Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
The Ugly American
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
On a boulder jutting into the Nile, an elderly Egyptian wearing a gallabiyah the color of cement sits on his haunches. He has the leathered skin of a farmer, of a man who has weathered life. He is in no hurry to move. From afar he could be mistaken for a mummy.
Like an undiscovered Egyptian temple, his secrets are invisible. Maybe he is at the river to worry about money, his harvest, his failing health. Maybe he is taking pleasure in his child’s school grades. Maybe he is simply tired after a day of hard work. Maybe he is taking a private moment of joy to watch the Nile glide by.
Maybe he is seething because he overhead an American trash talking about him and his friends.
In our air-conditioned tour bus, a woman with a pinched, drawn face— I’m guessing one cosmetic surgery too many—is claiming, “These people are so lazy. Look at those men just sitting around.” I take an instant dislike to her.
She’s talking about a cluster of five middled-age men sharing a hookah in front of a coffeehouse. I can only imagine what she thinks of the midafternoon customers at her hometown Starbucks.
It doesn’t occur to her that the meet-up might be a community bulletin board, a living newspaper for those who can’t read or afford a radio. A chance to talk politics, learn the latest crop prices, pass along family news, perhaps make an offer on a better donkey cart.
“If there are no jobs, they should do something like sweep the sidewalk or pick up litter,” she expands on her small-minded defamation with the authority of one who thinks they have said something profound. My dislike turns to boiling bile.
One cherished reason for international travel is to escape ugly Americans, but here I am hunted down by her bigotry and stupidity. I shrink into my bus seat, avoiding eye contact. I just wish she would shut the fuck up.
Sightseeing—both hers and mine--is nearsighted, myopic, blinkered. My traveler’s creed comes from Anais Nin, “we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Egyptian street life is a beehive of industry, grit, determination. Storefront delis sell handmade pita-bread sandwiches. To entice customers, enterprising butchers hang slabs of meat streetside. Racks of freshly baked bread—the aroma deliriously tempting--are in front of every bakery. Donkeys and horses pull carts laden with every imaginable thing, from food to furniture. A small curbside plot, no bigger than a card table, converts to a spot to sell fresh fruit, ice cream, olives, cigarettes, a lottery ticket. From full-on pay toilets and showers to the hardworking washroom attendant hoping for a tip, bathrooms are a business. In full view, a man steam-irons bedsheets at a drycleaner—turning his work into an advertisement. Men on motorcycles and women on foot move with purpose.
My body tenses, my face is locked. I want to point out that we aren’t seeing beggars or empty storefronts, but the teacher in me tells me she is unteachable.
