In November 1984 I visited Egypt. I have to admit I did not know much about Egypt. Egypt would be my first Middle Eastern country, my first Arab country, and my first predominantly Muslim country that I would visit and I knew next to nothing about the Middle East, Arabs, or Islam. In other countries, I would learn at least some words and phrases in the local language like “Good morning,” “Thank you,” “How much?” but I didn’t bother to learn a single word of Arabic for my Egyptian trip. I’m not sure why. Maybe I just presumed they would speak English because of the historical British presence there. I mean in India a lot of people spoke English.
To be honest, the only reason I went to Egypt was to see the pyramids. I had always wanted to see the pyramids.
Now I did know some things about Egypt from current events. For example, I knew that Egypt and Israel had signed the Camp David Accords five years earlier finally creating a peace between Egypt and Israel that has lasted for almost 40 years. An important thing to know since I was planning to travel from Egypt to Israel and with the peace that was a relatively easy thing to do. Here we have President of Egypt Anwar Sadat, President of the United States Jimmy Carter, and Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin signing the accords in front of the White House. For their efforts, Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
I also knew that President Anwar Sadat had been assassinated two years later by fundamentalist army officers, but what significance that had for Egypt I had no idea. As far as I knew it was totally safe to travel around the country without fear of being attacked by fundamentalist army officers.
Looking back it is amazing to reflect how ignorant I was about Egypt. But that was the way I preferred to travel back then. Just get a visa and go, then figure out what you’re going to do once you land. It was more exciting and spontaneous that way.
And once I landed at Cairo International Airport, I discovered, if I didn’t know it already, that there was a lot of things to see and do in Egypt than just see the pyramids. Hitting the streets of Cairo, it quickly came back to me all the fun of exploring a vibrant Third World city the way I had earlier experienced Bangkok, Bombay, New Delhi, Madras, Calcutta, and Katmandu.
And as I had done in those other cities, I naturally gravitated toward the non-tourist areas. I had found in my earlier travels that if you really wanted to meet the local people, you had to get away from tourist areas and meet people who did not interact with tourists on a regular basis. In non-tourists areas people treated you like a real person and you could return the favor. And along the way I learned a lot about the way these ordinary people lived. Although there were certainly differences in culture, I realized they were people just like me. We were all trying to get by, make a living, raise families, live, love.
The only downside about navigating in these non-tourist areas was that most of the locals did not speak English and I did not speak their language. So most communication had to be in what I call my “international sign language.” Now my international sign language had nothing to do with the international sign language used around the world to communicate with deaf people. The closest I could come to describe my international sign language is that it’s like miming but without any artificial limits on what you could do with your vocal chords or body parts. Communication was the key so doing embarrassing stuff was totally acceptable. For example, if you needed toilet paper, you simply mimed wiping yourself. Pure and simple.
Thus I didn’t give it any thought when I started walking the back streets of Cairo to see how the regular people live. And when I did, I found that the Egyptian people were the friendliest people I had ever met in my travels.
Every adult I would pass would make eye contact and smile. If they spoke English, sometimes men would invite me to have a seat, serve me tea, maybe take a few puffs from a hookah, and then chat about anything and everything. When they learned I was from the United States, they would pump me with questions about what America was like. They had seen the TV shows and movies and wanted to know if it was true what they saw. I could sense some anger about American foreign policy, especially with regard to Israel, but that did not stop them from wanting to learn more about me and my country.
But while the adults were remarkably friendly, what made Egypt truly exceptional were the children.
One evening a friend and I decided to visit the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the largest and oldest mosque in Cairo. We got a little lost and kept walking rather aimlessly trying to find the mosque and ended up walking into some neighborhoods where dozens of poor Egyptian children were playing.
The minute they saw us, they immediately rushed up and started running circles around us, yelling “Hello! Hello!” We were shocked by how friendly the children were. It was amazing!
And this happened everywhere in Cairo by just wandering down back streets. I could be walking down the street and walk past a child and I would say “Hello.” She would look up and her face would just beam with pleasure as she said “Hello!”
A couple of weeks into my visit to Egypt I teamed up with an English bloke and a couple of Australian gals and we decided to get out of Cairo and go out to the Bahariya Oasis in the Libyan Desert, a four-hour bus drive to the southwest of Cairo.
After four hours of travelling through featureless desert,
it is an amazing sight indeed to see huge dates palms suddenly appear out of nowhere.
Oases like Bahariya since ancient times were regular stopping points for camel caravans on their journeys across the Sahara Desert and continue to serve as stopping points for the car and bus caravans of today.
Bahariya is a particular large oasis comprising a half-dozen villages with dozens of natural springs in the area, with rocky mesas and conical hills (that used to be islands when the entire was an inland sea in ancient times) begging to be explored.
