Tag Archives: postaday2011

Oct 31 2011
1 Comment
Fiction, Stories, Three minute read

Jafar Schemes

the sweet potato oven that houses ghost of Ataturk

As our young protagonists near their collision, a military general named Jafar sulks in an undisclosed location, whining to anyone who will listen about the Supreme Council of Armed Forces. Having lost most of his friends after deciding to become a power-hungry, money-grubbing, good-for-nothing, his one companion is Stanley, a hairless rat he found in the desert and nursed back to life with cat milk. It was weird.

For as long as Stanley will listen, Jafar complains about how the SCAF’s poor leadership is leading the country along an ever lengthening road towards democracy. Why are they even bothering with the illusion of democracy at all? Can’t they just kill it, both the delusion and democracy itself, altogether and quickly?

If he, Jafar, were in power, there would be no more of this ridiculous talk along with the facade of free elections or free speech. He alone would command the country, an evil dictator that would host weekend parties where the glitterati of Hollywood and Bollywood swims in champagne purchased at one thousand dollars a bottle. No one would dare challenge him and he would catapult Egypt to the top of every development index by force, regardless of whether true benefits reached the peasants.

One thing stands in the way of his dream: the gassy compatriots that make up the SCAF. An outsider to the group, he only spies them when entering or exiting their lounge that is stocked with an endless supply of Redbull and Snickers Bars. There is no application process to enter this warm circle of military minds. You are either born into it, or claw your way to the inside by putting its entry above even the necessity of your bodily functions.

Though the way appears messy, Jafar is ready to sacrifice everything, even Stanley, in order to rule this thorny country. And he even has a plan. A ill-hatched, half-cooked, likely-to-fail plan.

Jafar dabbles in trolling websites concerning conspiracy theories, urban myths, and cute pictures of animals. While perusing one of these sites, he came across the legend of a sweet potato oven in Shubra that houses the ghost of Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state. When the sweet wood of a balsam tree is burned in this oven, the ghost rises and grants three wishes concerning statecraft and/or nation building.

The oven, however, can only be found by one from the neighborhood of Shubra itself, since the streets are quite difficult to navigate and change without documentation.  Moreover, the person who locates the oven must be the only living relative of the man currently in charge of keeping it and selling hot sweet potatoes to passersby.

After long years of internet searching and hanging out in bars, Jafar has found the shab he needs to locate the oven: Aladdin. Now it’s only a matter of time before the young man falls into the desperate clutch of the would-be tyrant.

To be continued…..

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Oct 29 2011
2 Comments
Fiction, One minute read, Stories, The Cairo Metro

Aladdin Dreams

Not nearly enough zippers on those pants

Meanwhile, a young man named Aladdin saunters down the street in Shubra, past rows of fruit hawkers, underwear kiosks, and junk food stands. Unemployed and illiterate, Aladdin does not even have enough money to cover his chest that bursts with man muscles, and he is forced to wear embarrassingly low cut shirts. He tries to compensate with an extra shellac of hair gel and tight jeans covered in zippers, but alas, he is still unmistakably “lower class.”

An orphan without brothers or sisters, Aladdin’s one real friend is a street ferret named Abu, who he only sees for about 15 minutes at 4 am on weekdays. Needless to say, the young man’s social skills are quite poor, his concept of the outside world limited to what gossip he catches on the metro as he walks up and down selling teaspoons or packets of gum.

Occasionally he gets into trouble with the local authorities, due in large part to his suspiciously unwholesome appearance and Abu’s reputation for stealing the mangoes and pomegranates piled outside of juice stores. But he avoids any serious beatings. Scraping by on wafer cookies and bean sandwiches, he dreams of one day moving out to New Cairo, away from all the chaos and unbridled humanity of Shubra, getting married, and living in a villa with the woman of his dreams, or any woman at all.

Despite his rough upbringing and lack of parents, a home, education, or any real hope of a future, Aladdin is a good soul. He has never knocked an old man down while boarding the metro and can always spare an extra guinea or two for the invalid in need. Somehow he understands that it is the little kindnesses that matter, and that even though the entire world and everyone suffering in it is eventually going to burn, we can make the time we have more pleasant by being civil with one another.

