Hunched over on a wooden box at the side of the street, Harry – a travel vlogger – is practising Arabic with two shoe shine boys when an elderly man shouts over: “Where you from?!”
“Great Britania!” Harry calls back.
“Where?!”
“England!” he says.
“England?! No good!” The man replies, gesturing with arms like a breaststroke.
Harry looks wounded, then turns to his camera: “You’re allowed your own opinions these days.”
Harry is in Egypt to see whether the online stereotype is true – that Egypt is “full of scammers” – in a vlog titled Rawdogging the Scam Capital of the World. But while he critiques Egyptians, he’s really doing what the old man did: asserting superiority. Only Harry does it the English way – wrapped in a friendly demeanour.
When I saw the older man behave like that, I felt disappointed. I thought it was only arrogant Westerners who went around the world asserting their greatness and pointing out everyone else’s flaws. But as most Egyptians told the vlogger Josie, everywhere has its bad apples. In this case, though, only one of these apples has a YouTube channel influencing the opinion of millions of people online. There is clearly a power imbalance.
It’s interesting that someone who looks like he’s affiliated with the shoe shine boys would insult their customer, who they are relying on for a ‘pay what you want’ kind of service. It seems to me like money is not the highest value for this elderly man.
It made me wonder if maybe he had visited England at some point and discovered that it’s a tough place to make a life if you’re not white or rich. I remember when I moved to Manchester, and noticed that the people who were up and out of the house first were rarely white. They were the cleaners – and usually immigrants. Or maybe it’s English colonialism in Egypt – he looks old enough to remember.
This scene isn’t the usual kind of misunderstanding I tend to focus on. This is more of a pushback against the global structures that let the average Western tourist travel the world and judge nations based on what he’s learned on YouTube – backed by a strong currency and his British passport.
I’m interpreting it as a negative encounter, but maybe this is the only real encounter Harry’s had. There was no performance, no concessions for the British tourist, on the part of the older man. Maybe Harry got his only taste of the real Egypt.