The people of Bahariya, the Wahati, are for the most part the descendants of the people who have lived here since ancient times. Back in 1984 Bahariya was a pretty sleep place. My friends and I found a cheap place to stay in the main village of Bawiti where we hung out most of the time. We did go on one of the organized trips out into the surrounding desert but there wasn’t that much that interested us and we were there to relax.
Me being me, however, one day I got bored just sitting around and decided to go on a walkabout around the village of Bawiti. I started walking down the streets of the village and then started walking across the palm groves, just getting a sense of what life in an oasis village was like.
And as I kept walking I noticed there was a growing number of children who were gathering around me, saying “Hello! Hello!” and I returned “Hello! Hello!”
I was amazed because this was a village in which there were lots of tourists like me so I couldn’t have been that unusual. But even in a small village I don’t think tourists ever just walked aimlessly about like I do. Tourists went on organized tours and hung around in their rooms. So I guess I was once again an object of curiosity.
As I walked up the main road, heading back to the place I was staying, I suddenly got the urge to do something other than just say “Hello! Hello!” I don’t know where this urge came from and, in retrospect, it was not a very good idea. But I got the urge to say something to the kids in Arabic.
Unfortunately, I did not have any guidebook with Arabic phrases in it. And I never bothered to learn any Arabic phrases in my two weeks travelling around Egypt. But I felt determined to say something in Arabic. So I thought hard. Surely I knew some Arabic from all those years of schooling. Unfortunately the public schools I went to in the 1960s and 1970s did not teach about Arabs and Islam so I was drawing a blank there. It would have been wonderful to say something like the Muslim greeting “As-Salaam-Alaikum” (Peace be unto you) but I wouldn’t learn that until years later.
And then suddenly, out of the blue, an Arabic word came to me. I don’t know where it came from but I knew it was an Arabic word. And so I turned and faced the dozen or so children circled around me, laughing and cheering “Hello! Hello!”, and I said in a very clear voice “JIHAD”.
I never saw children’s faces change so quickly.
It was like a black pall had suddenly descended upon us as their faces changed instantaneously with that one word from smiling and laughing to stunned, confused and scared. 
The kids started mumbling something that I took as “No, jihad. No, jihad.” And all of them began backing away from me. I tried to explain to the children that I just couldn’t think of any other Arabic word but that didn’t communicate well. They kept backing away, mumbling “No, jihad! No, jihad!”
Then I tried to suggest that it was a joke. “Ha! Ha! Just a joke!” Like some very off-color politically incorrect type humor. They didn’t get that either. I guess humor just does not necessarily translate across cultures very well.
I kept this up for about a minute as the kids kept backing away up the road and then I gave up and turned around to go back to the room, feeling sad that I had ruined such a nice thing with my stupidity.
But just as I started walking away, all of a sudden I got this sharp pain in the middle of my back. I turned around and saw the rock that had hit me and all the kids running away as fast as they could.
OK this is the Palestinian Intifada and these are grown men. And these guys are not running away. But I think you get the point. I couldn’t find any photos of a single Egyptian boy throwing a rock.
Now getting hit by rock pissed me off. Those assholes! What had I done to them?
I angrily picked up the rock and was fully intending to throw it back at the kids. They were far enough away at that point that I probably wouldn’t have hit anyone. But I had played Little League baseball when I was younger, so maybe. And I was pissed enough that I did want to retaliate.
But then I thought “No, Bruce. That wouldn’t be right. I’m an adult and they’re kids.” And I turned around again and started walking away, rubbing my back. Damn kid!
As I kept walking, it came to me, as crazy as it may sound, that the kids probably thought I had declared a holy war on them. How else to explain the sudden transformation in their behavior? For them apparently jihad was a very serious word, not one to joke about, especially coming from an American-looking guy. So if I said it, they must have thought I meant it. Why else would I say “jihad” unless I meant it?
I would learn later than jihad did not have to mean “holy war”. It could mean an “internal struggle” to be a better Muslim but none of these boys seemed to think I was going through any internal struggle for the faith. No, by jihad, they automatically assumed I was starting a holy war. And at least one of the kids was brave enough to get the first shot in before they ran away to tell their parents and regroup! And I guess, by not throwing the rock back and not going back into the village again – where they would undoubtedly have been laying in wait for me – I was being magnanimous enough to end the jihad. Right on, me! I personally ended the jihad!
I could call what I did the Camp Bahariya Accords, a new precedent for peace in the Middle East. What did you have to do to get peace in the Middle East? Simply refuse to throw rocks back. And stop saying jihad! Can I have my Nobel Peace Prize now?