In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [13]
As we listened, an American journalist friend sitting beside me leaned over and whispered into my ear that our host’s Egyptian family didn’t really have a problem with the attacks. “They said this is what we get for so blindly supporting Israel,” he said. A few minutes later, another American friend arrived, saying a taxi driver had told him that the attacks were “payback” for America’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The news ticker at the bottom of the TV screen stated that Palestinians were celebrating in their camps in Gaza and Lebanon, even going so far as to pass out congratulatory sweets.
This reaction didn’t surprise me. Palestinians had suffered extensively from what was then fifty years of Arab-Israeli conflict; many lived in squalid conditions. But Egyptians? In the two decades following president Anwar el-Sadat’s signature of the Camp David Accords, Egypt had received upwards of $2.2 billion per year from the American taxpayers. Hundreds of American businesses invested in Egypt as well, and American advisers played a key role in helping the government reform its bloated public sector. Now not only did I feel sorry that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, but I felt exploited as well.
Needing a good stiff drink and some secular solace among Westerners, I visited an upmarket bar-restaurant in Zamalek, normally an island of Western tranquility. Halfway through a whiskey, I saw two Egyptian girls in Westernized dress jump up and start dancing and singing. As the patrons also sang along, I finally realized that they were singing about how “Sylvester Stallone couldn’t save the World Trade Center.” I couldn’t tell for sure, but the girls looked like they could have been students at the American University in Cairo. Angry, I paid the bill and went home.
The next morning at the office, I sat staring blankly at my laptop screen, my eyes tired from sifting through stories of who might be responsible for the attacks. Speculation had evolved into outright ccusations that the attacks were the handiwork of Osama bin Laden, whose organization had ties to similar organizations in Egypt and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Throughout the day, I received phone call after phone call from American friends in the region asking if my friends and family were OK.
I hadn’t slept well the previous night, so I headed home early to take a nap. As I stepped into the elevator, I realized that not a single Egyptian member of staff at AmCham had expressed any sorrow about the attacks. The only person who asked me if my family was safe was the building’s security guard, whom I spoke with each day on the way into the office.
I then asked myself the question, Why am I living here? Egyptians always told me they differentiated between their opposition to the American government and the American people themselves. But their reactions indicated otherwise. I knew that the United States supported Israel and that its sponsorship of the peace process had yet to solve the problem. But did anything justify ploughing jets full of innocent passengers into skyscrapers? No, I thought. Standing on my terrace, overlooking the office buildings and slums that make up the Cairo skyline, I suddenly realized that I couldn’t stand living there anymore. I called my travel agent and asked her to get me on the next flight to Damascus.
Stepping off the bus ferrying passengers from the Cairo International Airport