ذكريات (١) ـ مصر

كنت في السادسة عشرة من عمري - أول مرة وطئت أرض أفريقا وأرض من العالم العربي ...

كنت نائمة في الباص السياحي الجديد والمكيّف الهواء في وسط درجات حرارة البلد. حر جدا بالنسبة لنا السياحيين مع أن كان ربيعا جميلا. كنا منتقلين من مكان سياحي لمكان سياحي آخر وقد تجاوزنا موقع قبر “هاتشيبسوت” المرأة التي كانت فرعون في زمانها. فيما بعد كنا نعبر قرية صغيرة وفقيرة. كنت نائمة لأن كنا نستيقظ بكيرا جدا ونذهب الى النوم متأخرا جدا لنستوعب الأكثر من كل ما كنا نزور في البلد من خلال أسبوع واحد من العطلة. فكنت أستغلّ من كل أوقات صغيرة مثل الرحلات في الباصات من منظر الى آخر وأنام ... ضد إرادتي معظم الوقت لأن ما كنت أشاهد في الرحلات من الحياة اليومية المصرية كان مثير للإهتمام في نظري. 

خلال الرحلة ذاتها لا أعرف لماذا استيقظت لثوان ،ربما كنت أحس أن قد يفوتني شيئا مهما. كان الباص يصير بسرعة وخلال اللحظة فتحت فيها عينيَّ وجدت نفسي أنظر في صبي واقف على بعد قصير من اباص ، لا أكثر من مترين، صبي واقف جانب الطريق (الطريق يعني الرمل الأكثر ممهد وسط مكان حيث لا تجد إلا رمل) وكان هذا الصبي قد خرج من برميل القمامة كبيرة (مزبلة) يصحبه في البحث عن الطعام معز هزيلة مثله. كلا من الصبي والمعزة هزيلان بشكل مخيف. هذا الهزال الذي نحن الغربيين نشاهدها فقط على التلفاز في الأخبار عن المجاعة في أفريقا ولأسباب مختلفة على عارضات الأزياء ... فكان الصبي يخرج من البرميل ليرى حيث كان الباص متجه، يرانا ولا يرانا في آن ولكن أحسست كأن ينظر اليّ مباشرا. 

في مشهد العسر ذاك ما أدهشني وأثّر في كان هو ناظر الصبي، عيناه. حيث أي منا قد يتوقع التوسل أو الحزينة أو الغضب أو أي شعور قوية مثلها التي “تناسب” ذلك المشهد فما فوجدت إلا سكون وهدوء. ناظر مليئ بالسكون وتقريبا شيئ من الإطمئنان والتساؤل ولكن لا من الفضولية. حتى لا فضولية لأن باصات فاخرة وسياحيين غنيين هو منظر يومي اعتاد عليه بكل وضوح. شيء مؤلفة مثل البحث عن الطعام وملابس. نحن الاجنبيون ما استحقنا حتى فضولية أو أي شيئ آخر من قبله. فقط رفع رأسه ونظر إلى الباص ليعرف إذا كان في خطر بالنسبة لمسار الباص. 
وهذا اللحظة منت أنظر في الصبي وكان ينظر فينا طالت في ذهني لمدة ساعة وانطبعت في ذهني أكثر من أي شيئ آخر في هذا البلد خلال رحلتي هذا أو في أخبار التلفاز ... لا شيئ يواسي الواقعية المباشرة. 
لقد اكتشفت حينئذ أن باقية العالم ليست في حاجة الينا وتعاطفنا (المتكلفة كثيرا ما) ودموعنا على وضعها وإلخ ... بل كان العالم يتبادل النظر معنا “الغربيين” بمساواة وحتى بشكل أقوى لأنهم ما عندهم ما يخسرونه فيما نحن نحتاج لكل شيئ حتى لمكيف الهواء في ربيع جميل.

