You Can't Make Mistakes.

1 down, 2 to go

I am sitting here at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to the States. There is no free internet in airports anymore, and since I figured that it would be nice to have access while I was in the airports today, I purchased some time on some hotspot service that will work Stateside as well.

And so, we have our first ever blog post from the airport. Nice.

Cairo was great this morning. It was nice to drive through the city just after dawn. There was no traffic and the city is really pretty at that time in the morning. I was also in a pretty decent mood because, for the first time in my life, I packed several days in advance—rather than several hours. That was a great idea. Usually I wait until about five minutes before I am supposed to leave to panic and jam stuff into cases. I have loads of books, though, that I am returning to the States with and I wanted to ensure in advance that they would all fit. They did, perfectly. I had two bags that were exactly the max weight limit. Sweet.

The flight this morning was alright. I got some sleep: a blessing since I didn’t sleep at all last night because I had to leave so early.

I had the misfortune of being seated in front of the two loudest and most boring wankers on the plane, though. They were a young Brit and a middle-aged American attempting to trump each other’s traveling stories. Boring. They were both the types who have sort-of been everywhere, but they have never drank local water anywhere. These are people who refuse to use squat toilets—unless there isn’t another one for a 100 miles; never eat vegetables or fruit—because they may have been washed in local water; make even their tea and coffee with bottled water—idiots; and generally follow all of the information they find in guide-books as gospel. I call them: misguided tourists, on account of the fact that they are perfect fodder for (mis)guided tour companies.

Oh yah, and the American was a proper racist, which is always nice. There was an Egyptian woman sitting next to who displayed the same wincing patterns as I did when this dude excreted such gems as: “Well, Arabs are generally easily excitable, sort of infantile, really” and “The best experience I had in London was riding the regular train early in the morning and seeing all of the street kids. It gave me a real sense of London and the culture.” I’m sure it did, buddy.

Thankfully after about an hour of saying these loud things for an hour or two, they both shut their mouths and slept, until the end, when it was right back into the swing. Unpleasant bastards. Thankfully they exist all over the world. I just don’t like being captive at 10,000m with them.

I was a little sad leaving Cairo this morning. It’s dirty, polluted, crazed, busy, sometimes scary—but fun. Everyone talks to everyone as well. I don’t get that at home so much. It was weird leaving the flat as well. It is like I am just going to be back there next week, a temporary thing. Which, really, is the case, since we are going back in the fall. It is starting to feel homey.

I woke up the other night from a nightmare that this has all be a weird dream. I was panicked to realize—in the dream—that I had fallen asleep while taxiing down the runway in Washington, DC and it was still last September. I am not sure it the panic came more from realizing that I had to do all of this over again and not wanting to, or that it would have meant that I wouldn’t be able to parse what was real and what was not about my experiences.

Thankfully, I then realized that I was dreaming, and woke myself up. Still, though, scary.

So, now here I am. Not a dream-me, not a hologram—at least I don’t think so: the jury is out on this theory still—real-John, John of the real-world, sitting in an airport, blogging.

And now real-John is a bit hungry, and would perhaps like a beer with his lunch. Ciao for now. See you tonight, America.

[Update: I just finished a vegetarian English breakfast—complete with FAKEN—and a Guinness. I have consumed neither meat-replacement technologies or Guinness for nearly 9 months. They tasted like ambrosia.]

Not like you might think

I used to get nervous getting on planes.

I don’t really anymore. Years of conditioning myself to know how to feel on a plane by taking a pill or two and a pre-flight beer took care of that. I no longer fear the idea that the giant, heavy thing that I just sat down will force itself into the air and then through the skill of a pilot, a little luck, and whatever other unseen forces, land safely on the ground safely several hours later.

What I fear now about air-travel is threefold: delays, other passengers freaking out, lost luggage—in that order. I suppose that this is not unreasonable. I have been subject to all three in the past, though thankfully not all at once. My luggage was lost coming to Egypt once. I have been so delayed in the past that I have missed flights or had to run through the airport like a madman.

