Inside Cairo

...One learns a great deal about middle class Egypt from this book...

...True, the contradictions of social class and income are particularly glaring in many Third World countries, but I would be hard pressed to argue that it is more difficult for a member of the Egyptian elite to have a conversation with a peasant that it is for an upper middle class American suburbanite to relate to a black sharecropper in Mississippi...

...The reader is presented with live individuals who have ideas, feelings, and fears...

...An American journalist with a Jewish background, Vivian Gornick does not speak Arabic and went to Egypt with the clear purpose of writing about a particular social class...

...The men, it seems, are somewhat obsessed with sex, particularly when it comes to relating to a seemingly independent and obviously "liberated" foreigner...

...This is not a political book, although politics intrudes into many parts of it...

...Vivian Gornick accepted middle class Egypt as she found it and was able to sort out many of the key elements of a complex society...

...And Cairo, despite its dirt, heat, and social contradictions, is a vibrant and " a l i v e " city with an active cultural life—and much safer than New York...

...She believes that her own "tribal" Jewish subculture helped her to understand...

...Her book provides at least a partial understanding of a city, a class, and a society...

...Her "methodology" included close observation of the particular family with whom she lived and the other individuals she met...

...Political freedom is not a hallmark of modern Egypt, but neither is there repression...

...Women play an important role in family affairs but have no really independent careers...

...Inside Cairo IN SEARCH OF A LI MAHMOUD: AN a AMERICAN WOMAN...

...This was a good choice, particularly in a society in which the extended family still occupies an extremely powerful position...

...In Search of Ali Mahmoud is a most useful book...

...And to this reviewer, who has lived in Bombay, a city not unlike Cairo in many ways, the descriptions and experiences have a ring of truth...

...As a result of her experiences, Ms...

...In Search of Ali Mahmoud is not really about "Egypt" in the abstract, but rather it is about Cairo, and particularly about the westernized, Englishspeaking upper middle classes...

...Vivian Gornick, who has edited a book entitled Women in a Sexist Society, was particularly sensitive to this issue...

...Many elements of Egyptian society are reflected in Vivian Gornick's sensitive observations...

...But in many respects, such as the all-important family, the social bond is more powerful than the western veneer...

...There is, in general, an atmosphere of acceptance of "reality" which is so common in the Third World, an atmosphere which Americans often find both frustrating and repelling...

...It is true that educated Egyptians have a much higher standard of living than ninety per cent of their countrymen and are often fluent in a foreign language...

...It is often said that the middle classes in Third World countries are somehow out of touch with the "realities" of their societies...

...Women from educated families do not wear the traditional Moslem veils, but they face many of the same problems that face their affluent compeers in terms of their roles in the family, in society, and in access to a career and an independent existence...

...While Egyptians are naturally preoccupied with the Arab-Israel conflict, few were extraordinarily upset when they discovered that Vivian Gornick was Jewish...

...In many ways, she found the Egyptians she met to be like the Jewish families of her own experience...

...This is both a strength and a weakness...

...While one does not come to grips with the problems and personalities of the peasantry of a country which is still dominated by peasants, a part of Egyptian society is described on a human scale...

...Jobs are not often satisfying, and government bureaucracy intrudes almost everywhere...

...Gornick came away with a deep, although quite mixed, affection for both Cairo and the Egyptian middle class...

...reviewed by Philip G. Altbach Here is a book that provides a "feeli n g " for a society vastly different from the author's own in America, and that is a rare feat...

...And in a world in which such understanding is both much needed and difficult to obtain...

...Outward "westernization" may make it possible for an Egyptian or an Indian to function in some contexts in a "westernized" manner...

...Philip G. Altbach is on the staff of educational policy studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook...

...Many Westerners find the contradictions of urban centers in the Third World difficult to understand and to accept...

...I have not found this to be the case in India, nor did Vivian Gornick in Egypt...