Category Archives: Two minute read

Mar 05 2012
45 Comments
Egypt, Humorous, Two minute read

The Cairo Expatriate: A Rare Breed

The loons are in the center

It is my personal theory that people who want to live in the Middle East are mentally unbalanced. Most humans do not willingly exchange their comfort and familiarity at home for discomfort and alienation abroad. Therefore, those that do make this trade probably feel ill at ease in their own culture and are likely insane. Indeed, most of the expatriates I’ve met suffer from heightened social awkwardness, an awful family from which they have fled, disgust with their culture, feelings of isolation at home, various kinds of guilt, and/or bad breath. Not surprisingly, the severity of the mental imbalance and personal issues is multiplied tenfold when it comes to long term expats in Cairo, a city of bad food, crowds, and some of the worst pollution in the world. If living here appeals to you, something is wrong.

My suspicion that Cairo expatriates are a bunch of eccentric loons was validated last night at an AUC event. As I gazed around the lounge of the Cairo Windsor Hotel, decorated with desert animal antlers and a Boston College pennant, I realized I had found myself in a kind of expatriate birdcage. Each party attendee was odd in some way, much like an exotic bird with its own story and quirks, the kind of strange pet that is hard to love and misunderstood by outsiders. The more I observed, the more I felt an ornithologist examining the fantastic plumage and social behavior of rare and valuable species.

Some expatriates have come for business, others to hunt mummies, and still others—the most pathetic ones—study Arabic. Some expats have been here for decades, growing stranger with the years and watching as new crops of expatriates come and go, while others come just for a year or two while they’re trying to figure things out. Each one hates Cairo in a way, though many of them also love it because in this city they’ve found a place among freaks like them.

New blood comes in and refreshes the stock every now and then, but still it runs strange. At expatriate parties, I often have to be prepared for bizarre amounts of eye contact, awkward introductions, unorthodox worldviews, and hazardous dance moves.

To be honest, I fit right in.

The best part is that Cairo is a place for everyone else, for those that didn’t fit in back home and want to start anew in a place where the cost of living is cheap and everyone recognizes you from the facebook pictures of a friend’s friend’s party.It’s a weird mix, but on the bright side, even boring people are a little interesting. We welcome you if you want to come, but prepare to get strange.

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Mar 02 2012
31 Comments
Humorous, Two minute read

True Life: I Have a Little Thumb

These are both my thumbs

My left thumb looks like a toe and is roughly one centimeter smaller than my already petite thumb on my right hand. All my life people have laughed at how ridiculous my thumb looks and/or how precious it is, sometimes wanting to touch it as one might want to touch a friend’s baby or a puppy. They alternately tell me it’s adorable, reprehensible, or impossible. The little thumb baffles them. How does it exist? Why does it exist? Can you even use it? What kind of freak are you?

For years I’ve answered questions and put up with people objectifying me because of this irregularity in finger formation, and now, for the first time ever, I’m speaking out about my little thumb and putting to rest the rumors surrounding its existence.

Yes, I have a toe thumb and this does makes me different from people with two normal sized thumbs. And though it is true that one centimeter separates this thumb from the other, and thus separates me from most of the earth’s population, it is far from the only thing. The toe thumb also has mysterious powers.

I hesitate to use the word magical here, because that would give the impression I’m just another conjurer with sparks shooting out of my thumb as I summon plates of fresh cookies, but the powers of the toe thumb are much wider than that. Indeed, I am still discovering the full extent of its use. God knows how many natural disasters I’ve accidentally caused.

Aside from random acts of time bending, I have found that my thumb has water filtering, coffee warming, and dandruff inducing abilities. I can also control marsupials, watch black and white movies on any liquid surface, and always get the last biscuit.

Not only that, my thumb can detect the fashion trends of the future and is the reason for my impeccable style. Because of it, I can tell without looking when professors are wearing pantyhose or taking anti-balding medication and can sense the very moment in which a cucumber passes its prime. Every time I play one of those claw machines at supermarkets I win seven stuffed animals and I have never overcooked pasta. My whites are brilliantly bright because of the toe thumb and it reduces the ability of employers to know when I’m lying, though it doesn’t directly increase my productivity.