Don’t even get me started on other passengers. Top three worst:

1. Awful woman who refused to put her seat up on landing because the intercom had gone out and no one asked her personally. How could she have known otherwise?
2. Toy Daschund/Boxer stowed under the seat two rows ahead of me. His owner kept taking him out of the carrier so that he wouldn’t be scared. Seriously.
3. Little girl who screamed every minute or so sitting on her mother’s lap next to me. She would do this and then laugh riotously while her mother smiled sheepishly at me like it made a difference. I got her back by sitting there reading Arabic. It made her really nervous, especially when the—oddly—Egyptian flight attendant asked me about it and we had a conversation in Arabic. Ha friggin’ ha, lady.

Now the only variables which have matching values in these three different scenarios—aside from the obvious: on a plane, in a seat, eating peanut-replacement-salty-snacks because everyone has an allergy to peanuts now—is that these were all American domestic flights. And, all of the above-mentioned individuals, as well as their pets and children, were Americans. Hmmm?

These are all average, normal experiences.

Right before I am about to cross the Atlantic, for whatever reason, it seems like something weird, or awful happens right beforehand. In this case, it was the disastrous opening of the Heathrow Terminal 5. Who knew that it could have gone so wrong?

Luckily, I have a stopover at Heathrow this week on my way to DC. Superb. If, I’m really lucky, they will let me check one of my pieces of hand luggage at the gate, and then lose that as well. Then, they can ship all of it to Milan, and I will never see it again.

Maybe I should just take a backpack.

Anyway, these are just pre-travel jitters. They are easier to handle than the other kind. They all have to do with people, and can be rationalized. Fear of planes and flying, on the other hand, are more difficult to rationalize. I will take this type, any day.

I’ll still take a couple of Xanax, though.

Well, look at the sign, for starters.

I am often asked for directions. I am told that this is because “[I] look like [I] know where I am going”—I did an impromptu survey last week when asked where something was.

Now, as most of you know, I am a foreigner in Egypt. I should not know where I am. The streets are named things like “Mohie el-Din Abou el-Ezz” and Gameat al-Dowal al-Arabia,” and so forth, and they go off every which way, with no rhyme or reason. But, I am armed with a very useful tool: a map. Not just one map, a bunch of maps. I have loads of them. I buy every map I see in hopes that they will afford me a more complete picture of how the city is laid out.

This has caused me several problems.

First, before acquiring the maps, I navigated the city like everyone else: blind. Now, I actually feel obliged to answer when someone else asks me “How do I get to such-and-such place/street?” or the more common shouted demand from cabbies: “Fayn haaga? [Where is something?]” This holds doubly true, because not only do I know where stuff is usually, but I also know how to say where it is as well.

I don’t get to play ignorant that much anymore.

Second, when I am in a cab or driving with someone else, and they take us the terrifically long way, I am inclined to make a suggestion that we could/should/should have/could have gone a different way as well, and possibly saved ourselves some time—in some cases an hour. This is met with either: confusion, denial, indignation, ridicule, or—the worst—offense. It isn’t that I always know where I am or where I am going, either. But, I do almost always know what I am near, and how to get there. I’m just trying to help. Most of the time now, I just keep my mouth shut and see how things unfold.

It’s a neat skill to have in a city like this, but nearly useless unless you want to always want to be telling people where to go or pissing people off.

Other than the endless hours memorizing maps, I also often know where I am because there is a sign. Now, this is not the case everywhere, of course. There are parts of the city that have no signs. There are parts of Boolaq, very near to where I live, where the streets only have impromptu names because they are either too new, or no one has cared to name them yet.

But, in the vast majority of places where I am asked for directions, there tends to be a sign standing somewhere nearby indicating the information requested. The Metro is fantastic for exhibiting this phenomenon.

Inevitably, when you are descending the escalators in the Metro stations, someone will ask which way one or the other of the trains are. There are huge signs with this information in two languages all over the place. No one reads them, they just ask instead. Once on the train it is the same deal. There are line-route maps indicating the name and position of every stop in on that particular line above every door. Instead of looking to these for information, it is more customary to turn to the guy next to you and ask, then he will likely look at the sign, and relate his findings.