 
ما كان يحتاج الصبي إلى شفقة. إحتاج إلى طعام لكن بدون أن يسأل أحدا لذلك وببساطة اكتفى بالبحث عنه بوحده. ويتسأل عن امكانيات الحصول على طعام وعن الأسباب التي تدفع سياحيين أجنبيين للعبور بقريته في غاية الاستعجال كل يوم. 
أو من الممكن أن ذلك هو ما استخرجت مما كنت أشوف في ناظره. لن أعرف أبدا ما كان وراء هذان العينين ولكن اكتشفت حينذاك عالم جديد تماما على بعد من أقل مترين مني. 

(the english version of it is here)

Memories (2) - Egypt again

     Of the group of tourists we were part of I was the only one to be fully clothed. For several reasons I didn't want to wear anything else than a long skirt and long sleeved top, when everyone else was in T-shirt or less, shorts and the like, making the most of the springtime sun and looking like real tourists. I didn't care a bit about the sun, especially since I discovered that my stupid white skin was the sort to get burned but never tanned (first reason). So I didn't bother with the sun, and I always prefered wearing long clothes, more graceful to my eyes than all these dreadful tight little clothes everybody else was wearing but fitting noone (second reason). 

      I had only the slightest consciousness that wearing full lenght skirt might be a good idea to help me cross the cultural divide between me, tourist, and the local population, always covered up, men and women alike. So it was not the main reason since I was barely conscious of ir, but I just liked it best, even back home. But none the less it made me stand apart both inside the tourist group and outside among the locals, which I think was the third reason, not wanting to be seen as another of "those tourists". I attracted the "locals"' attention much more than my cousin, though she was the prettiest, and that you could see much more of her than me. I didn't understand why and didn't care much, I was too busy eating the good food all around us on display at all times. That's when I discovered the marvelous stuff called fresh dates (I loved the sugary dry ones you can find anywhere in the world, and never knew you could eat it fresh). It was one of the best things I ever ate, and never managed to found the same again.  

     Anyway, the really funny part came when we were visiting around Cairo, or maybe Karnak, we were looking at temple ruins, along with japanese people, when suddenly a couple of them saw me, and insisted on taking a picture of me in front of the ruins. One alone by myself and another one with them. 

     To this day, I know I'm in the picture of a japanese couple in Egypt, and I still haven't the slightest idea why. Did they manage to find out I was french and found that great (as happened to me later in Australia)? Or did they just thought, for some unkown reason, that I was egyptian and looked local enough to look good on the picture (as happened to me even later in the West Bank ?). I don't know why people think french is cool, and even less why they should think I look egyptian, but long skirts can have a funny effect on random people.

Memories (1) - Egypt

     Asleep in the tourist bus, brand new and air-conditionned against the heavy temperatures of the country. Heavy for us tourists not used to egyptian weather, even though it was a nice spring. We were being taken from a tourist site to another, we had just passed by Hatshepsut's funeral site. We were now passing by a very poor neighbourhood. I was asleep because we woke up early and stayed up late, in order to be able to take all of what we could of the country in this very small week of holidays. And so, wanting to take all in, I slept through most of our coming and goings, thus missing whole sceneries adn views ...

     During this particular trip, I don't know why I woke up very briefly, thinking that maybe I was yet again missing out on something great. The bus was fast, and just as I opened my eyes, for 2 seconds, I found myself staring at a boy, less than a meter or two from me, behind the window, out in the street or what was passing for a street (a length of dirt flater than elsewhere), the upper half of his body down a roadside bin, with a goat beside him also head in the bin, both awfully skinny, skeletons of a human and a goat respectively, both looking through the garbage, obviously looking for anything that could be eaten. The boy got out of the bin just as the bus rode by with me in it, looking straight at us though not really seeing us, but it felt as if he was staring back at me, precisely me and no one else. 

