Summer in the City, Summer in the Middle East

In my many years as an activist, I have learned that when someone—a sacrificial lamb—has drawn the world’s attention, that most of the do-gooders who approach, myself included, have their own agendas. How could it be otherwise? All of us may mean well, all of us may cause harm, few of us, even the most religious amongst us, are there for completely unselfish reasons. Some are, but many more are after some kind of religious or political “credit,” and wish to use the sacrificial lamb to prove or achieve something else. No one is there for the sacrifice herself, no one knows her, she is a principle embodied.

I kept reading Playing the Game: Western Women in Arabia by Penelope Tuson. It concerns the Victorian and early twentieth century-era women who traveled to Arabia, Iran, and India. This is part of my research for a new book and partly a desperate obsession of my own to travel to these places—something that I will never again do. It is far too dangerous, impossible for an American, a woman, and Jew to do.

Therefore, I did the next best thing. I saw three movies: Agora, set in 4^th century Alexandria; Lebanon, set in an Israeli tank during the 1982 war in—you guessed it—Lebanon; and Cairo Time, set in present day Cairo.

I strongly recommend Agora, which is a story about violence and hatred in the name of religion (remind you of anything?). The costumes, sets, landscapes, interiors are breathtaking, as is the acting. The film is also about the burning of the library in Alexandria, a fact which has haunted me all my life. We have no definitive knowledge of when this occurred and who really carried it out. The film is mainly about the pagan philosopher, Hypatia, a supremely brilliant woman who taught science, astronomy, philosophy to the leading men of the time—and who was literally torn apart by an enraged Christian mob because she was an “uppity” woman and a pagan who refused to convert. Alas, this much seems to be historically true. In the film, she is, mercifully, knifed by her own former slave, who converted to Christianity, and who loved her. He does this before the mob can flay her alive, torture her in other ways, stone her.

What can I say about Cairo Time? Not much—oh yes, the views are also splendid, as is the acting, but it is a slight film about very little, about possibilities unrealized. I loved the coffee shops (all-male), the water pipes, the belly dancing (at a family wedding), the Nile—as for all else, it was not worth my time.

Ah, but it was a far cheaper and safer way of visiting Egypt.

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