I know that much of this phenomenon has to do with relatively rampant illiteracy or partial literacy, but I can’t imagine that this is the only explanation. There must be more involved as well. It seems almost as though no one is sure of themselves to a high enough to degree to be happy with their choices as well. Maybe it is just a social thing—being sociable via feigned ignorance. Lord knows that American kids do that all the time, fearing perception as a nerd, geek, or know-it-all on account of knowing or understanding something. It’s probably all of the above. I don’t really care what behind it. It just cracks me up when someone looks at me and at the sign past me and asks, “Where am I?”

“Please stow all lethal weapons in the overhead compartments before take-off…”

Recently, I went to the Cairo International Airport to pick up my roommate upon her return from the States. The affair was run-of-the-mill in most ways. I caught a cab, asked him to wait for us, and so on. While waiting for her in the corrals meant to keep predatory cabbies and others away from the actual exit doors of passport control in the arrivals hall, I noticed a young man pick his little brother up and perch him on one of the rungs of the corral railing. When he did this, the kid lost his balance a little and, in an attempt to correct, put his arms out wide. In his right hand was a convincing toy pistol.

My jaw must have dropped off my head, because the older brother snatched the gun and jammed it into his jacket, giving me a sheepish smile and shrugging laugh. I laughed out loud. I actually had to walk away so as not to raw attention to the situation any further.

This is just a symptom of something that I have noticed with increasing frequency here. People seem to have no fear of guns—even when they are inappropriately located, or being used inappropriately.

When living in Alexandria, I noticed this phenomenon not a few times. There was one afternoon where I hit the dirt on the sidewalk of the busiest street in the city because I saw a youngish kid in the back seat of a car taking aim out of the window with his toy Glock. Where I come from, you duck when something like that happens. Not in Alexandria though! Everyone else on the street looked at me as though I was having a seizure—unconcerned, but mystified by my sudden change in vertical/horizontal orientation—and continued on their path, unfazed. One woman actually stepped on my jacket and called me humar.

This was very disturbing, to say the least.

Another afternoon in Alexandria, I saw a group of three teenagers near my apartment holding up passing cabs with their toy—I assume—rifle. The cabbies would look momentarily startled, and then laugh riotously along with the kids. In the States, you would be arrested and held as an enemy combatant for five years without charges in an unnamed, secret detention facility: or at least you would be snatched up and roughed up a bit by the local cops. No such response here.

As I continued to wait, now on the other side of the corral, for my roommate’s tardy plane, the kid waved at me with his free hand, revolver dangling in the other. No airport authorities swarmed around, no police. Not even a second glance from anyone. Nada.

Meanwhile, poor bastards all over American airports are being cavity searched for tubes of toothpaste and fingernail clippers, as they not only pose a threat to individual airplanes, but to national security as well. I suppose that this is yet another indicator that though globalization is changing everything everywhere, differences are still glaring.

Welcome to the new world. Please check your nail-clippers at the door and be sure to keep your guns concealed from view.

Smalltalk backfires to my advantage.

I am really bad at smalltalk. I hate talking about things that I don’t care about or am not interested in, so I am not good at bringing them up.

Now, we all know that when you have nothing to say, you talk about the weather. Well, I was in a cab today for a rather long time on my way to Medinat Nasr, and I brought up the weather. Mostly, I brought it up because I wanted to know a few things and learn some words that I didn’t know so I asked the cabbie about the recent barrage of rain and storms in Cairo.

Apparently, I wasn’t very clear about what I was asking, or he misunderstood me—both of which are likely—because rather than telling me whether it was normal or not to receive this much rain in Cairo, he told me the average prices for a taxi from almost every point in the city and suburbs to almost any other point. It was all I could do not to get out my notebook and voice recorder. I could write a grid guide for this and make a million dollars. I might still anyway: I retained most of the information in my steel-trap brain.

Apparently, to get from Downtown to Medinat Nasr, 20 LE is normal. Back is about the same. To get from downtown to Zamalek and vice versa: 5 LE. Round trip?: 8-10 LE. Mohandessin to the airport: 40-55 LE depending on traffic. Airport to anywhere else?: 40-70 LE depending on how foreign you look. He actually said that to me, by the way.

Now, this information is particularly valuable because there are no standard prices for anything. The meters in the cabs are never turned on, though each cab has one. You can take cabs that are more like cabs in major cities in the United States, but they are more expensive, and often more comfortable. The only basis that you have for prices in cabs here is what you know and what people have told you.

