Category Archives: Humorous

Jul 22 2011
1 Comment
Anecdotes, Humorous, The Cairo Metro, Two minute read

The lone cowboy of Tahrir

I see him standing there, above ground or below, standing or wandering in his area, that general area that is the now urine perfumed American University exit of the Sadat metro station. Since he started coming around a few days ago, I feel a greater level of personal safety when walking in the thirty yards he patrols on the daily during the late afternoon, though he cleverly disguises this patrolling as chatting with friends or aimless meandering interspersed with standing.

Though I do not know what his job is, I am confident he has been charged with very descriptive tasks such as “maintaining a presence” or “keeping the peace.” It is equally likely that no one else knows what his job is or has purposefully not given him any tasks whatsoever, and yet he continues to be a “presence” and remain “active.”

His political activity of choice: wearing a cowboy hat. He undertakes all real or imagined missions with the easy confidence of one wearing ridiculous headgear, in this case a black cowboy hat like the outlaws of old and the pop country stars of today. His slim fitting jeans and tight white t-shirt with a black faux vest sewn on the front complete with contrasting buttons only confirm my initial impression that this is a shab (young man) of the shabbab (young men) that the people of Egypt can firmly place their trust in.

Was this one of the shabbab that wanted the foreign press to know they won’t be leaving Tahrir until their demands are met?  If so, may the foreign press also be aware that the shabbab demand more ridiculous fashion trends and to be taken seriously while wearing them. If this appears to be a conflicting request, then let it be known that the shabbab are completely capable of ignoring said contradiction and increasing the impossibility of their demands. Should the foreign press desire to know more details, the lone cowboy of Tahrir awaits them somewhere in the area around the AUC exit of Sadat. He will be wearing a hat, and he will not be messing around.

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Jul 20 2011
3 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Lists, Three minute read

34 ways to express cowardice when confronted with a difficult test

The end of the summer portion of the CASA program is near and we are currently in what might be called finals week. Normally, final tests have some relation to the material presented throughout the course of study, measuring the cumulative progress of the pupil. In the case of the tests of Professor Harb, however, the test has no purpose aside from inspiring fear and hopelessness among her students. Let the incontinent student beware:  you might need a fresh pair of pants after glancing through the exercises on the test and realizing no amount of studying would have saved you from the ensuing humiliation.

In other words, Professor Harb’s test was difficult. After finishing the 2 hr and 15 minute long affair, I rose from my seat and limped to her desk to turn in the test, my left foot having fallen asleep while my brain was being crushed by the Arabic language. Cackling at my pain, she says, “What, you can’t even walk?” I whimper, “The test was hard….” She gets up from her chair, walks around the side of the desk, slaps me across the face, and says, “Shame on you. The test was not hard.” I made up that last portion, but she might as well have slapped me. With the one exception of the entrance exam for CASA itself, this was the hardest Arabic test that I have faced in my life, but it is over now and there is nothing left to do in Prof. Harb’s class except for doodle and drool during the 2 hours I have with her tomorrow.

But in all honesty, Prof. Harb is great and she’s probably one of the best professors in the program and I’m happy to be in her class because I learn things and she loves teaching. She considers us her children and I consider her a non-hostile life form, so it’s not like I’m unhappy in the class. But the test was hard, so here are possible routes of action I thought for the future (read: fall) when faced with a similarly difficult test.

1. Stealthily climb out the window and down the side of the building.

2. Jump out the window and end it all.

3. Jump out the window and onto the pergola 20 meters from the side of the building. Climb down the pergola to safety.

4. Hide behind a curtain.

5. Hide under your desk.

6. Hide under someone else’s desk.

7. Hide under professor’s desk.

8. Go to the bathroom for the entire class period.

9. Hide behind the projection screen and hope she doesn’t see your feet.

10. Camouflage yourself by putting the wastebasket on your head.

11. Plead insanity.

12. Plead stupidity.

13. Sit for a while and try to take the test, then pretend to realize you’re from a different class and don’t belong amongst the test takers.

14. Pretend you’re someone else and only look like the student who was supposed to take the test.

15. Kill the professor.

16. Kill the other students, then the professor.

17. Kill yourself, then the other students, then the professor.

18. Close your eyes and hope it all goes away.

19. Close your eyes, lift your hands towards heaven, and offer the test as a sacrifice to God, pleading for Him to consume it with an all consuming fire.

