Catharsis and Creation: The Everyday Narratives of Baladi Women of Cairo Author(s): Evelyn A.

Early Reviewed work(s): Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4, Self & Society in the Middle East (Oct., 1985), pp. 172-181 Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3318147 . Accessed: 08/11/2012 18:26
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CATHARSIS AND CREATION: THE EVERYDAY NARRATIVES OF BALADI WOMEN OF CAIRO'

EVELYN A. EARLY
University of Houston
From formal modes of discourse such as ritual or literature, interest has turned toward more informal, everyday modes. The study of the "ordinary"yields rich data on how social actors couch exigencies in meaningful, culturally influenced idioms. While these idioms may be linked to stereotyped complexes like "fate" or "honor," their construction responds equally to unique, biographic experience. This article suggests how everyday cultural performances of traditional, or baladi Egyptian women provide a dynamic arena where women recount their daily affairs both to explain their life situation and to express their frustrations or accomplishments.

Unlike formal ritual events which occur at established times and outside normal space and routine, informal mundane performances happen in the context of ordinary discourse. The spontaneity and groundedness in immediate events of everyday narratives enhance the speedy and personal "working out" of the matter at hand: a mother concerned with a sick child, a neighbor annoyed with a government clinic staff's indifference, or a father distraught over an errant son. This article examines performance of the everyday narrative commentary on the progression of events embedded in, but stylistically distinguished from, more descriptive everyday discourse. Some of its forms resemble more set modes of discourse such as the formulaic invocations of fortune tellers or the rhymed repartee of street fights. In contrast to formal discourse, informal narratives articulate culturalvalues in terms of immediate personal specifics. Recent anthropological concern with informal discourse and mundane performance (Turner 1980: 12; Manning 1983: 13; Bourdieu 1977: 16) provides an appropriate theoretical context for a study of narratives. Mundane cultural performances such as the narrative are created custom-made to the context, albeit in culturally shared format. This flexibility allows one to impose a definition on the situation much as Beeman (1 976: 314) notes that Iranianconversations employing ta'arof (compliment) may manipulate a social situation one way or the other. Furthermore, these narratives offer, to those who hear them, explanations for why things happen the way they do. Like people elsewhere, the traditional women of Cairo continually present 172

problems of and solutions to their personal concerns and also manage their images in everyday discourse. Social scientists concerned with "impression management"'(Goffman 1959: 17-76) have paid less attention to the effect of such presentations on the sentiments of the speakers and performers. Everyday narrative performances among baladi Cairene women draw on biographic events and cultural values to fashion personal images and provide emotional support.2 The potency of cultural symbols is most striking in their practical application. While men also recount events dramatically in public forums (see Gilsenan [1976: 206210] on "public lying" and Crapanzano [1973: 32-56] on the Hamadsha), women's performances provide a unique optic on the intersection of the personal and biographic with the "public"domain. Moreover, women's public performances offer men an entree to the "woman's world." In this essay I examine how the recounting of everyday narratives dramatically presents baladi values and affects both the speaker and the listeners.
Everyday Cultural Performances

The everyday narrative comments on the progression of life events (Labov and Waletzky 1966: 13; Robinson 1981; Stahl

1977: 10). Part of ordinarydiscourse, it is a

context-specific rendition of past and present happenings. Although shaped by the performance rules of the highly verbal baladi culture, these narratives can be spontaneous and creative, and a particularly apt rendition can invoke a powerful response. Popular and striking accounts become "canonized" text, referred to for years to come.

