CAIRO, Egypt -- Be open to anything, and know everything is all part of the experience.
This is the best advice I can give to anyone studying abroad and is my personal motto. My name is Rebecca Byerly, and I am spending my junior year studying abroad at the American University in Cairo. The objective of this correspondence home is to try and capture some of the moments of life in this remarkable city.
The first thing I noticed about Cairo was the traffic. There are no traffic lanes, and getting around is a game of Russian roulette. There is a dusty film of years of pollution on every building. The air is heavy with a sweaty heat, the sounds of horns blowing and the bustle of 14 million people.
Yet my senses have never been more alive. There is something about this city that has taken me in. Everywhere you go in Cairo there is an intoxicating feeling of life all around you.
Cow carcasses hang in the market with the bushy tails still attached. Children with dirty faces play on the street. Women of all sorts - some wearing the hijab and others the latest Western fashion - stroll along chatting with friends. Cafes full of men smoking shisha spill onto the sidewalk.
This is a daily scene from Cairo, and these are the people I have come to know and love.
One of the things that surprised me most about the Egyptian people was their warmth toward Americans. Without exception, the people here have reached out to me. Before leaving the states people warned me about saying, "I am American." When I say 'Ana amrikiyya (I am American)," the Egyptians smile and say "Ahlan wa sahlan (Welcome)."
Egyptian sentiment toward America is not directed at the people, but the government. Egyptians - from the most renowned professor to the man I buy water from on the street - remind me they don't like Bush but love Americans. The frustration toward U.S. foreign policies, especially the Palestinian territories and the Iraq war, is an open sore.
"Bush wants to take oil and he wants to be the first to talk or make a suggestion and does not want anyone to order besides him," Mahmoud Sharkawy said.
The power of these words is amplified when you consider these are the words of a 15-year-old Egyptian boy.
I met Mahmoud and his friends on the campus of AUC, where the kids took English classes. The kids and I made an instant friendship. In remarkably good English, these youngsters, whose ages range from 11 to 16, asked me if I liked Jews and hated Palestinians. They asked how I felt about the war in Iraq and why Bush has allowed so many Iraqi people to die. These kids looked to me with questions I could never answer.
I believe that if you want to get an idea of what the future holds, talk to a child. After talking with Mahoud, Somar, Fouda and other Egyptian youths about their concerns, the road that lays ahead for the United States struck a nerve in my soul. One of the most shocking things I learned from our conversations was the way the kids separated the American people from the government. What kind of democracy are we living in when, in the eyes of a child, the people and the government must function in two entirely different sectors because the actions of the latter are so extreme?
Last week I met Hany Abdel Kawi. He is a well-respected student at AUC and is editor in chief of the Caravan, AUC's campus newspaper. When I asked Hany to recount his memory of Sept. 11, 2001, I was surprised by how similar his story was to my own.
"It was my first week of my freshman year at AUC," he said. "When we heard rumors of the news, everyone started panicking and rushed to the library to look at CNN online. It was such a strange feeling: Oh my God, those huge buildings had collapsed."
The difference in my account of 9/11 and Hany's was not the actual event but what has followed in the three years since. Hany talked about how he had planned to have an internship in the States the summer after 9/11. After he saw the way Muslims were treated in the States, his attitude changed.
"I am living here," Kawi said. "It is my country. At least here I can keep my dignity."
One of the courses I am taking at AUC is a seminar on the war in Iraq. The professor, Dr. El-Shazly, is an older lady who has lived in Egypt most of her life except for the 14 years she spent researching in London and working in Iraq.
After class, I stopped her and asked if she would reflect on 9/11 and the lessons she learned in the three years that have passed. The two of us sat on the campus of AUC as the night closed in. Between drags of her cigarette, she talked about her thoughts.
"In the beginning I could not understand the nationwide drama," El-Shazly said. "When I try to understand why the Americans were so traumatized I have several views."
She tilted her head back and said she realized the major difference in Egyptian and U.S. mentality was that Americans had read about attacks on other countries but never experienced it on their own soil. Also, Americans enjoyed secure borders while in Egypt the borders have constantly been negotiated over. But the last point El-Shazly made stuck with me the most.
"The drama of America is not so much what happened, but Americans are traumatized by what might happen again," she said.
Could there be a statement more true? In the last three years, has a day passed without the thoughts of terrorism passing through our minds? We live in a country with code oranges, reds and yellows. Virtually every violent event in the past three years has been blamed on some form of terrorism or another.
Bush reassures us that his hand of power is keeping us safe and securing our borders with Donald Rumsfeld and homeland defense. Do you believe this, or is it possible our president is controlling a nation of people with fear?
At this point I do not have an answer. However, the reason I am spending the next year of my life in Egypt is to learn more about the Egyptian people and understand how my country's policies and war on terror affects the rest of the world. Listening to the voices of people with a different perspective from a different part of the world brings us one step closer to understanding the lessons we have to learn from 9/11, and ensuring that the world does not allow such a catastrophe to happen again.
I do know that I live in a country where 90 percent of the population is Muslim. For the first time in my life, I am a minority. Despite a difference in religion, language and culture, I feel at home in this country and at ease with the wonderful people of Egypt.
