
A trip to Amarna, the desert city of Akhenaten - diodorus
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/26/ancient-egypt-amarna-akhenaten-rebel-king-arab-spring-revolution
======
616c
Sadly reminds of every expat I've ever met in Egypt. He lived over there in
Egypt but not in Egypt. Rare any of my friends got past this stage and no one
can stomach knowing Egyptians at a deeper level and their real problems, so
let's talk about pyramids!

(Source: being going for years and have relatives there; can also write
italicized Arabic transliterated but gave up needing to assert my street cred
long ago; the country's doomed because any more integrated and knowledgeable
than this as a journalist and report real stuff you get jailed or killed.)

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
I take it you're not familiar with Peter Hessler's other work? He's an
incredible writer who learned Arabic for the gig, and some of his pieces in
the New Yorker go way beyond pyramids:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/tales-
trash](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/tales-trash)

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/learning-to-
sp...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/learning-to-speak-
lingerie)

His work about China is also great, particularly _Country Driving_ :

[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/books/24book.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/books/24book.html)

~~~
616c
I actually remember that article from years ago. I liked it and I don't spend
much time in Sa3eed (aka Southern Egypt and Sinai where iirc he did that
reporting; I don't have time to reread but recall the lingerie angle).

Don't get me wrong, I am a relatively accomplished Arabic speaker and thought
it was my role in life to be like him and those like him. But being a white
dude who speaks Arabic is the only hurdle set, and no one says that is the
only bar to surpass to report on US news in English. You need more and if you
didn't speak English _at a minimum_ people will laugh you out of a media
outlet if we compare; only in the Middle East does that make you hot shit. It
is partly that, and partly that everything is romanticism facing outward bc
that is all the system tolerates. I always get away with stuff bc I can string
sentences together and I am fluent enough to be charming. It is all you need
to be respected, albeit increasingly less in Egypt, even if you are looked
upon skeptically as a spy by some and Egyptians call it Foreign Syndrome,
3odet al-khawaga. That skill gets you places, but you cannot be reporting on
relevant internal dynamics are you are gonna be sorry.

I know some that are a few degrees separated from me but close to many local
people going to jail for sedition or failure to comply with censorship
regulations, explicit or not. No amount of Arabic will teach you to hang out
in those circles as a journalist, unless you're an Italian researcher during
the Mahalla Labour disputes and you want to get beaten to death by the cops
for looking into govt involvement in labor inequity. That happened and whoosh
the human rights ambulance drove away to never came back. I'll google him
later but no one recalls that dude anymore. None one gives a shit about my
friends who learned Arabic and stayed during the revolution. Many of them
learned not to write bc posting real stuff gets you in real trouble there. End
of story.

So Peter is all nice and good but we have a made a global media economy where
this is the most that can be tolerated in Egypt and similar regimes down the
street bc it sells. Fuck the locals, who cares! And I say that a guilty
westerner who fears for family and knows my nation helped facilitate this
garbage, and shout at my ignorant Western family for not getting it when they
humored me for a visit. The compounded problem is a lot of us work in the
software industry building tracking systems used on those brave people who
speak up so only an idiot involves himself or herself in that shit directly.
Direct or not, I feel great shame at this.

But amarna is nice though.

As he says in his article, mafeesh faida.

~~~
uxhacker
I think he points it out in the article how it is mainly foreigners that are
both leading the work, and are interested in Egyptology.

I don't know if you have read Edward Said work, Orientalism, but this explains
the article. What interests the readers of HN, and the Guardian is the
romanticized past rather than the reality of now. But Peter Hessler in a way
brings this up.

Is Orientalism that bad ? If it gets people interested in a geographic region.
We have many more conflicts which are just ignored like West Papa, or even
Sudan now.

~~~
616c
Again, Arabist by trade. I have read Edward Said. My take: Orientalism has
been internalized by insider and outsider alike, as it kept the wheels greased
and trains running on time. Turning that back will take a long time, whether
western powers try to fix it out I'd guilt or locals do of their own accord
wholesale.

Egypt has many ills. As a young man I tried blogging in Arabic and said to any
listening audience: focus on improving education and economics to fight Israel
since because the Saudi Qatar spat, on paper, that was the existential threat
and money talks, and if you're serious that's how you'll win a war with the
west on your side, o Egypt, not with silly peace settlements and weapons
stockpiles. Official rhetoric talked of outside threats, not inside ills
(build a wall anyone? My time there informed a lot of my extreme cynicism
about US domestic politics). Random people would come out of the wood work and
label me a Zionist agent and because I said put Egyptians first.

I was amused and realized I should give my opinions to myself. I stopped soon
after.

Want to read someone real? Look up Abderrahman Munif: the other Saudi aside
from a few like Bin Laden stripped of citizenship; a hardcore Baathist who was
an oil minister in Iraq, became jaded, left politics, and became an artist and
social activist. Only one book translated and his Cities of Salt magna opa was
the prophecy that part of the world snubbed about western nations devouring
them complicity. It will be ironic to read him.

And Egyptology doesn't pay bills for locals. He has a story about that. Come
find me in my profile if you're interested, since no one remembers that book.
Lol