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Linguistic eloquence and literary expression are central to Middle Eastern culture. Quranic and classical religious references, and the styles associated with them, often intrude in everyday conversation in brief allusions in the midst of more descriptive prose. Even the everyday narrative is influenced by the cultural ideal of Quranic

expression, and it is quite probable that the baladTnarrative form which I consider is similarto equivalentforms of talk elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East. Narrativesare set off from ordinarydiscourse by style and by scene-setting devices such as body placement and gesture. A baladiwoman frames narrativeportionsof a conversation with such characteristic expressions as "although it was unbelievable" (remarking on the extraordinary nature of the event) or"l'll tell you how it was" (promising a true rendition) and with a specific linguistic style of heightened pitch and elongated vowels. Because these narratives are located in the midst of other events, they are less obvious than, say, a clinic visit or a formal ritual. But narrative evaluation of action can be therapeutic and can, like a ritual, announce a new status as obvious as the jubilance of a returned pilgrim (hji) or as subtle as the "broken off speaking" of estranged neighbors. The illness narrative is one kind of everyday narrative which can clarify the narrative's role in expressing personal crises and evaluating individual responses. It comments upon the progression of illness, curative actions, and both relevant and irrelevant associated events. The illness narrative, constituted by incident-specific information and interpreted via popular cultural maxims, provides rich insight into proper curative action as well as cultural concepts such as fertility or fate. The narrative relates these concepts to social action. A baladT woman does not automatically invoke such cultural explanations as envy or fate to explain illness; rather, she negotiates the episode in discourse with friends who recount equivalent experiences and evaluate, question or affirm her interpretation. Like a ritual performance or ceremony, the narrative conveys social intent; it is a commentary shared by family and others directly involved with decisions

about what practitioner to consult and when, and about how to comply with diagnostic instructions. Such spontaneous, everyday cultural performances as the narrative provide an additional window on culture to more formal, and by definition more visible, rituals. I witnessed my share of both, but often found information garnered at a spirit exorcism ritual (zar) or a marriage contract ceremony less valuable than that derived from informal narratives A 1976 entry in my field journal:
I had been waiting six hours for the zir (spirit exorcism ceremony) to begin. Just a few minutes after the drumming had started and before anyone had even gone into a proper trance, one of Fatima's daughters tapped me on the shoulder, saying her mother wanted to see me. "Couldn'tshe wait, since the z&rwas importantto my research?" I countered, as I turned back to watch the drumming.

Fatima's claim to my attention was certainly justified, for she had been a true friend and had taken me on many profitable research outings. In the end, I left the zr so she could introduce me to some distant relatives who had dropped in. Ironically, it was with Fatima that I noticed my first example of a mundane cultural performance, a spirited confrontation. I was accepted by her and her family, so no one thought twice about launching into a personal dispute in front of me. I had seen street fights, but this one was more complex in its metaphor, and this one I witnessed from its genesis. Such a performance was more critical to my research than any zar might have been. I discovered much more about a cultural theme through such informal performances than through more formal ritual performances. I was also interested in
comparing the text of informal discourse

with that of formal rituals. For example, an extremely common ritual is the subi'a, held seven days after a baby's birth. During this ritual, the baby is named, and the midwife chants a prescribed ditty which includes Quranic verses while the mother steps over a kitchen sieve seven times. Another woman clangs a mortar and pestle. The formality of the Quranic verses of thanksgiving conveys the mother's gratitude for her child's health. Quranic verses warning about the whisperings of old women and the workings of magic indicate the mother's

