Chain gang

As is perhaps evident from the relative decrease in nonsense posted on this blog, I have finally started work. After nearly four months of idle sedentariness - three-fourths of which were spent horizontal in bed – work’s unremitting, merciless routine has needless to say shocked me to the core in a way I last experienced when I misjudged the temperature gauge on a bidet. What is particularly odious is being thrust out of sleep by an alarm clock, more precisely my mobile alarm clock, whose alarm music is in theory meant to gently ease one into the morning with a soothing, cheerful tune gradually escalating in volume. I obviously never wake up immediately, and in my semi-conscious state usually incorporate the music into my dream a la Spielberg. As a result of this I invariably wake up flustered, disorientated and devastated that the sound hammering in my ears is not in fact my and Ahmed Ezz’s wedding march. A recent addition to this barbaric chaos has been my cat, Lupin, who occasionally experiences the urge to sit on my head on certain mornings. This is not meant to be a cute and twee exaggeration: in an effort to wake me up so that he can then trip me up on my way to feeding him, the animal literally wraps himself round my skull like a hat/launches himself at my face.

All this is marginally better than the (unrequested) wake-up call I used to receive from my father, which consisted of him SINGING “wakey waaaaaaaakey! Dah de de dah dah daaaaah” at 8 a.m. The barrage of expletives which this inevitably provoked would then result in a lengthy discourse on why getting up early is a healthier way to live one’s life, since getting up any time after 8 a.m. means missing “the best part of the day” – all while I was still lying stunned in bed. My attempts to persuade him that it is unnatural to get up any time before 9 a.m. for any reason other than catching a plane or escaping a burning house if the smoke is bothering you have failed miserably, and whenever I am under his roof this postman’s regime is imposed on me. For added piquancy the first question he asks me once I am vertical is invariably “how did you sleep?” to which I answer “horizontally” in the hope that he will desist. He doesn’t. I have noticed, come to think of it, that members of no nationality other than the Brits interrogate me as to sleep quality on a regular basis, leading me to conclude that this question forms part of the battery of grunts and sounds which British people find themselves compelled to emit when in the presence of other persons anywhere other than on public transport, and which for the most part revolve around the weather.

Working in an office is equally rebarbative. There is something truly soul-destroying about being incarcerated in a room at a desk for eight or more hours, regardless of whether you enjoy your work or not. This malaise is unique to office work, and entirely different from the armpit nature of for example manual labour. I once did a two week stint in a giant shed, which the company called a factory, where my task was to stand at a bench and stuff paper adverts into magazines before putting these magazines in clear bags, from 9 am to 4 pm. We did of course receive a half hour lunch break together with tea breaks, during which one of the girls there would regale us with stories about her pit bull terrier. We were also not allowed to change the radio station, with the result that as I stuffed the adverts into magazines knowing that they would be thrown away without a glance, I was serenaded by a constant stream of Phil Collins. The factory owner’s car number plate was something like ‘Paper 1.’ He was a very short man who drove a very big jeep.

The work was physically a nightmare, mentally a graveyard, and the musical accompaniment made it near-torture, but the mindlessness, the unchanging routine and the knowledge that it would end lent the work a certain reassuring constancy. It is this mindless constancy which is somehow absent from office work, or at least the desk jobs I’ve found myself in, with the result that I am mentally stimulated and alert (eventually) but confined, which I believe produces mental agony on a par with that experienced by giraffes kept in zoos.

With or without you, preferably without

Ahhh Sir Bono. Where would the world be without you, Mr Paul Hewson? Who else, apart possibly from Princess Di, could fill your leather trousers as they roam the world combating global hunger with such finesse, and such big sunglasses? While you claim that you wear them because of an eye condition, we all know the truth: It is to conserve the beneficent glare of your luminosity, which you save for African villages and meetings of the World Economic Forum. But luckily for the rest of us, your share your light with us verbally, and we are all richer for the wisdom you send down to us.

Take for example the following gem, in which you are asked to describe a concert which changed your life:

The Clash
Trinity College, Dublin, 1977

Bono: Can't remember the set list, can't remember much about the music, to be honest. I just know that everything changed that night, and I'm sure it was not just for me. Year zero. The shock of the new, where everything reconfigured. The venue was the exam hall of Trinity College, founded by Bishop Berkeley 300 odd years previously ... the man who spent his entire existence trying to prove the existence of existence. I'm not kidding. He also had a corner of San Francisco named after him. Other reconfigurations, other revolts.
It wasn't so much a musical event. It was more like the Red Army had arrived, on a cold October night, to force feed a new cultural revolution, punk rock. Marching boots and the smell of sulphur. Not weed or speed but fear, fear of the future, no future. And the delight, so much delight. All kinds of symbols pinned on jackets, some ridiculous swastikas, Red Brigade t-shirts, hand made knock-offs of extremely expensive Seditionaries threads from London. But as there was a war going on 100 miles from here, in a strange way, the Clash made more sense in Dublin than anywhere.
As I sat in the box room and stared out the window the next day, it was very clear. The world is more malleable than you think; reality is what you can get away with.

Delight indeed.

Sulphur is of course the smell of flatulence, but we all know that you meant the smell of revolution. You have of course acquired the patent for this smell - which was created by Bolivian farmers using extant samples of Che Guevara’s sweat - and you will be bottling it under the name Twat pour homme. All proceeds will of course go to charity.

Clerics are currently preparing an official interpretation of your comment “the world is more malleable than you think; reality is what you can get away with” in order to counter the stone hearted individuals who accuse you of being a pseud and claim that this statement is in reality an oblique acknowledgement by Your Eminence that one can get away with the most pompous pretentious nonsense as long as it’s for charity. Achtung baby.

Question for Hollywood filmmakers

Why must virtually every film you produce, even those dealing with important political themes of the zeitgeist, include a romantic story line? In the world as it is presented by you, romance flourishes in war, during genocide, during Armageddon, in outer space, even where one of the bloody lovers is dead. The irony is that when all is well in the world, love seems to go tits-up, with the result that we must sit through ninety minutes or more of a wife bawling and clinging to her absent husband’s suits hanging in the wardrobe, while away in the next scene husband is busy shagging another woman, before both realise through these very different means that that they were destined to be together, it’s just that their love has “matured.” The final scene usually includes: a Labrador/children playing in a sprinkler, and the reunited couple holding hands fondly watching their antics. Decidedly absent is any mention of the fact that the only reason the husband came back is the missus’ first-class lasagne/blowjobs/both.

