Tunis Awaits

I'm on a plane to Tunisia.  Nervous jitters keep me suspended between a fine line between calm and chaos.  I’m missing a week of school to interpret for a woman who works for the OECD.  My boyfriend came this past weekend to Paris to visit me.  It’s been a whirlwind.  I miss him.  I’m excited for the future.  Wish I could remain suspended in the past.  Of all the things I’ve ever done this feels of the most important.  Something that could help me get a job after I graduate.  Aside from drowning and cockroaches, being unemployed is my third biggest fear.  This is the transition between student and real person.  I just signed my first real person professional contract.  I’ll be making money doing work that I anticipate actually being challenging.  The trip is paid for.  It feels surreal that this opportunity fell in my lap, like being thrust abruptly into a dream.

I’m in Tunisia.  It’s different than any other Arab country I’ve seen.  The sidewalks are dusty.  The buildings carry remnants of old French architecture – gothic spires rising up into the sunset, gargoyles casting monstrous shadows across the concrete.  Some of them are unfinished apartments, and I am reminded vividly of flying down Ring Road towards Maadi where unfinished buildings line both sides of the street.  Tunis is small.  Walking through the streets for 45 minutes near my hotel I’ve seen two of the dozen or so tourist attractions already.  One of them is a beautiful church, which is interesting.  The taxi driver I spoke to earlier said that there were no Christians in Tunisia.  Also, the town shuts down on Sundays.  Interestingly enough, the weekend is on Saturday and Sunday of every week as opposed to the Friday and Saturday schedule of most other Arab countries.

Chairs and tables line the sidewalks of the main roads – Cairo style – but these chairs are wicker instead of plastic and the tables have tablecloths.  Also there are tourists scattered haphazardly amongst a sea of Tunisians but the Tunisians aren’t staring (mostly), and some of the foreign girls are even wearing tank tops.  This is all new to me.  The language that I’ve spent years and classes and what feels like lifetimes learning is suddenly put to waste.  I can barely make out the accent and they can barely understand my Egyptian.  Everything is far easier in French though it sounds so out of place, cutting through the coarseness with cloying delicacy. 

I’m curious about this town. I'm excited for what awaits me. Translating will be easier said than done, especially when on a subject with which I have limited familiarity. But the challenge is half the fun, isn't it? I'm excited, and ready for tomorrow and looking ahead to the future, thankful that my past has been so shamelessly blessed. Keep on moving, like the night train rocketing towards the horizon and keep your thumb outstretched like an antenna to the stars. The work day starts at 9 tomorrow. Ready or not, Tunis awaits.

The Whole "Networking" Thing

Some days are moche.  Other days are exellente. As I last wrote my stage, or internship, with Medecins Sans Frontieres isn’t going ideally.  But this Wedenesday last, I got lucky. 

So I’ve been trying this new thing called “networking”.  I don’t really like people too much so for years this is something I’ve been trying to avoid.  Under the scrutinizing pressure of my awesome German-American boyfriend, who now has more friends in Geneva after living there for two weeks than I probably will throughout the duration of this lifetime—and the next—I gave the whole networking trend a try. 

I contacted the GWU alumni network in Paris and three weeks later they contact me back saying that they’re just starting up but happy to help me.  Someone actually volunteered to meet with me.  He did his masters at GWU and now works at the Paris branch of Deloitte.  We have breakfast.  It’s great.  He’s possibly the nicest person I’ve ever met.  We talk about how Americans are like peaches—soft on the outside, but on the inside quite firm—and how Parisians are like pineapples—kind of solid on the inside, but on the outside, tough and prickly.  Our conversation ends with him telling me that he’ll look around and see if he can find me any work, or at the very least, any interesting contacts that can maybe help me once I graduate in May because as most newly graduates and soon-to-bes, I’m freaking the shit out. 

I had a great time, fantastic conversation, and a croissant that was good and overpriced and wasn’t expecting much.  But then I get a call less than five hours later from a Mister Man from Deloitte.  He says he thinks he might have found me a job.  I’m ecstatic.  What is it?  It’s too good to be true.  He puts me in contact with a woman from the OECD, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, who wants me to travel to Tunisia and then perhaps Senegal and interpret English/French for her. 

