The image of America that the average non-American possesses is derived primarily from two sources: the 24/7 news flush and Hollywood flicks. So how does, say, an Egyptian studying in the American countryside regard America?
Zeinab Abul-Magd chronicles her personal experience with that part of the US in the new release “Yomiyat Abla Fe Aryaf America (Diary of a Teacher in the American Countryside).
After spending seven years in Washington DC, Abul-Magd describes a different face of America when she moves to the small town of Oberlin, Ohio.
The diary was first published as a set of Facebook notes that the author shared with her friends. From the first glance, the reader can easily indentify the origin of these stories. Abul-Magd writes with colloquial Egyptian Arabic, relying sometimes too heavily on household catch phrases from popular Egyptian movies.
In several parts, Abul-Magd also uses the amusing responses her Facebook friends submitted. Via the social networking website, Abul-Magd shares with her friends some of the oddest realities she comes across in America.
At times, she ridicules these realities, comparing them with the “saner Egyptian ways of doing the same things. At other, she pokes fun at the way our Egyptian society functions when compared to the American countryside.
These highlights and contrasts are more than illuminating for anyone whose sole idea of Americans is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, or, at the other end of the spectrum, George Bush, Barack Obama and the evil forces of the corporate institutes.
From time to time, however, the author goes overboard as her sarcasm turns an ugly face that borders on bigotry. One such instant takes place when she describes her encounter with a Southern Christian man she found herself sitting next to on a plane. The man tells her he is a farmer and that he discontinued his education after high school. As they step out of the plane, he hands her a Christian book as a gift, and that just does it to unleash her fury. Abul-Magd calls the humble southerner “haqeer, loosely translated into “bastard, concluding that he used this innocent gesture to reinforce his superiority as a white American over an Arab like her.
She never explains how she reaches this outlandish conclusion that, judging by her account, doesn’t justify her overblown reaction.
Although her overall choice of the snapshots she presents of the US is quite original, I can’t help but deem her presentation’s perspective and critique quite superficial, especially when it comes to politics.
The shallowness of the author’s perception of politics is a fact she herself doesn’t deny.
She does, however, describe the American small-town folks and their reaction to the election mania which swept the country last year from a fresh point of view. The audience of one of the Obama-McCain debates she attended reminded her, she writes, of Mickey Mouse and the Labor Day ceremony in Egypt. “I felt that the whole crowd was fake, an idle mob assembled from coffee shops. Her description is novel, amusing even, but definitely not enlightening.
In an insightful and humorous chapter titled “How to be a cool progressive leftist in America? Abul-Magd explains how “after the extinction of the old left, which was about class struggle and the proletarian revolution and such, some well-educated and highly cultured Americans started leaning towards a new direction of cool leftism which doesn’t cost anything except for the cost of the slightly expensive organic food and an Africa trip which is good as both a nice vacation and a way to get a new pair of flip-flops.
A little too oversimplified but, on some level nonetheless, very true.
In another comical memo, she delves into her experience with an Amish community. The Amish is a conservative Christian group, which as of 2008 boast 227,000 members who emigrated from Switzerland to the US way back in the 1860s. What surprises Abul-Magd the most is how the Amish, whom she refers to as “sleepy heads, insist on a lifestyle which doesn’t differ much from that of their Swiss ancestors: an ultra simple way of life where modern technology is forbidden and where every item they use in their daily life, from clothes to food, must be manufactured by each individual.
“Diary of a Teacher in the American Countryside is essentially a diverse, random collection of images from the American countryside accompanied by captions that don’t explain much. Nevertheless, the images are quite intriguing; entertaining in most parts, illustrating that the Egyptian way of seeing things is like no other in the world.
“Diary of a Teacher in the American Countryside is published by Afaaq. Available now in bookstores nationwide.
