Egyptians who visit Japan must certainly feel both estranged and alienated, for it is a country entirely different from our own and so is its lifestyle.
They are organized, clean, polite and soft-spoken with cherry blossom in their streets and white clouds in their skies – I looked everywhere for smog, which we call the black cloud, but all their clouds were white as snow.
I was in Japan for a lecture on Egyptian culture at Kyoto University and a talk at the National Press Club in Tokyo about the current political climate in Egypt.
During my stay, I met some Egyptian PhD students. One couple complained about the strange education their only daughter was getting at school. They said that the system would help build a character that is very different from her parents, a stranger to her traditions and to the people she will eventually go back and live with when her father completes his degree.
The mother was almost in tears as she explained how her daughter actually makes her bed every morning, unlike her Egyptian parents.
“It certainly does seem like a strange habit, I said, “How on earth did she acquire it?
“It’s that damned school, said the mother. “They train her to do such things.
“What’s worse, said the father, “she even washes her own plate after each meal. “What a source of agony this must be for you both, I said.
“Yes, they agreed in one breath. “Such traditions are completely alien to us.
“Throughout our civilization which goes back thousands of years, we never heard of such things, I said.
“It must be their Buddhist faith, said the father.
“It’s true that Islam considers cleanliness to be part of faith, but this can’t possibly mean that the daughter must actually wash her plate, but in any case don’t worry, I comforted them. “Soon enough you’ll go back home, and Egypt is a country unlike any other country in the world. It encompasses all those who enter it and effortlessly moulds them according to its ways.
“Just look at Alexander the Great. After he entered Egypt he announced that he was the son of Amun and even began to dress like the Pharaohs. And look at Napoleon who was entirely swept away by Egypt. He went back with his researchers and scientists completely enamored with the country and its great civilization, bringing about what came to be known as Egyptomania.
“But this was in the past, said the father. “It’s all very different now. Besides, what children learn at a young age is etched in their minds. I worry that my daughter will absorb everything they teach her, to which the mother added, “Every time we ask her to stop these strange habits, she comes back from school the next day to do the same thing.
Then the father said in a sad tone, “Even her voice is now inaudible like the Japanese and when she hears us speaking at home, she is alarmed and asks why we’re quarreling. She even asks us to keep our voices down.
“It’s reached that extent? I said.
“It’s even worse than that, said the mother. “We don’t know what to do to protect our traditions and customs, why don’t you ask the Egyptian government to set up a school in Japan for the children of Egyptian students to teach them how to yell, fight and all about bad manners the way it is at our schools back in Egypt, instead of teaching them these strange and useless habits they’re learning here.
I remembered when our Ambassador to Tokyo Dr. Waleed Abdel Nasser told me that the Japanese had sent several groups of Japanese on missions to Egypt during the Mohamed Ali era. “One of those groups was sent in 1862 and the next one arrived a couple of years later to study the management and education systems adopted by the Egyptian state, which were exemplary at the time, he said.
Dr. Abdel Nasser also showed me a photograph of one of those missions wearing his traditional Japanese dress on a visit to the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
Overcome with grief, I told him: “If it proves anything at all, this photograph shows that those Japanese delegations have failed. If today Japan is so organized, clean, the people are polite and soft-spoken and cherry blossoms lace the streets and the clouds are white as snow this only means that the missions they sent to Egypt were a total waste of time, for they clearly learnt nothing at all from us.
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Writer’s Union of Egypt and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo. This article is syndicated in the Arabic press.