20. Set the test on fire yourself, claim your classmate did it, then run out of the room screaming.

21. Make a paper airplane out of the test and then set it on fire.

22. Eat the test instead of taking it, claiming to have misunderstood the exercise.

23. Return the test to the teacher with a spit mark on it saying you found it insultingly simple.

24. Report the test as an incident of abuse.

25. Report the test as an act of terrorism that inspired fear in the heart of an American.

26. Use the test as a diary to talk about your feelings and hope that’s good enough.

27. Explain that you never actually learned how to read.

28. Hide the test and say you lost it. Repeat as needed.

29. Sprinkle soil and grass seeds on the test, moisten with water, plant in the earth and watch it grow the answers. Harvest answers and turn in the test.

30. Vomit on the test. Repeat as needed.

31. Say you appreciate the offer but you really couldn’t take a test today. Make sure you’re sincere.

32. Claim a religious reason: Arabic tests are considered an abomination on the 20th of every month according to Leviticus.

33. Try bargaining with the test; talk it down from its level of difficulty.

34. Stir up philosophical questioning amongst the students, aiming for a mass walkout: “What’s the point of all this anyways? In a few billion years when the sun blows up and the earth becomes a potato chip, who will care how we did on a stupid Arabic test?

35. Take an aspirin and then take the test. Obtain a tissue for the ensuing nosebleed. Schedule an MRI to make sure everything is still okay up there afterwards.

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Jul 15 2011
4 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Open Letters, Three minute read

Open letter to the pile of mush I ate today

The innards looked kind of like this but redder. It did taste good.

Dear substance I consumed,

The path leading to you, a “shekshooka” sandwich, was filled with guilt, yellow-bellied behavior, and poor decision making in general. Though the time we had together was short, I would like to thank you for showing me the depths to which my dignity can plummet through the mere act of food consumption, depths I never knew existed. I am now more acutely aware of the pathetic human condition.

My thinking capacity weakened by the mid-day heat, I wander in a daze most closely related to that of tranquilized animals before they are slaughtered. Friend suggests getting something to eat, and I agree with the docility of a lamb, embarking on a journey soon to end with me shoveling goop into my mouth out of a plastic bag.

At the inevitable sandwich place, I crave something on the “lighter side” of Egyptian street fare. I have forgotten this is a side that does not exist. Regardless of other contents, the main ingredient by weight of every dish is oil and/or mayonnaise. In my woefully doomed attempt to avoid eating mostly oil, soybean or otherwise, I order you, a shekshooka sandwich, which I imagine to be a spiced omelet shoved into bread. “What could be healthier or lighter than an omelet?” I asked myself as blissfully uninformed as someone wondering why her mother is making such strange snuffling and grubbing sounds outside the tent. I soon find out the actual shekshooka is remarkably unlike an omelet.

Things go sour from the start, as my order is promptly lost and I have to wait a solid ten minutes (as opposed to the usual one minute) to begin what would ultimately be one of the most dehumanizing activities I’ve ever engaged in. Wasted by heat and restaurant crowd exhaustion, I am no longer hungry and desire only to consume you and finish with this business once and for all. Finally, I see you being prepared: a cup of oil and a few eggs thrown into a pan, a fork mashing it all together with disdain.  Mr. Man scrapes your pulpy substance out onto a plate before slopping you into a round of Egyptian bread that is then thrown into a small plastic bag. Here you take your final form and instantly begin to deteriorate, the thin exoskeleton of bread doing nothing to prevent the hot egg mixture from infiltrating its every pore and beginning to escape. As I cup the plastic sandwich casing, I feel your liquid innards struggling to break free. My heart fills with dread. There will be consequences but no looking back.

With both hands I lift you, dear sandwich, to my jaws and begin to devour you, the sensation closely related to what a bear must feel when it digs into the intestines of a freshly slain deer. The preliminary bites are mostly bread, but I then reach the heart of the mess, my hands supporting you in your plastic cocoon that prevents your complete disintegration. Were I to pump you in my fist a few times, you would instantly become the consistency of baby food. Knowing this, I proceed with caution, as I hope to retain some form of dignity when I polish off your last morsels. I have hopes of removing you from the plastic bag while savoring the final bites…

Alas it is not to be. Though your flavor itself is delicious, I only continue the grotesque task of eating you through sheer determination. As I near your end, there is no longer any distinction between the outer bread and your greasy innards.  You have become a homogeneous mush filling up the right corner of my sandwich bag, its tip a pocket of red oil for contrast that reminds me of my pre-sandwich naivety.  The sight turns my stomach, to be frank.

