Category Archives: Two minute read

Aug 12 2011
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Lists, Travelling, Two minute read

Pasta, Pizza, Espaghetti

Has anyone else noticed Italy looks like a boot? Weird.

So I’m heading to Italy today. In 25 minutes I will be leaving my house to bake in the noon heat for 10 minutes before getting into a cab taking us to the airport and then getting into a big ol’ airplane and flying away for a short 9 day trip where I will sample the wonders of Rome, San Benedetto del Tronto,  and Bologna.

Goals for the trip:

1. Eat Italian food. This one could prove to be difficult. I hear Italian food is hard to find and usually expensive when you do. Luckily, there are some great websites that have miraculously located places with passable fare.

2. Drink fermented Italian beverages. I’m no alkie but sometimes the fact you  can only choose between expensive crap and cheap crap here in Egypt gets annoying. Besides, I hear there are more than 4 beer choices in Italy. Rumor only? We shall see.

3. Sit in a meadow and breathe.

4. Nap on the beach in a one piece bathing suit.

5. Find something with little blue flowers on it to purchase and call my own. Place in someone else’s bag and claim they stole it.

6. Find cool gifts for the family to replace what I originally planned to bring back for them: pyramid keychains and little piles of sand.

7. Get in as many people’s photos as possible while at touristy sites like the Colosseum and the Pope’s wax museum.

8. Go to a hair salon and get my bangs cut. Refuse to pay and see what happens.

9. Speak with an Italian accent the whole time and see how many best friends I make.

10. Verify my hypothesis that Spanish and Italian are actually the same language.

11. Take a nap at least once.

12. Claim I am the direct descendant of the last emperor and declare my rule over Italy via public service announcement.

13. Pretend to be German and wear socks with my sandals.

14. Coat myself in glue and then roll in macaroni. Run through the streets screaming like the famous Italian macaroni monster.

15. Say “Mamma mia!” as many times as possible.

16. Stare at my travel companion on the train when he’s not looking at me and then look away quickly when he suspects something. Repeat continually.

17. Politely ask flight attendants to not make eye contact with me and explain I usually sit in the first class but there was a misunderstanding with my company and they booked the wrong ticket.

18. Blend in with the locals by covering my face in pizza sauce.

19. Pick and eat my own wild mushrooms.

20. Make a new facebook friend.

21. Fight a wild boar to the death. Eat its flesh.

22. Purchase a new spear and go truffle hunting.

That about covers it. Wish me luck on my adventures that will likely center around deciding which restaurant to eat at next; nothing too scary. I probably won’t be blogging while in Italy, but as soon as I get back I will go into a blogging frenzy that won’t stop until I’ve communicated all of the awesome thoughts I had while abroad, which are bound to be many.

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Aug 10 2011
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Anecdotes, Best blog posts, Humorous, Two minute read

Remembering the Frenchman Who Showed Us His Apartment Today

Here was the bed he slept in. And this was the kitchen he would always make his instant coffee in. Do you remember how much he loved instant coffee? He would always offer us some even though we never accepted. And do you remember how he would let us wander in his apartment as we examined it, awkwardly standing by as I took a few haphazard photos? His complete lack of facial expressions was so disconcerting!

This was the bathroom he showered in and the toilet he used, the sink he sometimes shaved over and the black-splotched mirror he would look into as he brushed his teeth.

These were the books he read, and oh! There was the one he was currently reading: Modern Trends in Post-Colonial Interpretations of Revolutionary Artwork. He was such a scholar, getting his PhD I believe.

Remember when he told us in his endearing French accent about the crazy lady who lived in the vacant building across from his apartment and how she would scream at the people in the subsidized bread line as they were fighting? How we nervously laughed and laughed! We were so unsure of what the proper response should be!

And when, right after meeting him at Hardees, I asked him what his wife does and it turned out she was the lady sitting right next to you? Wasn’t that funny!

The way he asked us whether or not we wanted the apartment was certainly charming as well. He inhaled deeply and said, “So, do you think this is something like what you are looking for,” and as we looked at each other we both knew that there was no way we would ever want to live somewhere the kitchen is the size of the bathtub.

As soon as we’d seen the kitchen, we heard the death knell of our relationship. There would be no second meeting to sign the contract or determine the final details of the lease. There would be no exchange of phone numbers with the real estate agent or the bowab, and no other semi-firm handshakes.

And so it is with fondness I remember those awkward moments we spent in his tiny apartment, examining his home and finding it wanting. Though our friendship, and I hope we can call it friendship, lasted only a painful 30 minutes, I know I will be unable to forget the complete lack of comfort I felt while in his presence. It may have been the fact we were not speaking in his native tongue, or perhaps he had forgotten how to interact with humans other than his wife and research subjects because of his time spent buried under PhD work. Whatever the reason for his particular brand of charm, his company was priceless. I do hope he finds someone else to rent his apartment quite soon.

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Jul 31 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Two minute read

You’re not from these parts are you

One of these things is not like the other

Brace yourselves. This might shock some of you.

