I can’t pass for American

Cairo taxi drivers always assume I’m either British or German, and absolutely never guess American. One even guessed Swedish once.

But far weirder than that is how often I’m now taken for Egyptian by the passport authorities at Cairo Airport. For maybe the fourth time in the past year, they were extremely suspicious of my American passport, and the nice young lady today said I must be Egyptian because of my face. (The guy last time bizarrely thought Harman was an Arabic name from some country other than Egypt.)

So, I just spoke a few sentences in Arabic, deliberately making my accent even worse than it usually is, and that finally convinced her I was a genuine American.

I guess I’m more wrapped up in Becoming-Egyptian, in the Deleuzian sense, than I’d thought. Even starting to look the part according to these airport people.