I tell her I can do it.  I know I can.  It’s going to be hard as hell but I know that this is a worthwhile challenge.  And since being in Paris, a challenge is something I’ve lacked.  Already familiar with the language, already a semi-competent grown up and just winding down my travels, coming from places that I find significantly more culturally different, Paris has been solid, but unexciting.  So ready or not, Tunisia, Senegal—interpreting economic issues—I’m diving in.   

Oh Where, Oh Where is my Stagiaire?

So being an International Affairs major has its perks and pitfalls. I can pretty much study whatever I want: security, development, the Middle East, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, diplomacy, history, the US and every other government.  I can study abroad three semesters with no problem.  I can afford to take more art classes than an art major without stressing.  I can learn from the best and the brightest professors that GWU has to offer. 

But.

Being an International Affairs major also means that I’m one of those lucky kids who isn’t studying to become A THING.  Premed goes to doctor, prelaw goes to lawyer, engineering goes to engineer—even art history kids have a specialization!  Now I happen to have a specialization in an area of the world I’m not currently in, so I was curious to see what kind of internship, or stage, my study abroad program would find for the only Middle East Studies major.  Actually curious isn’t the right word.  The right words were naïve and optimistic. 

So they got me an internship at Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.  Sounds nice, right?  Well what sounds cool about MSF to me is the international component but without actually being a doctor, and without actually being in a developing or underdeveloped country, what’s left…but paperwork. 

I have never seen an office so cluttered with papers.  It is a truly an archaic system of documentation.  The pink sheets get stapled to the white sheets, the blue sheets go into les commandes, or the packages that are sent overseas with doctors, the yellow sheets go into one of nearly a thousand big, ugly red or blue binders.  After half an hour in that place I feel that I’m going colorblind and more than that I feel like I’m trapped in a prison made of paper. 

The people that work there are nice and don’t seem to mind papercuts, those irey splinters, but most are volunteers.  The few salaried employees started as doctors in the field and have been there for no less than ten to fifteen years.  These are the ones that sit there patiently and watch as I staple the yellow sheets to the pink sheets and staple the blue sheets to my forehead.  So in this one case International Affairs/Middle East Studies major goest to librarian, and I’m the sucker who signed up for it. 

Being Brown Abroad

Its hard to know where to start. If you have brown skin and have been just about anywhere you will know why. Its different for everyone abroad and for everyone abroad the interactions you have may be better or worse depending on those taboo topics like your gender, the gender of the people you date, your religion, the color of your hair, skin, and eyes.

I have brown skin, brown hair, and brown eyes. A monochromatic depiction of a half white half black American. And in America this has its pros and cons. I am somehow both integrated by both white people and black and yet fully accepted by neither. I am targeted by the extreme stereotypes of both races yet am a prime candidate to overcome them and prove the agent group wrong. At face value, I have a seemingly ambiguous ethnic origin and this makes me both exotic but also foreign. The list goes on. But the fact is that these are realities I have recognized and learned to accept over the course of twenty years. These are the realities that I have come to understand and what I understand is this: I look different. And I'm okay with that.

Being abroad every individual regardless of background must re-confront themselves, their thoughts, their opinions, their beliefs. I have spent nearly a third of my life abroad, and so assumed that after five years of childhood in Mali, a year of living in Egypt during the Revolution, three months in Jordan, back to Cairo and topped off by a short summer in Germany, Paris would be a cultural-adaptivity joyride--a breeze. This has not been the case.