While I admit that if given a choice between watching a romantic comedy and boiling my head I would in most cases put the water on the stove, I do not object to romance as a genre per se, my objection is its omnipresence. It seems to be the tomato ketchup of film production: added to virtually any dish in order to make palatable otherwise difficult to swallow fare. I am thinking in particular of the film I saw tonight, Blood Diamond. The production and directing of this film was mostly excellent, and it dealt with issues of critical importance, namely the trade in illegal diamonds, the part this trade plays in funding civil wars and the role of foreign governments/mercenaries in this sordid business. The lead was played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who is gradually wringing the last drops of Titanic out of his persona with excellent roles such as these. The female lead was played by the stunning Jennifer Connelly, who played a - guess what! – sexy yet intelligent journalist. When Connelly appeared my heart sank. because the film had until then been going great guns (geddit?) with its realistic and effecting scenes of civil war. Then these two met in the bar, he with his broad shoulders and blood hi-lites, she with her green eyes and well-formed bosoms and I heard the knock knock knock of someone trying to extract ketchup.

More horrific than any of the war scenes was the moment where DiCaprio is preparing to enter war-torn diamond country on a potentially fatal assignment and must leave the intrepid Connelly behind. We are subjected to a five minute dialogue in which he entreats her to settle down with a good man, while she replies that she has three sisters married to good men, and she herself prefers her life of roaming the planet searching for war zones in tank tops. Sorry, but who cares? And why add insult to injury by having Titanic-style pipes playing softly in the background? I was secretly hoping that Celine Dion and her heart which must go on would appear simply so that she would be shot by a rebel warlord.

To go from watching the deaths of countless (anonymous) Sierra Leonians and the forced enlistment of children in rebel armies to this hogwash was almost obscene. While the platonic relationship between the journalist and DiCaprio’s mercenary was integral to the story, the romantic element was entirely superfluous and annoying, particularly given that it almost compromised the film by risking making the civil war merely the background against which their love plays out.

How does it work then? When a script dealing with political intrigue/war etc arrives on a producer’s table, does he tell the script writer “well this looks great Bob, but I want you to go ahead and make the prisoner of conscience fall in love with a feisty gal from Brooklyn, preferably with big knockers”? Is it mandatory, in the same way that in 1999 it was made the law to include Hassan Hosny in the cast of all future Egyptian comedy films?

To be fair, you are merely part of a supply and demand equation, and it would seem that the audience like their war misery pizzas toned down with a bit of romance sauce. How sad however, and what a damning indictment, is the knowledge that for a film to succeed, the misery of an entire country - an entire continent - must be described using the stick figures of boy meets girl.

Wednesday night's alright for fighting

Tonight I went to a pop concert which ended in a mass brawl – always my idea of a splendid night out, what with possessing English blood and all.

Sharshar has been raving about Arabic pop prince and heir to the throne Mohamed 3adeweyya ever since he saw him live last year, and bored us into going to tonight’s concert with incessant droning about his ba7a. (Hoarse. But in a good way.) While the concert was organised by al-Saqia, it wasn’t being held in al-Saqia’s (convenient centrally located) Zamalek base, but rather “somewhere on the Cairo-Ismailia Road.” Sharshar assured us that it wouldn’t take long to get to.

After spending an hour in static traffic during which Amour attempted to explain the wisdom of the Egyptian saying “ask someone with experience rather than a doctor” (what if the doctor is himself mogarrab??) we eventually broke free onto the highway. As we sped past anonymous buildings in the darkness, I enquired as to whether Sharshar in fact knew where the bloody place was. He replied confidently “if we find ourselves in Ismailia, we’ll know we’ve gone too far.”

Miracle of miracles however, we saw a dimly lit sign announcing al-Saqia on the other side of the road, and discovered that Mohamed 3adeweyya was in fact performing in a school, hired for the night by al-Saqia. This was one of those expensive-looking soulless language schools, with beautiful furniture but no books. I have always found schools devoid of the children which give them life somewhat eerie, but this one had a particularly creepy the Shining emptiness about it. After traversing its silent palatial halls and immaculate garden we were ushered into what was obviously the lunch hall, and which was adjacent to the assembly room where 3adeweyya and his ba7a were booming out of the speakers. The lunch hall itself was scattered with signs bearing words such as “tolerance,” “patience,” and “respect,” presumably for the miniature diners to ponder as they steal each other’s sandwiches. It is unfortunate that similar signs did not emblazon the stage on which 3adeweyya performed, given the subsequent turn of events.

3adeweyya himself really was wowzers blazers, possessing in addition to an excellent voice, that lovable, smiling geniality of the type exhibited by Nelson Mandela which - in addition to facilitating national reconciliation - can make an assembly hall full of people forget they are in a school and hang loose. His evergreen smile and liberally distributed thumbs up signs made me entirely forgive him for the fact that he was wearing an otherwise criminal brown corduroy ensemble which put me in mind of the contents of my cat’s litter tray, and pointed brown shoes of an indeterminate material.

3adeweyya also possesses the world’s most enormous band of musicians which is not actually an orchestra. I counted some twenty five people on stage, including a boy who was clearly someone’s brother, and whose only task as far as I could tell was to stand immobile behind 3adeweyya and dispense tissues as needed. I was particularly delighted by a Riqq (big tambourine) player who was spectacularly morose, and when not drumming would sit, cross-armed and frowning, with the expression of a man forced to spend many nights staring at a jolly man in a brown corduroy suit. He was rivalled only by the saxophone player, who could not disguise his disgust whenever the keyboardist usurped saxophone soundalike solos which were rightfully his.
3adeweyya cheerfully made his way through his songs, accompanied by fire effects, bubbles during slow songs, and lung disorder amounts of dry ice. At one point the effects engineer released a rocket-type fire effect of such ferocity and velocity that it shot upwards and caused a plastic ceiling tile to come crashing down, almost on the head of the morose Riqq player, which needless to say ensured that I got my money’s worth of entertainment.

