Lists entitled "12 Things about Egyptians that Give Foreigners Culture Shock" or "50 Things You Never Knew About Egyptians" have been mushrooming lately all over social media. After reading yet another one of these seemingly ground-breaking articles, I have decided to put together my own, random and subjective, list of 8 things you have probably never suspected about Egyptians.
1. Egyptians have a real passion for tapperware.
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| Me in the Swedish Institute kitchen. (fot. Amy El Shaarawy) |
- I was in Carfour the other day and I saw the most amazing tapperware! It had beautiful colors, all green and blue and pink on the inside! Really! And it had all these separators, with a special space for your sandwich and your pasta and even a small container for salad dressing - built in! It was beautiful.
- Oh, I think I saw one like it ... Doesn't our coleeague X have the same one? ....
Or like this:
- Wow, nice tapperware!
- Thank, it was a present. My friend Y got it for me. He told me it reminded him of me! Isn't it fantastic?
The greatest sin a young wife can commit against her mother-in-law is not to stain her silver! Oh no! It is not to return her tapperware on time! "Here is molokheya my mother made us" - a young husband might tell his wife. "Just make sure we don't forget to return the tapperware right away!"
2. Eating pork is a bigger sin than drinking alcohol, taking drugs and cheating on your wife.
Many hard-core party animals I know here don't eat pork and they will not touch anything which might contain traces of it (like a hot-dog, pate or sausage) but they will not tell you "I don't eat pork because it is haram" (as if all the other things they do wasn't). Most likely, they will tell you "I don't eat it because I don't like it" or "I don't eat it because it is disgusting for me." Some will even try to explain their reasons scientifically, like "It is known that pigs eat everything, and they have parasites extremely dangerous for humans." Explaining, that all untested meat might contain such parasites doesn't seem to have any effect.
A friend explained to me recently that the "I don't eat pork but I drink&fuck around" thing might mean the person in question is struggling with his religiousness and wants to avoid one more sin which does not really affect his life, as in: "I want to go out and drink&fuck, but there's not much sausage lying around, and even if there was, I don't care to try it".
3. All doctors drink. Heavily.
Doctors drink everywhere in the world (in Poland they say that a surgeon has to drink so his hands don't shake during an operation), but here it's especially visible, as most of the society doesn't drink at all. My theory is that this excessive drinking among doctors in particular goes with a certain "decadence" typical of the upper middle class many of these boys come from.
4. Egyptian men do marry foreign women.
I have been asked many times by my non-Egyptian friends, whether it is true that an Egyptian man will never marry a foreign woman, because for him she is only a toy to play around with before the "real life" starts. Not being a virgin, she could never possibly be taken seriously into consideration as a candidate for a wife. Also, in most cases, she is not Muslim.
The answer is two-fold, as the Egyptian society is multi-layered. Among the higher classes it is acceptable, even fashionable to marry foreigners (for some people this is something of a social-status thing). In the past, in the so-called golden years of this country, cross-national marriages were something normal, praised by romantic literature and cinema. Many Alexandrian families boast Turkish, Lebanese, French, Greek, Italian, Swiss, etc. origins. I know many Egyptian guys married to foreign women and some Egyptian women married to foreign men.
Of course, the situation is radically different amongst the lower classes of society. In certain groups, a foreign girl will never be accepted or treated with respect. But even there, things depend on the education and circumstances of the family. My friend even met a fully-covered Salafi woman who turned out to be from Western Europe.
5. Everything foreign is better than Egyptian.
This point is somehow connected with the previous one. For many Egyptians, anything foreign will always seem better than Egyptian. This refers to objects (such as coffee, fruit, clothes or hair-die), as well as people: teachers (a foreigner, no matter from what country, will teach English better than the best-educated Egyptian), dancers, actors (a Lebanese actress will always be regarded more beautiful than an Egyptian one), hairdressers, etc. A doctor educated abroad will always be better than one who spent all his life in Egypt. The pharmacist will recommend imported Panadol Extra or shampoo over the Egyptian equivalent. Et cetera.
No doubt, the society in Egypt follows a double-standard. There are apartment buildings where flats are rented only to foreigners, or such where Egyptians must show an ID to enter. There are hostels, which only allow foreigners.
6. Christians are just as conservative, as Muslims.
In some cases, maybe more. Yes, they do drink alcohol openly, eat pork, and wear revealing clothes (in public places everyone follows the general rules or not-too-much-flesh), but in other respects their lives don't differ all that much from the lives of their Muslim compatriots. No sex without marriage, no marriage with non-Christians, curfew for women, etc. The men like to wear giant golden crosses (it is not usual for Muslim men to wear gold) and flashy colors (such as pink swimming trunks). Apart from that, its all tradition, much less religion.
7. Egyptians love cake.
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| Fot. Paulina Raduchowska |
The colorful, spongy, American-style kind, all smothered with whipped cream. They love it so much, they will always find an occasion worth celebrating with it, almost as if a day without cake was a day wasted. When I first arrived to Egypt, I was genuinely shocked - at the office we were having colorful cake at least once a week! Yesterday was this one's birthday, and tomorrow that one's. This one is leaving, that one just arrived, and the other one got promoted ... Any reason is good to get cake!
8. A pate is a pastry with cheese.
I'm not joking. Check any Egyptian pastry shop's offer! A pate is a pastry! And has nothing what so ever to do with the baked (usually) meat paste popular in the rest of the world (this does not exist in the popular Egyptian consciousness at all).
I suppose this is just an example of a French word which meaning got shifted and, over time, changed completely. There are many borrowed words in common use here, most of them French (also Italian, German and English). Some popular examples would include: "asanseer" for elevator, "quafor" for hair dresser, "tsheeder" for cheddar-like cheese, or "robabikia", which comes from the Italian "roba vecchia", meaning "old stuff" and is used by the guys who walk the streets with their little carts, buying anything old anyone might want to sell. Pants are "pantalon", a shirt is "chemise" and a tie is "cravat". It is also quite common for people to say "merci" instead of "shokran" for thank you.
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