culture shock and pastry shops.

As I caught myself glaring at a pita bread vendor yesterday, it occurred to me that I am still going through culture shock after so many months in the Middle East.

Yes, yesterday from 3:05 – 3:28pm, there was no target too small to receive my unfettered and irrational ire: rusted Peugeot taxicabs clogging the double-parked street, too-sweet clouds of hookah smoke billowing across the cracked and dirty sidewalks, the low smoggy haze hanging over the Nile, the crowds of pedestrians clogging my path—pedestrians who speak a language I still don’t know, eat food I’m tired of eating, wear clothes I wouldn’t feel natural putting on, and overall, behave in crowds in a way that strikes me as inefficient and pushy.

At 3:28, I had iPod headphones jammed firmly in my ears to let the lofty conversations of a Radio Lab podcast carry me above the chaos of Cairo’s streets, and I was glowering in the crankiest mood to have hit me since I moved here in July. To be more precise: I was loathing Egypt. I didn’t like it. I wanted to go home.

Just then, I walked by the open storefront of a bakery. The smell of sweet, warm dough wrapped around me, and melted away my defenses instantly.

I stepped inside. The bakery—like most in Cairo—simply contained metal racks and large trays of biscuits and breads. No gentle display lighting, no doilies and delicate arrangements. The industrial racks remind you of a hospital supply room—only filled with fig cookies and flaky croissant bread rather than linen and backless gowns. It didn’t matter. In one moment, my mood had swung back to its usual position, and I was inspecting the piles of pastries before me with a calm and careful love.

Never mind that at the exact moment I stepped in the store, a worker poured a mop bucket of sudsy water all over the floor, soaking the bottom of my pants. Never mind that the man who rang up my quarter kilo of biscotti-style biscuits had his mouth stuffed with his own afternoon treat and sprayed crumbs all over me. Maa’lish, as the Egyptians would say—never mind. In that pastry shop, I felt at home and peaceful in Egypt once again. Even the sudsy puddles on the floor and the clerk’s spattering of crumbspittle were endearing. I knew these people. I’ve been living among them for ¾ of a year now, and I was glad for it.

So by 3:30pm, my half-hour hate session had ended, replaced with an almost blissful euphoria as I dunked my biscotti baladi in a cup of Turkish coffee.

This emotional yo-yo has been yanking me around all too frequently lately, causing concerns about my sanity. Neither unrelenting crankiness nor pastry-induced euphoria are probably all that healthy, nor particularly sustainable.

I fretted about this. Am I in a seasonal funk? After all, November has never been my best month, and daylight savings exists as much here as it does in the U.S.
Or is the daily grind perhaps beginning to wear me down? Have I gotten into a rut with my work routine?
Or maybe it’s grad school applications. The additional work and stress hanging over my head might be taking a larger toll than I consciously realized.

All of these things have their minor role to contribute, I’m sure. But no, I realized yesterday that I had forgotten the most obvious thing: I’m living in Egypt. I am not home here yet. As someone recently reminded me, there’s a certain loneliness that comes anytime we live outside of our home culture. Even with the comforts and community I have here, I’m not immune to that.

Slowly but surely, I’ve been disengaging from the people around me—dropping Arabic class for the moment (in the name of finishing grad school apps), staying home in the evenings, visiting my Egyptian friends only rarely. It’s a hermit phase in the process of cultural acquisition that’s certainly forgivable, but not particularly recommended. The momentary comforts of cocooning myself away are ultimately harmful if they take me so far out of “real” Egyptian life that I no longer feel comfortable there.

At a certain point during my stay here, I had assumed that cultural adjustment in Egypt was a “Mission Accomplished.” It looks like I was about as correct as Bush was when he made that regrettable and early announcement in 2003. Instead, it’s time to acknowledge that I still need training wheels. Almost 8 months into Egypt, it’s still not home yet—and that’s realistic. Fierce and independent, maybe, but I’m still not superhuman, and it may be time to remember that.