After a rousing rendition of ‘zahma,’ the song made famous by his legendary father Ahmed, 3adeweyya announced a break during which the audience devised ways of smuggling food into the hall without teacher seeing. Some of the band eventually began filing back onto the stage, but the first sign that all was not well on the ranch came in the form of a bespectacled man who mumbled into the mic that “the concert is over.” The audience ignored what was clearly either a prankster or a lunatic, and carried on extracting packets of crisps from their underwear until 3adeweyya himself appeared and confirmed that “they have cancelled the show.” A cohort explained that this had occurred because “there are people in the audience kissing each other and generally not giving proper respect to the surroundings.” Being unable to give us detention, the school managers had thus cancelled the show, which understandably enraged the audience whose demographic was largely 18 – 20 year olds wishing to assert their existence by any means possible, but preferably a fight.

As we left the hall crisps were eaten and fags smoked in a defiant manner, and excitement mounted as the boys sensed that a ruckus was in the offing. Sure enough, once outside the angry crowd began milling around the ticket window swearing and posturing, Rebel Without a Cause style, while the poor bastard inside trembled. The crowd bayed for the blood of whichever despot it was who had denied them ‘bent el sultan’ and cheated them out of their money – they needed it to fill up the 4 x 4s waiting for them in the car park, poor things – until the bespectacled man who had announced the cancellation made the mistake of attempting to run to his car. The crowd selected him as the conduit for their fury, and immediately leapt on him. Things turned ugly as some 50 people surrounded the car before dragging him out from as he tried to explain to the bags of testosterone that he in fact had nothing to do with either the cancellation or their tickets. He was eventually let go, and was ushered back inside the school’s gates, faint and stunned, to wait for the police and figure out which member of the mob it was who relieved him of his car key. During this chaos, Amour observed the proceedings impassively, while smoking a cigarette, and observed that if he had had brought a couple of boys “men 3andina” [from his area] the bloodthirsty crowd would not have got near bespectacled man. Ignoring the youthful hyperbole, I expressed my pleasure at his desire to protect the man, to which he responded that the only reason they would have done so was so that they themselves could “sort him out” and find out where the money is.

Back at the gates the Armani-jeaned Proletarian masses continued protesting the injustice they had been subject to by vigorously shaking the gates and fighting both the security guards and, occasionally, each other. Who said Che was dead. They were eventually placated by a promise that they would get their money back if they were good boys and formed an orderly queue. Something resembling a queue did eventually form, though this being Egypt it mutated into a scrum at the window itself. Amour eventually emerged from this with the refunded money, muttering something about bringing his matwa [knife] next time, and we were all delighted to discover that we had been refunded ten pounds too much, which Amour promptly pocketed, for his trouble.

And so ended a charming evening which contained all of man’s most important primitive urges: dancing, fighting and seeking refunds. I cannot wait for February 14th when 3adeweyya will perform again, this time in a sporting club. I am hoping that the brawl will end up in a swimming pool - stay tuned.

This is what happens when you don't have satellite TV

"Ya 2amar"

A scene in an Egyptian soap opera tonight featured a couple walking into a nightclub- type establishment before being guided to their seats by a waiter. Being a consummate professional and connoisseur of old-school restaurant etiquette the waiter stood behind the lady’s chair as she sat down, and then did the holding-onto-the-back-of-chair-and-pushing-slightly-while-lady-sits-down-thing. Now this is all very Omar Sharif and chivalrous etc, but the lady was sitting in a tank-sized leather sofa, which resulted in the waiter having to adopt a stance similar to that one adopts when pushing a car which has run out of petrol up a slight incline.

This took the edge off the rage induced by accidentally hearing thirty seconds of a song by suberstar Yousra. I do not know the name of this atrocity but it is the one where she bleats on about everyone needing love, in Arabic, English and French - because she’s international and debonair, people. The chorus features accompaniment by a choir of children whose voices have not yet broken: a musical crime of the first degree. It seems to have escaped Yousra’s notice but there is a reason why microphone stands are so high: it is to prevent precocious little tuneless individuals sneaking into studios and recording songs with which to torment us. You may be angelic, Derek, but you sound like Tinnitus.

Why must Yousra sing? She is a good looking actress of a reasonable standard who can boast that her lips have been within two centimetres of Ahmed Ezz’s face – surely her work is done? Seeing her in the vicinity of a piano makes the Jaws soundtrack play in my head, and during her rendition of La Vie en Rose in the Yacoubian Building I found myself biting on my knuckles, while trying to curl myself into the smallest ball possible - a defence mechanism used by small mammals in response to danger from predators. It didn’t make the pain stop. I literally felt embarrassed for Yousra, whose unctuous, tuneless, supposedly seductive warbling is essentially poor man’s Dalida, and induces a mixture of rage/vicarious embarrassment every time I hear it.

Speaking of His Majesty Omar Sharif, and I take any opportunity to do so, I saw him in his mole-bedecked glory days in ‘Men agl Imra2atin’ yesterday, and nearly passed out while contemplating his beauty. Those slightly scary intense eyes! Those lips! The man was a god, and I can in fact boast to having met him for exactly two minutes after my Bridge-playing auntie smuggled Mildred and me into a Bridge tournament hundreds of years ago. I am pleased to report that he still had his certain je ne sais quoi-ness goin’ on then, and the motor is still revving now - if his antics at the latest Cairo Film Festival Awards anything to go by. The contrast between his polite but tepid greeting of male winners, and the old fashioned mental undressing treatment he gave the ladeez was a joy to behold. At one point a breath-taking statuesque Italian beauty with enormous bazookers glided onto the stage dripping sex. Omar’s jaw dropped and he immediately began fanning himself theatrically with both hands. During her (faltering but sexy) speech Omar was clearly visible whispering to (Dr – how come?!?) Ezzat Abo Auf and his toupee - while all three checked out her endless legs. He was probably saying something along the lines of “eih el ta3ama deih” only in French, cos he’s sophisticated, innit.