He walks to the metro on this day, like every other day, loaded down with the day’s merchandise. Yet unbeknownst to him, an unadvisedly hopeful product of the Egyptian elite is stuck in traffic on the way to Shubra at this very moment, and the stars have fated that they cross paths……

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Oct 23 2011
5 Comments
Anecdotes, Best blog posts, Stories, Three minute read

The Coffee Grinder Saga, Part 1

possible bane of my existence

Have you ever done something you regretted so much that you would give anything to undo it? Have you ever wanted nothing more than a time machine in order to go back and roofie yourself to prevent something horrible from happening? Have you ever felt remorse welling up in the pit of your stomach, a veritable fountain of bile waiting for any excuse to spew?  Many of you will not be able to relate to the dire circumstances I have found myself in, but I will relate them nevertheless.

Last night, in a fit of delirium, I thought it would be fun to go over to the apartment my friend was apartment-sitting and take advantage of the espresso maker there by having a late night coffee. Little did I know that only 2 hours after suggesting this idea, I would rue the very moment I ever thought of the words “go,” “espresso,” and “tonight” in the same sentence.

In times past, I relished going to said apartment in order to enjoy its civilized air, an air that comes the breath of a person living off a real salary and not the peanuts of a student stipend. This apartment has nice things in it: mixing bowls with rubber on the bottom, a digital oven, a flat screen television, etc. In hind sight, these were all indicators I should never have been there in the first place.

Amongst the fineries of this apartment are an espresso machine and a coffee grinder, two appliances that go together like Cairo tap water and hair loss. In my ignorance, I thought I knew how to work both of them. Step one: plug them in. This proved very easy to do with the espresso machine. I just plugged it right into the converter box that adapts the electric current for appliances made to work elsewhere i.e. the U.S.

Having plugged in the espresso machine, all I had to do was grind up some coffee beans. There was only one knob on the KitchenAid Pro Line coffee grinder, so the actual grinding part seemed essentially fool proof. Unfortunately, the machine was dealing with no mere fool. I am a fool with a college degree and a passport, a fool of the most dangerous kind. You see, the converter box had two sockets: one labeled 110V and the other labelled 220V. The numbers appeared to be meaningless afterthoughts, more decoration than anything else, but I soon found reality to be quite different.

I went to plug the coffee grinder in. The only plug open on the box was the 220V one, and I thought, “Well, I might as well try it to see if it works.” There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First of all, why didn’t I check to see what kind of voltage the appliance itself called for? Even if I had the pathetic excuse of not knowing where to look, any dum-dum can check the bottom of a machine where these nuggets of information are usually hidden. Second of all, I had unknowingly begun playing Russian roulette with electrical outlets, one outlet leading to freshly ground coffee, and the other descending to a coffee-less pit of despair and self-loathing, a pit that can easily be avoided through the least amount of research. I didn’t even ask my friend for his opinion even though he was standing literally a foot away from me.

I went to plug in the coffee grinder and…..now that you’re burning with suspicion, this story will be continued tomorrow. It will involve international statecraft and the fall of capitalism, so stay tuned.

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Oct 19 2011
2 Comments
Anecdotes, Stories, Two minute read

My Boring Life part 27: Hit by a Car

These are cars. Something like one of them hit me.

The first thing I thought after the car hit me was that the experience would make a great blog post, not realizing at the time how boring stories about accidental car-human interactions could be.  I found out later on that even thinking about what had happened was incredibly tedious, let alone telling the story to other people. Despite my initial hope, a non-fatal or non-injury car accident seems as normal as snack time at soccer practice.

The whole ordeal felt as uninteresting as a conversation with a drive-thru window employee: I and my colleague were walking in the street along with the rest of Cairo. He asks me how I exercise. I tell him I don’t. The car hits me from behind at a fairly slow pace, ramming roughly into my left side. My colleague accidentally gropes me as he yanks me out of the way. I let off a stream of unsavory speech and pronounce fanatical threats (at the car, not him). And then I descend into the metro station and meet a nice family from Kansas before heading home, right as rain.

