Category Archives: Anecdotes

Sep 24 2011
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Anecdotes, Two minute read

Volunteering: The Ladies Love Us

Guess who the foreigners are.

Friend and I have gotten into the vicious habit of volunteering at a church here in a lower-income area of Cairo. Our current project is setting up an early childhood development center, something friend and I aid primarily through an abundance of good wishes due to our utter lack of qualifications.

Why do we donate our semi-valuable time? Though it’s mostly for the Arabic practice, there is also a small part of us that wants to “help people.” There’s something to be said for the furry, balmy feeling you get when you delude yourself into thinking you’ve made life on this earth a little more bearable for someone. While this morally indulgent feeling is great, it’s simply not enough. I need something spicier, so this is how I make the most of my volunteering experience:

Step One: Hunger Monger

Since I know our five hours of volunteering (probably) won’t include treats, I eat a tiny breakfast. Thus, without fail, I begin starving roughly 30 minutes after arriving at the volunteer site. The awful rumbles coming from my stomach provide a great backdrop to the children and cat screeches coming from in and around the church. Volunteering is even more interesting as I become a hunger zombie and spend my last kilojoules of energy planning out exactly what I’m going to eat when I get home.

Step Two: Sleepy Time

I never get an appropriate amount of sleep the night before involving myself in charitable work. This is a trick I learned during Ramadan, when I would regularly stay up until 4 am and then leave to volunteer at 8:20 am. Living life was so much more meaningful and full of nausea while running on less than 4 hours of sleep! While at the church, I would gaze into the distance with glazed eyes and wonder when I could leave and be reunited with my bedding and a bowl of ramen noodles. The feeling that nothing was real added an special depth to our projects.

Step Three: Ham it Up

The ladies love us, and by the ladies I mean all the females at the church, regardless of age or relation to puberty. They be smiling at us, giving us those eyes, coming to say hi to us…. Though it doesn’t take much additional work, I try to look as clueless and non-Egyptian as possible in order to create an even bigger spectacle and stir up more interest. Wacky faces and disturbingly broad grins seem to work well.

Step Four: Keepin’ it Real

In Egypt, there’s something called the “foreigners’ complex,” which means that anything involving foreigners is automatically considered better than something made from scratch in Egypt. Thus, when I wake up in the morning, I wrap up in my big ol’ American flag I keep beside my bed, throw on a cowboy hat, and grab a 64 oz. soft drink cup before heading out the door. There will be no question as to where my nationality lies.

And that, my friends, is how you volunteer.

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Sep 22 2011
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Anecdotes, Two minute read

I Want to Open a Bakery in Egypt

This is almost incomprehensible. And it’s just the beginning.

We met three minutes ago and you just learned that I study Arabic. You don’t take the news well—your mind is reeling….why would she study Arabic? What is it about this language with its scribbly letters and random dots that has confused her so much that she wants to actually learn it?

You may not know this, but on the other side of the conversation I can see the thoughts swirling in your head and I know what you’re about to ask me. I can feel the question being formed in your mind as your lips, tongue, and chin prepare to pronounce the dreaded words. The sentence pours from your oral cavity in slow motion as my usual panic sets in.

“Why do you study Arabic?”

You might as well ask me why hippos seem friendlier than crocodiles despite their notorious aggression or why lotion doesn’t taste like yogurt even though it looks the same. You, my dear, blundering acquaintance have forced me to peer into the black abyss of my future post-Arabic fellowship and let me tell you this: I can see a darkness that no amount of graduate school could penetrate.

If you really must know, I’ve been studying Arabic since my senior year of high school because–and pay attention to this part—I liked it. Indeed, friend, I enjoyed the twisty letters and sounds that required new muscle growth. I didn’t even know that people wearing black suits and sunglasses would pay handsomely for my skillz.

But I smashed those sunglasses on the ground and threw white chalk on their coats. I was much too naïve for the men in black, and instead dreamed of working at an NGO in development work or something romantic like that where I could “help people.” On less romantic days, I entertained the thought of working in a think tank, of swimming in big wells of ideas and spending all my waking hours in front of a screen.