Afterwards while all the fabulous people on stage formed a line and smiled, and the ordinary people in the audience clapped them, I kept my eye on cheeky Omar. Sure enough he edged his way gradually towards Bazookers using a sideways-stepping crab motion before standing on tiptoe and whispering something in her exquisite ear. She looked briefly baffled before herself edging away, both of them all the time clapping and smiling rigidly, leading me to conclude that he may indeed have whispered “eih el ta3ama deih” only in Italian, cos he’s sophisticated, innit.

Meeting Omar seems to be a family tradition, because my mother used to see him - only in black and white – in the Gezira sporting club during the sixties. Both she and I share the same tic of involuntarily sighing ‘ya 2amar’ [moon] whenever we see a black and white Omar on screen. God forbid that anyone should think my mother missed a romantic opportunity all those years ago, because she is now married to a librarian and lives in Croydon, where she can enjoy its first-class tram service.

Lest anyone think I am name-dropping, allow me to state that I have not met any other celebs apart from a pre-Olympics British pole-vaulter who never made it. I did once however enter a restaurant just as Amr Waked and his green eyes were putting their coats on and leaving.

Note: Never before have I hyper-linked to so many men, I feel quite the trollop.

Sock it to me

Scene:
Amnesiac and the Pig are cruisin’ in the Corolla on the traffic-free Maadi Corniche.

It is a Friday, and the Islamic new year holiday, and Cairo can stretch and yawn into the empty other side of the bed, still warm and recently vacated by its poorest migrant workers and richest long-weekenders.

The weather is trademark Egyptian winter: intensely sharp coldness bathed in the sun’s languid heat. The azure perfection of the sky is rivalled only by the anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better silky blueness of the Nile waters, and everything and everyone gleams in the incandescent brilliance of the sun.

Amnesiac has not seen a single donkey or horse being beaten. She has not in fact seen any working animals of any description. She has only seen cats chillin’ on roofs. This is the kind of thing which makes her happy.

Adding to her general joie de vivre is the fact that Ilham el Madfai is singing ‘Baghdad’ on the car stereo, his richly sad love song/lament for the city he loves.

Ilham: We ensy el 3ataab, faqad neseet 3ataaby etc etc [forget blame, because I have put reproach behind me]
Amnesiac: Allaaaah etc etc
The Pig: He doesn’t sing in tune.
Ilham: [ignoring the Pig]: 3aynaak ya Baghdaaaaad, mondhu tefoolity [your eyes, O Baghdad, since my childhood]
Amnesiac: [ignoring the Pig]: Doesn’t matter. His voice is full of shagan.
The Pig: Hmm.
Ilham: [rababa solo]
Amnesiac: [Practically in tears because of its exquisite sadness, and also because of PMT]: This rababa solo is gorgeous!
The Pig: It’s not a rababa, it’s a violin.
Amnesiac: No, it’s a rababa.
The Pig: La2 it’s not. Etc etc.
Ilham: la tunkury wajhy…fa anty 7abeebaty…we woroud maa2edaty [do not deny my face, for you are my darling, the roses on my table]
Amnesiac: Yaaa “ you are the roses on my table!” Gorgeous!
Ilham: …We ka2ss shuraaby* [and my cup of life. Literally “the cup of my drink”]
The Pig: And my socks ya3ni.
Amnesiac: …
Amnesiac: Do you realise that I will never again be able to listen to this, one of my favourite songs, without thinking of footwear?
The Pig: [Looks straight ahead and smiles the smile of a boy who has just kicked his worst enemy’s football onto an unreachable roof.]

* shuraaby is a homophone which can mean either “my drink” or “my socks,” for allegedly comic effect.

Catharsis

I occasionally get acute attacks of the Egypt blues. During these bouts my head aches in the same way it does when I read books which attempt to explain the size of outer space, while my chest feels like I’ve been inhaling pure, undiluted, sadness. Brief but intense, the only antidote to these episodes is watching Rachael Ray, so that I am reminded that there exist other, worse, realities.

Egypt’s capacity to induce melancholy is, of course, no surprise, and these particular Egypt blues should not be confused with the feelings induced by witnessing particularly heart-rending scenes of poverty, oppression or misery. It is a sad truth that an essential coping mechanism for living in this society is steeling yourself constantly to witness/hear about some hideous event practically off the scale of human suffering. As a result, I - and apparently everyone else around me judging by the levels of indifference - have become inured to seeing crowds stepping over invisible limbless beggars, inconsequential people breathing their last breaths in police stations, and six year old Kleenex sellers.

This protective armour has rendered me (almost) insensible to the daily misery, but cannot prepare me for the less direct, more low-key sadness akin to the water which melted the otherwise indestructible Wicked Witch of the West. Sources of this sadness are many and varied, but are linked by the common element of being entirely mundane. They include; soldiers outside embassies with no shoelaces in their boots; the taxi driver in the beat-up taxi who kept having to push up the car’s sun visor every time the car went over a bump; people wearing shibshib at night, in the dead of winter; tears in the seats of trousers which have been repaired using thread an entirely different colour to that of the trouser fabric; the Nile TV English channel programmes devoted entirely to interviews with foreign tourists, and filmed with what appears to be a mobile phone camera; moneyed people who subject powerless restaurant employees to Abu Ghraib-type humiliation, only verbally, simply because they can; Mohamed Hosny Mobarak plaques on any edifice of any kind, including tram stops in Alexandria; donkeys; bureaucratic officiousness; shops called bookshops devoid of books; people using sports club membership as a key factor governing a marriage decision; sycophancy, particularly of the type witnessed on “el bayt baytak”; radio listeners telling Nagoum FM DJs that they love them “gedden gedden” and DJs similarly declaring their love for people about which all they know is their first name; bridal white face paint; dirty bear/clown costumes during children’s parties at MacDonald’s; long little finger fingernails; the ‘who shouted fire’ manner in which people get on and off metro trains; ‘7ader men 3anneyya el etneen’ and then nothing happening; ‘3addeeha ya Amnesiac’; the furniture used in soap operas and films; prefacing first names with Mr/Miss, even when speaking Arabic; ‘look at me’ displays of piety; schools with the word ‘home’ in their names; people prefacing their name with their occupations in situations where their occupation is entirely irrelevant i.e. ‘ma3k el mohandess Abaza’ or ‘ma3k el fadya Amnesiac’; ‘kol sanna wenta tayyeb’ as an extortion device; soldiers lining the 2asr el nil bridge whenever some minor official is in the environs; when these soldiers relish ordering people to keep to the pavement.

