Reality check

Natural History, May, 2004 by Peter Brown

A couple of months ago, my friend Mary Knight, a visiting scholar at New York University and a consulting member of our staff, made a return trip to Cairo, Egypt, a city where she has lived on and off since 1994. What originally drew her to the Middle East was a scholarly interest in ancient Egypt, but while there she played an active role in Egyptian intellectual life. Since her first arrival in Egypt, of course, Western attention to the Arab world has lurched from casual neglect to riveted, hysterical dismay--with few stops for cool dialogue in between.

Knight made her return visit, in part, to give us all a reality check (see "Egypt's Young and Restless," page 34). She visited elementary schools, cafes, universities, research laboratories, and friends in low and in high places. Guiding her inquiries were the big, central questions about Egyptian society: What is it like nowadays to grow up among the wave of young adults who make up the elusive "Arab street"? Can young men find gainful, challenging employment? Do women have access to education, or do traditional values still block their way to economic independence? To what extent are liberalizing forces taking hold--forces such as education, scientific research, and competitive free markets? What drives some young people to embrace militant Islam?

Knight brought along her camera as well as her notebook, and our pictures of Egyptian life, by her and others, depict neither the rosy optimism of a society with a bead on its future, nor the grim, authoritarian Fanaticism of a populace determined to reject liberal, Western values.

Twenty-first-century Cairo may look like the neighborhood right around the corner, compared with the exotic world of the western Appalachians in early-nineteenth-century America. As a young man, the future artist and ardent bird naturalist John James Audubon took his family to what is now western Kentucky (see "Audubon in Kentucky," by William Souder, page 46). Now, 200 years later, I walk in the woods whenever I can, and I know there are still plenty of places to find solitude and serenity out-of-doors. But Souder's account of the Kentucky wilderness, based on Audubon's acute observations, takes my breath away. The primeval abundance of the country must have seemed bottomless. The dimensions of American nature seem sheer Paul Bunyan, until a sober observer such as Audubon assures you it really did take three days for a single flock of passenger pigeons to fly past. That world is truly gone.

We are delighted to announce that Natural History, has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for Essays, for Robert M. Sapolsky's "Findings" column, "The Pleasure (and Pain) of 'Maybe'" (September 2003). The award is the most prestigious prize in magazine journalism; the winner will be announced on May 5. Sapolsky's latest essay, "Of Mice, Men, and Genes," appears on page 21. Congratulations, Robert!