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Live and Die Like a Man
Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt
By Farha Ghannam Stanford University Press
Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8328-6
CHAPTER 1
Uncertain Trajectories The Joys and Sorrows of Boyhood
Patriarchal assault on the emotional life of boys begins at the moment of their birth.
bell hooks, The Will to Change
ACCORDING TO MONA, a single woman in her late twenties, there are two kinds of men: a raagil and illi bye'mil raagil (one who pretends to be a man). While the first term implies an "authentic," genuine manhood, the second implies more of a pretense, an act that is not real. The difference, according to Mona, is that a raagil conducts himself in a manner befitting a man all the time, while illi bye'mil raagil does not consistently materialize the norms that define a man. Her examples focused on the way a man treats his wife. Er-raagil fears for his wife's safety and reputation and thus establishes clear boundaries for her behavior, explaining what is permitted and what is not and why. If she goes to visit his mother, he ensures that she does not return to their home alone at night; he instructs her not to leave until he comes to accompany her home. He is tough, firm, and strict but clearly articulates his logic and reasoning to his wife without resorting to violence. In contrast, illi bye'mil raagil may do one thing in one context and then something contradictory in another. He would claim to care about his wife but would say, "Let her go back home late. What's the problem? What could happen to her?" One of Mona's brothers, as she explains, falls into the second category; he makes a big deal out of trivial things (haagaat hayfa) but ignores what is more important. Mona contrasts her brother with a proper man, who is tough (shideed) but reasonable (bi 'aql), who is strong (qawi) but tender (hinayyin), and who controls his wife but does not suffocate her.
Mona's description touches upon some key aspects that define the ideal man more broadly in her neighborhood: he is generous but careful with his money, controlling but affectionate, dominating but caring, concerned about himself but not vain, assertive but gentle, serious but fun-loving, absent but present. These expectations may seem contradictory and impossible to materialize in any meaningful sense, and, in a way, they are. However, upon closer inspection, one can see that they are context-bound. The materialization of a socially credible and recognized masculine identification depends, to a large extent, on a man's ability to enact the proper practices, stances, and feelings in the right context. This materialization is central to sustaining a "coherent" masculine trajectory and a credible definition of a real man. In this chapter, I use the word "materialization" because it captures the struggles, challenges, and physical and emotional pressures embedded in the processes of becoming a man. The alternative, more common term "performance" continues to evoke some of its daily connotations of deliberate, fake, temporary, and playful acts, which are not part of how masculinity is lived, practiced, and experienced in al-Zawiya. My use of the word "materialization" aims to encompass both bodily gestures, movements, and representations as well as other discursive practices and stances enacted in daily life to assert one's standing as a man. It also aims to capture the interplay between the internalization of specific norms and their externalization in particular practices, bodily presentations, and social interactions.
A masculine identification is not fixed, complete, or fully established but has to be re-created and reasserted in different settings. It is always under the gaze of others, who may challenge, reaffirm, legitimize, or discredit its durability and "authenticity." This chapter aims to account for some facets of this interplay and seeks to give the reader a sense of how men internalize and externalize the discursive and embodied knowledge that they are imbued with from the moment of birth. To paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, one is not born, but rather, becomes a man. I start by looking at one young boy and how he is taught the meaning of boyhood, informed about manhood, instructed about his body, and introduced to his quarter and its various spaces. As mentioned in the Introduction, the "life cycle" notion has proved to be inadequate for capturing the multiple spatial and temporal contexts that shape shared projects of gendering. Thus, rather than looking at a linear or chronological history of the boy's life, this chapter traces certain themes and significant moments of his cultivation as a future working-class man. I then move to look at some of the words and labels used to evaluate and critique various aspects of the materialization of masculinity and the social values attached to them. My discussion highlights some of the hegemonic norms that families work to inculcate in young boys in hopes of producing real men, but I also account for the challenges, uncertainties, and struggles embedded in this process.