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desire to protect the child from envy. The clanging of the mortar while the performer admonishes the baby to obey its mother and father and to be courageous conveys the mother's hope that the child will grow up fearless. I watched many subu'a; nonetheless, baladi concepts of fertility and envy became clear to me only after I observed more informal cultural performances which surround the formal subG'a ritual. Such an informal performance occurred during a long and otherwise dull cooking party where my friends prepared rice pudding for a subi'a The cooking sparked tales of similar past occasions. The most dramatic was that told by the mother, Amal, who recounted a memorable night when her aunt fell while carrying trays of pudding for Amal's son Hassan's subu'a. Amal remarked "There was somethingspecial about that boy,"and in an altered pitch, she presented an informal cultural illness narrative of Hassan's death at age two.
Aftermyfirstgirl Mahrusawas born,Ihad a boy. Mahrusa carried him and dropped him more than once; she killed him but he didn'tdie right then. He died when he was over two years old and nice and tall. One day a man was in our house and greeted him with a handshake. The man said, "The boy has a hand like a man."It was that night that my boy, who always used to sleep through the night without crying, woke up and called for water and then said he wanted to go to the bathroom.The next day he was not in good health and that went on for three days When Iwould give hima coin and tell him to go buy something for himself, he refused. The other children offered him sweets but he had no appetite. Afterthree days Itook himto a clinic; my mother later told me that I had been irresponsible,but one must wait to see ifa child will get well on his own. He was beautiful; he would stand up in the windowand fillthe height of the window bars.So Itook himto the hospital and to another clinic [run by a Christian religious order]. It happened to be Mother's Dayand they let in enough of us forgifts of bonbons and pictures of the-VirginMaryand then they shut the doors. I told the doorman that I wanted to leave, but he said, "Stay and take your gift." I toldhim that I was not interested; my son wanted to drinkwater and he needed a toilet and I could get neither there. So I him my ticket and left. Then I went to another gave. clinic and paid four pounds for medicine and glucose, but I would put the tablet in his mouth and it would just slide out the side and he

wouldn'tswallow it. But now it was to the stage that Iwould give himwater in his mouthand put the pot under him because it would come out the other end....Iwas afraidhe was going to die. There was something special about this boy. All my other children were born a year and two months after my previous child.... I sat beside himthe entire night, but by dawn he was dead.. .. My next baby was a girl, but people didn't believe that she was until I pierced her ears. They thought Iwas dressing her as a girlso that no one would put the eye on her.

Amal's narrative retrospectively elaborates possible explanations for Hassan's death. She makes sense of the death for herself and for her listeners once again as she did at his death fifteen years before and as she has done continually since. Her account highlights the cultural themes of envy, remark on anomaly (Hassan was spaced differently from her other children) and sibling rivalry.In such a context the cultural themes' meaning and their effect became apparent to me. Envy is an a posterioriconcept (Early 1985: 8) which notes possible social constellations which may have influenced the course of events. Like mushahara (infertility or insuffi-

cient lactation) it can be induced by irresponsible social conduct. A manifestation of envy may be a compliment like that of the neighbor. Mushahara may come about when a recently circumcized child enters the room, and thus causes a recently delivered woman to cease lactation. Anomaly may be used as an etiological explanation in baladi medical culture (Early 1982: 1494); here Amal uses irregular pregnancy spacing to contextualize the abnormal event of death. Another theme in baladT medical culture is sibling rivalry.As elsewhere, children compete for parental affection. A newly pregnant baladTmother may forcibly wean her nursing child by smearing her breast with a bitter herb. Rivalry continues until early childhood when competition for milk and affection is replaced by the imposition of child care on the older child, who is thought still to resent his or her little charge and thus to beliable, intentionally or not, to harm the younger one. A stereotypic sibling-caused injury is to sprain the child's body by dropping it; baladi culture describes a child thus sprained as mamzi'a and prescribes a specific oil massage home remedy. In saying that "she [Mona]

