I see roofs littered with trash. Trash everywhere. Dust. Forever-dirty feet. Stray cats and kittens. Cars and chaos.

And often, I find myself seeing not what is there, but what I want to see.

Instead of seeing streets littered with trash and stray animals, I see well-paved, well-kept roads and sidewalks. Instead of seeing chaotic traffic that makes me cringe when walking on the street or when in the car, I imagine orderly cars that obey the traffic laws I grew up with. Instead of run-down towering apartment buildings littered with satellite dishes, I see new or remodeled, tall, strong, clean structures.

I see a Cairo that fits my tastes. A Cairo that is comfortable. A Cairo that is clean, organized, and, well, not really Cairo.

I soon came to realize that Cairo will never be what I want it to be. Indeed, these “imperfections” are part of what defines it, what makes it beautiful.

Once, when walking through a crowded (as if that needs stating) area, I flicked a piece of plastic from my water bottle into the street. I had a strange sense that in doing so I was contributing to the essence of Cairo. Giving my share to the city—leaving my mark, like carvings we make on walls or trees and wish beyond logical reasoning that they will last forever.

When cautiously strolling through the roads of Garbage City, nose plugged, eyes holding a blank stare intending to mask the bewilderment doing laps in my mind circuits, I struggled to take it all in. The filth, the trash, the fact that people lived there. But Garbage City also had the most beautiful church I have ever seen—a truly divine structure that appeared to be carved out of a giant mountain by the hand of Him himself. I remember thinking that the church was made so much more beautiful by the fact that it existed next to the City of Garbage.

Once, in a half-awake daze at Ana el-Masri, my conscious mind was delivered a sudden epiphaneal thought—I reached to the nearest paper on which I had been doodling, and jotted down with a green color pencil we had recently purchased : all the beautiful things about the world are the ones that ruin us. But they are also the things that define us.

Love and hate. Identity. Division. Ambition. Fear. Desire.

“Everything is brown. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

This is the first sentence I wrote in my journal upon landing in Cairo. This observation  was derived from the view outside my airplane window. Since, I have begun to see that the plethora of brown and sand makes those pink flowers on the highway, deep water of the Nile, and the red of my students’ nail polish, that much more visible.

It has allowed me to see the true color in this place, far past my initial visions.

Mismatched shoes. Shoes that don’t fit. Dust, dirt, everywhere. Stained clothes. The unfairness of it exacerbated by the cuteness of their smiles.

A lust for life expressed in the way Monar shakes those hips to Shakira; in the beauty of the picture Adham draws symbolizing Egypt; in the looks of pure joy that cross their faces when we pull out their craft folders.

The amount of effort it takes for them to attempt standing in a single-file line. Trying to fathom what kind of chaotic life they must have led for this elementary task to pose a challenge.

Today, Monar was not participating in art class. I urged her to try drawing. She said she would on one condition—if I watched her so that she could sketch a portrait of me. Amused, I sat down and she commenced her work. Focused, she drew my perfectly circular face, lopsided eyes, nose in between my eyebrows, and a twisted smile. Above, she wrote in Arabic and English “I love you,” and underneath, “Allah.” “Allah,” she said, pointing up at the sky.

She embodied the realization that despite everything, these kids have faith. They have hope for a bright future. What breaks my heart is the little chance of them attaining the future they deserve.

And so I am frustrated. I am frustrated that we are only here for two months. I am frustrated that I can’t speak Arabic well enough to more fully interact with them. I am frustrated that Egypt does not provide opportunities for social mobility. I am frustrated  that they do not have families, and may never have them.

Most of all, I am frustrated that even if I gave them everything I could, that wouldn’t be enough.

This was the parting quip Dr. Ayman Fouad left us with as he sped away into the hectic Cairo traffic. Still laughing, I reflected upon the discussion we just had with Dr. Fouad, an Egyptian judge and human rights expert, and our AUC counterparts pertaining to human rights.

Human rights. A concept too complex to embody in words or pictures, like the concept of right and left. Suffice it to say, the word “utopian” was mentioned more than once that night.

I will try to start the process of unraveling this dead knot of an idea by looking at the reason human  rights are an issue at all. I’d argue that it is because human rights are violated. But why? It would be difficult to find someone who didn’t believe in universal rights. The problem lies in what else they believe. If a government believes in the well-being and security of its people, it may violate human rights in its pursuit of that end (Israel-Palestine conflict, anyone?). If an individual wishes to uphold their religious beliefs, they may infringe upon their belief in human rights, and so forth.

But isn’t the pursuit of these basic needs and interest a basic human right too? Indeed, I would define human rights as the ability to pursue well-being, safety, happiness, and your own beliefs. Thus, we seem to be violating human rights in order to secure human rights.

Extrapolating upon this, it appears that humans are not motivated to secure human rights for the sake of human rights. They are motivated to secure them for their own well-being. When this overlaps with human rights, all the better.

Dr. Fouad described the hugely popular Facebook memorial to Khaled Said, an Egyptian who was allegedly killed by Egyptian security forces, “We are all Khaled Said.” He hinted that empathy for this cause and the Revolution in general was partly based on the belief that “it may be us next.”

Thus, there is an inherent selfishness in human rights, fueled accordingly by that present in humans (optimistic Hobbesianism?). This is not to take away from  the value of the fight for human rights. Rather, I believe we can most bolster this cause by recognizing and capitalizing on the momentum and energy that largely drives it—human nature.