An American Woman Living in Egypt

Life during an Islamic takeover

Cheri Berens

• Publisher: MASR Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781733855402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Cheri Berens had been conducting field research throughout Egypt and had settled into married life with her Egyptian husband when the Arab Spring began. Quickly recognizing that western media was concealing the truth, Cheri began documenting the events that were taking place. Never-ending violent protests caused chaos to distract the public while the Muslim Brotherhood censored and arrested members of the media, disabled the Supreme Court, removed judges, and began changing the constitution. Police were demonized in order to remove them, and once removed, police were replaced with members of Islamist militias. The national anthem and saluting the flag were banned. Egyptian history was removed from textbooks and replaced with Islamic History. Only an Islamic identity was acceptable to the Muslim Brotherhood. Through personal experiences, Cheri unfolds a fascinating story of a foreign culture and illustrates how Egypt’s culture was being systematically removed and replaced with Islam. Though the final process was implemented in a matter of months, the foundation of takeover had been long laid. The Muslim Brotherhood had placed activists inside universities and the Islamification began by altering the minds of Egypt’s youth. Giving historical insights to better understand what took place, Cheri exposes the Arab Spring for what it was—including U.S. involvement. Within weeks after Barack Obama was elected president, the State Department held an Alliance of Youth Movements Summit. Muslim Brotherhood Youth attended this Summit and were trained to implement a false flag event to be used as a pretense for removing the government. Also at this Summit were representatives from CNN, MSNBC and other mainstream media, as well as Facebook and Google. Fake news and social media propaganda assisted the implementation of the Islamic takeover. Jam-packed with explosive information about U.S. involvement, Cheri fully demonstrates why there is a similar crisis lurking subversively inside America and exposes Islam for the devious system of takeover that it is.

Chapter 1. Egypt 101

I approached the man holding the sign with my name on it and said to him, “That’s me!” When he asked where he would be taking me, I answered, il-haram. He gave me a startled look, then one of confusion. Students enrolled in the Arabic Intensive Program at the American University in Cairo are usually family members of diplomats, wealthy individuals entering international banking, or some other “upscale” field or position in life. The village neighborhood of il-haram, my destination, has always been ghehlaba (poor, lower class).

The people of il-haram are at the bottom of the Egyptian class structure. They live at the base of the sphinx and pyramids, but most come directly from poor farming villages along the Nile or the villages of the Delta.

As we drove towards il-haram the driver continuously eyed me in the rearview mirror with a look of suspicion. His expression turned into astonishment when we pulled up to my destination, the entrance to an alley of mud-brick one and two-room houses without running water. The driver handed me a packet of information and a letter of greeting from the American University and left without a word. It seems this driver wasn’t too enthused about my destination and judged me unfairly because of it.

During my enrollment in the Arabic Intensive Program, I lived with various families in il-haram. I settled into village life and got to know the neighborhood people. There are many horse and camel stables along the streets and alleys around the pyramids, so I began to take horseback riding lessons almost every evening after a long day of classes.

I would end each day on a high sand dune observing the transition to nightfall. Slowly the lights of Cairo would begin to light up one by one in the distance. Then suddenly, Cairo would light up all at once—a wave of lights in a magical blur. Soon after, the spotlights aimed at the pyramids would turn on. Often, the pyramids appeared to be glowing in a hazy mirage—enormous but blurred from light mixed with fine Saharan dust.

I will always look back on my earliest years in Egypt as some of the best years of my life.

Living amongst average Egyptians taught me the Egyptian culture. It was like taking a class: Egypt 101. Part of what I had to learn had to do with the country’s well-defined class structure and how each class expected to be treated (or not treated, in some cases). Poverty had forced many Egyptians to remain in their village-like areas and alleyways of Cairo. You could turn a corner into an alley off a main, modern street and find yourself in Egypt in the mid-1800s.

By living in these village neighborhoods, I experienced all of their festivities and celebrations and came to understand the belief systems attached to those festivities. The lower class and poor are the majority in Egypt and they hold on to the very oldest traditions.

Unlike most foreigners who visit Egypt, I lived like an Egyptian and lived with Egyptians. I went to countless engagement parties, henna nights and weddings. I participated in the four days of feasting during the Corban Feast which included the ritual slaughtering of sheep. Many of my friends bought baby sheep months ahead with the sole purpose of having them full grown by the date of the feast. Often they would raise the lambs on their rooftops along with a few bunnies (to be eaten, not as pets).

I lived in these village homes while celebrating eid il-fettira (the feast at the end of Ramadan), shem el-nisseem (a holiday that is a remnant from an old Pharaonic tradition), and I’ve been to countless subuah, the 7th-day birthday party. Due to high death rates, Egyptians are afraid to celebrate the birth of a baby until it has lived seven days.

I attended all the other festivities and celebrations as well, both secular and religious. Egyptians love celebrations and have many. I did not “observe” the culture; I became a part of it. I lived it. It became my life. It was my life for many years.