I thought that maybe this guy might have been inflating the prices a bit for me, but we seemed to have pretty good rapport and his data tracked with what seemed to make everyone happy from my experience haggling over cab fair. So, I figure that he was actually being honest. At the end of the day, the prices are still ridiculously cheap when compared with prices in the United States. Many things are beginning to level out, but cab fare is still one of those things that is just cheaper here.

For instance, for a Chicago cab-ride equivalent to the one that I took today, I would have paid $70-80 US each way. Instead, I paid 50 LE, equivalent to about $9.00 US. I can’t argue with that.

Today was definitely a lesson in “If You Don’t Know What You’re Doing, You Can’t Make Mistakes.” If I had stopped the guy and tried to turn the conversation back to the weather, I would never have learned this crucial and potentially valuable information. Instead, I benefited from the mindset of someone who is happy to let information wash over him in waves, just hoping to take in anything he can.

Try it. You might learn something by accident.

Is that “inshallah for real,” or “inshallah, it’s never going to happen?”

I recently stumbled upon this article about the possible induction of “inshallah” into the English as a side effect of the occupation of Iraq by the United States military. It seems that soldiers and evern high-level diplomats are now using this phrase—which is often misconstrued as a single word—as a part of their everyday speech.

Yah, elves really exist. Seriously.

In this report on NPR’s All Things Considered this week, we learned that elves exist—in Iceland at least.

Icelandic Elves – All Things Considered

Merry Christmas, if you’re into that. Otherwise, I hope that everyone is having a nice Tuesday: I know I am.

Kolo sanna w ento tayebeen.

In this episode I go out and explore Alexandria on Eid ul-Adha and am met with some pretty exciting sights and sounds.

Click below to listen online or download.

[display_podcast]

Extras:

New Podcast Feed Address: podcast.youcantmakemistakes.com

New podcast web address: http://youcantmakemistakes.com

Music Credits:

“Lick It and Stick It” by the Gypsy Cab Company

I never really understood what that meant until now.

I spent the weekend in Cairo again, this time attempting to sort out some Arabic lessons for next semester, sort out an apartment and see my friends off back to the U-S-of-A. Everything worked out, it seems.

My friends made it off alright, at least as far as I knew. I left a few hours before they were actually off to the airport because I had to catch the last train back to Alexandria. Their flights, complicated by the presence of their two enormous dogs, left at about five o’clock in the morning.

One of the myriad things that had to be accomplished before they left was to repair minor damage to a couch, perpetrated by their giant, ahem, boxer-mix Cha-Cha.

Cha-Cha is a sweetheart but is unaware of her size and power. She will readily bowl over anyone coming through the door in her efforts to greet you. It is no wonder that jumping up onto the couch meant tearing the couch to pieces with her massive feet.

So, Stacey and I set out to find what seemed like easy prey: needles and thread. This was not to be.

We first went to Carrefour, the sort of giant French WalMart, figuring that if anyplace would have a needle, it would be them. At the time this made sense: Carrefour has everything. Rows and rows and stacks and stacks of everything.

We engaged a rather lovely cabbie and set off. It was dark and driving on the Ring Road was a treat. You can see the whole city laid across the Nile at parts. It is a nice relaxing highway drive.

When we got to Carrefour, the cabbie agreed to wait for us, which was very kind of him. The cabbies that hang out around these places are vultures and will readily try to screw you out of cash, even though you know better. So, that sorted out, off we set into the gaping maw of globalization to search for a needle.

In the mean time, we had learned that the word for needle was ibra. Having never had any need for an ibra here, we wouldn’t have known that. This is learning, baby. Vocabulary acquisition in action.

The Carrefour was rammed with people. I couldn’t tell why, exactly, but judging from the mob around the Christmas decorations—oh yes—it appeared that the Copts had come out en masse to stock up for the impending holiday. We asked the first guy looked like he worked there if he knew where we could find an ibra. He directed us to walk all the way across the store, and then ask someone there.

I made a crack to Stacey about redefining the meaning of “finding a needle in a haystack.” She grinned.

A we walked, I thought that I had remembered seeing sewing needles near the shoe-polish in the Carrefour in Alexandria. I suggested that this might be where he was sending us. They were not there, but Stace needed shoe-polish. We asked someone near our new location if she knew where we might find an ibra. She said she didn’t know, but asked three guys nearby.

