Vanity Fair has a couple of pieces on the Middle East right now.
The first is a combined text / photo bit on Egypt headlined—a little disconcertingly for those of us who live around here—“Under Egypt’s Volcano� / “The Egypt you’re not supposed to see.�
The pics are by Magnum photog Paolo Pellegrin, and at least 14 of the 17 are lovely, complicated things that amply reward time spent figuring out the light and the lines.
The text is by Scott Andersen. He cuts back and forth between Al Arish (where he talks to relatives of “the notorious Flaifil brothers,� the Bedouin men alleged to have been at the center of the 2004 Taba bombings) and Beni Suef, where he meets with a long cultivated “friend� (read journalistic contact) and a shadowy (and way-sinister) Jihadi type. His point is, ultimately, slightly fatuous: Egypt is chock full of frustrated, broke young guys who are right on the edge of blowing up some serious shit.
Never mind that though. This is Vanity Fair, after all. The piece is built on anecdote, and very nicely built it is. Andersen makes some very fair points about the inequities of life in Egypt and the violent repression of the security forces (see Hossam’s bit on torture in Arish below), and the pressures that these create. There are also some great passages, as where Andersen writes about asking the concierge in his five-star hotel how to take a train to meet his friend.
… his look changed to bafflement when he heard my request. “You want to take a train to Bani Suweif? But there is no reason to go to Bani Suweif, sir.”
I explained I had a friend there.
“An Egyptian friend? Then it is much better if he comes here.”
“But I want to go there,” I said.
With a frown of consternation, he picked up his telephone and spoke in hushed Arabic. He apparently heard good news, for his frown cleared, and he replaced the receiver with a relieved sigh. “I’m sorry, sir; very few trains go to Bani Suweif, and all the ones today are full. What is best is to arrange a minivan for you, with a driver and a guide.”
I knew this couldn’t be true. Just 75 miles south of Cairo on the Nile, the town of Bani Suweif lay on Egypt’s main rail line; there were probably dozens of trains every day, and they couldn’t all be full. The real issue, I suspected, was that I had just run up against Big Nanny.
In response to the terror attacks on foreigners in the 1990s, the Egyptian government now operates a vast internal-security apparatus designed to shield visitors from any potential unpleasantness or harm. Wander away from the demarcated and heavily protected tourist zones in the countryside and the ever present tourist police will try to herd you back; insist on proceeding and, more than likely, you will end up with your own bodyguard detail. The specific problem with Bani Suweif, I surmised, was that the nondescript industrial city, best known for the pall of white dust from its two cement factories, fell outside of any conceivable tourist zone. By stating my intention to go there, I had tripped the Big Nanny alarm bells—and those bells would continue to sound until I gave up or submitted to whatever minivan security package was arranged.
Telling the concierge I would think things over, I wandered away. I then went down to the main railway station and caught the first train.
Fine stuff. And Andersen’s point about Big Nanny, which he plays off nicely against Big Brother, is well made. He can’t help coming off as a bit of a Big Khawaga, however, as he wanders about sniffing out “the angriest man in Egypt� and generally playing up some pretty threadbare stereotypes. Naïve, lovelorn Farouk from Beni Suef may go over just fine with the domestic readership, but we can practically see Andersen sitting crosslegged on the floor of his Marriott hotel room cutting the guy out with a pair of scissors. In one scene he has him pulling a bundle of postcards from a shoebox under his bed.
“From the girl I loved,” Farouk said, untying the string.
The girl, from eastern Canada, had been on vacation in Sharm al-Sheikh with her family when they had met. As he flipped through the postcards, Farouk described a chaste, almost pre-pubescent version of romance: strolls along the beachfront promenade, long talks in a secluded corner of the hotel gardens, a quick kiss or hug when they were sure no one was looking.
“I loved her so much,” he said, “and I thought she loved me, too, but … ” He held out a postcard. “This is the last one from her.”
Twang go my heartstrings for the lost world of innocence that the worldly journalist so thoughtfully illuminates for us here.
And herein lies the problem with this piece. Evocative and compelling, it still deals in half a dozen paper cutouts rather than real people, and—because it is built on anecdote—these two dimensional little tokens are all we have to go on. A nice read, but it’s going to take more than this bit of Harlequin-on-the-Nile to convince me that the Talibanization of Egypt is just around the corner.
It annoys me to no end how Cairo and the rest of Egypt are always portrayed as improverished, dirty, and very exotic. As if we all lived in dirt alleys and the men all look forlorn. In terms of quality, the pictures are excellent, but they are very cliche and I’ve seen a million them them.
Hmmmm…someone has been reading one too many novels. And then cribbed the dialog. It sounds like here am I, the Great Western Reporter, being stymied by those wiley locals. Yet. Again.
I usually love Vanity Faire wirters – although I’ll make a BIG exception for Christopher ( I like to do field on fellatio) Higgins- but I might have someone else to add to my list.
And also:
a) North Africa is full of bright frustrated, broke young men angry at their circumstances – so what else is new…
b) and if Anderson is that well-informed a reporter to go sniffing out questionable types and have “Egyptian friends,” then for Pete’s sake, he knows better than to ask the concierge for things like that. You might as well leave a copy of your intinerary and tell them to ask the goon squad to meet you for breakfast so you can discuss today’s cat and mouse game.
This would be a bit more amusing if it weren’t in such a prominent publication.
Well, as I said in the post above I thought this was one the best articles on Egypt I’ve read. Remember the article is meant to be for an American audience, not one familiar with the Middle East. The article does a great job of explaining a) the condition of the average young Egyptian man and b) what Egyptian editorialists call the khawaga complex. A rare look at the advanced decay of Egyptian society, if you ask me.
Wll, I have to actually read the article, but I do think one could do the same without the wiley local yokel angle. Plus, don;t you think a slightly informed American readership is a bit more dangerous than one that can only find Egypt on a map when drunk?
And isn’t Vanity Faire’s readership a bit more sophisticated, anyway? They do use three and four syllable words in their writing- not exactly for the USA Today crowd.
The pictures are very bad in my view. The b&w and the effects give the impression that you’re in a nightmare or in the Matrix movie. The picture labeled a street scene is of a cemetery! The picture labeled partially unveiled is of completely veiled women or wearing niqab! the picture with people praying in the street is labeled as a stronghold of the muslim brotherhood and the same picture with the people kneeling is titled in an improvished area. While the two labels may apply, that is a common picture regardless if there’s a Brothers presence or not!
Can’t imagine how many mis-representations would be in the article itself!
After having now read the article, I can’t shrug off the feeling that I’ve read something very very similiar before. Did you notice that Andersen’s last publication was a novel, fact mixes with fiction and becomes this crazy-Middle East-out-of-control-Anne Weaver style of writing that portrays Egypt in a terrible way (there are positive things in this country, you know) and uses the same of stereotypes and cliches.
M, I agree with your comment about the photos, you hit the nail on the spot, the pictures are like a nightmare or Matrix movie, just like the text of the article!
Really, guys? You liked this? “Bikini-clad butts” and “dark-skinned natives?” I know it gets more serious after the first 1600 words, but I found it hard to concentrate on bearded Islamists after being forced to imagine bikini-clad, dark-skinned, native butts.
And the photos, while beautiful, don’t look much like Egypt.