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allowed to continue. Eventually, I found killed him but he didn't die right then," Amal that Mona may have resentmyself bringing my own tales to my friends. If acknowledges I had been frustrated in Egyptian governed her younger brother. Amal does not really ment offices or stymied in springing a pacthink that Mona killed Hassan. In fact, one senses that Amal does not think that any of kage from customs, I'always felt better after the factors she mentions killed Hassan. regaling acquaintances with my account and Amal's agenda is not to explain the scienhearing their response and advice. Everyday narratives are not unique to tific, medical reason for Hassan's death but baladTwomen; I now notice them in converrather to interpret that death meaningfully. sations in the U.S. But their cathartic role She does not discuss the cholera that may have been the culprit, but she does mention may be more important in Egypt where the dehydration that most certainly connegotiation of illness is often a group matter, in contrast to the individual focus of Western tributed to Hassan's death. Had she focused therapy. The frameworkof narrativesfacilitates solely on medical realities, Amal would not have felt as comforted as she did when proexegesis of difficult situations, like abandonment by a husband or the death of a newborn viding a vivid context of neighbors, an unusual boy, and a careless sister. Amal's child. They also provide emotional support fervor that night made it clear that, fifteen through the sympathetic interventions of the listener. Such support rarely comes from the later, she still mourned for her child. years Her audience relived Amal's story and Egyptian agencies which provide social services for many low-income clients; in fact, similar ones from their past as they listened one often sees baladf women cut short by a and murmured words of encouragement at social or health professional as they attempt critical points, responding to such phrases to launch into a account of their plight. As a as "I would give him water... and it would kind of "culture in action," narratives occur in come out the other end." They appeared rethe midst of critical decisions about medical freshed after taking a temporary respite from and respond to treatment, household management, marriage cooking rice pudding to hear partners, and so on; they justify and evaluate the tale. For the anthropologist, listening to action through reference to both cultural the narrative clarifies such cultural themes ideals and biographic incidents. Like other as fate and envy. A standard anthropological cultural rituals which have been the concern explanation of envy places it within a folk of theorists of praxis (Bourdieu 1977: 97), medical context and suggests that envy has they are both shaped by the system (they etiological and curative significance. I began invoke cultural reasoning) and in turn to doubt that cultural explanationssuch as shape it. "the child died because the neighbor envied him"were reasons for inaction. (In fact, Amal Catharsisand Creationin the Narrative had worried about how responsible her action was.) They seemed, rather, sources Everyday discourse is dense with detail. for personal meaning. The cues of voice pitch, idiom, and gesture Narratives provide public drama at the set off mundane cultural performances from same time that they provide private catharother types of discourse. As a cultural outsis. When tales like Amal's were told, voices sider, I began to appreciate their strength assumed a dynamic intensity. Group memboth as cathartic happenings for the parbers listened politely and interrupted only ticipants and as creative events affording an with encouraging comments equivalent to entree to cultural principles. Pragmatics and our "Right on!" and the speaker finished her culture meet in recounting. narrative in a state of exhiliration. In ordinary Women tend to be specialists in the interdiscourse, an individual rarely spoke more section of the public and household worlds, than a few uninterrupted sentences. Narrawhere many matters, including personal tive accounts might be intentionally broken business ventures and the placement of to seek audience opinions-What was the children in school, are decided. Baladi best medicine? Was the bride a good women perceive public agencies and foreign the speaker would then be choice?-but powers as resources to exploit for their

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families' benefit. One day, the neighbor of Umm Mona (the mother of Mona) returned from the clinic with complaints of the staffs disinterest in her child's health; her discontent sparked Umm Mona to reminisce about her visit years ago in pre-revolutionary Egypt to a British clinic. Her narrative relates the domestic concerns of nutrition and health, so often managed by women, to the public institutions of clinics and aid:
One day I went to the Ministryclinic with my two youngest children, and the staff said that there was no treatment that day but that there was free flour.They gave me a paper. I took it home and threw it under my pillow. [Women store their money and official papers under their pillows and mattresses.] Later I looked at it and found it was for two big bags of flour,ten kilos of milk, and several kilos of ghee. But I needed to go to a a storehouse in Sayyidna Zainab to receive it. My husband was against the idea and said it would be too much trouble. But finallya woman upstairs took my daughter Monaand went to fetch the goods. They helped to organize the women waiting in line for the food. This delay meant they received only a portion of what was written,but who can complain about receiving something for free?

liked my daughter Mona because she was so clean. The nurses slapped women whose children had pacifiers and told them pacifiers were bad for their babies, so I hid Mona's pacifier under my dress. The nurse said that Mona was very clean and that I should bring her every week Mona's eyes hurt her, which is why Itook her that day. Isaid, "Fine,Iwillreturn, just do not hit me," and I took Mona several more times to get her eyes cleaned. The other women did not understand why I received so much attention.