These things perturb me because they are a reminder that Egypt’s social and economic problems have seeped into every single aspect of its existence, and are so interlinked, that attempting to fix one area would be like the time ten of my mother’s necklaces became knotted together, and she asked me to extract one, and I discovered that in order to do so I would have to spend hours undoing the whole bloody lot.

Egypt obviously still rules in a myriad other ways, and I could write a lengthy love letter to her exulting her many virtues, but also advising her that she appears to have fallen in with a crowd of shady types who are leading her astray.

Badonkadonk

I went to a house party on Friday night about which I can remember very little. One very clear memory however, is my “friend” Sharshar inexplicably dragging me over to talk to the boss of a centre where I was going to work, but who I had turned down with a curt email. Sharshar obviously did not give me enough time to think of a convincing and inoffensive reason why I had refused the offer, and the brief but intense moment of social awkwardness which ensued was dispelled only when I realised that Almost Boss guy was so completely pissed that he would not remember the conversation - nor indeed meeting me. It turned out that he had reached this astonishing level of intoxication in record time by doing Ouzo shots. Sharshar discovered this after Almost Boss became particularly animated during a discussion about the human rights issues surrounding the niqab case (the conversational tone at the party was initially high) and spilled his glass all over the sleeve of Sharshar’s suit jacket. The sleeve subsequently spent the rest of the night trying to seduce the female guests before throwing up over a plant.

Gombaz demonstrated that sisters are still doing it for themselves by identifying a Man Target and cutting through the mingling party-goers like Moses traversing the parted waves of the Red Sea. She claimed subsequently that she was “going to get food” and that she and Man Target’s eyes had just happened to meet as she wrestled him to the ground was choosing a selection of mezze.

Sharshar - who usefully doesn’t really like to drink and is therefore the always and forever designated driver (despite the intoxication levels of his jacket sleeve) - spent most of the evening like a UN peacekeeper: allowed only to observe the course of events without himself being permitted to join in the action. He demonstrated good will and forbearance towards we, the drunkards, however. Like an indulgent granddad, he patted the Pig’s hair while the Pig patted his in order that they too could join me in marvelling at the rich textual difference and associated sensory variation experienced during the process of patting their two curly hairs (Sharshar: think Tom Jones. The Pig: Glen Medeiros.)


Sharshar


The Pig

At the end of the evening Gombaz and I line danced (or is the past tense lone danced?), she elegantly and fluidly, me flailing and limping, to house music. This is possibly the first recorded instance of such a juxtaposition of the two art forms, and is certainly so within the middle east and north Africa region. Gombaz then walked on her hands, and the Pig performed a magnificant football player-style shoulder spring (again at my insistence) which transformed the party into a small-scale suburban Cirque du Soleil, minus the dwarves.

We eventually left after the hostess called out from the other side of the room telling Gombaz and me not to keep changing the music, or else she would send us to our bedrooms (while we sniggered). I was eventually bundled into the car and the next day happily examined mobile phone photos I have no recollection of taking. Always a sign that a good time was had.

Update: Gombaz is insistent that she will teach me to dance the 'electric slide' and has made me download two country music songs in preparation. I am delighted to discover that the songs in question are by 'Trace' Adkins (the best names are verbs), and the songs are entitled 'Ladies Love Country Boys' and 'Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.' I am sold!

Separated at birth

Corella DeVille


Walid "el koun" Aouni

Best headline of 2007 so far

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Swings and roundabouts no. 2

Bad things about Cairo Mall, Haram: The monkeys maddened by being chained to fake trees in a jungle-themed coffee shop. The acres of beige polyester. The window displays full of sad looking ladies' underwear in the style worn by elderly prostitutes who refuse to admit that they've had their day.

Good things about Cairo Mall, Haram: Demonic child mannequins:

Chuckie











Demonic child mannequin.

Yeah but Forrest didn't get bothered by boys in Lancers

Continuing this week’s theme of doing foolish, masochistic things, tonight I went jogging in the streets of Zamalek with Gombaz and her 19-year old jogging pal (yes such things exist.)

To put this in context: I have not undertaken physical exercise of any kind since I was doing my dissertation last summer and, during a particularly idle moment did my Cindy Crawford: the Next Challenge Workout DVD.

What persuaded me to undertake this foolhardy step was:

1. Bum envy. Gombaz is a runner and has a posterior you can rest objects on, such is its 90 degree-ness.
2. Being 30. I wanted to test if I can actually still run normally or whether I have irredeemably acquired the gait of unfit middle aged women running for buses (head down, side to side motion, arms and handbag lodged under bosoms to stop them bouncing.)

I was happy to discover that I can still run. In fact it started out splendidly, I kept up with the kids with only minor breathing difficulties, and successfully negotiated at least two 3- foot curbs.

Then we stopped suddenly because Gombaz needed to pee and a minor detour was made to the Four Corners restaurant, after which it all went downhill. As Gombaz and friend glided along in front of me, I began to tire. I like to think that it was because of Cairo’s infernal pollution, but in fact when I face the music and listen, the tune playing is “Amnesiac is hideously unfit.” At about the time I started to lag and eventually stop, three youths in a Lancer appeared in order to shout “encouragement” at certain parts of my two companions’ anatomies. The whole circus disappeared round the corner, and when I eventually arrived (walking and swearing) I saw the youths still in full voice, but noted that they stopped when I appeared. This prompted the sobering thought that perhaps these boys mistook me for a lady chaperoning my two daughters, and had stopped their testosterone charged antics out of respect for the presence of a senior citizen.

Anyway I soldiered on and about the time I began to master my breathing, the Rugby induced knee injury which had been cured by complete inactivity decided to put in an appearance because it missed me so much. This was outside the Marriot, so I was forced to limp, red faced, the entire length of the 26th July drag to our meeting point at Um Kulthoum tower. Gombaz and her pal gallantly remained by my side and propelled me along with light banter, making me feel like an enormous taxiing airplane being guided onto the runway by the men with the lollipops.

