The Cowboy of the Giza Plateau
I spent some time in Texas (as an exchange student at UT). This is why my instructor said I should volunteer. He'll like you. He claims his mother was from Texas, arrived here in 1964 with nothing but the clothes on her back and a suitcase. So I decided that as part of my Anthropology project at AUC, I write an ethnography of the one who's called the Cowboy of the Giza Plateau. This is a transcription of our first encounter.
[Day 1]
I arrived at Nazlet el-Seman, the village swallowed up by Giza's urban sprawl. I found him sitting on a palm tree log just outside the horse stables where the Nile valley meets the desert. A hand painted ad for Marlboro cigarettes covered the cracked stucco wall behind him.
"Mornin," I said in my best happy Texan dialect.
There was a slight expression of astonishment from him which he immediately stifled, "Mornin. You the one from the college?" He replied.
"Yep, that's right," I said proudly. Inside I was bursting. Struck oil, I thought to myself.
He stood up and looked me up and down before continuing. "Is it true what they said about you? That you studied in Texas."
"Who wants to know?" play it cool Sami, that big old bass ain't biting yet. I said to myself.
"Why me of course? You see anyone else around here?" he put his face right into mine until I could smell the Stetson and tobacco steaming off his skin.
I dropped my shoulders and kept my focus on his eyes. "Yes. I studied in Austin."
"Where in Austin?" He wouldn't let up.
"Where else? UT."
"How's the view from the tower?" he asked, turning his gaze to the south toward Sakkara.
"It's nice. You can see the"
He cut me off before I could tell him about the Austin sky line. "Bullshit. Get outta here. They don't allow students up there."
"You don't know that they opened it?" I said trying to hold a smile back and not to offend him.
Cowboy: Most of the locals think I'm crazy, which is why they leave me alone. Don't get me wrong. They talk about me behind my back. Some even right in front of my face. Think I don't speak Arabic. Fuck you Ehab! Bakallam Arabi ezzay el-ful, I tell him. It's always the younger ones, the ones who still think they can say whatever they want in front of others. The ones who haven't had a good beating yet. Anyhow, I ain't got alotta time here. Supposed to be a whole bus load of Japanese come through here any minute.