I am not fluent in Arabic. It’s unbelievable, I know, and after 4 years of studying it no less. Moreover, I do not believe I will ever be “fluent” in Arabic. Though in the far future I may be able to consume the Arabic language perfectly through the mediums of reading and listening, I am completely certain that my language production will remain quite obviously non-native.

I dream of future self like this:

Native Arabic Speaker: “Hey you down for getting a bite to eat after we ditch this joint”

Me: “I think that a nice plan but first of all it is necessary for me to go to the house and get my knapsack since I have left her there.”

Despite my language short comings, I can still speak Arabic better than most infants, toddlers, and other foreigners. Therefore, I feel my Arabic studies cast in a particularly ironic light when someone, perhaps a toy shop employee, sees me, surmises that I am not Egyptian and instantly becomes mute, believing he cannot say one word to me unless he says it in English, a language in which he never progressed past “Welcome in Egypt.” He quickly determines that his only other option for communicating with me is through a complicated series of sounds, hand motions, and facial expressions that would be much simplified through the miracle of speech, which he has already ruled out.

Should I begin this mode of vocal communication by speaking in Arabic, the result is usually confusion, surprise, and then disbelief, sometimes with a swift return to hand motions and one word sentences. In the most depressing of cases, the person will not recognize that I’m speaking Arabic (albeit poorly) and will ask someone passing by if they speak English, and I’m standing there like an idiot thinking about my past four years of Arabic study, realizing it’s all led to this point of me being unable to find out where the spices are at the grocery store.

Here’s another example:

Man who comes to check the gas meter knocks on the door. I answer it. He notices I’m probably foreign, tipped off by the American flag I drape around myself at home. I’m speaking in Arabic, he’s speaking in English.

Me: Good morning.

Him: Good morning. (motions to his notebook) Gas.

Me: Please come in.

Him: (motioning with questioning signals, asking where the meter is)

Me: It’s in the kitchen.

Him: (goes into the kitchen, checks the meter, emerges) Eight pound.

Me: (I pay him and he gets ready to go) Goodbye

Him: Bye Bye

Of course, there are plenty of circumstances when I have wonderful conversations with people who are delighted to know that I can speak their mother tongue despite the fact they are slightly baffled that anyone would learn Arabic, saying

“Why? Why do you learn Arabic?” (I often ask myself the same question after every disaster similar to the spice search.)

But occasionally you meet a person who simply will not believe someone of my appearance could speak scribbly. Encountering this disbelief  is just another one of the joys of learning Arabic.

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Jul 27 2011
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Anecdotes, Two minute read

The day’s adventure: a glimpse of heaven, crushing disappointment

Thanks to years of  being subjected to family scorn, I am overcome with self loathing whenever I wake up past 8am regardless of how late I went to bed the night before. I could have run a 5 hour midnight marathon and woken up at 10:30am, and my family would still say upon seeing me with my marathon trophy, “You just got up?”  Thus, as I transition to a more Ramadan-appropriate slumber regime, sleeping at 4am and getting up at 12 pm, the first thing I feel upon awaking is a sense of shame, followed quickly by righteous indignation. “I didn’t even go to bed until 4 am and I got exactly 8 hours of sleep so there is nothing wrong with this. NOTHING WRONG. I’M NOT CRAZY.” Before I even drink my morning nescafe and peruse the morning internet, I’ve experienced a veritable roller coaster of self-blame and justification. My family has clearly taught me well; I look forward to imparting a similar sense of self-loathing to my own children.

After this train wreck, I pulled myself together and then made the mistake of sitting in my living room for four hours straight as I planned my upcoming Italian vacation. This was a poor decision since my living room is generally an unbearable place, filled at all times with stale air, heat, and gaudy furniture. When we removed the heat element through the wonder of air conditioning in addition to closed windows, we were left with a new evil: florescent lights. As I lingered in the harshly lit cave, clicking through endless tabs of travel advice, I found that having the fluorescent lights suck the soul from my body was equally uncomfortable as sweating through every layer of clothing I have on.

Realizing I needed some soul revival, I set out on a little errand that would take me where some sun rays could splash my pasty skin and help me remember once again what life felt like. And so I descended from the den of death and burst into the sunshine. Never had I seen Cairo more beautiful. It felt like my first spring day, even though it was near a dusty 100 degrees. I even saw several trees wither and die while I saw out, but to me everything was beautiful. While wandering around the shaded streets of Doqqi, I noticed a burst of greenery resplendent in the sunlight at the end of a street. What joy! I thought. Perhaps this is a park I didn’t know about! I saw visions of myself wearing ribbons in my hair, strolling in the park while licking lollipops and petting puppies. As I savored the possibilities of the future, I came upon the green area and found to my chagrin that it was merely a spit of weedy grass with some scraggly trees in the middle of a traffic circle. There was no park to be found here, and if I wanted to come and lick lollipops with ribbons in my hair it would be weird.

So I went home and sat in my room and read a book with the window open, suffering through the sweat so I wouldn’t have to suffer through the depths of fluorescent hell once again.

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Jul 22 2011
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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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