I can now say with authority that jogging in public in Cairo is a preposterously foolish act on several levels. I had strong suspicions that it was such before embarking, because of the memory of my father jogging in Dokki in the 80s and being pelted with stones. He however, insists on wearing shorts resembling Speedo swimming trunks, and the uncharitable part of me thinks that he got off lightly with this treatment.

I am now pleased to report that I am the proud owner of a limp similar to that of Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso in Midnight Cowboy and, when mounting stairs, must swing my completely straight left leg to the side in an arc motion.

Not everything that is banned is good/we Ahmed Ezz maalu?

I voluntarily went to the cinema to watch Donia tonight. It turned out to be a particularly foolish act of masochism.

My interest in the film derived from the fact that media reviews had touted it as a bold film which crosses Egyptian cinematic red lines, tackles thorny issues such as female genital circumcision and, as a result of this audacity, had been banned by those reactionary killjoys with their busy scissors at the Ministry of Mind Control. Egyptian films seem largely to fall into one of two broad categories; arty/independent or mass consumption, by which latter is meant either Ahmed Ezz or Hany Salama in a car chase, or Mostafa Qamar/Khaled Selim running in slow motion on a beach with Dalia el Bekheiry/Nelly, all laughing uproariously at some unheard joviality and the sheer magic of life. Having had my fill of implausible plot lines and la la land Egypt First, what Religious Sectarianism?© propagandising with el Raheena , I looked forward to watching Donia. By the end of it I was longing (even more strongly than I usually do) for Ahmed Ezz surviving a 4000 foot drop off a cliff, and Russian actors pretending to be American. As Sharshar said once he had regained his ability to talk after seeing it “law makanoosh mana3ooh kont ana hamna3oo” [If they hadn’t have banned it, I would have.]

The film simply had no plot, but rather was a series of the following self-contained, apparently unrelated scenes: [Excruciatingly long, but friends share pain, right?]

- Hanan Turk does Kate Bush style dancing in a circle, while a very camp Walid Aouni with a frankly ridiculous accent (yes yes kettle and pot) and Corella Deville hairstyle entreats her to “truly feel the music” and “focus all her weight on the pivot” as she is “surrounded by the universe…the UNIVERSE….the never-ending UNIVERSEEEEE” as he himself waves his arms in the manner young children use to represent trees swaying in the wind during school plays.
- Fathy Abdel Wahab lurks in waiting for Hanan in a pervy stalker manner, and confesses his love for her after he descends upon her. Hanan rebuffs him in a playful way, but her cheeky smile, and the fact that she is standing so close to him that she is practically inhaling his nipple, tells us that she is Hot for Him.
- An overweight woman appears in a very short nightgown and belly dances.
- Mohamed Mounir rails against the banning of 1001 Nights.
- Hanan dances again, this time against the backdrop of a giant poster which is meant to be her mother. That it is actually Hanan Turk is plainly obvious to all.
- Aida Riad drives a taxi while smoking, for she is a Woman Who Doesn’t Give a Fig About Social Conventions.
- Mohamed Mounir rails against the banning of 1001 Nights, this time while topless and wiping his sweaty face all over the body of a woman wearing 407 bangles.
- Fathy jumps out from behind Aida’s taxi and tells Hanan that he loves her.
- Hanan dances. Walid is camp.
- Four overweight women dressed in what can only be described as opaque coloured cling film belly dance.
- Mohamed Mounir rails against the banning of 1001 Nights, but this time he is blind. He has lost his vision at some indeterminate moment - possibly during the five minutes that my companions and I were debating whether to get up and leave.
- Aida drives her taxi.
- Fathy and Hanan marry. Hanan wears a wedding dress made out of paper, and gets on the back of a lorry carrying a wardrobe, laughing playfully.
- Hanan and Fathy experience problems in the bedroom, largely because Hanan is eggs and consumed by feminist and existentialist angst which she simply must share with both us and poor old Fathy, who himself just wants a bit of how’s your father.
- Mohamed Mounir, this time not railing against the banning of 1001 Nights, teaches a young boy letters drawn in the sand, in an isolated spot in the desert. Blind Mohamed is led by the arm placed on the young boy’s shoulder, but nonetheless insists on extending the other arm in front of him in a comedy sleep walking manner, just in case he should bump into any buildings left carelessly in the desert.
- Hanan dances, but this time a pouting Walid is angry with her for absenting herself for ten days. He lambastes her in a super bitch way while sitting on a stool a la Boy George, clutching an invisible handbag. Hanan works through her rage by attempting to dance, in a defiant Rocky manner, but Walid and his handbag tell her that “she is not really with him.” Hanan responds by removing the pencil holding up her hair and breaking it in two (why??). The music ends dramatically with the snap and a close-up on the pencil and Hanan’s slightly squinting eyes. Walid fumes. The scene brought to mind a preposterous homosexual Million Dollar Baby. On the ground surrounding Hanan are ten male dancers doing backstroke. We don’t know why.
- Aida drives her taxi with Mohamed Mounir railing against the banning of 1001 Nights in the back.
- Hanan dances, and then Walid makes her eat a rose.
- Mohamed Mounir enters a music store and rails against the banning of 1001 Nights. Meanwhile, the audience wonders whether the director deliberately left a poster advertising Mounir’s latest album in plain view behind him. Is this post-modern irony or an oversight?? Do we care??
- Mohamed Mounir rails against the banning of 1001 Nights, and receives a gift of an uncensored Indian version of the tome, brought to him by Hanan. He briefly regains his vision and sees the birthmark on Hanan’s neck. Sharshar says that the birth mark switched between the right and left sides of Hanan’s neck. This shouldn’t be attributed to continuity problems of course. Rather, it symbolises the constant objectification of women in Egyptian society.
- Mohamed Mounir rails against the banning of 1001 Nights while feeling up Hanan.
- Being felt up by Mohamed Mounir resolves Hanan’s bedroom issues.
- More overweight belly dancing.
- Etc..

And so it went, on and on and on. It was all so highly symbolic as to be entirely stripped of fun and entertainment, but then again maybe me and my companions were too dense to see what the bloody hell eating a rose means. It will however, be well-received Outside by men in glasses wearing polo necks because its scenes with prayer beads conspicuous in the foreground and the obligatory sound of the muezzin inevitably transform it into a damning critique of the socio-economic dichotomy of gender roles in contemporary Arab society blah blah blah.

