Amira Mittermaier - Dreams That Matter

Dreams That Matter

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of the General Endowment Fund
of the University of California Press Foundation.

Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination

AMIRA MITTERMAIER

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu .

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2011 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mittermaier, Amira, 1974.

Dreams that matter : Egyptian landscapes of the imagination /
Amira Mittermaier.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-25850-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-520-25851-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. DreamsEgypt. 2. EgyptReligion. 3. Dream
interpretationEgypt. 4. DreamsReligious aspects
Islamcase studies. 5. EthnopsychologyEgypt. I. Title.

BF1078.M485 2011

154.63096216dc22 2010020056

Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

INTRODUCTION: STUDYING DREAMS
IN UNDREAMY TIMES

At some point during my fieldwork in Cairo, probably on a particularly hot, loud, and frustrating day, I jotted down a reminder in my notebook. I wrote that once back in New Yorkwhile sitting at my desk surrounded by the comfort of my home, with a cup of coffee next to me and my laptop in front of meI shouldnt forget what a pain fieldwork was at times. The traffic, the pollution, the mosquitoes, the heat, the tense political climate, and, maybe more than anything else, the many hours spent waiting for and running after peopleall these frustrations, I insisted, should not be erased in my ethnography. Now, years later, sitting in my office at the University of Toronto, finalizing the last bits and pieces of the book that has grown out of my dissertation, and on my third cup of coffee today, I miss Cairo. Certainly not the everyday annoyances but the people I came to know, rely on, learn from, laugh with, and occasionally argue with. These are the people I want to thank first.

That my assumptions and beliefs were repeatedly shaken up in the field I owe most to Shaykh Qusi and his community. I hope this book can stand as a small token of gratitude for their many stories, trust, and friendship. I also owe special thanks to Shaykh Mustafa for all the time he spent patiently answering my questions and for letting new questions arise through our conversations; to Shaykh Hanafi for introducing me to his vast library on dream interpretation and for sharing his thoughts on the art of interpreting dreams in the age of television; and to Shaykh Nabil for the many teas, yansns, and coffees, for allowing me to witness his interpretive and counseling work, and for his sense of humor.

Likewise, I am deeply grateful to Madame Salwa Alshebeny, who quickly became much more than an informant. I thank her for taking me to countless saint shrines in Islamic Cairo and the City of the Dead, for teaching me so much about the saints, and for distributing rice pudding at one of the shrines after I had passed my dissertation defense. Another informant-turned-friend is Hassan Surour, who generously gave me of his time and who gracefully navigated being a friend, research assistant, and teacher all at once. Without Hassans company and his occasional attempts to help me come up with a clearer plan, fieldwork would have been more difficult, more alienating, and certainly less enjoyable. Egypt also would be an entirely different place for me without Abdelnagy Sakout, who had the pleasant habit of showing up in Cairo whenever I was feeling discouraged. He and the entire Sakout family, both in Cairo and in Hurghada, have made Egypt feel like a second (or third) home to me. I further wish to thank my relatives Soheir Taraman, Abd al-Aziz El Desouky, and Mohamed Abd El-Wahhab for their support and hospitality; Sahar Mansour for her cheerful friendship; Dr. Husayn Abd al-Qadir for talking me through the local history of psychoanalysis; Rasha Badr and her family for the many meals and conversations; Walid Gharib and Huda al-Hussaini for helping me transcribe recordings; Khaled Sakout for introducing me to healers in Upper Egypt; Muhammad Gaber and Shaykh Hisham for our unforgettable hourlong conversations under the stars of Qurna; and Umar El-Gendy for his patient but passionate explanations and for all the stories he has shared with me. For institutional support and for allowing me to escape occasionally into the shielded oasis that is the American University in Cairo, I thank Elizabeth Coker, Farouk Sendiony, and the late Cynthia Nelson.

Guidance and inspiration throughout my years in graduate school at Columbia University (and beyond it) were provided by my dissertation adviser, Brinkley Messick, who first introduced me to the field of anthropology when I was an exchange student at the University of Michigan and who continuously renewed my excitement about the discipline in the years to come; Lila Abu-Lughod, who commented generously on chapter drafts and pushed me to think more carefully about the social life of dreams; Michael Taussig, whose work has long inspired me to marvel at the strangeness of the seemingly ordinary (and the ordinariness of the seemingly strange) and who widened my vision of what ethnographic writing can be; Brian Larkin, who nurtured and guided my deeper interest in the effects of mediation; and Vincent Crapanzano, who offered crucial input both through his close reading of my work and through his own writings. To all of them I am deeply grateful.