When I first decided to move to Egypt, I was met with a lot of skepticism from the people in my life who loved me. The people with whom I choose to surround myself are generally open minded and tolerant, well educated in terms of life experiences, and at the core just very caring, thoughtful people. The reactions I got were mostly somewhere in a range between "have a good time, but be very careful," and "my god, woman, are you trying to get yourself kidnapped by ISIS?" None of the people I'd consider myself close to are the kind of people who conflate Islam with terrorism automatically, but the idea of actually going to a Muslim-majority country in the MENA region (the Middle East and North Africa) was something that struck fear into the hearts of even my most accepting friends. I think when a woman decides to go teach English abroad, her friends tend to picture her going somewhere like Costa Rica or maybe South Korea, if she's adventurous.
I used logic, current events, and sheer stubbornness to convince my friends I'd be just fine. "Guys," I'd say, "I'm more likely to be killed by a gun in the United States than I am to be killed by a terrorist, or really anyone else, in Egypt." Sadly(?), this is true. I try not to live my life in fear of the occurrence of random events, but the rising toll of gun violence in the United States was becoming increasingly distressing to me and by the week I left the country, I was reading at least one new story every day about new shooting tragedies unrelated to domestic violence. Domestic violence has always been the bigger threat, and will forever be tragic, but the unpredictable nature of mass shootings is still in some ways scarier-- no matter how simplistic it sounds, we always hope we can control our lives and our relationships to the point where we feel someone we love won't pull a gun on us, but no amount of careful prevention can protect us from the one guy who goes crazy that day and decides to express his rage in the supermarket, the mall, the movie theater. Two days before I left the United States, three people were shot and killed at a house party less than 20 minutes north of my own home where my going away party was being held. Leaving the States meant that I felt as if I had literally dodged a bullet.
I told my friends I'd be fine. Risk is an aspect of life, experiences, travel. There's risk in getting out of bed in the morning. But I've typically been good at simultaneously managing risk and seeking adventure in my own life, and this was no exception. Despite what some Americans may think, the entire MENA region is not a hotbed for terrorism or some kind of ISIS incubation unit. As long as I stayed out of Syria, I'd probably be just fine. I mean, how hard is it to just not go to a war zone? As it turns out, the answer to this question is more complicated than I'd initially expected. I made promises about staying out of Syria. I never mentioned Libya, never thought I'd need to. For as worldly and educated as I'd like to think I am, there still has been little reason to focus on Libya in the American media over the last few years other than the story of the tragedy in Benghazi with the American ambassador a few years back, and a few conservatives incoherently screeching out "BENGHAaAZIIIIIII" in all caps in the comments sections of internet news stories when discussion of Clinton's presidential run started getting serious. My somewhat nebulous understanding of Libya and its current political climate (hey, still better than the average American-- at least I can find it on a map) did not prepare me for coming to Egypt and falling in love with a man from Benghazi. I was not immediately sure what I was getting myself into, but every day I spent with him was another day that both my heart and my head would agree with greater certainty that I was getting myself into trouble.
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