Wrong Impressions

The past two weeks have been incredibly unamusing. Putting aside the slaughter in Lebanon, the 14-hour-days at work and missing my flight to Rome on Friday because GW and his minions are playing Fear Factor with carry-on baggage, a cousin of mine is visiting from Egypt and is making me into an Egyptian parent.

I thought she was different from the rest but, boy oh boy, was I wrong.

It is a peculiar misconception held by many foreigners, and definitely including Arabs and Muslims, that Americans have no morals. None. Their image of America and Americans is a crude version of "Girls Gone Wild", where parents let kids do whatever they want, sex with anyone you want is okay, there are no rules and anything goes. Perhaps it is one too many episodes of the "Bold and The Beautiful" or "Baywatch", both of which are regular staples of the Arabic television diet, but it is quite apparent that my cousin thought she would come to America and be a girl gone wild.

So when my sister and I told her she was out of her mind for thinking we would let her go out alone with some shady Arabic guy she met on the plane ride over here, she started behaving like a child, lying, trying to play us off against each other, all so she could go have "coffee" with this guy. Did I mention that this sleezy guy was planning to pick her up from my father's house for "coffee" at 10:00 p.m. during the week? We thought this was a matter of Arab culture, a culture in which no man with an ounce of decency would ever suggest to a woman's family that he pick her up at 10:00 p.m. (and which is the tell-tale sign that the mystery man is utter filth). Most women are not allowed to stay out that late and, certainly, not alone with a guy the family does not know. The more we thought about it, however, it is not something unique to Arab culture because the response is no different in American culture. It is a matter of basic safety.

When I asked her what made her think such behavior was okay, one of the many lying responses she tried to pass was that she does the same things in Egypt. As I tried to contain my laughter, with flashbacks of all my conflicts with family members in Egypt who would not let me come and go as I please during my visits, I asked her to name one male member of the family who would not beat her ass for asking if some strange guy no one knows could pick her up at 10 p.m. Her silence spoke volumes.

It is not often that I wave the American flag for anything, but I let her have it. I told her that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are far more moral than those hypocrite Muslims who fuck prostitutes and molest boys under the cover of darkness. The only difference between America and Egypt is that people here speak openly about what is going on, rather than bury it in mounds of lies and hypocrisy. When you do come across a virgin in America, you know she is a virgin by choice and not because having sex, or even talking to the wrong boy, is a life or death decision. The real test of morality is putting someone in a society where she can have sex and seeing if she still has all those uppity morals behind which she takes cover.

My cousin does not.