To say the least, my toe thumb is powerful and more opposable than your normal length thumb. So while people may laugh at the toe thumb because of its mildly grotesque appearance, I am the one laughing late at night as I gaze into my coffee mug and watch Casablanca while thinking about Professor Norton’s battle against genetics.

There are dozens of us out there, fellow toe thumbers with powers untold. One day we’ll live in a world where people will revere our disfiguration, but until then, let us wield our secret power over the same sizers as we bide our time for greatness.

P.S. Professor Norton actually has a great head of natural hair.

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Mar 01 2012
8 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

The Set Designer of Jurassic Park Becomes an Interior Decorator

the closest I’ve come to Jurassic park is a place called Tafraoute, Morocco

His first meeting at a client’s home.

Okay, I like this villa thing you have going on here. It’s very simple, very real….but I just feel like we can make it more raw, you know, like people walk into your home and all of the sudden they’re afraid. BOOM. SCARED.  You see what I’m saying? Like they’re walking up to your house—what are your plans for the front yard, by the way, because I think we should fill it up with fleshy tropical plants and really thick undergrowth—oh you haven’t decided yet? Okay well you should give some consideration to a mud based yard with fern undergrowth and giant palms that a path can wind through mysteriously, like people can’t see your house from the street—oh and we gotta get those garden speakers that look like stones and have all kinds of nature noises.

We’ll get some scuffling and rooting around noises and maybe some low growls. Are the growls are too much? Okay I guess we can just go with the rooting —yeah I’m definitely getting some kind of vision here. And now that I’m looking at your ceiling I can’t help but think we just need to tear it off and replace it with dirty glass like an abandoned green house, but here’s the best part, we shatter part of the ceiling and put a tattered blue tarp over it, just to make people think, “Oh god what happened here?”

So we got a blue tarp covered shattered glass ceiling with those iron beams and pre-rusted screws sticking out everywhere…..how do you feel about leaving glass shards on the ground? You’ll have to wear shoes in the house, but it’ll be worth it for the stealth decorating points. Your guests won’t know if you accidentally forgot to clean the glass up or if you’re just that good at making them uncomfortable. Because as soon as they come in, they’re going to feel aware, you know, just really aware of everything because they know something’s not quite right and so their adrenaline is going to get pumping and their bodies are going to be telling them to FLEE.

Oh and how much plant life can we get in here? I say we dig up 30 percent of every room and plant a bunch of fleshy palms. We can get more stone speakers to spread the atmosphere, maybe get a couple dozen geckos and some birds and stuff….get things nice and tropical. We should probably break a lot of these windows and get some ambiguous animal scratches on the wall.

And then in the dining room we can put the outdated medical equipment and curious looking scientific instruments. These will make great conversation pieces if anyone ever wants to stay for dinner, and just think of the fun you can have with the roast at Christmas.

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Feb 29 2012
31 Comments
Egypt, Fiction, Two minute read

The Mummies of Niagara Falls

view from pyramids on a clear day

Today, Cairo was besieged by a dust storm, its air becoming the color of cinnamon. As a result, the sunlight that warmed my apartment was the color of a slightly dehydrated person’s urine. As I napped in the urine light, I dreamed of jumping into a pool with my clothes on. I don’t think it was a coincidence.

Unfortunately, the effect on both air quality (including taste), and visibility was not so pleasant. But perhaps the biggest shame of all is that this entire dustastrophe is likely caused by a stupid mummy from Niagara Falls.

Mummies are known worldwide to be needy, wrathful, and prone to outbursts of childish rage. Anything can send them over the edge and make them call down all kinds of ridiculous curses on Cairo*: hordes of seedy politicians, shark bites, annoying fashion trends, etc.