Another day, in a more apocryphal version of this narrative, Umm Mona said the neighbor returned so heavily laden with food that she had to rent a horse-drawn cart. The opulence of the old days is a common narrative theme; a popular version describes how, while washing a tub of British clothes, one could accumulate a mound of money forgotten in pockets by wealthy British. English are also remembered as kindly disposed toward the unfortunate. Umm Mona was initially reluctant to visit an English clinic:
I heard that they beat people at the English clinic. One day the clinic staff noticed that a man in a nearby street was hitting his mule. An English woman called the man inside and asked him for his whip. He gave it to her and waited, expecting a gift since the Britishwere renowned for their gifts to mothers and children. The woman started to whip him! He complained. She retorted, "Ifyou don't like it, why do you hit the poor mule who can barely carryits heavy load? Now you see how it feels."

tered about her inablityto wheedle medicine

out of the clinic, "Next time I'II outwit them!" As a narrative can be cathartic, so it can be creative in its shaping of reality. We will build on our exploration of envy and consider the companion cultural theme of fertility. Children, and the ability to have them, are critical resources for a woman, and often occupy center stage in her life. The theme of mushahara (infertility or insufficient lactation) permeates both formal and informal

Umm Mona's account heroizes her past; she braved the foreign clinicians and, to some extent, outwitted them. Her narrative is laden with cultural imagery about EgyptianAnglo relations, childrearing, and welfare. In their love-hate relationship with the British in the early twentieth century, Egyptians resented the Britishoccupation politically, but appreciated its benefits economically. Today the low-income Egyptian is likely to remember Britishwelfare, while the privileged Egyptian is likely to recall British efficiency. Baladiwomen developed a kind of missionaryclient mentality in their dealings with British and other welfare agencies; one must look suitably needy without repulsing one's benefactor, and one must appear compliant without abandoning one's principles. Umm Mona learned to balance the two extremes and win favor with the clinic staff. Evaluative narratives like Umm Mona's indicate how limited-income women, who visit a panoply of clinics to locate an inexpensive cure, judge the care at each and strategize methods to extract better service. Her tale embellishes a common theme in the foreign, bureaucratic repetoire, "us against them." That day its telling eased her neighbor's frustrations; upon hearing how Umm Mona outguessed the British, the neighbor mut-

But there were other reasons for Umm Mona's hesitation to attend this clinic:
My relatives told me that the clinic was for the very poor (qalhtba),so I wore a dress with long sleeves to cover my gold bracelets. The staff

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performance in baladi culture. Briefly, mushahara is caused by encounters of a vulnerable woman-for example, one who is newly married or who has just given birth-with people thought to have power to influence fertility or lactation because of their connection with crisis rites such as circumcisions or funerals, or because they have recently shaved, or weaned a baby. Mushahara serves as an explanation for delayed conception ("I am afflicted by mushahara")as well as to express a desire for infertility. A woman who had just delivered twin boys, the last of eight, and wanted no more children recounted the following:
One of my sons was fighting with a boy and I went out to stop him. The boy's sister Megda was there, and after she went upstairs, they told me that she had just been circumcized3 I called up to her:"Didyou turnaround in frontof me? Never mind if I don't get pregnant again, but I beg of you not to dry up my milk"Then I reconsidered the possibilities of getting pregnant and went upstairs and dragged Megda from the couch and made her turn around and around in front of me. Ialways said, "Oh,Iwish I would deliver in a hospital and they would take everything out," because I never want to get pregnant again.

Umm Amal functions as a kind of counselor who judges behavior, and who suggests "therapy" for her listener, Muhammad's father. She criticizes Muhammad, his son who has been away from Cairo on an unexplained visit to the village; Muhammad's mother has suffered a leg injury and needs her son to drive her to the doctor. Umm Amal announces that things will be better, much like the performative rituals of marriage or swearing in. She read Muhammad's father's cup as follows:
Yourcup reads very well. Isee in yourcup a victory (nasr)and that you will overcome(titnisir) the obstacles in your path. I can see you will have the answer to an important question in five days. [Abu Muhammed counts to himself and says that is definitely true.]Have you made No, any vows to the saints ['awliyya]? nothing. You have no intention to make a promise ? Well,the thing you should do does not requirea vow. Itcan be rathersimple. Finda poor person sitting in the street; give himfive loaves of fresh bread and a ten piaster coin; and have him recite the Quranic verse "The Family."I see your son Muhammadin your cup. I see that you are very worried. father interjects].Of course Iam (Muhammad's worriedand upset for I have a sick wife and a son Ican't find. I have a problem in every place! Why shouldn't I be worried! [Umm Mona continues] However, I see that good will happen. But remember to give the loaves of bread and the ten piasters to the poor person.