To my great relief, however, I found after only 2.5 months out of college that I have absolutely no interest in any of those careers. I won’t waste time describing the depths of my dread when I think about typing on a computer all day in a cage with people who start conversations with statements like, “So, President Obama has kind of an aggressive foreign policy.” Suffice it to say that I’m glad to be free of those business casual and business formal illusions.

But, you insist, what are you going to do with Arabic? I’ll be honest: anything I say will be a lie to myself and to you so let’s just leave the future as the black abyss it is and I’ll tell you about how I’ve always wanted to work at a bakery. If you can connect that to Arabic, be my guest and stop by for cookies, or should I say كوكيز?

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Sep 19 2011
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Anecdotes, Travelling, Two minute read

Hydration Makes All the Difference

THIS ISN’T REAL!

This past weekend, I traveled to Ain Sukhna, a popular beach on the Red Sea, with the Arabic Language Institute on one of their egregiously swanky trips. Though I was initially excited to experience  an Egypt other than Cairo, I realized shortly after arriving at the resort that Ain Sukhna is neither a part of Egypt, nor a part of civilization in general. As a resort, it belongs to a class of places that is removed from time and space as well as sterilized of both culture and reality. Indeed, the whole point of a resort is cultivating a state of complete relaxation that closely resembles death. If it seems like I’m complaining about a free weekend at a five star resort on the cobalt waters of the Red Sea, my response is, “Yes. I am doing exactly that.” And I think you’ll see my complaints are legitimate.

1. Our stay at the resort did not include the elixir of life itself: water. The breakfast and dinner buffets were almost completely dry, and did not offer alcohol, juice, water, sugar water, etc. Since I was not willing to spend extra money, I subsisted off of the 4 cups of coffee at breakfast and dew I licked off the grass in the early morning. As a result of the crippling dehydration, I was plagued by bizarre thoughts about wanting to be a sea creature, leading to many  ill-advised attempts at settling permanently under water.

2. Resorts are creepy places. This particular one was about 40 kilometers from the nearest city, and it was an entirely enclosed compound, a world unto itself.  The longer I stayed, the more I felt my humanity leaking from me as I slowly forgot my former life, the one where I drank water. Furthermore, Ain Sukhna falls where the Eastern Desert meets the Red Sea. This isn’t one of those wacky deserts full of vegetation and animals. It is barren.  Despite this, at the resort one can find blossoming gardens, twittering birds, and broiling humans. None of this should be here. It is a desert. We should just call this whole thing quits and go back to fertile land.

3. The weather was too hot. I simply can’t understand how people find self-roasting (immolation) pleasant. Don’t they know they’re dying? I wanted to understand the others, and so I spent an entire day outside in the scalding heat, cowering from the sun under an umbrella.  However, probably due to the dehydration as well as the heat, I felt weaker than I ever have in my entire life and remained plastered to the lounge chair like a deflated beached animal, drifting in and out of consciousness and trying to remember what it was like to have thoughts. Next time, I will have no shame in embracing indoors and air conditioning.

One might say I should have expected all of this from the words “resort vacation on the beach,” but I had yearned for more. May my next trip outside of Cairo be a fount of creativity and not a sinkhole of lethargy.

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Sep 13 2011
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Anecdotes, Two minute read

Bats: Just Hanging Around (It’s a Pun)

You can see his eye glowing. There’s a body too, I promise. 

I realize I’ve already written about the bats, but last time I could have been lying. I could have been spewing whatever crazy froth had floated to the top of my brain, just as I do when editing other peoples’ resumes, putting up job descriptions on Craig’s list, or applying for a place in the emergency room. But now I have proof of all my romantic waxings about bats, and my life, your life, and especially the bat’s life has changed.

It’s nothing unusual to see bats loitering around while I’m clacking away at the ol’ silver clickers (keyboard) on my increasingly dusty balcony in Mohansideen where it never gets completely dark. I’ve even named one of the bats Nigel, but it’s difficult to tell which one he is since they all look like soot colored flappy things against the grey nighttime sky.

I had already finished yelling at the moon (credit: 30 rock) and drowning in my endless sea of Arabic homework. And so there I was, getting my greedy fill of internet magic and thinking about the banality of life when the world changed. I see Nigel fly up near the tree next to my balcony, since bats can fly. This was nothing special. I was utterly unimpressed, disgusted even.

