our class washed themselves clean and used the school drama room as a prayer room. When I waited outside to start class while every person exiting would glare. Why, i would ask myself, would a so called ‘devout Muslim’ criticize me for not starving myself. I gave money and food to the poor more than the average person. Then it hit me, people don’t fast as a sign of sympathy for those who can’t afford food. People only fast to show their superiority to those who didn’t.

I ventured for understanding through different channels. I’d listen to the drivers talk of their admiration or fear of The Big Man or listen to my aunt’s celebration of Ramadan using her Vodka and Dates experiment. I’d hear my cousins speak of fasting to please their religious father. It seemed that only the truly destitute and derelict of this largely populated city had even the slightest belief in the Eye in the Sky. But when I saw that the only reason they even considered the G Man because they were desperate that their hard work to pay off.

While I was quite happy offering clothes and money and food to those in need purely out of generosity and not because of some mythical obligation I felt to score some brownie points with the Man Upstairs, it wasn’t good enough because I didn’t perform some dance five times a day.

Whether it be a random old woman tugging down your skirt to cover your knees and scolding you or the peer asking why you aren’t fasting or praying all the while drawing silent assumptions that paint ugly pictures and gossip. I found the only remedy for judgement without parents to speak to about the culture or friends who’ve lived anywhere other than the city, was silent anthropological observation of reasons and customs for those actions that seem so habitual for so many of the townsfolk.

In the end I found that the most ‘generous’ of customs were, in the end, only done for selfish reasons. An old woman searching for youth, a poor man searching for wealth, a young child searching for her parents reconciliation, or even a rich woman searching for motivation. The purest intentions came from the foreign ex-pats and the Coptic Christians whose reasons weren’t clouded by expected moral imperatives but by free choice. The injustice served by Egyptian socialites who don’t approve of foreign manner to this day baffles me. It is to a startling extent that new customs are refused for more traditional customs and even the seemingly kindest actions can impurely motivated to the point of guilt and resentment all for the G Man.