Not only is the story itself banal, but it’s difficult for people to comprehend it since oftentimes (as in the two times I’ve told people), there is no shared background with regard to close encounters of the vehicular kind. For example, when you’re telling a story about a time you got a sandwich, there is a ready-made paradigm for understanding the experience. It’s likely your audience has a background in sandwich eating and can ask informed questions like: What kind of sandwich did you get? How much did it cost? Was it good? And then they might make a statement like, “Ooo…that sounds good. I should try that sometime.”

However, when you tell someone you were hit by a car, the same lexicon of understanding just does not exist. Though people want to care, they simply don’t. This is especially true if you weren’t hurt. The first question is “Are you okay?” and if you the answer is yes, then they’ve likely lost what little interest they were feigning in the first place. They might ask, “How did it happen?” but if you’re okay, than it’s probably a boring story anyways and so you’ll get a statement indicating you were slightly in the wrong, like “Be careful!” Also, the idea the person they’re talking to was in such a foreign situation and could have either been maimed or killed only hours earlier is weird and causes uncomfortable thinking about death and the meaning of life. Therefore, for everyone’s sake, it’s best to stick to talking about things people understand, like food, love, and laughter. Car accidents should be discussed only when involving circus animals or family members you thought were dead.

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Oct 17 2011
3 Comments
Best blog posts, Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read, Wedding

Say Yes to the Toothpaste!

“the one” was still being shipped

The search has finally ended. Today I found “the one”—the one toothpaste that fits me perfectly, embodies my personality, and makes me look better than everyone else. It’s a little out of my budget range, but I think we all can agree that no price is too high when you find the paste that takes your breath away. I’ve known people who have taken out second mortgages, sold vehicles, and rented out less-favorite children’s rooms to strangers just in order to afford the perfect paste. Personally, I dropped out my fellowship program in order to give this search the time and focus it deserves, and my efforts have not gone unrewarded.

I started with the go-to Crest®, Colgate®, and Aquafresh® collections. I was particularly interested in seeing what Crest® Tartar Control Whitening Plus Scope® Liquid Gel Toothpaste would do for my gum color, and I wasn’t disappointed. After a quick brushing, my gums felt as taut and healthy as a well tuned guitar string. The Aquafresh® number was also a strong competitor with its new Extreme Clean® toothpaste with Micro-Active Foaming Action and Whitening, a product developed in part by NASA. But even though the Extreme Clean® looked and fit wonderfully, it just didn’t feel like “me.” So then I tried on Colgate Total®: Enamel Strength toothpaste that also has 12 hour germ fighting protection. After brushing only once with the Colgate®, I bit through a kitchen table.  I had never felt so powerful. My friends and family also thought Colgate® was a good fit for me, but even so, I still yearned for something else.

When was at my hairdresser’s getting my bangs redone and and talking about my search for “the one,” he asked me if I’d ever tried Sensodyne®.  “It’s America’s #1 desensitizing toothpaste” he said, and “It’s been taking the feeling out of people’s teeth for over 4 decades.”“Wow.” I said. “I had no idea.”

I left straightaway and went to CVS. Standing in the oral care aisle of the drugstore, I felt a calm descend over me as I picked up what I knew would be the last brand of toothpaste I would ever squeeze onto the soft bristles of my toothbrush: Sensodyne® Extra Whitening: Maximum Strength with Fluoride. I headed for the checkout with my prize, grinning like a convict with a secret. The cashier said I’d picked out a nice toothpaste and I knew he was right. This was “the one.”

When I tried on the toothpaste at home, it felt as though it and I were one soul, long separated but at last rejoined. I took pictures of myself brushing my teeth and sent them to my entire family and posted them on facebook so everyone could know just how beautiful my teeth were going to be. The flood of comments and support was overwhelming.

All I can say is that I’m incredibly thankful to have a group of people in my life willing to stick with me and give me honest feedback throughout this process. I refuse to stop now that I’ve found “the one” toothpaste, and will continue similar searches for “the one” toilet paper and “the one” deodorant, and very soon my life will be perfect.

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