Such occasions assume the performative efficacy characteristic of formal ritual;that is, change of state (Tambiah 1979: 359). A recently circumcized child can afflict a woman with mushahara; the speaker turns Megda around to that end, and no doubt simultaneously draws smiles and comments from onlookers at her unorthodox form of birth control. Spectators at this "twirling girl" performance, like listeners to a narrative, may influence the event so that it becomes tailored to them and the occasion. The speaker plays to an audience. As Umm Mona poked fun at bureaucaracy to cheer her weary neighbor, so raconteurs may not only support but also advise their listeners. In such cases, the cathartic effect of the narrative flows more to the audience. They no longer merely chime in with interjections to support the teller, but also recall similar past experiences of their own. The listener may become the focus of narrative, with details selected with the listener and his or her predicament in mind. In the narrative below,

Baladi men are less likely than baladiwomen to make vows at shrines. The good deed that Umm Amal suggests for Muhammad's father short circuits the need for a vow.4 Her narrative prescribes the good deed, like a home remedy, to ensure that Muhammad will return safely. Her narrative not only negotiates reality to suggest therapeutic paths; in its pronouncement "I see that good will happen," it assumes the performative role of ritual action.
Everyday Narratives: The Social Connection

Narrativesprovide a repository of experiences to tap as people move through life. They not only"write" culture in action, but inscribe individualexperiences as well. They negotiate cultural absolutes and provide a sense of personal control over culture and self definition. One person's life passage conjures up

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memories of another's, and recounting the two events connects one individual with another. One day Sakkina and I admired pictures of her daughter Suad's first child Sana, surrounded by smiling relatives. While viewing the pictures, we got off on a tangent and discussed the woman Sherifa who had lived next door. After Sakkina described Sherifa's Nubian (a distinct ethnic group in Southern Egypt) identity, she went on to relate the household's experience with Sherifa's last delivery. Organizing her narrative around a common human event, birth, she talked of the birth styles and cuisines of two ethnic groups, baladr and Nubian. Personal event narratives can bond people of disparate kin, geographic, ethnic, or class background. Life passage observances suggest a common humanity: as everyone is born, matures, and dies, occasions like birth or marriage create the context for commentary on correct conduct. When I accompanied Umm Mona to the subu'a of Suad's new twins, we found that Suad's sister had managed the household the last seven days so that Suad could rest. This sister criticized their stepmother for departing for Mecca on pilgrimage knowing full well that Suad would deliver and need assistance before the stepmother's return. Later in the day Suad's sister recounted a dream:
Idreamed that Iwas sitting in a roomwithall my women friends like you who are with me today. Suddenly, someone came to tell me that my father's wife [the stepmother] had returned early from pilgrimage. When I asked why, the messenger explained that my stepmother had taken a bag from someone who had asked her to carry it through Saudi customs and that the police had seized her because the bag contained contraband. The police then deported her to Egypt.

said: "The name of this child is Ibrahim." My husband is a follower of the IbrahimDesouqi sufi order [a mystic group founded by I. Desouqi] so Ibrahim was an appropriate name!