Though all mummies are moody, there is a group of particularly infamous mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Niagra Falls, Canada. Colonel Sydney Barnett purchased these mummies and transferred them to Canada from Egypt in 1850, back when Egypt was legally selling national heritage for a quick buck because there was a lot of it and it was just lying around anyways. A few decades later,  Theodore Roosevelt called these mummies, “a group of genuinely awful creatures.”

There are nine mummies in the Niagara Falls Egyptian collection, but only four have coffins.  The ones without coffins are named Slappy, Silly, Sally, Socky, and Stumpy, and the ones with coffins are named Sammy, Sudsy, Stubbles, and Trent. According to museum curators, these mummies have been nothing but a nuisance and a bother since they arrived in Niagara Falls. Slappy and Trent never stop complaining about the cold, and the endless grumbling really pisses off Socky and Stumpy. Sudsy and Stubbles both resent tourists’ “sausage fingers.” Sally has a crush on one of the museum curators and never shuts up about it. Sammy and Silly squabble endlessly over coffin rights, while Sudsy continually asserts that he was the Colonel’s favorite when everyone knows it was actually Socky, and all of them constantly try to annoy one another by poking each other or throwing stuff at each other’s cases. It’s a nightmare.

Between the nine of them, they’ve called down 203 curses on Cairo since moving to Niagara falls, one of which indirectly caused the Arab spring. Their life in the comfort of Canada has made them unbearable, petulant, self-important beings that forget they are essentially raisins wrapped in toilet paper. This current dust storm is probably just another effect of their brattiness. If I had to guess, I would say that Stumpy probably made Trent mad again by saying Trent wouldn’t be so cold if his wives had ever actually loved him, which is a low blow and doesn’t really make any sense.

On some level, though, I guess I can understand how that makes Cairo deserve a dust storm.

*Curses can only be called upon Cairo, not any other city.

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Feb 28 2012
11 Comments
Lists, Modern Life, Two minute read

Five Bad Ideas and One Good One

Oh sweet and savory. It does not get better. .

Uh oh. The weather is nicer than you expected and your coat and scarf are now grossly inappropriate. You’ve become too warm and are forced to take the scarf off and put it in your bag which bulges awkwardly, making you feel like a clumsy forest creature. This sucks.

Also, you’re locked out of your house.

The key is sitting on your desk, safe within the apartment’s walls. Your phone is dead, you have precious little cash on you, and your roommate is out somewhere in this godforsaken city.  She won’t be coming back until much later, if she’s even still alive. A salty panic rushes over you: “Oh God what do I do? I’m completely alone, getting hungrier and more fatigued by the second. Is there any hope??”

In order to save time, you should consider your extremely limited options as you panic. Remember that the situation is just as hopeless as it seems. You have only six possible courses of action.

  1. Break the door down. Borrow your neighbor’s Gerber Camp Axe and bash that bad boy in while thinking of people or societal situations you don’t like. When your roommate gets back and starts to ask questions, wondering why she stepped onto a heap of door splinters after entering the apartment through a gaping hole, say you don’t know what happened and that you’ll go fifty fifty with her on a replacement. Encourage silence by wearing a pair of her patterned socks as an unspoken threat.
  2. Use your spider-human powers to shoot thick, moist web from the disgusting holes in your wrists and swing up to the balcony. If the door is unlocked, you can stride right in and pretend nothing happened. If not, you can smash that bad boy in and follow the instructions from the previous piece of advice.
  3. Depending on your manna levels, you might be able to reduce your body density and float through the door. This is an advanced maneuver, however, so be careful when trying it. Internal organ damage is likely if the density reduction is done improperly.
  4. Go to the grocery store and spend all of your money on chocolate pudding. While you wait for your roommate’s return, devour it in front of your door with the spoon you keep in your pocket. The pudding won’t help you get into your house, but you’ll feel better about the situation with a belly full of pudding.
  5. Go across the street to your landlord’s mom’s apartment and eat meatballs while watching foreign soap operas until your roommate comes back (Note: this option is Egypt-specific).
  6. Go to IHOP’s National Pancake Day Celebration and eat free pancakes. Stay awhile and make friends with the staff; they are your new family. Leave your old life behind and never look back.
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