Many moons ago, in what must have been 1992 or so, my mother, her Danish friend Marianne Blegvad, Aziza, Osman, Sarah, my friend Ahmed Sami, and I, were walking down the narrow street we lived on, when a crazy fool of a man in his fifties zoomed past us at breakneck speed. As he drove past us, he hit Aziza, who fell screaming to the ground.
Then he turned around, looked, and laughed.
This was far too much for my hot-blooded 22-year-old self. Blood boiling, I launched myself after the man’s car. As it turned out, the man lived just two buildings away from us and was on his way home, so it was easy enough for me to catch up with him. I had him half outside the car window, slapping him back and forth, when what seemed like the entire neighborhood’s population of young men showed up to defend the man, who it later transpired, was an Egyptian army general who had helped all the neighbors’ boys out of mandatory military service. Soon, I was looking at an angry mob of young men who only knew that the foreigner boy was beating up their esteemed benefactor.
I managed to hold off the mob just enough to get them up the stairs to mom’s house (where I intended to run inside and shut the door) from which Aziza’s screaming was emanating. At this point, the man’s son grabbed the scruff of my neck and began dragging me backwards down the stairs. I punched him as hard as I could, right in the eye.
And all hell broke loose.
For several minutes, I held my own quite well against what mom swears were more than thirty people. I bloodied enough noses and lips that a significant number of the participants lost interest or otherwise backed off. The fight was so loud that it attracted the attention of the chief of the local police station, who actually came to see what was going on. When he was told that this was a fight between a US citizen and an Egyptian army general, he decided that he wanted no part of it, and that he would wait until the matter was brought to him (discretion is the better part of valor; this could easily have turned into an international incident, right in his lap).
Ten minutes later, I had reduced the number of combatants considerably. I swear to you that I was holding my own, if not quite winning. I was heroic. I was bold. I was intrepid and strong. I stood alone against the hordes, giving far better than I received…
…until mom came out and won the fight for me.
Mom, you see, had, in her inimitable way, mobilized the women of the entire building. They came—landlady, friends, neighbors, servants, and all—with hoses and pots of water. They then proceeded to spray, douse, drench, and soak all the men. The men, who had stoically taken all the abuse I could mete out, were unable to handle the handful of angry women with their pots of water. Incidentally, I stayed dry as a bone.
They ran, screaming, like little girls.
That day, I learned a couple of things: 1) I could hold my own against 30 angry men; and 2) mom had more courage than any twenty people I know. That woman was so brave that she actually carried a pot of water into a mess of angry, swearing, bloodied Middle Eastern men who felt that they were defending their honor. She threw the water in their faces. She told them to get the hell out of her yard. She stood her ground. And she won.
I gained a new esteem for myself that day, but it is nothing compared to the humility I felt as a result of the inestimably higher respect I gained for my mother, my hero.
Incidentally, Aziza was (mostly) ok. She suffered a twisted ankle, a few bruises, and a wounded dignity.
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