One guy said that they didn’t have any ibra. “Mafeesh,” he smiled. Another said he didn’t know. The third said that if they did have them, then they would be on the other side of the store.

Right.

So, off we went again. We asked every person we saw where the ibra might be, and receiving various answers of “Mafeesh” and somewhere other than where we were—which we swiftly learned to translate as “either we don’t have what you need or I don’t know where it is, but I will tell you something that I think will make you happy so that you won’t give me that disappointed look that breaks my heart because my only desire in this world is to make a foreigner smile at this moment.” After completely exhausting all possibilities, we decided to leave and look to see if there was an upholstery shop in the mall. I had remembered seeing on in the Carrefour mall in Alex, so it was worth a shot.

As we walked, we saw a pharmacy, and I mused, longingly about how if we were in the States, that would be the place that we would find everything we needed and more. As I said this, Stacey said that she was going to give it a try, what could she lose.

She marched up and asked the clerk if he had any ibra. I was drawn to the gel insoles after having walked back and forth across Carrefour several hundred times, and missed most of the conversation. I did catch: “Blah blah blah blah mustashfa. Blah blah mustashfa blah blah.”

We walked away, and I asked Stacey why the guy was talking about a mustashfa. We needed a seamstress not a doctor. Then it dawned on me:

We had walked into a pharmacy where they sell medical supplies and asked for needles. He thought that we wanted hypodermic needles.

Sigh.

We left the Carrefour and told our Cabbie, Mustafa, about our woes. He indicated that he understood, saying that Carrefour had everything. Everything but ibra. He said that he would take us to the Omar Effendi, a store, in Mohandiseen. They would have ibra there.

On our way back to Mohandiseen, the cabbie stopped suddenly, saying that he would be right back. This was an odd move, but “maybe he had to pee,” I suggested to Stacey. “Like that guy?” she said, pointing out the window of the cab at a guy taking a leak on a wall adjacent to the street.

We shortly figured out that he had gone to find us some ibra. It seemed that he knew a place where one might procure ibra. After he had been away for what seemed like an excessive amount of time, we perhaps thought that he had gone to his mother’s house or something to nick one off her.

Stacey mused at some point that this was very sweet of him, but that if he came back with needles and no thread, she would strangle him to death. I cautioned that this was very likely, as we had only indicated a need for ibra and not thread. We didn’t know the word for thread anyway.

He came back with the needles and no thread. Bless him.

Sigh.

We got back to Mohandiseen, indicating that we still wanted to go to Omar Effendi. Mustafa didn’t seem to know where it was, so at one point we just got out. Stacey asked the first woman with children if she knew where the Omar Effendi was. She gave us directions to a different store and went on her way. We gave up for the evening and had a drink.

Sunday

It was critical that we get needles on Sunday and fix the couch. Their flight left late, late that night and this had to be done before then so that the landlord didn’t freak out. Stacey and I went out in search of needles once again.

This time, we had some information on our side. The dry-cleaning guys downstairs told us that there was a store very near that had all the things needed to sew anything. This and we still had Omar Effendi.

We decided that since no one seemed to know where the Omar Effendi was, we would just get in a cab and have him tell us by taking us there. He told us, after driving away, that Omar Effendi was closed. Permanently. We thanked him and got out, setting off to find the one last store that we had been told about.

Deep breath.

We followed the directions perfectly, but there was no store. We walked up and down the street asking people where we would find an ibra. One man told us two places, both of which turned out, inexplicably, to be lingerie shops. Finally we started hearing the name of a store, Nimroosi. We asked everyone where Nimroosi was and they pointed in various directions.

We went into one shop that had stationary, pens and art supplies just to see if they had ibra. The man at the door pointed us to a counter in the back. We rejoiced until we got to the counter. The girl sitting there begrudgingly looked up from her text-message and asked us what we wanted. We, wild-eyed and gesticulating, explained that we needed ibra. “No,” she said, shaking her finger and clucking her teeth.

Deep breath. Deep breath.

She lead us to the door and pointed at a location down the street and said, “Nimroosi.” We squinted off into the distance and then looked at her. “Nimroosi,” she nodded, smiling.

