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Sun. Sep 22, 2002

Letter from Egypt

Letter from Egypt – P. J. O’Rourke writes to us from Egypt, and tells us about the ”Arab Street”: "When I could bear to peek, I saw traffic copsnot in ones or twos but in committees, set up at intersections and acting with the efficiency and decisiveness usual to committees. And I saw a driving school. What could the instruction be like? ’No, no, Anwar, faster through the stop sign, and make your left from the far-right lane.’ Surely John Kifner, Chris Matthews, and NBC News are kidding when they use ’Arab street’ as a metaphor for anything in the Middle East."

He draws analysis from the labor of the Pyramids: "You can imagine the awful labor of heaving and pulling these rocks 2.3 million of them, according to Mousa. There is a question that less-sophisticated Americans ask (and more-sophisticated Americans would like to): Why are people in the Middle East so crazy? Here, at the pyramids, was an answer from the earliest days of civilization: People have always been crazy." [...] "What will be left of our civilization 5,000 years hence? Probably the ruins of our interstate highway system. The tourists of some future age will wonder, as I wondered at the Valley of the Kings, ’Why were these people so obsessed with where they were going instead of where they were?’ "

And he compares the merits of Eastern and Western culture: "When it came to art, I think the ancient Egyptians had a look going and decided to hang with it for 3,000 years. ’Notice how the quality of decoration degenerated,’ Ibrahim said. An important part of cultural understanding is to understand that not all cultures progress. Ibrahim and I went across the street and had dinner at McDonald’s, where the quality of decoration had degenerated much further."