I actually had a lot of dreams, but the one with the obvious significance was the one that started with the belligerent Germans, karate Jersey shore character, and the two obese Egyptian girls all trying to kick or punch me in the balls. All of them seemed fairly sure of the fact that I needed to be kicked in the balls and in doing so they indicated that I needed to learn some sort of lesson about being here in Egypt. In my dream-prescience though, I knew this really was an excuse they were looking for to beat me up. In the beginning, the girls were there trying to goad me into a fight so the karate Jersey shore guy could have a reason to step in and start to fight me. Then the Germans came and spent their time trying alternately to get really close and (to an American) seemingly intimate with me or to throw a kick or punch at me.
From the beginning of the dream I vividly remember the very distinct feeling I have had only a few times in my life where I felt it was basically a fight or flight situation. I've never been one to have a temper or snap and lose it with someone, and that adrenaline rush always makes me feel extremely calm and quiet on the outside while all my senses feel on edge. As they continued trying to provoke me, sometimes they would just try to make me flinch, but my middle school wrestling experience precluded me from taking their bait. When one of the characters would take a swipe at me with the intention to make contact I would move or block, but playing defense like that when you're cornered like that is a frustratingly helpless experience, because if you're trying to avoid a full on fight, you can't hit back. I could feel a quiet anger building.
At the end of the dream I was standing in my room with a distinctly Egyptian-looking German while one of his German friends waited somewhere behind me impassively. The Egyptian-German told me he wanted to show me something that I needed to see and then without waiting for my response he lifted up his shirt to reveal bright red Arabic words cut disturbingly into the skin all over his chest, stomach, and going down below his pants line. He then pulled me close, which I let him do because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of flinching, and he put his arm around my shoulders ostensibly to tell me the important secret he'd been saving for me but instead using the hand around my shoulders to get a free punch to my head while yelling something about how I had stupidly let him have such an easy first attack. The second his hand connected with the side of my head, my dream self snapped. Without thinking, I hit him right in the jaw faster than would ever be possible in real life with a full on reverse punch and then followed up again with a speedy jab to his nose. He went down immediately unconscious and bleeding profusely from his broken nose, and the other German rushed over looking distressed about his friend and angry at me for knocking him out. I muttered something like "sorry I knocked out your friend after he punched me in the head..." and the dream ended.
I often think about these fight or flight situations from an evolutionary perspective as I am fascinated by how this most important of instinctive survival reactions must manifest itself just so to get the animal to do whatever it needs to do to stay alive. That adrenaline rush we get is the same as our ancestors got when cornered by a sabre-toothed tiger, or what those little kids who lift up cars to save their trapped mothers get. But that anger is something that seems uniquely related to inter-human conflicts. The anger grows from something very small, giving us humans time to try and reason our way out of the situation, but if that's not possible, eventually it builds to a point where there can only be one more straw added to the pile before suddenly, we are moved to take action. Furthermore, because injustices feel all the more so when they are caused by other supposedly rational, thinking human beings I think it feels like a betrayal when your predator is none other than your fellow man. It seems to me like the sensation of anger is what humans need to get past any moral obstacles that might make them hesitate in a split-second decision to make a move or not against another human being. The building anger I felt in my dream tapped into a feeling I've increasingly had here in Cairo, which draws on my sense of disillusionment with people here in Cairo.
I think I sort of talked about how in-your-face Cairenes can be already (or maybe that is in one of my half-finished posts...) and how that has been especially bothersome since I got back from Siwa. My problem with their pushiness and their frequent contempt for foreigners is pretty elementary school, but nonetheless, it's a little disheartening knowing that other humans' gestures of good will are nothing more than their best attempt to screw you over. In my dream the characters maintained the pretense of trying to be helpful, of wanting to just teach me a useful lesson, when, in fact, I knew the characters in my dream actually intended to kill me. I despise when Egyptians feign concern for my well-being, employing all the physical mannerisms of putting their arm around your shoulder and telling you blatant lies with concern and sincerity meant to replicate an intimacy of friendship and trust just to dupe people. On a fundamental level, this willful extortion just feels wrong to me and even though I was warned that this would happen coming from my spoiled existence, I resent being duped by having a basic faith in humanity's trustworthiness. And that--until I had this dream and wrote this blog post--is what was bothering me most about Cairo.
It wasn't bothering me much before I went to Siwa and actually experienced wonderfully hospitable Egyptians and somehow my dream has made me feel ok with it all again. Perhaps because I got a brief instance of retribution, or perhaps just because it helped me come to terms with it all. That is the whole point of dreaming, right? To help our brains come to terms with the crush of information that is our everyday experiences.
And don't get me wrong, Egyptians also have a warmth and generosity unlike anything else I've experienced and I'll be able to talk about that more as I adjusted I think, it just coexists paradoxically with this other stuff. This is what I came here to experience, and if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.
Reminds me of this article i recently read, which you may find interesting.
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