Communicating Egyptian Style 243Words possess power. As such, conversations contain
frequent blessings to keep things going well. Blessings are
also used to demonstrate that the speaker harbours no envy
toward a person or object. Westerners commonly attribute
this speaking pattern to concepts of fatalism—that one
cannot control one’s fate. However, another perspective is
that frequent blessings actually represent efforts to control
future events to some extent. For example, envy or perceived
envy toward something relates to belief in the ‘evil eye’, a
belief shared by many Europeans and some North Americans.
Belief in the evil eye (or just ‘the eye’), though common, is
less pronounced among educated Egyptians. The evil eye is
feared because it can bring harm to a person or thing if looked
at (consciously or unconsciously) with envy. To prevent
harm, and therefore the perception of envy, one should offer
blessings or other statements of goodwill. Amulets, used in
conjunction with religious phrases, most frequently depict
drawings of eyes, open palm prints and the colour blue.