Suad was pleased to relate the special events surrounding her twin son's namegiving at this, his naming day. Such an informal announcement probably meant more to her than the actual subu'a ritual. Another life passage ritual, marriage, is perhaps the most traumatic transition for an Egyptian woman. Socially, the wedding night realizes the union of two families and proof

of the bride'sfamily'shonor.Personallyit is a
distressing event. Mona shared her feelings about her marriage to Hassan in a brief, private conversation we had before her departure for her husband's home in Saudi Arabia. She squeezed in a condensed narrative while we drank coffee and waited for Hassan to return from Friday noon prayers. Her account reveals customary modesty and proper reticence:
I was so afraid to marry that I took sick on Thursday [the day they married]and my husband and I had to delay our marriageuntilSunday. The night Hassan came for us to get married[July 1975], we had put henna on our hands and feet [henna is an herb used to redden the hands at a time of joy like a wedding or circumcision],and were prepared to attend five other weddings which were being held in the area and to sit at each wedding long enough to fulfill our social duty. Mymotherdid not invite anyone to our wedding, even my good friends Suad and Aysha, because there was to be no party [a relative's death meant there could be no public celebration]....Afterwe wrote the marriagecontract at my house, we went to my aunt's house to consummate our marriage. My aunt's son was at the apartmentto show us how things work,give us the keys, and so on. Suddenly I found myself alone with him [Hassan]! He said: "Takeoff your clothes," and went to the next room. He returned and found me still dressed and asked: "Areyou going to sit there all night dressed?" I replied "yes". He ordered me to undress. Then he left again and I started to take off my wedding veil and hair pins, and wig. I wore a wig because it would have been a waste to go to the hair dresser, when I would wash my hair the next morning. [Mona had to wash completely to purifyherself after her wedding night]. I suggested that we sleep on separate beds. He said "no"and left again. When he came back, I had removed my

Suad's sister's dream eloquently expressed her resentment of her stepmother's irresponsibility. Dreams can convey moral judgments, but they remain personal and private until they are conveyed to an audience in an informal narrative performance. At the same subu'a we heard why the twin boy was named Ibrahim. Suad explained:
My husband was at prayer in the Hussain mosque one day when he saw a vision. He was carryinga child.A man tapped himon the back and

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dress but not my underwear.He inquired,"Are you going to sleep with all of that on?" I said, "yes."Then he told me to take it off. Then I did. Then he told me to take off, you knowwhat, my underwear.At that point, I said that Iwanted to go home. We stayed like that till dawn. Then I ate some food. We had broughtsome along for supper and all night he had been tryingto make me eat. When I got up, Iwas "drowning." [Mona used this idiom for the flow of virginal blood].

Mona's narrative was interrupted by Ahmad's return to our table. Her reluctance to abandon both her modesty and her virginity was clear. Her wedding night brought the personal ambivalence baladi women are expected to feel. They should hold back, but they should likewise obey their husbands. Through such narratives, unmarried women learn how they will feel, indeed are expected to feel, on their wedding night. Such narratives provide a forum for discussion of preferred strategies to deal with men's demands, and afford a lively performance where women re-enact men's latest ploys. If we had not been interrupted, Mona might have talked, as she did later, of the life she anticipated in Saudi Arabia, and of her plans to demand special standards of decorum as an Egyptian woman living in Saudi.
Conclusion

Informal discourse is peppered with everyday cultural performances which may have a salutary effect on their raconteurs or audienrces and may have the ritual efficacy of performance (Turner 1969: 8; Beeman 1976: 311; Tambiah 1979: 359). I have focused upon the narratives' effect on the speaker and audience, rather than upon the more typical concern with narrative presentation of self (Goffman 1959: 17-76). Beeman (1976: 311) suggests that conversational negotiations in Iran lie somewhere between the Parsonian reflexive action and the Goffmanian imposition of definition on a situation. Similarly, I have tried to show how narrativenegotiation of the specific, biographic reality of the moment has a therapeutic effect as well as a creative one. In short, a narrative helps to make sense of what is going on by tailoring cultural explanations to biographic specifics at the same time that it

