Karin van Nieuwkerk - Manhood is Not Easy: Egyptian Masculinities Through the Life of Sayyid Henkish
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In this in-depth ethnography, Karin van Nieuwkerk takes the autobiographical narrative of Sayyid Henkish, a musician from a long family tradition of wedding performers in Cairo, as a lens through which to explore changing notions of masculinity in an Egyptian community over the course of a single lifetime. Central to Henkishs story is his own conception of manhood, which is closely tied to the notion of ibn al-balad, the authentically Egyptian lower-middle class male, with all its associated values of nobility, integrity, and toughness. How to embody these communal ideals while providing for his family in the face of economic hardship and the perceived moral ambiguities associated with his work in the entertainment trade are key themes in his narrative. Van Nieuwkerk situates his account within a growing body of literature on gender that sees masculinity as a lived experience that is constructed and embodied in specific social and historical contexts. In doing so, she shows that the challenges faced by Henkish are not limited to the world of entertainment and that his story offers profound insights into socioeconomic and political changes taking place in Egypt at large and the ways in which these transformations impact and unsettle received notions of masculinity.
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Karin van Nieuwkerk
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This electronic edition published in 2019 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
200 Park Ave., Suite 1700 New York, NY 10166
www.aucpress.com
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
200 Park Ave., Suite 1700 New York, NY 10166
www.aucpress.com
Copyright 2018 by Karin van Nieuwkerk
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 977 416 889 5
eISBN 978 1 61797 951 4
eISBN 978 1 61797 951 4
Version 1
For Sayyid, Azza, and Karim
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
INTRODUCTION
W hile preparing my fieldwork trip to Egypt to explore a new research topic, I received an email from an American dancer who had recently visited Sayyid Henkish. Sayyid had helped me greatly in the late 1980s during my PhD research on female singers and dancers, being a popular (shabi) musician himself. would be lost. I was a bit amazed and even slightly annoyed by this suggestion, as I thought I had collected lots of information about Sayyid and his work, and particularly about his female colleagues, for my book A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt . What did he mean? Was there much more out there? Hadnt he shared it with me?
Suddenly it occurred to me that indeed there was a story he had not told until now: his own story! He introduced me to many of his colleagues and relatives, whose stories I had collected and which Sayyid always illuminated or added to with a wealth of information and his own views. Yet I never systematically sat down with him to take his own life story. He had a different role in my research: that of advisor and teacher not that of a respondent. In fact, he was my key informant, but as an expert I valued for his knowledge rather than for his personal life experiences. Although we shared a lot of experiences and adventuresthat is, he took me to many, sometimes quite rough, shabi weddings and provided me with inside information on what I witnessedthese events became fieldwork notes or participant observation.
During and after my research, Sayyid became my big brother in Egypt and a dear friend. Although there were periods of silence when I was not able to do fieldwork in Egypt, we kept irregularly in touch by phone. Pondering this feeling of knowing a lot about him and his background on the one hand, while on the other never having conducted a biographical interview, the thought occurred to me to take a very detailed and extensive life story over several sessions. Of course, I was not sure whether Sayyid would be willing to share his life in full detail, or whether he would be a good storyteller, but I decided to give it a try.
So, when I went to Egypt at the beginning of 2015, I paid Sayyid and his wife a visit. I was invited for lunch and presented my customary gifts from Holland. After exchanging news, I introduced my preliminary thoughts and said that I realized I had interviewed so many people about the trade but I had never taken his story. He did not react to my remark, but his wife took up the issue right away, animatedly repeating and explaining to Sayyid what Iindeedintended. We decided that Sayyid would give it some thought and that we would discuss it another time.
A few days later I paid him a visit at his music shop in Muhammad Ali Street. We settled in front of his office on two purple plastic chairs with a small table in front of us, accompanied by the shisha , the water pipe, which was his inseparable companion (see figure 2), and resumed our discussion on the project. He said that he was willing to cooperate and that he actually liked the idea. I asked him, using the methods developed by McAdams (1993) what the chapters of his life story would be, thinking that I would use his categorization to structure the different sessions.
Sayyid came up with a chronological structure that appeared quite conventional and gave some highlights of the story that would later unfold: First, tufula, his childhood, during which he witnessed his father, a talented shabi musician, working at weddings. The second period he called bulugh, puberty, during which he started attending and working at shabi weddings with his father. The third was murahqa, adolescence, when he had two secret love affairs that were interrupted by his obligatory entrance into the army. Next was sahib masuliya, taking on responsibility, during which he became a professional musician. The following phase, razana, meaning self-composure, steadiness, or gravity of demeanor, was the stage in which he said he became a real man. Manhood brought him the full responsibility for his house, and later his son. In this stage he took up many different activities within the trade to make ends meet. He finished with the stage in which he found himself now, kibir fi-l-sin, or old age, in which he more or less retired, occasionally produced music for a foreign dancer, and kept an eye on the music shop. Sayyid was sixty-five when we embarked on this project.
So far for our firstunrecordedsession. In the ensuing fourteen recorded sessions, Sayyid did not necessarily take his own arrangement as a way to structure his biography, but I found it illuminating for his outlook on life. It occurred to me immediately that it was a mans perspective, focusing on responsibility, duties, and manliness. I noted down that evening that I should also explore the theme of masculinity with him, not knowing how naturally this theme of manhood would be interwoven in Sayyids own story lines.
Around the eighth session, when the taxi took an alternative route, my eye caught graffiti on a yellow painted wall (see figure 1). On the left it reads al-rugula mish bi suhula, manhood is not easy. I immediately felt attracted to this expression as very apt for the project I was working on with Sayyid. I returned on foot to take a picture and later showed it to Sayyid. He smiled and nodded in agreement, affirming that being a man is indeed not easy. We then began to discuss his ideas on manhood in a more explicit way. He embraced my suggestion during the final session to use the graffiti as the title for the book.
Figure 1. Graffiti Manhood is not easy. Photograph by Karin van Nieuwkerk.
Sayyids developing notions on manliness are a leitmotif in his narrations: in the sessions on childhood, he described his father as his ideal of manhood; during his first love affairs and in his final choice of marriage partner, he explained his ideas on gender and marriage; and last but not least, in all his stories about his work at weddings or later in clubs, we can see how notions of masculinity inform his attitudes toward customers and colleagues as well as toward earning and spending money.
Although Sayyids story is a personal and specific narration, it also reflects a certain way of living that is connected with the so-called authentic Egyptians, awlad al-balad. The notion of awlad al-balad as I will explain in chapter 3is an intricate term that denotes both a certain group of people of lower-middle class background inhabiting shabi quarters of Cairo and complex rules of conduct that embody traditional Egyptian values. The people of the countrywhich would be the literal translation of awlad al-balad represent the ideal of the highly moral, traditional-minded ordinary Egyptian, also captured in the notion of salt of the earth (Armbrust 1996, 25, 205).
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