I lived with different families over the years, but eventually I began to rent apartments of my own in various parts of Cairo. Each of the areas within greater Cairo are like separate villages. I’d get to know my neighbors and the people in the local community, the shop owners, and the people who sold things from the little kiosks that speckle every area of Cairo. I became friends with my neighbors and owners of shops. I hung out in their homes, at their shops, and was always invited to their events.

One of my favorite homes during my earliest years in Egypt was that of my first horseback riding teacher. My teacher, Hassan, would often invite me to his house to have a meal. Once he discovered that I knew all the classic Egyptian songs, he would sing them while we took long rides in the Sahara.

Eating at Hassan’s house was always a treat. Not only was his wife a fantastic cook and taught me how to cook the traditional foods of Egypt (which came in handy when I later married an Egyptian), she was also my first insight into the life of the average Egyptian woman.

At first Hassan’s wife, Aiya, served me. I was her husband’s guest. Following tradition, she would not eat with us—she would serve us and then disappear. But after a few visits I talked Hassan out of this special treatment. I wanted to be part of the family and not treated special.

Aiya loved it when I helped her. She would grin at me when I showed interest in how she made traditional Egyptian food, and eventually, she showed me the tricks of her cooking skills. She then began to allow me to carry food in from the small area outside where she cooked, to the dirt floor of their main room where we all ate together on the floor.

Their small mud brick home had a dirt floor and no real furniture to speak of, just one hand-made mattress on the floor and one very simple dresser-type piece of furniture that held the wardrobe of the entire family of six. In other words, not much clothing.

They had no bathroom inside the home; they shared one with other people in the alley. That I did not seem fazed by their toilet, a hole in the ground, was a relief to them. Their neighbors had seen foreigners show disgust at the hole in the ground system. But the truth was, I had already become used to it. It is the norm for many in Egypt.

There was no running water inside Hassan’s home. There was a pump outside in the alley that was used for cooking and washing dishes. After eating and clearing the floor, an ancient cassette player would be taken off the dresser and beledy music would be played. Beledy is traditional music with a very recognizable drum rhythm recognized by all as “Egyptian.”

Beledy music and a well-used, tattered Monopoly game in Arabic was all Hassan and Aiya had for entertainment. But their favorite form of entertainment was dancing. After eating, we would dance. Usually the youngest child would go first, a three-year old boy who was one of the most impressive dancers I had ever seen, though as the years went by, I saw that all children, both male and female, begin dancing at the same time they learned to walk. Music and dance are deeply ingrained into the culture and play a central part of most festivities.

The Lowest of the Lowest

For several months I rented a very tiny one-room apartment with an incredible view of the pyramids. I was thrilled with this room with a view, but my relationship with the owner of the building, and the shop on the ground floor, was a difficult and tricky one.

Although he treated me with great respect because, as he often said, “You aren’t like the other foreigners who come here for sex,” he also made me uncomfortable because he managed to bring up sex in every conversation!

I came across this sexual stereotype about foreign women constantly. And to be honest, I came to find the stereotype somewhat true. Many foreign women come looking for a summer romance type of experience. And many offered casual sex. It was assumed that if these women offered casual sex to one man, they probably offered casual sex to many—and this is considered extremely bad by most all Egyptians.

The owner of the building respected me. I knew the culture well enough to know that being chaste was a must. I was in Egypt to learn the culture and to speak Arabic, but even if I was tempted at some point, I knew better. This chaste conduct served me well over the years. I had a good reputation wherever I went and with whomever I made friends. Years later, my husband went around to neighborhoods he knew I had lived and asked questions about me. He later reported to me that he could not find one dishonorable story about me, and in fact, heard raves about my being “like an Egyptian.” He was very proud that I was well respected and loved (and that I hadn’t had sex with anyone).

Every day the owner of my apartment building would tell me some story of a foreigner who had hit on him or did something bad (had sex). I was uncomfortable because I wasn’t sure why he was always talking to me about sex. Was he bragging? Or was he hitting on me? I wasn’t sure. So I avoided him as much as possible.

But I had another problem with the owner. He had an employee at his shop who helped at the counter and retrieved goods from the backroom. This employee had a son, and the son kept the shop clean and ran errands for the owner. One time I was sitting having coffee in the shop and also having a pastry. I had dropped the tissue I was using as a napkin and when I bent over to pick it up, the owner yelped “No!” He called his employee over and made him pick up my tissue.

Then, as if this was not enough, the owner pointed at some invisible speck of lint on the floor and told the employee to pick it up. The employee looked, but nothing was there. He was told again to pick it up. I bent over to get a close look and nothing was there. In fact, the employee’s son had just finished sweeping the floor. I looked at the owner in puzzlement, but he just yelled at his employee to clean it up. The employee finally pretended to pick something up—making a big show of it—and walked away. Sadly, this type of thing happened most every day between the owner and his employee.

Even worse was the treatment of the employee’s son, Ayman. Ayman was a bit slow, and because of this, people in my neighborhood treated him poorly. Kids made fun of him and shopkeepers shunned him when he came around.

