![\"NASA\/NOAA,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2018\/12\/egypt-and-the-nile-at-night-1200x599.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n
Written separately, so with some overlap:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(1)<\/p>\n
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My wife and I lived for roughly four years in Egypt, in a southern suburb of Cairo called Ma\u2018adi that lies on the east bank of the Nile River. \u00a0We didn\u2019t plan to be there so long; it simply worked out that way. \u00a0We were doing reasonably well financially, partly because of the remarkable generosity of my brother in connection with the family business and partly because my wife, to our surprise, walked right into a good job teaching at Cairo American College<\/a>. \u00a0(I was studying. \u00a0For one year, I served as a private tutor to the daughter of the exiled Shah of Iran. \u00a0In our final year there, I won a fellowship \u2014 essentially, I understand, Fulbright money \u2014 from the Center for Arabic Study Abroad<\/a>, which was and is pretty much the finishing school for American Arabists.) \u00a0But also, frankly, because we were having a wonderfully good experience there. \u00a0Every day was fascinating, although also often challenging.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Twice, we went home during the summer. \u00a0After all, Egypt is hot in the summer, and I could make a fair amount of money working for the family construction business.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I always found returning to Egypt just a bit depressing, though. \u00a0To leave my parents and the rest of my family behind was rough, and, in those days, we didn\u2019t have easy communication by telephone, let alone by email, and regular mail took weeks to reach us, if it even reached us at all. \u00a0We called home only twice during those four years, and doing so was a major undertaking. \u00a0(Even calling across Cairo was difficult, because the Egyptian telephone system back then was so bad.) \u00a0The first time was when I received a telegram from my brother telling me that my father had suffered a heart attack. \u00a0It took me twenty-four hours to get through via a telephone at the Ma\u2018adi post office. \u00a0Only then did I learn that my father had survived. \u00a0The second time was when our first child was born. \u00a0And that, too, took prolonged effort \u2014 which was especially difficult because, at the time, I was suffering from hepatitis.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The most depressing part, for me, was typically the approach to Cairo airport after a summer in California, which, given our flight schedule, always took place at night. \u00a0As I looked out the window, down on the poor, drab, and dimly lit neighborhoods over which we were flying, I would ask myself what I was doing. \u00a0And then, when we hit the chaos of the airport itself \u2014 things are much, much, much better now; the Cairo airport today is clean and modern, whereas it was once completely disorganized and resembled a not very well kept warehouse \u2014 I was really feeling down.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But then we would climb into a taxi and begin the sheer, white-knuckle thrill of careening through the streets of greater Cairo (and sometimes on its sidewalks), weaving at high speed amid the traffic. \u00a0And I would begin to think to myself, \u201cI absolutely\u00a0love<\/em> this place!\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n (2)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I first became really aware of the power of Latter-day Saint community when my wife and I were living in Cairo. \u00a0Or, more precisely, in Ma\u2018adi, to the south of Cairo.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As I say, we ended up spending four academic years there. \u00a0We hadn\u2019t planned on that initially. \u00a0We simply kept on extending \u2014 and the Cairo Branch was a principal reason for our willingness to stay.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A resident American official then with the Center for Arabic Study Abroad<\/a> \u2014 I was a CASA fellow for my last year in Egypt \u2014 made an interesting comment to me that is helpful in this context: \u00a0I had been suffering from hepatitis, which had left me bedridden for at least a month, and he came to visit me to see how I was. \u00a0In the course of the conversation, he confided in me that, if it were up to him, he would be seriously inclined to admit Latter-day Saint students to the CASA program, which was strictly limited in size, in preference to non-Mormons, even if the LDS students had slightly lower qualifications. \u00a0I asked him why. \u00a0Because, he said, LDS students arrived in Cairo \u2014 a huge, exceedingly foreign, often quite dysfunctional, and frequently very difficult city \u2014 with a support system already in place. \u00a0Several CASA students, pretty much on their own and overwhelmed by Cairo, had prematurely dropped out of the program, leaving their spaces vacant \u2014 and, each time, leaving the Fulbright officials who were its principal funders tempted to reduce the number of student slots accordingly. \u00a0The Mormons, he said, flourished . . . \u00a0and never dropped out.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This certainly fit our experience. \u00a0The hepatitis episode was a case in point: \u00a0My unofficial diagnosis, before a physician confirmed it, came from the branch president\u2019s wife, Lani Green, at a branch Christmas party where I was feeling unbelievably awful. \u00a0(She\u2019s a nurse.) \u00a0And members of the branch were amazingly kind through my recovery. \u00a0Especially so as it transpired during the very last stages of my wife\u2019s pregnancy. \u00a0I could do little, but the branch president\u2019s wife and Carol Naguib, the Relief Society president (both of whom had become very close friends), as well as others, were remarkably kind to both of us then and during our son\u2019s first months.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That had been the pattern from the first: \u00a0Arriving at the Cairo Airport \u2014 a chaotic and intimidating place in those days \u2014 without even a plan of where to spend the night, my new wife and I were met, to our delight, by a then-member of the branch, our friend S. Kent Brown<\/a>, who was in Egypt at that time doing research at the Coptic Museum<\/a>. \u00a0We stayed at his family\u2019s apartment for a week or two, until, with the help of the Relief Society president, we found a place of our own. \u00a0And she also helped my wife land a quite unexpected teaching position at Cairo American College<\/a> \u2014 which had been vacated, a few weeks into the fall term, by a new American teacher who, it seems, simply couldn\u2019t handle life in Egypt.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 Written separately, so with some overlap: \u00a0 (1) \u00a0 My wife and I lived for roughly four years in Egypt, in a southern suburb of Cairo called Ma\u2018adi that lies on the east bank of the Nile River. \u00a0We didn\u2019t plan to be there so long; it simply worked out that way. \u00a0We […]<\/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":[3613,948,24431,24422,17386,24425,1809,19826,19829,936,951,3739,12830,3001,12842,12845,2905,1812,1815,24428,788,55,1667,3049,10889,2532,22319,19448],"class_list":["post-92374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-university-in-cairo","tag-cairo","tag-cairo-airport","tag-cairo-american-college","tag-cairo-branch","tag-center-for-arabic-study-abroad","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-daniel-c-peterson","tag-daniel-carl-peterson","tag-daniel-peterson","tag-egypt","tag-egyptian","tag-green","tag-kent-brown","tag-lani","tag-lanigene","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-maadi","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-nile","tag-nile-river","tag-peterson","tag-river-nile","tag-s-kent-brown"],"yoast_head":"\n