About the only scene which moved me in any way was that depicting a female circumcision, which was leg-crossingly horrific and quite well done.

We all left the cinema to the sound of my friend Amour dispensing various mother-related invectives against the film’s directors. Amour is 20, his favourite pastimes are looking at Haifa Wahby pictures and playing sadda radda, and his best film is Titanic. We bonded in my last job when I explained female menstruation to him and he repaid the favour by making me a George Wassouf cocktail. Were it not for the fact of Amour’s jubilance about the recent news that his army service had been delayed for three years, I fear that an act of violence could have been committed in the cinema tonight.

This weekend I am going to see Ma7atet Masr to get the taste of Donia out of my mouth. So to speak.

Swings and roundabouts

Good thing about Egypt: People can roam the streets wearing pyjamas, dressing gown and bedroom slippers without a single onlooker's eyebrow being raised.

Bad thing about Egypt: The right to appear in public in such attire is reserved to gentlemen aged over 65.

Elvis and the wings

I am unemployed and idle as I think is obvious from the prodigious amount of crap which spare time has allowed me to deposit on this blog. One perk of unemployment has been my ability to socialise with my cousin Mildred’s kids, Elvis (3) and Boosa (1 and a half). Spending time with them is always a wonderful experience and an opportunity for personal growth for all parties concerned: Boosa demonstrates that it is humanly possible to repeat a single word 78 times in the space of a minute, Elvis is as good as her word and doesn’t vomit in my face when I spin her on top of my head (at her insistence), and I fight the good fight and continue the war I am losing of trying to make them sound British.

Elvis has introduced me to Dora the Explorer, a bilingual Latina cartoon person with a Beatles moptop haircut and a talking monkey. Either the formula is fantastic or my brain is slowly turning into sponge, but I have been entirely seduced by Dora and her hypnotic patho-tunnelo-pyramidos, and regularly sit there fixated, my mouth hanging open, as Boosa plays in the dribble leaking out of it and Elvis climbs on my head.

I found myself watching Dora with three children under three at Mildred’s place last week. Mildred herself was out. Two of the children were Elvis and Boosa. The third kid, Nably, I recognised as the daughter of Mildred’s friends, though I wasn’t sure what she was doing there. I assumed that she was being baby-sat rather than e.g. having driven herself over to discuss her stock portfolio with Elvis.

When Mildred and her husband arrived home I briefly tore my attention away from Dora and noticed that they were carrying with them fancy dress butterfly wings, and reflected on how far either toys or parents have come since my day, when I was given empty egg boxes to play with. In the interests of short person harmony Mildred diplomatically announced that the wings were for both Elvis and Nably to share, because “sharing is caring.” Elvis attempted to challenge this by demonstrating, practically, that “not owning = moaning” but luckily was silenced by the wings. Not for long however, and, like a certain recently departed Arab ruler, she discovered that sanctions and an eventual resort to force follow failure to comply with orders to hand over embargoed items. Nably of course was entirely oblivious to Elvis’ silent rage as she enjoyed the timeshare wings, and meanwhile Boosa pronounced the word “key” repeatedly, and at high volume, for reasons best known to himself. Eventually both Nably and Elvis tired of the wings and discovered that it was more fun to run into each other at high speed.

One of life’s enduring mysteries is how small children are able to locate any available liquid matter and immediately stain themselves with it, even if they are in outer space. Nably did the honours somehow - even though I don’t recall her leaving the room - and Mildred was forced to clothe her in one of Elvis’ jackets. Noting that the wing-stealing intruder was now apparently misappropriating items from her wardrobe, and that compounding the outrage was her own mother’s complicity in this dark act, Elvis pointed at the jacket and bellowed “NO!!!” with a ferocity last witnessed at Sodom. Mustering all her impressive parenting skills, Mildred attempted to enter into negotiations with Elvis, who was pulling the face I myself pull when I see boyfriends looking at other girls’ bottoms. Mildred explained that the weather was cold, and that without a jacket Nably risked falling ill. Asking what she must have thought to be a straightforward question she asked, “you don’t want Nably to get sick do you Elvis?” To which Elvis calmly replied that in fact yes, she did want Nably to get sick - which pleased me enormously. Almost choking on the laughter I was repressing, the sofa shook with my silent hysterics as Elvis reiterated for clarity in a spooky Silence of the Lambs voice that she did definitely want Nably (who was completely unaware of Elvis’ vitriol and was herself protesting having to wear a jacket) to get sick, despite her mother’s protests.

Elvis is of course a wonderful, kind, and good-hearted child, she was merely demonstrating firstly; the importance of never asking a question the answer to which you are not sure of, and, secondly; that as compensation for not being able to go anywhere unaccompanied, drink caffeine, watch TV after 8 pm or make any executive decision of any sort, small people are allowed absolute free reign with the truth and can make startlingly rude observations with impunity. I discovered only recently that this right is rescinded at some unspecified point during puberty, and that since conversations are consequently something of an offence minefield, giving an opinion and in particular a truthful one is to be avoided at any cost. I am beginning to slowly understand why British conversation is so centred around the neutral zone of the weather, where it is virtually impossible to cause offence to one’s interlocutor, unless you are talking to a cloud.

I'm Gouna party

My gorgeous shiny cousin Gombaaz is back from the States to grace us with a brief sojourn in Egypt before she makes her escape to do her masters abroad, somewhere in the Western hemisphere, and apparently preferably in a country with a permanent seat on the Security Council. She is applying to study Kinesiology, which as I understand it means aerobics.

Gombaaz, while Egybtian through and through, has been corrupted by her six years in that cradle of sin which is the US. She now lives a Paris Hilton type lifestyle which she occasionally interrupts to pass by our house, looking gorgeous, in order to regale us, the open-mouthed Hillbillies, with descriptions of her exploits in Cairo’s various nightspots, with assorted moneyed shiny persons. Needless to say she planned and executed her new year’s celebrations with the kind of concentrated dedication that I reserve for writing my CV, or working out how many pairs of knickers I will need to take with me on a trip. Her new year in Gouna was a whirlwind of men and women in tight shirts, shoulder rubbing with tob international suber model Naomi Campbell and private parties on patios overlooking the Red Sea. She can now also legitimately combine the words “yacht,” “I went on a” and “big” in one sentence without being a preposterous liar – an ability to do so is something I have aspired to since I first saw the “Careless Whisper” video with that bird sitting on the helm of George Michael’s big vessel in a tip-ex bathing suit.

