aladi Women of Cairo: Playing with an Egg and a Stone

Evelyn A. Early

Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1993. 216 pages, photographs. LC 92-10682. ISBN 1-55587-277-8 $38.50 hardcover. ISBN 1-55587-268-9 $17.95 paperback.

Review by Joel Gordon, Ph.D. Franklin and Marshall College

?lo be "buladi" is to be "savvy." This intrinsic self-view, this asser- tion of cultural pride and social humility, part put on and part real, captures the essence of life as depicted by Evelyn Early in this ex- tremely perceptive study. Early focuses on women in Cairo, but her work says much about traditional popular culture in Egypt in gen- eral. Her work is the product of many years of familiarity with and sensitivity to her subjects, the poor women of Bulaq Abu 'Ala, the traditional industrial quarter just north of downtown Cairo. Her scope is impressive, and she moves with ease and authority from issues of identity and community to popular religion, life-cycle ritual, daily life, and health and "well-being." Early knows her sub- jects intimately. She gives voice to their misfortunes and calamities; their struggles with authority; their skirmishes and verbal vendettas with friends, neighbors, and kin; their triumphs over adversity. And above all, she gives voice to the "cultural performances" that punctu- ate their lives, the "flamboyant interludes in the quiet flow of every-

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day life” that “index social relations and social reputation” and ”enunciate baladi culture with a vigor and a clarity that cannot be equaled in a reconstruction of their text” (p. 159).

For these ”cultural performances” to really come alive I sup- pose you have to have witnessed-or been embroiled in-your fair share of darushas (commotions), or heard the subsequent fallout, with all the attendant protestations of wronged innocence, from at least one of the aggrieved parties. It is both the dawsha-surprisingly, the one vital concept I find missing in the book-and the ”retelling of myths” (p. 14) that define Early’s sense of ”performance.” Despite her own self-admonition, Early does a fine job of letting these women speak in their own voices. She is not the first to treat baladi women, but she is possibly the most astute. Her book makes a fine compan- ion piece to Nayra Atiya’s Khul-Khaal, the partial life stories of five Egyptian women who might well live in Bulaq. Atiya‘s text brings the baladi personality vividly to life by relying solely on the women’s autonarration. Early fills in many of the gaps with her own keen ob- servations and explications of baladi practice and belief.

cern is the construction of baladi identity, particularly in apposition to middle class, westernized, afrangi Egyptian culture. According to Early, baladi women (and no doubt men as well) create an ideal ren- dition of the world in which they-despite their poverty, their politi- cal, economic, and cultural marginality-are the insiders and afrangi Egyptians are the outsiders. They are “honorable, hospitable, nation- alistic, devout, and authentic”; afrangis are “corrupt, stingy, unpatriotic, irreligious, and artificial” (p. 26). It is of course a love-hate relationship, because on many levels baladi Egyptians scorn a lifestyle they increasingly try to emulate. This is particularly true with regard to material possessions: ”Each area of everyday life has its baladi and its afrangi alternatives, which often roughly corre- spond to inexpensive and expensive” (p. 56), and baladi women do aspire to own appliances and to dress their children in fancy cloth- ing. Their children are acquiring afrangi tastes and many embrace afrangi culture (while this is beyond Early’s scope here, I would urge her to write further on this). Yet, while desiring the comforts of middle class life, baladi women relish ”duping” their afvangi counter- parts. There is a trickster element to this relationship, which is often rooted in employment or commerce. Of course, westernized Egyp- tians have their own sense of their apposition to baladi culture, which they find uncouth and clamorous, maddening, yet quaint and charm- ing, depending on their degree of intimacy.

There is much to learn and ponder here. Early’s primary con-

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Baladi identity is also viewed in apposition to the countryside. This despite the fact that many of the women Early works with are themselves recent migrants to the city. How quickly they assimilate urban scorn for peasants “as a noncosmopolitan group who live a routine mindless existence, and rural women as inept or dull” (p. 65)! They, on the other hand, are alert and inquiring, dexterous in social dealings, “capable of playing with an egg and a stone at the same time” (p. 66) without breaking the egg, thus Early’s subtitle.

a professed sense of misery. Baladi women present themselves as “downtrodden” and “oppressed” (gallaba), by society, relatives, hus- bands, children, and neighbors. Early posits a schema for interper- sonal relations between women living ”cheek to jowl” in the “back lane society” of Bulaq, one that is rooted in varying degrees of inti- macy towards close friends, relatives, neighbors, fellow villagers, acquaintances, customers, and strangers (p. 133). She discerns opera- tive rules for information gathering and protection, hospitality and reciprocity, recognition and nonrecognition, and the construction of reputation which is inextricably linked to conflict and conflict resolu- tion. At the ”heart of baladi sociability” she finds constant moraliz- ing, enhancement of reputation, yet ultimately a triumph over pov- erty and a reassertion of communality. For those of us so often en- countering a culture of “people’s talk” (kularn al-nus) and back stabbing, it is enlightening to hear a baladi woman assert “We are all sisters together” (p. 138).

baladi women ”pick and choose from popular and orthodox tradi- tions” while they set their lifestyle to an ”Islamic beat” (pp. 90-91). She describes rites of passage from birth to death. Saint’s-day (mawlid) ceremonies, marked by processions, circumcisions, vow fulfillment, and shrine visitation, epitomize baladi religion. Tradi- tion-”because that’s what we do”-is invoked to explain practice to outsiders. Muslim and Coptic women exchange visits during feasts, sha;.e shrines and common beliefs in vows, miracles, amulets. They signify religious affiliation by their dress, yet respect each other’s religious customs, albeit with some good-natured mockery on occa- sion. Religious tensions are intra- rather than inter-confessional. Early discusses, too briefly, the ”new personal piety” emergent in baladi neighborhoods. She notes the spread amongst younger baladi women of neotradition-a1 Islamic dress, the higab, or veil, since the late 1970s, and senses that a “new orthodoxy” is emergent, one that challenges traditional practices like saint veneration. Unfortunately

If there is a baladi ethos, Early asserts, it is rooted in poverty and

Early’s discussion of ”popular baladi Islam” describes how

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she has little conclusive to say about patterns of belief that today have exacerbated tensions in many popular quarters, where not only radical imams, but often sons and daughters, decry tenets that baladi women hold fundamental and dear.

So, as thorough as she has been, there is more yet to study. Still, this is a book that will be of great interest to teachers and students of Egypt, the Middle East, Muslim cultures, and women’s lives. This is not a theory-laden book; the subjects remain stage center. And it rings so true. Early puts into words what afrangis-Egyptian and foreign-have always sensed about baladi savvy. She portrays a rich, energetic culture that, however embattled by modernity, afrangi, and Islamist cultures, persists due to a dynamic eclecticism, in which baladi women ”mix the appropriate cure at the appropriate time and place” (p. 202), as they “play with an egg and a stone.” She leaves us-those who know and those who will come to know baludi cul- ture-with a heightened appreciation of these women as they struggle to make the most of their lives, in good and bad times, and especially times of high drama and performance.

Reference

Atiya, Nayra. Khul-Khaal: Five Egyptian Women Tell Their Stories. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982.

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Joel Gordon is the author of Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution.