A) The 40-something-year-old "president" of the dorms who took 2 months to get the internet connection fixed
B) The 60-something-year-old professor of calligraphy who is obsessed with photographing his female students and their friends and seems like a dirty old man
C) The 20-year-old girl study literature at the University of Alexandria
Of course, this is a trick question. The answer is clearly D) You should respect everyone. We're all human. But, do you respect everyone to the same degree? And, how should you show your respect?
Let's talk about Mr. A. Truthfully, he has failed at providing an American priced service. The dorms are cheap compared to America (around $350 a month), but for less than that price you can get a pretty sweet apartment on the Corniche with a view of the Mediterranean on the top floor. Egypt is full of disorder, but internet is not hard to get. Cafes and apartments all over Alexandria have internet without any problems.
Additionally, he could never fix the food situation. The food is terrible in the dorms, yet the food is great at restaurants and friends' houses. I can get a good dinner at a restaurant for $5, so I don't know why I can't get a good meal at the cafeteria seeing as we are paying 15x the the Egyptian price to live in the dorms. One of the three tiny washing machines has been broken since August. This is pretty normal, but it's just odd that market forces (the relative wads of cash the dorms are bringing in from the Americans) don't lead to more organized and accountable living conditions.
So, I respect this guy as a human being, but my respect for him is nothing more than any regular person. I tried to enter his office to discuss the progress on solving the internet problem two weeks ago, but one of his secretary-like-people told me I had to change from my sweatpants and t-shirt before I could meet with him. I changed my clothes because I didn't want to cause a problem, and I respect the fact that I'm in another culture and customs are different. Nonetheless, I was very surprised that I had to change into formal clothes to enter an office located 10 meters from my room. I dress up when I meet with someone important, so I felt very odd dressing up for this guy (although it was only jeans and another shirt).
Mr. B is the definition of a dirty old man. I went to one calligraphy lesson, and I noticed that he was odd. He took more photos than the average Egyptian (and that means a lot), and although he took the same amount of pictures of guys and girls, it seemed like he was taking pictures of the guys in order to justify taking pictures of girls. I had a weird feeling about him, but no one else seemed to think he was weird.
I never returned to the calligraphy class because I was too busy, but I saw Mr. B again at our Thanksgiving party. He brought his camera and asked some of my Egyptian friends, his students, to take pictures of people. Once again, I thought this was odd, but I didn't have any proof to say that this guy was doing anything wrong. Then, he asked Ahmed to ask a particular American girl to sit next to him, so he could take a photo with her. Mr. B had never talked to this girl or seen this girl before in his life. Ahmed knew this, but Ahmed nonetheless he followed the directions of his elder professor. I stopped Ahmed mid-sentence (she obviously didn't want to take a picture with this old man) and told him that it wasn't going to happen. Ahmed apologized for asking and later explained to me the conflicting forces that pulled him in two directions in the previous situation: the respect for his elder and the respect for the girl... he might as well ask and that way when she said no, he would have done his best to please all parties.
The inspiration for this post comes from another one of my Egyptian friends. Last night, he told me that he no longer goes to the calligraphy class. I thought that was weird because he loved the class more than anyone else. He told me that the problem was the professor took an obscene amount of photos of his girlfriend, and he got mad. He didn't say anything, but he doesn't want to return. He continues to respects this professor as an elder and artist.
Another Egyptian says that it's o.k. that the professor is a dirty old man because he is old and alone. It's not his fault, it's just the circumstances. The exact phrase directly translated was "He has a disease." Elder men are simply respected and that's the end of the story. The idea of confronting the professor and saying "NO, you cannot take a picture of that girl you don't know" is completely foreign.
Another example of respect for older men comes from the female side of the story. Egyptian girls don't like guys taking too many pictures of them (regular group photos like when we take trips with the program). On the last trip to Siwa, one Egyptian girl made another Egyptian guy delete all his pictures of her. He took a lot of pictures (and I mean a lot), but they were all group shots and nothing even resembling risque. She was willing to say stop, don't take a picture of me to him. But, they won't say this to an older man because then then they would be accusing him of being a pervert and that's rude.
Then, there's Ms. C. Some of these same guys are really nice to her, but one dismissed her as an academic because she attends the slacker college -- the arts and science college (remember stuff's relative). But, in reality, her marks were high enough to enter into the same college as him, the college of medicine. She was just more interested in literature, and that's what she pursued. These guys would say they respected her, and I know they do, but at least one of them is willing to put her down for no reason and not a single one is willing to confront a dirty old man about his misgivings.
We can say we respect everyone, but what does that mean. How do we respect these people. And, how should we gauge how worthy people are of our respect?