We had narrowed it down. We had bounced back and forth down the street like errant ping-pong balls. The reward for our perseverance had now come. We walked back the way we had come from and saw nothing. Upon asking someone standing on the street, we were directed across a side street.

I looked and noticed a shop that was closed because there were workers re-tiling the entrance. I paused, looking up. “Nimroosi,” the sign beamed down at me.

The store was closed.

I thought that I was going to have a heart-attack. I thought Stacey was going to lift off. She gently explained to a gaggle of workers that she absolutely had to have a needle and thread. They said it was not possible. I walked away toward the glass and looked in desperately at the stacks of needles and spools of thread lining the display cases.

A fat-cat, gangster looking dude took pity on Stacey and shouted something down the hallway and a bunch of needles were brought out. Frigging hallelujah. I suggested thread colors.

We handed him ten ginay and were on our way. I relished in the opportunity to stitch up the seams of a sofa like I never though I could. It was sheers bliss.

with contributing investigative reporter Amanda Wood

Some wizards just don’t know what is good for them

There is a phenomenon here in Egypt whereby the porters in blocks of flats are very involved in the lives of the tenants of the buildings in their care. This is the story of one such porter by Amanda Wood, investigative correspondent in Alexandria.

“Having made the acquaintance of the porters in our building, we noticed a cheeky element in the character of our night porter,” says Amanda, lighting a cigarette. “Upon further discussion, my flatmate, myself, and our guests uncovered his secret.”

The porter in question, it was determined, was not a porter at all. Rather, he was a defunct wizard whose powers had been suspended for a few hundred years. As it turns out, he had a tendency to play pranks on lesser mortals. One such prank ended in the suicides of hundred of Vodafone customers when he convinced them that there were tiny people trapped in their phones.

This infraction was too much for the High Wizarding Tribunal. they summarily stripped him of his wizarding powers and set him up as a porter in a block of flats in Moharrem Bey, Alexandria. He was left with only the ability to control the actions of the cats living near the block. This has resulted in a great deal of inexplicable cat dancing in the street in front of the building.

At first, this was amusing and provided explanation for a great deal of odd goings on in the building, such as power cuts, phones not working, elevators sticking between floors, and the inability of anyone to ever find the address. It seems that the Wizard Porter had not learned his lesson and was up to his old tricks.

“We at first found comfort in the fact that we had an ex-wizard as a porter with contacts in the High Wizarding Tribunal seeing as we are two young women away from our homes and families,” muses Amanda. “Unfortunately, upon the departure of my blonde flatmate—as blonde, it seems, is #&*%ing currency amongst Alexandrian men—he has turned his hand away from simple pranks and innocent goings-on to all out nosy interfering in my day to day life. As a woman of Middle-Eastern origin I am not unaccustomed to the standards to which women are expected to conform. Indeed I have been a model of modesty and good behaviour [sic - Amanda is British]. After all, when in Rome… and in my case, Rome is not that far from home.”

It turns out that as the porter’s frustration over the removal of his wizarding powers deepened, he became increasingly interested in controlling the minutiae of the everyday lives of his tenants. He apparently feels it is his duty, as a man, to protect the the interests, honor, reputations—indeed even chastity—of his young, impressionable female tenants and save them from their own evil ways and any temptation. “Someone of weaker character might assume that he had been paid to do so by certain male members of her family. However, upon further reflection, resting safely in the knowledge that all I say and do is fully endorsed by my family—including gallivanting off to the Middle-East to pursue deeper knowledge in the language and culture of my forefathers,” reflects Amanda. “However, to entertain such a ridiculous notion would do an grave injustice to the rational, modern, forward-thinking familial background I come from.”

Ultimately, Amanda has decided that the Wizard Porter is just a controlling prick. It seems that he simply cannot fathom the idea that a young, Western, woman of mixed-race origin from London—den of iniquity—could not possibly make decisions about her own comings and goings which would not lead to her inevitable demise.

“So bless his heart of solid gold,” Amanda exclaims, stubbing out her cigarette, “for taking time out of his busy and important life in order to see to my well-being. One would think that he wouldn’t have the time, what with having to deal with going before the High Wizarding Tribunal in order to have his powers reinstated. Just bless him.”