My Clash Of Civilizations

by Eric Trager
Special To The Jewish Week

Of all the Muslims I met during my nine months in Egypt who had visited Mecca, only my landlord insisted on being called “haggi,” or “one who has made the pilgrimage.” Haggi Mustafa, as even his teenage son called him, was a deeply devout man. Given the healthy respect for religion that had brought me to Cairo to study Islam in the first place, this is a characteristic I would have normally appreciated. But I quickly learned that Mustafa expected comparable devoutness from his tenants — a task that his three American rent-payers had no intention of fulfilling.

It was an issue I should have anticipated from the moment I signed the contract in September 2006. As I finished reading through the poor English

translation of the Arabic document, Mustafa demanded my attention. “No girls, and no whiskey,” he said. It seemed like the kind of thing a residential adviser tells incoming college freshmen — a rule that one states out of obligation, rather than the expectation that it will be followed. Without hesitation, I nodded.

Yet Mustafa’s wife, clad head-to-toe in black with only her eyes visible through the niqab face covering, knew better. “Are they Muslims?” she asked. “I believe in God,” I replied to Mustafa’s giddy nod, delivering the line I had been taught for these uncomfortable situations and neglecting to mention my Jewish heritage. Still, Mustafa’s wife pressed on. “You must become Muslim,” she said. “Maybe,” I responded, naïvely believing that Mustafa and his wife couldn’t possibly be serious.
I was profoundly mistaken.

With each monthly rent collection, Mustafa inspected the apartment. In the first few months, we had some close calls. On one occasion, the landlord opened the refrigerator to find the light malfunctioning. Luckily, this distracted him from the Israeli bottle of Sabbath wine staring him in the face. On another occasion, his son came to collect the rent and, perusing our kitchen cabinets, found a bottle of whiskey. “It’s olive oil,” I said, pulling it away before he could waft it. Beyond the kitchen, Mustafa would often inspect our laundry detergent. On three occasions, he seized it, dubiously claiming that certain brands would break the washing machine.

Aiming to avoid these searches, I began paying Mustafa two months at a time to keep him away. It was all in vain. When a neighbor reported seeing my roommate’s girlfriend leaving our apartment early one morning, I immediately got a call. Two days later, Mustafa’s wife dropped by unannounced, berating us for having female guests and telling us that we should embrace Islam. A few weeks later, after returning from another pilgrimage to Mecca, Mustafa surprised us late at night, exhorting us to live according to Islamic values while renting his apartment.

For all the inconveniences that accompanied each of his probing visits, Mustafa never realized how intrusive he seemed to his American tenants, who were raised on the sanctity of closed-doors privacy. Upon our answering the door, he would head for the couch, expecting juice or soda before undertaking his inspections. In one instance, when I had just returned from winter break and had nothing in the refrigerator, he intimated his disappointment.

During another rent collection, when I hoped to use my strep throat as an excuse for abridging his visit, Mustafa followed his inspections with an hour-long talk comparing Christianity and Islam, reminding me that Islam forbids alcohol and premarital sex. Perhaps excited by this religious dialogue, Mustafa’s son, who frequently accompanied him, offered his disdain for Baha’is. “They believe in Bahaullah — not God!” he said ruefully. They were brutal company.

In late January, a new roommate moved in and, by mid-March, his new girlfriend was visiting regularly. While I was out one Friday afternoon, my roommate answered the door to find Mustafa’s son accompanied by his cousin. The teenaged pair entered the apartment, removed their shoes, plopped themselves on the couch, and said that Mustafa would arrive in four hours to speak with us.

When my roommate frantically called regarding this latest encroachment, I was livid. Upon rushing back to the apartment, I flung open the door, threw my keys against a chair for effect, and began screaming. Having grown accustomed to my previous toleration of their invasiveness, Mustafa’s son was stupefied.

“You had women in the apartment! It is forbidden in Islam!” he yelled.
“I’m not Muslim! What I do in the privacy of my apartment is none of your business!” I retorted, with Arabic fluency I never realized I possessed.

Naturally, this debate was futile. There would be no convincing him regarding my conception of privacy. But in expressing my angry frustration, I suddenly found the most effective means of communicating with my landlord’s kin.

Indeed, they backed down. Although female friends continued to visit, Mustafa never surprised us again. When Mustafa’s wife arrived in early May to collect our final rent payment, she declined the usual inspection and proselytization, leaving with record speed.

This actually disappointed us. The hour we’d just spent agonizing over where to hide our wine had been wasted. n

Eric Trager was a 2006-2007 Islamic Civilizations Fulbright grantee based in Cairo, Egypt.

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