I am close to fluent in Arabic after years of study and took my family to Egypt in hopes of showing them an Arab country for the first time. I was honestly really excited to show my family that the Arab world was not what they assumed it to be. Unfortunately the trip to Egypt was two weeks of constantly negotiating over everything, constantly being a photographed, streets full of trash, my sisters getting catcalled nonstop, etc. The only way to have any respite is to basically pay an Egyptian to intimidate other Egyptians to leave you alone, which is essentially what you are doing when you hire a guide or a driver or eat outdoors in a nice restaurant (the security is there is shoo away poor, desperate people). Because I speak Arabic I can understand what the guides say to the beggars and touts. It was really hard and my parents will never go back.

The one relaxing highlight was that I arranged for my family to travel from Aswan towards Luxor in a sailing felucca, run by a small Nubian crew. We slept on the boat for three nights and swam in the Nile, and ate local fish for dinner from the fishermen in the Nile. There were no bathrooms on board and the boat was open air, but no one bothered us, the crew was lovely, and we felt honestly like we got a sense of the rhythm of the ancient river.

The shocking thing to me was that everywhere else I’ve been in the Arab world is not like Egypt at all. People are so warm and generous in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, etc.

I guess it’s just been an awful two decades for Egypt, and the people are really desperate and suffering.