Tag Archives: egypt

Mar 12 2012
29 Comments
Anecdotes, Egypt

How is a lampshade like a fire hazard?

a work of brilliance.

Every skype conversation with my parents begins the same way: “Hello? Can you hear me? I can hear –wait hello? Now I can’t see you. (Typing: turn your camera on) Okay that’s better. Wait can you hear me?” etc. Last night we repeated this sacred ritual and like usual surprised ourselves with a successful conversation. After talking about weather and church for an appropriate amount of time, given our backgrounds as Middle Americans, my parents commented that my video’s quality was quite poor. Based on the image, I was a freak that lived in a highly pixilated cave, one side of my face shadowy with never ending night and the other a dull orange.

There are a number of reasons for this, I explained. First of all, I do live in a highly pixilated cave. Second of all, my room is naturally dim because I only have two lamps. While thinking about the lamps, I was struck with the desire to show them something I was proud of, namely a lampshade I had made myself. I created this masterpiece by hanging a scarf between a curtain rod and a picture frame, hiding the lamp’s naked bulb behind a transparent scarf wall. However, instead of being impressed at my ingenuity, my mother said with an overtone of reprimand, “Now Emily, isn’t that a fire hazard?”

Where are the congratulations, the “well done, genius and thrifty daughter, for you have saved yourself the purchasing of a lamp shade and used a seldom worn scarf to diffuse light from a bare bulb?”

Also, of course it’s a fire hazard! Sometimes I look over and the scarf is draped on the naked bulb in a forbidden embrace. If I had left the room with the bulb and scarf in such a position, who knows what I would have found when I got back. The sock I’ve been looking for? A hole singed in my scarf? A fiery chamber of death? It could be anything! So yes. Technically, this precarious set up is slightly dangerous.

However, let’s not forget the fact I live in Egypt. The makeshift lampshade, or pre-fire if you will, is only one of many dangers I face daily. I also have to cross the street, no small task in a city with 5×10-7 crosswalks per person and billions of cars. Furthermore, according to World Bank statistics from 2004, Cairo is among the most polluted cities in the world. These pollutants daily become a part of my body, which itself is becoming more flammable. They’re also pollutants I’ll be bringing back with me to the states, where I intend to get as much medical work done as possible while still on my parents’ insurance.

The concern is certainly welcome, but I would prefer it to be done in a more thoughtful manner. I simply ask that if they’re going to worry, they worry about everything and in equal proportions. Road safety should probably come first, even before the worry I’ll convert, marry an Egyptian man, and never come home (in that order.)

For further questions on what should and should not be worried about and/or quotes from Late Night with Conan O’Brien circa 2006, please contact me. Thanks.

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Mar 08 2012
22 Comments
Anecdotes, Humorous, Two minute read

How to Eat Mayonnaise Out of a Jar

I spell yoghurt with an h. Sue me.

This morning while wearing a cardigan I became hungry in the middle of class. At that moment, I pulled a jam jar filled with plain yoghurt out of my purse and started to eat it (the yoghurt). To the common observer, I was eating mayonnaise. Not only that, I was dipping McVitties Digestive biscuits in the mayonnaise. These delicious biscuits (better referred to as tea cookies for the American reader) are usually topped with Nutella, jam, peanut butter, or all three. Putting mayonnaise on them is ill advised and would likely result in the nausea of all parties involved, especially the biscuit. Yet this is what my classmates saw me doing.

While looking for an appropriately sized container for 6 oz. of yoghurt earlier that morning, I hadn’t thought of the fact that using a jam jar would make me look like a mayonnaise gobbling creep. To be honest, it’s not certain that anyone even noticed me as I was sitting in the corner with my jar, spoon, and white dairy substance. I certainly wasn’t looking at them, engrossed in the delicate effort of eating yoghurt out of a jar without making clinking sounds.

Later on, while despairing in the computer lab because of a lost internet connection, I noticed the striking similarity between my yoghurt lined jam jar and a jar that had once been full of mayonnaise. This was not the hope I had been looking for. “Ew,” I thought. Then I wondered how my classmates had reacted, if they had even noticed at all. How would they have responded to the strange sight of a fellow student slurping down mayonnaise and cookies in the morning? I can only imagine their thought bubbles….

“That’s disgusting.” “Not again.” “Does she know how many calories that has?” “I want a bite.” “ “….Mayonnaise shakes!” “How long has she had that in her purse?” “I would like some to put on my hair.” “She’s a monster.” “She’s a psychopath.” “She’s my hero.”  “I should avoid her.”  “I need to talk to her more.” “Is she single?” “Is this a cry for help?” “I shouldn’t have come to class today.”  “I miss mom.” “I don’t miss mom.” “Here comes my breakfast.” “And I thought the putrefying cat would be the grossest thing I saw today.” “She needs to leave Egypt.” “I hope she stays in Egypt.” “Am I that weird?” “She can do this but I can’t smell my toes in public?” “She’s got it all figured out.”

I can certainly agree with the last fictional statement. I do have it all figured out. Next on my hit list is drinking water out of a toothpaste tube.

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Mar 06 2012
18 Comments
Egypt, Humorous

I Am a Meat Flavored Chip

Hello there. I am a meat flavored chip, a food even most animals avoid. I see you’ve come to the shop for a snack, and luckily for you, we have many delicious offerings: tea biscuits, sawdusty wafer crackers, baked goods that smell slightly of garbage, refrigerated Snickers bars, and most importantly, all varieties of MSG laced chips: the Chipsys and Doritos and what have you. Sure we have the ketchup, chili lime, cheese, shrimp, and salt and vinegar flavors, but have you considered trying something slightly more repulsive? What you’re really looking for is me: a meat flavored chip.

Don’t think about it too much, about how this piece of fried vegetable matter has the distinctly smoky taste of leftover oil from a kebab grill or about how the almost fulfilling meaty taste and irresistible crunch leaves you deeply dissatisfied and spiritually drained, or about how you know your tongue will start to feel raw as your taste buds inevitably dull from the cocktail of chemicals that imbue me with my meaty flavor against the will of God.

You know that I’m an abomination, that this kind of taste should not exist on a chip. You know that your entire body should shrink away from me in disgust and recognize me for what I am, something wholly unnatural, a deviation from all that is wholesome. Furthermore, you know how you’ll feel about the whole affair in just 5 minutes, after your wave of hunger has subsided and you’re left tasting the chemical after notes of the artificial kebab flavoring as it bubbles up over the next hour.

But you’re hungry and your mind is not functioning quite right. The part of your brain that would recognize the horror of what you’re about to do is busy watching the food channel and drooling. Nothing can stop you and I’m so close. I’m right here, behind these bags of chips covered in far less carcinogens, the black color of my bag hinting at the evil that lies within, the evil that will soon be within you, creating in your stomach a veritable cesspool of laboratory substances.

Forget everything. Forget how you felt the last time. Forget that I am a meat flavored chip, nature’s scandal, and think of me only as the snack that you need right now. And the next time you want to spend a few hours in a bathroom, you can try out my buddy, the Doritos T-Bone Steak and Curry Collision. Treat yourself. Because you deserve something reprehensible.

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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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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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