The Joy of Having a Boy
When Hiba became pregnant, she and her husband, Karim, were overjoyed. They had waited for that news for three years. The pregnancy was important to them, not only because children are highly valued and loved in Egyptian society and are central to confirming their parents' social status as a couple but also because Karim was a long-distance commuter. Just a few months after their wedding, he had to travel back to his work in Saudi Arabia and could spend only limited time in Egypt. Despite the time they spent together immediately after their wedding and a return trip by Karim nine months later, she did not get pregnant, and the expense of additional return trips continued to eat into their savings. After both of them consulted several doctors and received some treatments, they were delighted to learn that Hiba was finally pregnant. Their joy doubled as the newborn was not only healthy but also a boy. This was especially desirable because Hiba's husband was from Upper Egypt where, she explained, males are greatly valued and viewed as important sources of financial and moral support.
While her husband was abroad, Hiba and her baby, Ahmed, received his financial support but lived with her family in al-Zawiya. When he was in Egypt, they spent most of the time (usually around two months) in their own apartment in Upper Egypt. Five years after Ahmed's birth tragedy struck when Karim, at the age of thirty-eight, died in Saudi Arabia (see Chapter 5 for details about his death). Hiba, who was only thirty-three at the time, and her two children (Ahmed, who was five, and his sister, who was five months) now permanently live with her family in al-Zawiya. She makes sure to visit her husband's family at least once a year to maintain social connections with her in-laws as well as to protect her children's rights to the apartment that their father built and the inheritance they could receive after the death of their grandfather.
I have been fortunate to follow Ahmed's life since he was one year old; he turned eleven in the summer of 2012. Given that my daughter was born just two months before him, it was especially interesting for me to observe his upbringing, including a strong emphasis on the teaching of a classed and gendered identity. I followed his life with the eyes of an anthropologist and the interest of a mother and found his boyhood profoundly informative. By watching Ahmed grow, I learned a tremendous amount about how gender norms are circulated, taught, and inculcated in young males and, as we will see later, embodied by men of all ages.
From the moment the doctor announced that the newborn was a boy, Ahmed's evolving identification had a pervasive gender component. Immediately after his birth, there was a process of negation. This, as defined by Connell, denies similarities across genders and underscores differences between infant boys and girls.
Several concrete measures flagged his identification as a boy. First was his name. Ahmed was named after his paternal grandfather. Naming, as argued by Judith Butler, "is at once the setting of a boundary and also the repeated inculcation of a norm." The name marked Ahmed as a boy and a future man who would maintain the continuity of his father's lineage. Second was his circumcision. In Cairo, most male infants are circumcised discreetly during the first week of their life, but Ahmed, in Upper Egypt, was circumcised at the age of one. Hiba and her husband were respecting Ahmed's paternal grandfather's wish to abide by the traditions of his village, which marks the circumcision of boys with public celebrations and festivities. Third, there were the colors he wore, the bodily adornments he lacked, and the celebration his family had when he reached the end of his first week. But above all, there were the continuous discursive directives by various people who instructed him about his gendered identity. His mother, grandparents, uncles, and aunts always stressed his identity as a boy in their interactions with and treatment of him. As soon as Ahmed started talking, his family would instruct him to behave in certain ways in line with established gender expectations. They would say, "Don't cry. Boys don't cry," or "Don't be scared, you're a man."
Other times, they would tell him, "Don't back off. Hit her, you're a boy," or "Go ahead and shake his hand, you're a man." Once, when he was six years old, Ahmed came back home in tears after picking up his uncle's clothes from the dry cleaner. He described how a big boy had teased him and asked the shop owner to call the police, accusing Ahmed of stealing the clothes. His uncle and aunt immediately told him to "be a man" (khalleek raagil) and to make sure to respond to any boy who insulted or attacked him. His uncle teasingly reminded him of how he keeps referring to himself as a man (raagil), implying the need to live by his words. When I commented that perhaps he should not retaliate because the other big boy may beat him up, his mother quickly retorted, "one time he'll be hit, another time he'll hit back. Over time, he'll learn how to handle himself." Such statements were coupled with specific forms of self-discipline (for example, how to control his emotions), of regulating his bodily gestures and movements (including how to walk, sit, and shake hands), and of educating him about the social expectations that define him as a boy and a future man.
