With its wondrous pyramids, the Great Sphinx and ancient culture nestled in the valley of the Nile, Egypt is an alluring, intriguing place to visit.

But Charlotte and Clark Parscal were apprehensive.

Egypt is a largely Islamic nation, and with the Parscal's frame of reference shaped by years of troubling cable television news reports of radical Muslim terrorists and hatred of Americans in the Middle East, they were fearful.

But the Lompoc couple had won a 10-day, all-expenses-paid vacation from the Dr Pepper soft drink company, which was promoting “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” They had to overcome their fear and choose from one of four overseas destinations - India, Jordan, Peru or Egypt, all the places Indiana Jones had visited on his travels.

“India, I didn't even want to see - too much poverty,” said Charlotte Parscal. “Jordan borders Iraq. Peru, it turned out, was a high physical intensity vacation.”

By a process of elimination and despite their misgivings, they chose Egypt for their $6,000 vacation.

“Before I went, I was scared. We were both scared,” Charlotte said. “It's 80 percent Muslim; we're Americans. We didn't know what to expect.

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“All I knew about Muslim people was what I saw on CNN and it was not very good,” she said. “My opinion of Muslim people was that they hated Americans, Muslims were terrorists and women were enslaved.”

They worried that as a Third World country, Egypt must be riddled with crime.

But by the time they returned last month, their minds had been changed by what they saw and what they heard.

“We were completely wrong about everything, all our preconceived ideas,” said Charlotte, a mother of three who educates her children at home. Zachary, 14, Henry, 11, and Savannah, 9, stayed with their aunt in Lompoc.

Fear had been replaced by knowledge and understanding.

“We spent 10 days in Egypt. We went from Cairo to Aswan, back to Luxor and then back to Cairo - on a sleeper train one night, a cruise on the Nile three days and flights in between,” Charlotte said.

They visited the pyramids, the sphinx, tombs, temples and monuments. They visited Abu Simbel, a monument cut into the side of a mountain and moved in the 1960s as the waters of Lake Nasser began to rise after construction of the Aswan High Dam.

Abu Simbel was the most impressive part of the tip, Clark Parscal said. It was a huge monument chiseled with amazing detail, he said.

“I was in awe of how they did that - 5,000 years ago with stone chisels. You walk up to it and they've got toenails on the toes. One part of the wall had seven different angles on it that were all completely square.”

But it wasn't the history of Egypt, the artifacts or monuments that changed their minds. That happened after mingling with the Egyptian people, talking with them about everything from suicide bombers to the Koran, Islam and Christianity.

In Aswan, they traveled 45 minutes by boat to an island in middle of the Nile to visit a Nubian village, and ate dinner in the home of a Nubian family.

“We spent 10 days talking to many, many, many people,” Charlotte Parscal said. “We ran into few Americans. We spent almost all our time with Muslims.

“They were so kind, and curious about America. Everywhere we went they wanted to know what it was like to live in America. They were very open about us asking questions. Nothing shocked them or upset them; they just wanted to talk.”

One of the topics they talked about was suicide bombers.

“The Koran says to be gentle, not to be violent, and to be tolerant,” Charlotte said. “Suicide bombers kill Muslims, too. To be honest, they thought of them as crazies, too. I have such a different view of Muslims now.”

The Parscals were introduced to Egypt, its people, customs and treasures by a private tour guide, Ahmad Sameer, an educated Egyptologist who spoke perfect English and was provided to them by the Dr Pepper company.

Charlotte said one stark difference between the two cultures arose when she was showing Sameer her cell phone and he viewed a downloaded comedy skit mocking President Bush.

“He laughed and laughed. I told him we have freedom of speech. We can say what we want to say,” Charlotte said.

“He said, ‘We have the freedom to say what we want and the president has the freedom to have us arrested.”

Their concerns about crime also were unfounded, she said.

In Luxor, a popular international tourist destination on the Nile, they left their camcorder in a taxi. The next day, the cabbie tracked them down at their hotel and returned the equipment, much to their astonishment.

“We were like, ‘Never in America,'” Charlotte said.

The couple said it was common to see merchants in the street markets leave their stands unattended, apparently without fear of merchandise being stolen.

“It's a part of Islam - being honest,” Charlotte said, adding that their tour guide was surprised that they even asked about the issue.

Neither did they find Muslim women “enslaved,” she said.

“We saw many, many examples of Muslim men and women sitting there talking to one another, men actively interested in what they were saying.”

Professor Juan Campo, who teaches Islamic studies in the Department of Religious Studies at UCSB, said the misconceptions - and the transformation - of the Parscals is common among Americans who visit Egypt.

Campo said he first visited Egypt as a graduate student in 1976 when President Jimmy Carter was pursuing the Middle East peace initiative. He found Egypt to be in stark contrast to the urban violence he had known in Chicago.

“I never felt so safe in my life,” he said. “It shocked me that there had to be something else working in society that counter-balanced the poverty.”

That counter-balance is the cultural value that Egyptians put on hospitality, especially to strangers, and especially to Americans, he said.

It is common in Egypt for Americans to be invited to share tea or a meal, or even to spontaneously be invited to a wedding, Campo said.

It was during that initial journey to Egypt that Campo met his future wife, Magda, who now teaches Arabic at UCSB. They have been married 31 years.

Campo frequently takes groups of teachers from California to Egypt for cultural workshops and sees first-hand how their initial reticence, because of the reputation of the violence of the Middle East, quickly dissolves.

In frank group discussions about their changing perceptions, some teachers shed tears when they confront the depth of their unfounded biases, he said.

America is isolated geographically, with oceans on two sides, and despite its history as a nation of immigrants, the people still become insular, Campo said.

“One of my jobs as a teacher is to try to reglobalize the thinking of our undergraduates. Our investigation in education is so minimal, it makes it more important that our young people grow up with awareness of other cultures and with the ability to act.”

The Parscals said they have learned the importance of that lesson.

“There are so many ways that we were wrong,” Charlotte said. “Anybody I talk to for the rest of my life, I'm going to tell them my experience with Muslim people.”

December 30, 2008