     It was living scene of extreme misery, but what shocked me even more was this stare, his eyes. Where any one of us could have expected to find some pleading or sadness or anger or some strong emotion «fitting» with what we were seeing, I found nothing but calm. A calm look, serene, with maybe a hint of interrogation, and not even curiousity. Rich tourists passing by were a daily occurrence to this boy, just as not finding food and no clean clothes to put on. So we didn't deserve curiosity or anything else. He just happened to hear the noise of the bus, wondering if he was too close to the road, so he just glanced at the bus' curving trajectory. In that glance, for a quarter of a second that seems an hour in my memory, I saw this incredible stare of a starving boy in the middle of nothing but old houses and dirt. It disturbed me much more than any TV news I had seen on poverty or any other sort of subject usually linked to the «third world», the majority world I had never seen up until that moment, this unexpected holidays in Egypt I spent when I was 16, with my godfather and his family.

     I discovered at that moment that the rest of the world didn't need us, and especially didn't need pity or tears or the like, and possibly could be better off without us. That the rest of the world was staring back at us as an equal, and possibly a «stronger» equal in that it had not much too lose, unlike us, the rich tourists who couldn't survive a mild springtime without air conditioning.

     The boy didn't need pity. He needed food, but didn't ask for it, he was looking for it by himself. And wondering how to come by it, and how things came that rich tourists were passing by his village everyday. And maybe how all this could be changed. Unless that is what I wanted him to think, when it's more plausible he was being fatalistic, thinking that the only thing that was within his grasp was to look for food in trash bins. But then that too, could be only what an intellectual would like to think, that all arabs are fatalistic ...

    What was behind these eyes, I'll never know for sure, but I discovered a whole new world, less than a meter or two from me. I remember this boy more clearly now than the pyramids or anything else in Egypt.

  بالعربية هنا

The butterfly mosque

Autobiography by Willow Wilson

     I ordered it through amazon by chance (I don't like sponsoring anyone or anything but I have to admit my life has been embellished by this website ... Where else could I find so many books so cheap?), I think I heard of it first on another website (muslimahwatch if I'm not mistaken) and I didn't even remember the subject by the time I received it.

     And so I began reading it and was enthralled by the story at its first pages ... It was the first time ever I could relate almost totally to the experience of another convert ( revert as many muslims like to call us ), and her story is so beautifully written, with a very light style, amusing, and above all, something I appreciate, being raised french, not trying to convince anyone of anything, the author here just want us to read her story and at least understand, if not approve, what happened to her, what her life has been and might still is. 

     It's refreshing (another widely used term that comes to mean almost anything, but it's the only one I can think of today), it's an adventure, and it's the sort of book that contributes to "building bridges between cultures" (gosh I'm so mainstream today !), and not destroy them.

So you you have a little time (quick read) and some money (you can get it really cheap second hand ... Or free in any library), I strongly recommend it.

     Autobiographie de Willow Wilson, que l'on peut traduire par "la mosquée papillon", pas encore traduite en français me semble-t-il. Belle histoire d'une américaine convertie, une conversion qui me ressemble d'ailleurs beaucoup, mais c'est surtout l'histoire de sa rencontre avec son mari, et le style est très agréable et léger, et l'auteur ne cherche à aucun moment à convaincre qui que ce soit sur quoi que ce soit, ce qui est en soi très agréable par les temps qui courent ... !

   "مسجد الفراشة" سيرة ذاتية لويلو ويلسون (كاتبة اميريكية) 

اشتريت هذا الكتاب ولمل استلمته ما تذكرت عما كانت القصة ... وكنت متعجبة باكتاب من الصفحة الاولى : سيرة من امرأة اميريكية التي اسلمت وسافرت الى مصر وتزوجت هناك وهذا القصة هي الولى التي مشبهة بقصتي انا فيما تكتب عن مشاعرها وكيف الحياة دفعتها في هذا الاتجاه. ومهم جدا بنسبة للقراء الغربيين، لا تحاول ان تقنع احدا مع اية من فكراتها. تحاول الكاتبة ان تجعل الناس متفاهمين مع قصتها فقط، ولا حتى راضيين.