When a person has a defect of any kind, whether mental or physical, that person is considered to be the lowest of the lowest, and depending on how different he is, he can become an outcast. But I found Ayman to be bright and very lovable and I made friends with him, first out of pity, because he had no one treating him well in my neighborhood, then, truly out of fondness.

Ayman began walking me to the corner where I caught the minivan bus that connected me to the main bus that would take me to downtown Cairo every day to get to the university. Ayman would also be waiting for me when I returned, which I loved because I’d be tired from a long day of classes and taking three buses to get home. The smile on his face when he saw me step off the bus made my long day new again.

The owner of my apartment building started a joke in the neighborhood about Ayman following me around like a dog. This joke was told in a most cruel and ugly way. Stray dogs often came into our neighborhood because there was a spot nearby where people dumped all types of waste and food scraps. Rats, cats, dogs and donkeys could always be found scavenging for food around the dumpsite. The owner of my building hated dogs more than any other creature, even preferring the rats to the dogs.

One day when the owner was gone for the afternoon I asked Ayman to accompany me to the post office to mail some letters. I knew he loved walking with me in this neighborhood where he was normally scorned and treated badly.

At first I thought he was leading me the long way for the fun of it, and that was fine with me. But then I realized he was walking me to his own neighborhood. People said hello to him and eyed me with a smile. He led me to a home where he was fussed over. It was his aunt’s home and there were many children and a few female relatives there. They jumped to serve me tea.

Ayman’s aunts asked me the same questions I am always asked when people first meet me:

Are you married? (my answer: divorced)

Do you have children? (my answer: yes)

How many boys? (my answer: none) Having no male children always received a reaction of great sadness, or sometimes people were “embarrassed” for me. Some men will divorce their wives if their wives produce no male children.

How old are you? (this meant, are you still young enough to marry and have male children in the future?)

After finishing tea and thanking Ayman’s aunt profusely, we left for the post office.

We continued on down the alley but then Ayman darted into another home. Soon women came out and smiled at me and begged me to come in. It was another aunt and several cousins. We had another cup of tea and there was lots of joy expressed that Ayman had made a new friend.

We left, and it happened again, this time his mother’s. I think maybe someone called ahead or sent a child as messenger because she was standing outside waiting with a huge grin on her face. I met all of Ayman’s small brothers and sisters and I lingered longest at his home.

By the time we left, a large mob of neighborhood kids had gathered outside and they followed us through the streets as if we were the Pied Piper—all the way back to the border of my neighborhood. When we eventually returned to my building the difference in atmosphere was hard felt. The smile left Ayman’s face immediately as he humbled himself in front of the owner.

The owner’s poor treatment towards people he felt were less than him was endless, and over time I found it difficult to take. It was the main reason I ended up moving out of my wonderful little room with the pyramid view. But the final straw came in an awakening of sorts.

There was a taxi driver who I used often and who I had befriended. The owner would not allow my friend to meet up with me inside the ground floor shop. The owner made him wait outside like an outcast. People living in the building often met with friends in the shop and the owner normally welcomed it. He allowed others to meet up in his shop, but never my friend. Fed up one day, I asked the owner why he would not let my friend inside. He replied, “He’s just a taxi driver.”

At first this was a puzzle.

My taxi driver friend was very well educated and from an upper-class family. I had many dinners with his family and got to know them well. My friend’s father was a historian and author of several books. There just weren’t enough jobs for graduates and that’s why my friend bought a taxi. It was an easy way to make an income while he found a job. My friend and his family were well respected in their community.

But my taxi driver friend was a Christian. And the owner of my apartment building had voiced his dislike for Egypt’s Copts on many occasions. This was to be my very first inkling into a deeper underlying hatred some Muslims have for Christians.

Orgasms

As I moved around to different villages and suburbs, I continued to go horseback riding and tried new stables.

At one particular stable, the guides, and even the owner, who had many experiences with foreigners over the years, truly believed that foreign women always wanted sex. The men at this new stable not only believed that foreign women always wanted sex, they believed that foreign women rode horses to have orgasms!

Many stables have a multi-purpose meeting room where you wait for a guide. This room is also where you could go after the ride for a drink of water, soft drink, or to socialize a bit with other riders. Many ex-pats own horses in Egypt. Arabian horses are a fun ride, so there is a large community of foreigners who ride and socialize at stables.

It was there in this meeting room that my guide told me it was a well-known fact that foreign women rode horses to have an orgasm. Moreover, since Western women weren’t circumcised, he believed they couldn’t help but have an orgasm. He believed they couldn’t control it from happening.

Images began to race through my mind as I contemplated this. Egyptian women who ride on the back of a motorcycle ride sidesaddle. I had thought it odd, but was now beginning to realize women did this to prevent people from thinking anything bad about them. It would be social death for a girl if people thought she was allowing her vagina to be stimulated.

I also thought of a time when I was v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Egypt 101
• 2. The Revolution: U.S. Involvement
• 3. The Christian Origins of the Quran
• 4. The Beginning of the End
• 5. The End
• Conclusion: What can we do?
• Appendix
• Sources
• About the Author