An evening spent with an unfortunate group has strained the limits of my tolerance and has me edging towards an unfair prejudice against French people. I hope to let it pass, in the same way that I hope others forgive and forget their perceptions of Americans when they meet me. However, the inexcusable conversation, in brief:

My friend and I are standing outside of a bar in a large group of French kids, about our age. We came with three boys. They introduce us to their friends. One of them asks me what nationality I am. I respond American. He looks at me as if I have just slapped him in the face and asks again. Again, I answer American, this time adding that if he would like to know my ethnic background, he should ask. He doesn't seem to understand the difference between the two, despite speaking perfect, unaccented American, but to humor me asks my ethnic background. I say half black half white. Again, I receive another stare of disapproval and disbelief. He tells me that I cannot possibly be American. I tell him that both of my parents are American. He calls me a liar. My friend attempts to divert the conversation but at this point all seven sets of eyes are on me. The boy asks where my parents parents are from and then their parents. All American, I respond. His friend steps in and says frankly, "She's American. Half n***er." I tell him I don't use that word and that in America a lot of people would find it offensive, especially when used by someone they don't know. The conversation devolves to him explaining that he is one quarter black American and he lived for 2 months in Chicago, so its OK. I tell him that's fine if he wants to use it in his own friend group but that I find it offensive, so he shouldn't use it around me. I then am attacked on all fronts by 5 white French boys and one one-quarter black American, three-quarter white French boy all who attempt to convince me that I am wrong and they are right and that I shouldn't find the word offensive. This lasted all of five minutes, because at that point I realized I was arguing with walls, and dumb ones at that. So I leave.

I understand that these experiences can happen anywhere, and that being abroad I should expect to encounter these types of things. I just can't help but wonder how and why a group of well educated, young, progressive French people can't seem to exhibit any type of tolerance whatsoever, nor form any semblance of a coherent argument in the presence of disagreement. This is the most thick-skulled and rude I've ever seen, and I have been places opened my eyes and really truly seen.

And I'm disappointed. And will try to be optimistic. Tomorrow. But in all of the places I've been and all of the people I've met and gotten to know and enjoyed knowing, I am content for now to say that I like French people the least.





Sincerely,

Bitter, Brown, and Abroad



P.S. The following is me being brown and abroad this summer. And loving it.

Paris

Berlin

Dahab

Cairo

Seattle

Paris, Enchanté

My first few days in Paris can be categorized by a sense of enchanted confusion. I arrived a few days before the start of my upcoming study abroad program with the intention of renting a Craigslist apartment. Standing there in front of the stoop with far too many heavier-than-lead bags I rang the bell and rang the bell and rang it. Nobody answered, and nobody showed up. So my first time being stood up was by a man from Craigslist. I suppose it could have been worse. I looked to the right and saw a hotel next door that was overpriced, but it did the job admirably, and had the advantage of being in an utterly charming neighborhood.

Somewhere between le 10e et le 20e, I wandered down narrow, crowded streets and I did my laundry at a laverie. It was my first time doing laundry in a communal wash-place outside of university. It was also an excellent test of my French, and my patience. Seated, waiting the hour it took for my clothes to wash, I met some interesting characters. Two little girls, Sara et Matilde approached me, little pink and white beads dangling from the ends of their braids. They took the seat to my right. We spoke for a while about les chevaux that they were riding. As plastic and green as horses I'd ever seen. Matilde spent the majority of the time correcting the pronunciation of my name as Sarah delivered it "Elisa", "Non, pas Elisa. C'est Elisa-bet"!

Henri took the seat that the girls had had upon their departure. Henri was about my age with blonde hair and a book under each arm. He was a master's student at La Sorbonne, a place where I may take a couple courses, and his cheeks turned fuscia when he looked at me. I smiled.

I left the laundromat and headed in a direction. I did not know where my feet would take me or where I would end up but I knew that I would know it when I found it and I did just that. I found a river. The sun was roasting my brown skin and I reveled in it. I sat down at the concrete embankment beside two Chinese tourists who were speaking perfect, unaccented French.

I lied down on top of all my clean clothes that smelled of soap and I closed my eyes. I thought about all the fuss people make over Paris and how all of those fuss-makers were right. Paris is alive, like a beating heart. Thump thump, thump thump. Hot and sweltering and sore and beautiful and so full of light.

