On Egyptian domestic abuse and a quick update

Note: I wrote this originally on Saturday night, but I held onto it to edit it a bit. So to be clear, when I say tonight, I don't mean tonight.

I saw a rather disturbing sight tonight as I was walking down Talaat Harb street. Talaat Harb is one of the main shopping streets downtown (kind of like an Egyptian 5th Ave.) and I was there to buy a cheap red shirt that I could wear to the Egypt-Tunisia soccer game I'm going to tomorrow night (woo!). After finding a suitable shirt from a street vendor (I think I got a little bit ripped off by only bargaining him down do about $6) I was walking back when I saw a sight unlike any I have ever seen in Cairo (or maybe anywhere for that matter). I was about to cross a street when I heard a little girl crying loudly and a man yelling in Arabic. I looked back to see about thirty feet behind me a thirty-ish looking Egyptian man trying to pull a two-ish looking little Egyptian girl off the head of an Egyptian woman wearing a full hijab and robe covering her face and body. The little girl was in kind of a weird position, shrieking loudly while she had her arms wrapped tightly around the woman's forehead. I am assuming, based only on how the tightly the girl held on to her, that the veiled woman was the little girl's mother or maybe grandmother as her movements to fend off the man seemed a bit feeble. It was a little difficult to tell who the man was more angry with, the woman or the little girl, but after a second or two he succeeded in prying the girl off the woman and then it looked like he was trying to rip off the woman's hijab. The woman's cries became audible despite the fact that she was sort of bent over in what was either a defensive or submissive position under the man's arm strength. It took the man only a second more to pull off her hijab and push her toward a nearby doorway. As she scrambled away hunched over (to hide her face? or just to get away?), she paused to snatch up her veil and it was then that the man slapped--not, thankfully, in the face, but still rather forcibly on her back. It wasn't that he was aiming to hit her in the back. It looked like he was simply slapping at her with the intention of punishing her whatever way he could in that exact moment. The whole thing lasted about 10 seconds tops.

So having watched only this much, I don't what was going on. From what I saw, it seemed, somehow, like he was enraged with woman for something to do with her veil. The detail that made me think that all the more was in the way the girl had been clutching so protectively to the woman's forehead--as if to help her keep it on. He seemed so intent on pulling off her veil, and she so intent not let anyone see her face. And yet, from what I know, which is admittedly mostly academic, about the middle east, Islam and the stuff in between, this explanation doesn't really make any sense. Is it possible that they'd been having this argument before? Is he some sort of militantly modernist Egyptian who cannot stand veiling (which always makes me think of the American Enterprise Institute's resident anti-muslim ex-muslim woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali?) Or maybe he is afraid the little girl, who I'm pretty sure was his daughter from the way he picked her up, will adopt the veil? Frankly, I don't know what was going on. But what to me was the most remarkable part still was yet to come.

After the woman stumbled away, the man turned to pick up the little girl and go after the woman. The thing was, as soon as he had hit the woman, the crowd of Egyptian men that had stopped to watch the spectacle closed in around the combative man. He managed to pick up the little girl, but the men would not let him through to go after the woman. I couldn't hear what they were saying from where I was, but from their demeanor and the context I imagine it was something along the lines of "What [Egyptian expletive] the are you doing?"

Now, again, I don't know what was going on, but I was happy--heartened, really--to see how the Egyptian men watching had stepped into the protect the woman as soon as they saw the man hit her. Realizing this wasn't my base expectation reminded me of some of my lingering questions about the place of women in Egyptian society which made me start writing some especially pretentious stuff about how this all makes me an Orientalist until I realized that you don't really care. When I have some more coagulated conclusions about gender in Egyptian society, mayhaps I will post about the subject. Or not. I don't know.

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In other news, now I'm writing this on tuesday. Since writing all the above, the Egyptians won their soccer game against Tunisia which was a big deal, and a very fun experience. Being in a stadium full of people who grew up wanting nothing more than to be on that field is an awesome environment, and it was great to be with Hemeida and his friends. Now I am about to start packing for my trip to Alexandria tomorrow. There is a national holiday tomorrow and then their is basically a universal acceptance of the fact that no one is going to class on Thursday, so we have a long weekend effectively. And I will be spending it in Alexandria. Sweet. Gonna go swim in the Mediterranean. Just gotta go pack now.