A map of the Nile Delta. As I recall, Kamal\u2019s village was on the eastern side of the Delta, somewhat inland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the last three of the four years that my wife and I resided in Ma\u2018adi, south of Cairo, we lived in a multi-level apartment building directly adjacent to Cairo American College. \u00a0The apartments above us occupied entire floors, and were rented by people with relatively cushy corporate or diplomatic positions. \u00a0By contrast, ours shared the ground floor with another relatively small apartment (a bit larger than ours) and with a rather large entryway. \u00a0Thus, it was too small to be of much interest to the market consisting of better-positioned foreigners, and we were able to get it at a comparatively low cost. \u00a0It was much nicer than the apartment in which we had spent our first year.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The building had a bawwab<\/em>, or doorkeeper, named Kamal. \u00a0He was an illiterate peasant from the area of the Nile Delta, north of Cairo. \u00a0(Cairo sits at the point where the Nile River branches out into its delta.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
We came to like Kamal very much. \u00a0Unfortunately, he\u2019s probably long dead by now: \u00a0Like many Egyptians, and especially like many very poor ones (at least back then), he smoked several packs of cigarettes a day, and he had already developed a chronic and very deep cough.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the moment, three memories about him:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, for much of the time that we lived in that apartment, Kamal lived outside our window, literally in a very large cardboard box. \u00a0During our last year or so, however, the owner of the building had a small but permanent one-room shack built \u2014 not much larger, really, than the box \u2014 for him to sleep in. \u00a0It was finished in the same tan stucco that covered the building itself. \u00a0I was pleased for Kamal and, when I next visited with our landlord to pay our rent, I complimented him on having provided our bawwab<\/em> with a nicer place in which to live. \u00a0He looked at me as if I were from another planet. \u00a0He had built it, he explained rather coldly, because the cardboard box was ugly and he wanted his building and its surrounding area to look nicer. \u00a0Plainly, Kamal himself, the human being, didn\u2019t matter at all to him. \u00a0I had never overly much liked the landlord; I liked him considerably less after that conversation.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Second, after some time living in our new apartment, my wife and I bought a cheap black-and-white television set so that I could listen to the news and to Arabic programming and so that we could have some evening entertainment at home. \u00a0(Egyptian television sometimes even picked up American television series, and I still shudder to think what Egyptian audiences were learning about life in the United States from Dallas<\/em>, which was broadcast just about every night during our last several months in the country.) \u00a0When we left, we gave that television set to Kamal, so that he would have something to do while sitting out there alone at night. \u00a0(We were also obliged to give him a letter certifying that it had been a gift, lest the police assume \u2014 since someone like him could never afford to buy a television \u2014 that he had stolen it.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Third, Kamal was only permitted by our landlord to return to his wife and children in his small village perhaps once a month, for a couple of days. \u00a0Maybe less often than that, actually. \u00a0(He was rarely absent.) \u00a0Once, when he went home, we loaned him our super cheap and super simple Kodak Instamatic camera after teaching him how to point, look through the viewfinder, and click. \u00a0We also gave him a few rolls of film and taught him how to change them. \u00a0When he returned, with lots of images of his family and the people in his village, we developed the film and gave the photos to him. \u00a0But I\u2019ve kicked myself for decades now that we didn\u2019t make copies of those pictures. \u00a0They\u2019re the kind of images that we, as foreigners, could never, ever, have obtained. \u00a0Our presence would have disturbed their normal routine. \u00a0They wouldn\u2019t have been natural. \u00a0But those photos were taken by one of their own, a peasant like themselves, speaking their dialect, dressed like them. \u00a0How I wish that we had copies of those photographs!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 For the last three of the four years that my wife and I resided in Ma\u2018adi, south of Cairo, we lived in a multi-level apartment building directly adjacent to Cairo American College. \u00a0The apartments above us occupied entire floors, and were rented by people with relatively cushy corporate or diplomatic positions. \u00a0By contrast, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6537,951,6531,6534,3049,6543,6546,5045,6540],"class_list":["post-79893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-delta","tag-egypt","tag-fellah","tag-fellahin","tag-nile","tag-peasant","tag-poor","tag-poverty","tag-village"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>