And then he latches onto a branch and HANGS UPSIDE DOWN ON THE BRANCH! UPSIDE DOWN! CRAZY! He hung for a good 3 minutes and I felt the whole world disappear as I stared at his freakish being suspended there in the vegetation. It was, to be quite frank, the most ethereal bat experience I’ve ever had. Here is a play by play of my thoughts throughout the encounter. Also, National Geographic is probably going to be contacting me pretty soon because of my breathtaking pictures, in which case I’ll have to buy sunglasses and leave this lame blog behind.

12:45 am: No new facebook notifications. My life is worthless. Why did I even have wireless internet installed? Why did I go through that hassle only to reach the unavoidable conclusion that my online life is as mundane as my carbon-based one?

12:46 am: There’s Nigel…he’s looking fit tonight. Why is my eye twitching?

12:47 am:  What a second..what the..OH MY GOD! HE’S HANGING UPSIDE DOWN ON THE TREE! I’M SITTING HERE LOOKING AT HIM AND HE’S HANGING UPSIDE DOWN JUST LIKE THAT BAT DID FROM ANASTASIA! THEY ACTUALLY DO HANG UPSIDE DOWN!

12:48 am: HE’S STILL THERE! MUST GET CAMERA!

12:49 am: (enthusiasm wearing off) Oh good! He’s still there! If I could only see his dark leaf-shaped body against the background of the actual dark leaves….this picture is not going to be great. (checks camera) Nope, not great. What did I expect anyways?  This must be what average people feel like. (too much?)

12:58 am: Why was I impressed by seeing a bat hang upside down in the first place? I need to get more sleep.

1:00 am: You know what, it was really cool to see Nigel hang upside down. It was freakin’ AWESOME! But seriously, why is my eye twitching?

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Sep 08 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Two minute read

Sell Me Your Shoes, Give Us a Smile

Cars, Humans, Buildings

A few days ago, I and my friend were on our way to Fellaki Square in downtown Cairo, matters of international importance awaiting our attention.  This is an area of Cairo that I don’t love since not only is it extremely crowded and noisy, but it boasts a thriving community of sleaze-balls that feed off the steady stream of tourists frequenting these parts. The only occupation of these folks is to slink around and bother the linen clad foreigners passing through. And even though I and friend have been here since June, our appearances are hopelessly foreign and therefore we are subject to the usual tricks of the touts and harassers.

As we were walking, a man passes by us and says to my friend in English, “I like your shoes.” This was unusual. For some reason, the man chose to forgo the traditional “Welcome in/to Egypt” and cut straight to the bizarre chase: footwear. I and friend were confused but not intrigued enough to continue the conversation, so my friend said “Thank you” and we continued to walk away, our backs to him. Conversations that are already this strange when they begin are going nowhere we want to go.

Yet he had more things to say at us about the shoes, shouting after us “How much for them?” This was still bizarre. Perhaps he was just performing his usual shtick, which involves him hanging around downtown waiting for the rare well dressed foreigner in order to heckle them about their shoes. For all I know he might have  a candid camera show that he produces himself by uploading footage from his cell phone for a small but devoted audience. My friend, however, was not interested in selling his shoes, and I still harbored hopes of purchasing them myself and didn’t want to encourage anything. And so we continued on our merry way.

The heckler was not to be ignored, however, and capped off his shoe conversation with both a non sequitur and the most creative end to a drive by harassment that I’ve ever heard. “Smile!” he commanded. Clearly, here was a statement that summed up the interaction perfectly. It was an uncalled-for statement that fit well with the unwanted and purposeless transaction as a whole. Furthermore, as most people know, there’s nothing more grin-inducing than strange men demanding you bare your teeth at them. Unfortunately, the mood had been soured by the failed shoe sale, so this last statement did not compel us to return, nor did it produce the appropriate feelings that would electrify our facial muscles and pull the sides of our mouths up into smiles.

Sometimes, like right now, I wonder what would have happened if we’d stuck around for longer. Would he have pulled out any other gems, like “Your teeth are good. How much for it?” I don’t suppose I’ll ever know the answer, but then again, I don’t suppose I ever really want to talk to him again. Maybe I’ll watch his show.

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