may influence the course of events via audience evaluation of appropriate action. The impact of narratives on their raconteurs and audience is enhanced by the power of such cultural themes as envy, mushahara, or modest behavior when they are coupled with biographic immediacy. Amal employs cultural explanations of envy, anomaly, and rivalryto make Hassan's death more comprehensible and by extension, bearable. The mother of twins dramatically expresses her despair at too many children by juxtaposing it with the cultural expectation that one avoids infertility. Mona's account of her wedding-night trauma expresses a personal ambivalence and female mutual support typical of balad culture. With each telling Mona feels better about losing her virginity; furthermore, her informal narrative performance offers both cultural instruction for future brides and a discussion arena for troubled wives. Women's informal cultural performances provide a unique perspective on the intersection of the personal and the public, bureaucratic realm. BaladTpeople consider themselves to be downtrodden (qaljba) and appreciate individuals who are bureaucratically savvy. It is these very cultural values which Umm Mona celebrates in her tales of British clinics. Umm Mona narrates her experience with the British to highlight the position of the qalaba, Egyptians vis-a-vis foreign occupiers and in turn contemporary baladibureaucrat antagonisms from which Umm Mona's neighbor has chafed that day; this provides the neighbor a chance to vent her frustrations and opens a forum for discussion of strategies to use in "them-us" kinds of confrontations. Umm Amal ties the immediate problems of Abu Muhammad to more public religious duty and action. To direct him to give bread to the poor cures him faster than to linger in discussion over explanations of his dysphoria; he can act rather than listen to theories of shattered nerves. Suad criticizes her step mother's ignoring family commitments via a dream narrative which does not directly attack the stepmother (after all, she is fulfilling the religious obligation of pilgrimage) but yet suggests that her action is lacking (as it is in the dream where a favor becomes a crime).

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Suad thus expresses personal feelings about family obligation in a more public idiom of religious ritual and customs. These narratives construct the realities of individual lives in ways that are both personally and

culturally appropriate. Mundane cultural performances like the narrative positively affect the narrator's sentiment and image, at the same time that they provide space for cultural challenge and innovation.

NOTES
This essay is based on field work in a baladrquarterof Cairo, Egypt from May 1974 to January 1977, and a half dozen return visits from 1979 to 1983. The research was under the auspices of the University of Chicago and the Egyptian Institute of National Planning and was supported by grants from Fulbright-Hayes, NIMH,and SSRC. I am grateful to Jon Anderson, Anne Betteridge, Dale Eickeiman, Pauline Kolenda, Carl Lindahl, and Kimberly Swartz for comments and editorial assistance. 2 BaladTis a recognizable life style in traditional Cairo and contrasts with that of qfrangri literallyforeign, quarters where more cosmopolitan Egyptians live. BaladTi an is important Egyptian cultural concept whose meaning is based on a series of baladT/afrangT .poppositions which order the balad-social world. A baladi person is seen as authentic, honorable, religious, nationalistic, simple, personal, and hospitable. An afrangT person is seen as spoiled, dishonorable, non-religious,Francophile,materialistic, impersonal and stingy. There is the sense that baladt is the included, authentic and that afrangTisthe excluded, inauthentic. For example, the balacdTpersonis thought to be an heir of Egyptian culture and a true, devout Muslim. (Some baladT people are also Coptic Christian). The afrangT person is seen as excluded from the Egyptian cultural heritage and as yearning for the artificial and the imported, often quite literally as in the case of synthetic fabrics or Scandinavian furniture. Analyses of baladTsociety focused on historical text and self-images (Messiri 1978) and on gender roles and socialization (Nadim 1975). Another baladT study discusses socio-economic patterns and how a balad-woman manages information to present herself in the best posible light (Wikan 1980:146). Autobiographic narratives of baladT women have been collected in a volume by Atiya (1982). SMany traditional Egyptians still practice a superficial cliteridectomy of girls. The operation, performed by a midwife, is illegal, and most middle- and upper-class, Egyptians have abandoned the practice. 4 Knowledgeable women like Umm Amal are often consulted by family and neighbors for advice about home remedies or domestic management. Umm Amal relishes this role; when I was in Egypt as a consultant on an Egyptian Ministryof Health infant oral rehydration project, she asked me to explain rehydrant use to her so that she could advise her relatives and friends.

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Anthropological Quarterly

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