Everything you need to know about Egyptians can be summed up by our national dish: koshary. A British colonial-era inspired street food made up of a steaming pile of carbs (macaroni, rice, vermicelli, lentils, chickpeas or “Atkin’s nightmare” as I like to think of it) embedded with caramelized fried onions, anointed with generous amounts of spicy tomato sauce, and finished off with garlicky vinegar final kick. A delicious — and temporarily immobilizing — culinary experience.
So too are the Egyptian people — pragmatic and populist, we care about filling you up and sticking to your gut so you can get back to work, or back to yelling at another driver on the street or whatever you were doing already. We’re sometimes weirdly proud of our oh-so European influence (we say words like piscine and sechoir, after all). True, you might have to occasionally dig a little to find our sweet parts. And we know we can be a lot to handle sometimes, but we’re deeply good-humored, gregarious and sociable, and like to think our company makes others better off (even enlightened, whether they realize it or not in the short term) in the end.
You can probably tell I’ve thought a fair bit about what it means to be (and to eat like) an Egyptian. But the truth is, I hesitate to say “our” national dish. Even as I write this, I continue to question my legitimacy to do so. Not because I’m not proud of my Egyptian heritage, but because as an American Egyptian Muslim woman, I — like millions of other third-culture kids — constantly find myself caught between two worlds and am always subconsciously seeking my own niche/place.
And I, like so many other born-and-raised Americans of “ethnic” heritage, decided to return to the motherland (!) after college (a personal hijrah if you will). I had visited relatives in Egypt several times growing up, but actually moving there and living independently for several months as a wide-eyed 21-year old challenged my notions of both what it means to be Egyptian and what it means to be American on a daily basis.
In Egypt, I'd blend in perfectly with my regal Pharoanic nose and other features, but jut out like a pyramid on the desert horizon as soon as I opened my mouth. Even as I studied and studied and practiced and practiced and reached new levels of Arabic fluency that I didn’t even think were possible, my non-native Arabic accent would always immediately belie my other-ness.
My behavior, too, sometimes didn’t help. As an independent young American woman, I expected to continue having lots of freedom and mobility. I’d often duck out of my apartment for a late-night pizza run (because the munchies are real) and was always hyper aware of being the only single woman out and about after dark. I’d have conversations with my coworkers at the local Egyptian women’s NGO where I interned about what it’s like to be Muslim and Arab in America (You know how to pray? You go to the mosque on Fridays? Even though you’re a woman and you know you don’t have to?). A few people even said they could tell I was American (or not a regular Egyptian woman) by the way I walked and carried myself (whatever that means).
Yet nowhere were these external challenges to my two-sided identity (that I thought I’d neatly resolved in my earlier adolescence) more frequent and epic than in my daily exchanges with the love-‘em and-hate-‘em suwa’ tax — taxi drivers. The script became a highly predictable one.
Where to?
(My one-word response)
Double take look in the rear view mirror. Turns down the Quran playing in the background. “Huh? Where you from?” (Told you Egyptians talk too much sometimes.)
“I’m Egyptian-American. I was born and raised in the U.S., but my parents are Egyptian.”
“Ahh, then you’re Egyptian too! *smile* So tell me which is better, America or Egypt?”
My diplomatic answer about how every culture has pros and cons, etc. *end scene.*
But the most memorable taxi driver exchange came from a particularly friendly one who started to ask one too many questions about my interests and lifestyle. The ride literally ended with a marriage proposal — hello green card!
Moments like this, as hilarious and awkward as they sometimes were, forced me to become aware of the immense privilege that came with my holding an American passport.
Some days, many days, it was exhausting. Finally, when I’d had enough of it all and was just too exhausted to legitimize my dual identity and presence everywhere I went, when I was exhausted from not being Egyptian enough to dart past speeding traffic like playing a Frogger game without thinking twice, or was too aggravated by incessant catcalling, when I’d had enough Egypt for one day, enough of the ubiquitous ful sandwiches, the gregarious fast-talkers who also had staring problems, the gender double standards, etc., where did I turn for relief? A hearty dose of slowly-streamed “Gossip Girl.” (Don't judge.)
As all these identity-challenging interactions started to accumulate, I began to see the stark parallels between these daily well-intentioned but sometimes emotionally-taxing incidents, and my daily struggle back home to constantly prove and assert and re-assert my legitimacy back home as an American Muslim.
Now, six years after coming back stateside, I’ve started to see a real opportunity for third-culture nomads and wanderers like me to benefit from our pervasive other-ness and use it for the greater good. Let me explain.
Community is in crisis in America today. Robert Putnam and other social scientists have shown how we’re less interconnected as a society, less likely to know our neighbors or participate in local civic groups today than a generation ago. In many ways, the average American is more isolated than we’ve ever been before. The election is evidence of just how deeply divided we’ve all become. In other words, America is facing a real social capital deficit.
On top of that, there are a few other unique social capital challenges that our generation faces: ironically, as millennials, we crave connection now more than ever, even while we deepen into pits of isolation and social media rabbit holes. We spend more time alone and watching TV and scrolling Facebook than getting to know our neighbors, spending time with our families, making new acquaintances and friends in shared third spaces, and doing the slow, hard but necessary work of interacting with people who are different than us to solve common problems. We’re less connected and more isolated.
I personally feel compelled to help build community wherever I go (including spiritually relevant and nourishing modern American Muslim community), and I realize this is driven by my own self-interest to have these spaces and places help nourish me.
And I think people like me — “third-culture kids” — who, for better and worse almost always feel in limbo, have a special role to play in tackling some of the greatest social capital challenges in our country today.
Why? Because we get it. What it feels like to stand out and feel socially isolated. This builds in us a unique capacity for empathy with any other soul — no matter how different they may look/worship/talk/act from us — who visibly stands out from a crowd. And that empathy is the necessary foundation for all healthy communities built on mutual respect.
We can help give the wake-up call. You don’t need to be a luddite to realize some of the negative side effects that tech being infused in our society has on connection and community with others. It’s undeniable that most of us, even just in the last few years, have come to expect so much more from technology (or expect technology to do so much more for us in our lives), and so much less from each other (internet and society scholar Sherry Turkle has a great book with exactly that title).
Yes, almost always feeling in limbo — and in need of explaining or justifying your presence just about wherever you are — can really be draining. But I think this primes us to be good community builders. If we want, we can help push back against the worrying tide of growing automatization and social isolation in this country — at whatever community level makes sense to you (mosque, campus, city, state or beyond). People can do really bad things when they feel a deep sense of being alone. And for all the struggles and awkward interactions we, as third-culture kids, have to deal with on a pretty regular basis, we can do a lot of good to help rebuild American community (and democracy) — not just for the good of us, but for the good of all.
Nada Zohdy runs the Open Gov Hub, a coworking social enterprise and network of 40 international NGOs working together to promote transparent, accountable governments and civic participation around the world. She can often be found thinking about democracy and community, biking around the city, and looking for art in the ordinary. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their cat, Mrs. Meow.