Unwilling to concede defeat, and despite being disgusted at what I have become in the heat of competition, I proceed to consume you in your entirety. You, since you are a sandwich, cannot appreciate how shameful it is to eat mush out of a bag. Indeed, it is impossible eat in such a manner and retain the same level of self-respect, knowing full well I am one step away from eating out of feed bag strapped to my face. As I use my fingers to invert the corner of the bag and thrust your last remaining particles-a veritable oil slick- into my gaping mouth, I swear to myself I will never stoop this low again.

A new day dawns tomorrow, one in which I will eat with a fork, or a spoon, or even with my hands, but never again will I feed as a common pack animal or wild beast. The obvious exception is if I am, in fact, tucking into an animal I have just chased down and slaughtered. So thank you, shekshooka sandwich, for inspiring me onto new heights after showing me the very nadir of human existence.

Eternally yours,

Emily

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Jul 12 2011
1 Comment
Best blog posts, Humorous, The Cairo Metro, Two minute read

Leave your thug life at home

avoid looking like this guy

If you’re heading to the Sadat Metro stop and/or planning to enter Tahrir square at all, you best leave your guns at home. While you’re at it, forget about bringing along any knives, clubs, maces, and vegetable peelers you might traditionally carry with you. Now is not the time to practice transporting your archery set or collection of poisonous darts. If you happen to usually don a thug-like appearance, you should consider trying something else for a change, like wearing a floor length tiered jean skirt and a long sleeve turtleneck shirt emblazoned with either sparkly cartoon characters or nonsensical English words. Not sure if you have a thug-like appearance? If you look in the mirror and seem to be male, you are most probably a thug. If you seem to be male AND are over 5’8 and have darker skin, you are a thug and are a persona non grata in the environs of Tahrir square, which is in full blown sit-in mode.

Tahrir square has sprouted white tents, stages, signs, and new graffiti, heralding a new level of the revolution, despite the fact many Egyptians have grown weary of the continual instability. The square is occupied by groups of people demanding their demands be met. Yes, there are specifics for the people in the square but no, they do not actually help clarify the situation. One of the many consequences of the sit in is that the Mogamma, the center of Egyptian bureaucracy, was forcibly closed both yesterday and today, preventing the completion of much government business including the bribery of countless officials. Another consequence is the “tafteesh,” or security checks, now found at every entry point to the square.

The nature of the security check experience varies wildly from one entry point to another as there appears to be no standard procedure. It’s almost like these people didn’t get their tafteesh badge at Sit-In Camp for Budding Revolutionaries. Everyone from teenagers to dentists to adolescent girl helps out with the tafteesh. You could be asked for anything from giving your name, a passport, or an identity card to allowing them to examine your bag and ask you riddles. Sometimes they just let you through so long as your appearance is free of thug-like traces i.e. you are female (see above note).

Today I stupidly forgot to bring any form of ID with me to school, so I was lucky that both times I approached security, the “guards” let me pass through with nothing more than a smile. Other CASA students, however, had their bags checked and/or were prohibited from entering the square at all (one student). Tomorrow there is supposed to be a million man march to/in Tahrir but I haven’t heard anything about our classes being cancelled so apparently some people (our administration) were not entirely convinced it was going to happen. We shall see.

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Jul 11 2011
3 Comments
Anecdotes, Best blog posts, Humorous, One minute read

There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother

It is a mosquito.

An entire day passes in my apartment and I see no Cairo wildlife, i.e. insects of various sorts, dogs, cats,

This is the enemy

weasels, or small badgers, but as soon as the hour approaches when I consider beginning the long nap I take at night, my old enemy confronts me once again. Indeed, as soon as the very thought ekes its way through the fabric of my mind, I hear the familiar high pitched whine that signals the presence of a creature desiring to partake of my flesh.

Nothing could be more dangerous than this foe. Left unattended, I am faced with the frightening reality of awaking in the morning to as many as five or six bites upon my feet, face, and claws. That is a reality I do not wish to experience.

And yet, night after night, the dastardly devil proves nearly impossible to kill. I have only successfully killed one mosquito in my time here. In that case, the little lady had feasted too heartily on the blood of yours truly. Slowed down by the weight, she could not avoid my slowly approaching, slightly moist palm which after the fact was graced with a bright smear of body fluid complemented by mosquito appendages. Of course I ingested it, making my revenge complete.

The war continues, however, another thirsty female eagerly filling the last one’s place. How does it hover so slowly and closely to my ear and spring away with the precision of a gazelle when I go to slap it? What mad science is this that the mosquito is perfectly adapted to inflict both physical and mental pain in its victims? Why do I leave my windows open and breed mosquitoes under my bed?

The only solution is continual wakefulness until every mosquito is gone. A disguise must be sequestered. I have work to do.

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