After reading Cairo House, I grew a new understanding of Middle Eastern culture. It was clear that the geopolitics of the region also had cultural effects. For instance, the rise and subsequent fall of Nasser brought change to Egypt in how people went upon their day. While Nasser himself was an anti-imperialist against the West, the key part was that he was open to western investment and growing industrialization to compete regionally. We saw that western influence in how many tourists from Western Europe arrived, how cities were changing with new buildings and houses, western clothing brands and food brands like McDonalds were arriving to Egyptian markets, and how Egypt was interacting with the world globally. After Nasser was killed, this only increased as we saw with the Camp David Accords. The value was that the characters in the book had their lives change as they moved from England, Saudi Arabia, and then back to Egypt. England represented the modernized western society, Saudi Arabia showed a country that was just in the early stages of changing but has a very traditionalist background, and then Egypt which showed a clear example of a country well on its way of modernization with western influence.
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I like how you showed the different progressions of each country, moving from very little Western influence all the way to Western culture entirely between the different countries. Egypt’s history and the transformation that led them to their current affairs is definitely in correlation to Western involvement. I believe this is because Eastern culture has a certain sentimental value in traditions and their culture, where Western culture puts more importance on technologies and modern items. The transformation was long, but Egypt gave a great representation of an entire culture changing.