Michael and Me and 150 Egyptians

So a couple weeks back I attended a showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 at he Genena Mall here in Heliopolis with some other teachers—both Egyptian and American—from the school. It was an interesting experience. First, the place was packed. Second, the audience for the most part sat quietly and watched the whole thing with only occasional laughter and no comment. (Much of Moore’s humor, of course, didn’t quite translate.) The film was subtitled in Arabic, so we Americans had no trouble following it. One of our teacher-friends was curious—since I had seen the movie before in the U.S.—to know if it was censored at all. In fact, it was less censored than the American version, but what wasn’t censored was mainly gory images of dead Americans. (In America, these images were kept "blurred" to prevent their being so graphic.) In any case, I cringed a little thinking how Middle Easterners would interpret some aspects of the film (which are quite conspiratorial), but there was one segment I really appreciated being in there. This was the part where Moore talks to a woman who lost a son in Iraq. Her pain is very powerful and very in the open, and it occurred to me that most Egyptians had probably never witnessed this sort of thing. The press here generally focuses on Iraqi civilians (which is, of course, something that should be paid attention to, definitely more than it is in the US) and basically ignores the human dimension of the injured or killed Americans and their families. (Which is NOT good.) So it was nice to see this out there and have this audience exposed to that reality.

In any case, I never felt at all uncomfortable or worried. As I said, the audience was calm and, it seemed, thoughtful, and after the movie ended we all filed out to head off to our next destination: whether that was MacDonalds, the rest of the mall, a taxi to a restaurant, or home. No one looked particularly furious or sad or radical. Nothing blew up. A fairly nice time, it seems, was had by all.