Ahmed's tearful reaction to the possibility of calling the police to detain him was part of a broader outlook that shaped his views and feelings about the security forces and their role in his life. As a man, and as will be further discussed in the coming chapters, he would have to learn how to handle the police gaze and make sure to avoid interacting with security forces as much as possible. At the age of six, Ahmed told me about a dream where he saw a police officer grabbing him from the back of his neck and pulling him away. I asked him if he was afraid in the dream and he answered "no." "When you dream of the government [people in al-Zawiya often used the word hukumah (which means government) to also refer to the police, in the process equating the two], tell yourself that what you see isn't real so you don't feel scared," Ahmed explained to me, repeating his mother's advice about bad dreams. Over the years, he told me several stories, jokes, and rumors about the brutality of the police, the bravery of some of his relatives in tricking or standing up to corrupt policemen, and the changes in the status and authority of policemen after the January 25 Revolution. In the summer of 2012, he was proud to tell me how the authority of the police has been challenged in deep ways in his neighborhood. According to Ahmed, in the past police officers acted like they were the masters and the people their slaves. He argued that the revolution fundamentally undermined the power of the police and restricted their ability to use unlimited force in their daily interaction with people. Ahmed supported his point by describing how in the past people had to put up with being falsely accused, detained, and subjected to insults and beatings, but after the revolution, the police have to be careful about their conduct and might not even retaliate after hearing direct insults from an ordinary citizen.
Learning to Be a Good Boy
A central part of Ahmed's training has been focused on acquiring knowledge of al-Zawiya, its streets, shops, mosques, and markets. Already at the age of four, Ahmed was going down from the fourth floor, where his family lived, to run errands for his relatives at different nearby shops and stands. At first, one of them would keep an eye on him from the balcony until he went and came back. He would buy matches, soft drinks, cheese, detergent, bleach, milk, yogurt, and more. He was eager to do these chores and his mother was proud of his abilities. If she needed several items or something he could not remember or pronounce, she would write a list to give to the seller, instructing Ahmed carefully about how to handle himself so as to not lose his money or spill what he would buy. Through these chores, he was being trained to negotiate his way around the neighborhood and how to navigate its many spaces. He was instructed to go only to the shops and stands around his family's building and was totally forbidden from crossing any main streets. When he went to kindergarten, either his mother or a neighbor helped him cross the street to and from school. Slowly, his ability to move around expanded and, by the age of seven, he was able to cross the busiest street in the area. After many years of visiting al-Zawiya, I can attest to the fact that this was no trivial accomplishment, seriously complicated by the many pedestrians and sellers who occupy the sides of the street as well as the speedy vehicles, which have caused several tragic accidents and deaths. A child usually learns how to cross with a relative, who instructs the child to look in both directions, wait for the moment when he could find a break in the line of vehicles, and then quickly but carefully cross to the other side. When no relatives are available, a child could ask an adult to help him cross. By the age of seven or eight, most children are able to cross by themselves. During the summer, with school out of session, Ahmed could go up and down the stairs to his apartment more than ten times a day—a major feat, given the hot weather. His chores were complicated by his family's limited income, lack of storage areas, and deep appreciation for fresh produce. These factors restricted their ability to stock up on household products and demanded Ahmed to make trip after trip to get small quantities of required cooking supplies and cleaning materials.
At the age of seven, Ahmed became the person designated to buy the bread for the family during the summer. This entailed waiting in line for several hours under the hot summer sun and enduring harassment from grown-ups who would not respect his turn in the line. He was introduced to this chore by his grandmother when he was around four. She would take him with her, tell him to stand in line, give him the money, instruct him how to handle the bread when it was given to him, and stand next to him to help. He slowly started going by himself. Before Ahmed turned eight, he would wait in the women's line for bread; however, as he grew older, he began standing in the men's line, which he says is usually faster and more organized than the women's. In the summer of 2012, Ahmed was proud and happy to tell me that he had good connections (the mother of one of his close friends) that enabled him to quickly get good-quality bread. However, his happiness did not last for long. His mother got furious when he came back one day with half-baked bread and instructed him to only get bread from another place that is much farther than the one he frequented. Usually, he would return to the apartment after this chore totally exhausted and sweaty but often, even before he rested and despite his protests, he would be sent down to buy something else.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Live and Die Like a Man by Farha Ghannam. Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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