“She’s a tourist.”

There was a small party of men in my hotel room, standing on the balcony in response to my complaint. The hotel manager kept repeating that phrase, hia siyaha, to explain to anyone who would listen why I had been on the balcony in the first place. A proper Egyptian girl, I was given to understand, would not have been out there— at the very least, she would have gone inside at the first sign of trouble.

I was five days in to an eight-month graduate research project in Egypt. Things were off to a truly amazing start.

Outside the glass doors of my balcony, the Nile gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Between me and the Nile was a squat grey apartment building, where I directed the men to focus their attention. Sitting on his own balcony across the street was a middle-aged Egyptian man, calmly reading a newspaper, looking for all the world as though he’d been reading that same newspaper for hours. As though he hadn’t, a scant twenty minutes earlier, leered at me and lifted up his robe to masturbate in my direction.

I had grabbed my camera and caught him in flagrante, and had gone downstairs to show the front desk. After many expressions of shock and sympathy they had recommended that I switch rooms. My refusal to do so had led to the argument happening on my balcony now. The hotelier kept repeating, hia siyaha. She’s a tourist.

As a tourist, I couldn’t be expected to know or follow the rules for behavior, couldn’t be expected to know that my private balcony would be considered a public space where I would be open for harassment. I hadn’t yet learned to adapt to Egypt, and in a country where the revolution had scared away most of the tourists, the hotelier was eager to have the locale adapt itself to me.

In the end, the hotelier won the argument in my favor. An altercation took place across the street, the man with the newspaper disappeared, and I was free to enjoy the Nile view from my balcony.

It was hard to feel pleased.

For the next eight months, I would adapt my dress and behavior anytime I stepped outdoors, keeping my body covered, my hair back, my gaze down. I would count the number of times I got catcalled—ya mouzza!—each day, and if the total was less than ten I would be pleased. Occasionally, I would feel my nether regions groped by ghostly hands when I walked through a crowd.

Some days I didn’t bother to leave the house.

Each week, I would hear fresh stories coming out of Tahrir square, of women being publicly stripped and assaulted when they went out to protest for democracy and human rights. Even as I was adapting to Egypt, Egypt was adapting to the strange new world without Mubarak, where the only authority was the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Learning self-defense for protests became a preoccupation among my local friends. I watched my Egyptian Facebook feed fill up with recipes for homemade mace cleverly concealed behind large pieces of jewelry, watched calls go out for gas masks and field hospital supplies. I met a girl on the metro who proudly showed me the knives she carried up her sleeves. My adaptations away from being a siyaha were minor in comparison to this countrywide shift.

Over time, the daily sexual harassment layered with the growing civil unrest began to feel normal. Acts of aggression became part of everyday life, and sights or events that would have once shocked me left me numb. The women begging on the highway seemed normal. The random roadblocks, the police violence, the tang of tear gas in the air. The tourists stopped coming. The expat community drank heavily.

The expats left, one by one. As did I.

Returning to the U.S., I felt like a siyaha in my own country. I no longer knew how to dress for U.S. cities. It took me months to walk without looking at the ground, to get used to the lack of casual violence every time I left the house.

Today, I see news in the U.S. that reminds me of my Cairo days: the protests, the police aggression, the widespread culture of misogyny.

I do not want to get used to this. I do not want to learn these rules again.

I do not want to be a tourist in my home.

 

Photo © Laura Carroll. All rights reserved.

Laura has spent several years living, working, and studying in different countries, most recently in Egypt. Her career focuses on linking sustainable tourism with international development work.

by