Berlin-bound

Berlin is nice and quiet and the air is sweet and calm but never stagnant. When it rains it pours. The people don't stare much. I am never provoked, or touched by strangers on the street. My last night in Cairo, a young boy grabbed my butt. That doesn't happen here. Here, where there is law and order and organization and above all, calm serenity.

I can see the stars at night.

I stayed in Baitz this weekend, population: 250. I lived in a large brick complex, covered in wine leaves. Bees live amongst the vines, and during the daytime, the walls sing. At night I make and eat dinner with the artists, their eccentric clan of singing, dancing, drinking, smoking ballerinas and electrical engineers. Here is some of their work: http://www.benoitmaubrey.com/. We listen to one of the ballerina tutus, made of speakers, by the fire at night. We roast marshmallows too. The fire crackles and tendrils of fuscia flame fire into the sky. Full of stars. A million stars. A dozen different languages come together and try and name the constellations. A plow, a carriage, the big dipper. All different and simultaneously the same. Crackle, crackle. Pop, pop.

I can see the fire at night.

I return to Berlin and nurse my wounds. I crashed twice on a bicycle, the first time scratching a leg, the second time tearing a hole in my shoulder. I'd like to blame someone other than myself, so am content to blame the ground for not having been softer. It will scar. So far this summer has been full of scars. The one on my shoulder from biking in Baitz, the the one on my leg from horseback riding to the Pyramids at Giza in Cairo. But I like scars. They remind me of my more adventurous self. So I look at their brutality with fondness because I know that those memories I will never forget. The smell of the sand in the desert. The feeling of the world after a rain. The sky full of stars. The sound of the fire licking the wind.

Ramadan

Shhh.  Don't wake the ghosts.  The town is silent, despite all of the people in it.  Shadowy storefronts stare out on desolate streets as the sun begins its slow, painful descent.  We are alone on the road but for the cats that crawl by us and the dogs, which howl.  They are kings and queens of this ever-darkening, twilight hour.  And we are but lonely witnesses, defiling these reverent silences like sinners do the Cloth.

A car flies past us to the left, the blare of the horn growing from an ear-piercing shriek to an all-consuming quiet, before becoming quieter still. I lift a bottle of water to my lips and a woman--one of the ghosts--appears from the air and points at the watch she isn't wearing. She says, without saying a word, you who are one of us, we are waiting. Al iftar.  I feel an ounce of hesitation as I cling to those words.  I look down at my bottle of water, then back at her, but she is gone. 

We move on, waiting for the sunset to arrive.  And then as my eyes adjust to the non-light, the time of day in which it is hardest to see, I begin to make out of the shadows, the shapes of the ethereal bodies  in this metropolis, where sibilant silence reigns supreme.  They whisper amongst one another, and look up but do not see us as we walk past.  They are preoccupied.  Makeshift tables that are meters long suddenly sprout up like mushrooms along the sidewalks.  Long enough, and with enough food to satiate even the hungriest of gods.  A plate lies placidly at every seat, and at every seat there sits a ghost, watching the horizon, as stone effigies.

Allahhhhhh el akbar. Allah el akbar.  As the muzzein calls from each mosque, the city quietly rumbles and shakes.  Allah el akbar.  God is great, they say.  And so are we.  There is a brief lull while the city bloats, gaining momentum and volume and voice and form.  Suddenly the sky is dark but the lights are bright--a fanoos, dangling in color that is saccharine sweet, hangs from every storefront--and shadows are vanquished, and the world becomes ripe again. 

The ghosts solidify and take form, peeling from the shadows to flood the terrain, making it again rocky and tumultuous.  The sun has set but the day is just beginning.  The streets are lined no longer in ghosts and darkness, but in people and we are jostled from side to side.  The sweet scent of sheesha tobacco greets us, for the first time in thirteen hours.  I take his hand, and we step forward into the darkness to find the light while smoke from the spit in front of our building and the cool night wind, which wafts in from the Nile, collide.  I inhale deeply, and feel a ghost myself next to Ramadan's greatness.  But I can feel that it is generous tonight, and smile.