Gouna was apparently filled with Cairo’s beautiful people, the kind whose Amr Diab - garnished Grand Hyatt weddings appear in the back of magazines. The way Gombaaz described it, Gouna seems to be a wannabe Riviera enclave of Gucci handbags which has very little to do with Egypt – perhaps like a giant open-air Cilantro? In any case I am super excited to check it out, but am wondering whether people who pack their beach stuff in Seoudi Supermarket plastic bags are allowed in.

We celebrated Gombaaz’s return yesterday with some medium to heavy beverages chez moi while she explained the concept of writing on people’s walls in Facebook to me. I was duped into making an account in Facebook (which seems to be the preserve of 20 years olds with a mania for joining groups) and now find that people with nothing better to do write on my ‘wall’ and that in order to reply, I in turn must go to their Facebook page and write on their ‘wall’. The result is a series of totally disjointed, demented statements floating around in space. Not that communicating with others hasn’t always had this quality for me, but it is somewhat alarming to see it in a visual form. Facebook seems a stupendous waste of time (says the woman who writes a blog) as most of the messages written on these sodding walls consist of “see you tomorrow!” and “it was great seeing you today!” i.e. it is used by people who are in actual physical contact in real life and therefore should know better.

Gombaaz trawled through the 3 million odd people on her Facebook page with me explaining who is engaged to which billionaire. Needless to say all seemed to have photographs taken in mansions or in Miami beach homes, and all without exception were born in or after the year 1982. Looking at their nubile young images made me feel like an internet paedo pervert, and I was glad when the whole torrid process was interrupted when Gombaaz decided that she simply had to go out and ‘party,’ which is American for going down the pub. After a few phone calls she had found someone going to an establishment called 35 who would let her and me in for free. I would not usually set foot in such a place, because I am distinctly unshiny and generally a killjoy, but the fresh new year sap is still flowing abundantly causing me to undertake foolhardy endeavours where general moroseness and a vague sense of doom would ordinarily act as a check. I was also somewhat pissed at the time I agreed to go, which must account for why I invited along Bald but Deliberately So, someone I have never met, who is cousin Mildred’s colleague and who I have spoken to once or twice on MSN.

I was initially pleased to discover that 35 is apparently so-named because this appeared to be the average age of its clientele. Gombaaz – who is 21 - assured me that this is not usually the case. She was horrified by the specimens on display, many of whom did seem slightly advanced in age, if not menopausal. She later explained that all the trendy sexy people were still travelling, and that the place had been taken over by Gulfies during the Eid - like aliens landing from space as I understood it. From our vantage point at the small bedside table used to demarcate the metre squared allotted to us in lieu of a proper table, I could nevertheless discern a certain level of glamour and key-to-expensive-car ownership which I personally only witness on Nip/Tuck. At one point a couple so gorgeous walked in the whole joint lit up with the radiance of their beauty, and I wondered whether if I touched the hem of her haute couture jacket, I would be granted six foot long legs as well.

After an hour and a half of people watching, continuous standing and listening to a man discuss the car buying habits of the Libyans, I threw in the towel. On the way back someone rang me on my mobile. Seeing a strange number, I immediately thought that it must be my pal the stalker, and answered, but without saying anything, leaving a man’s voice to say “hello? Hellooooo?” into the ether before I hung up. He rang again, and I made the Pig answer on the basis that in the paper-scissors-stone strength test a male voice is the stone to stalker’s scissors. But inevitably it wasn’t the stalker. It was poor old Bald but Deliberately So who I had forgotten about entirely and who resorted to sending a timid text explaining who exactly he was. I look forward to the awkward moment when we meet via Mildred, and I have to explain that the Pig is not in fact my pimp, that I don’t usually have men answering my phone for me, and he in turn can explain why it is that when questioned by the Pig he said that wa7ed sa7boo, a friend, gave him my number. Bonkers!

Cairo Superdome

Little white lies are as pernicious as big black lies. When they mix together, a great greyness of ambiguity descends, society is cast adrift in an amoral sea, and corruption and rot and decay start to flourish. Such is the time we are now passing through. Everything is disintegrating because details are neglected and nothing is regarded seriously.

Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters.

About the only way in which I allow Christmas to interrupt my life is calling my Grandmother in the UK. Christmas was always fairly ridiculous, but it makes no sense whatsoever when not accompanied by my father’s drunken joviality and the dulcet tones of my mother’s farting over the Queen’s speech. But Gran loves Christmas because Christmas means family - perhaps the reason why I dislike Christmas. Joking obviously, Dad.

While I am the now the proud possessor of a phone-line at home, the line is filled with so much static (a free and unadvertised gift courtesy of Egypt Telecom) that it sounds like the person I am talking to is eating foil in a tornado, and I myself am barely audible. “Kharwasha” it’s called in Arabic, and never was a word more onomatopoeically evocative of the blight that it describes.

Not wanting to spend 30 le on a phone card in order to have two minutes for the privilege of saying, “Hello Gran, Happy kharwasha kharwasha kharwasha” I was forced out into Cairo’s winter streets and to the telephone exchange.

The Centraal is as 1960s Russia as it sounds, and my local one even looks like it should house the Ministry of Truth, imposing granite monolith that it is. During the day people “queue” for hours in order to be told that they are at the wrong window, before queuing some more in order to tell a man who doesn’t care that their phones aren’t working. At night the windows close leaving only the telephone cubicles. This being Egypt it is mandatory for conversations to be conducted at full volume, and the empty hall is filled with the sound of disembodied voices which hang in the air like the cigarette smoke from the bored cashier watching them. Cutting through this is the computerised robotic voice which announces the duration and cost of each and every call made, and which always forms an oddly dispassionate and striking contrast to the dawn chorus of emotions being played out at full volume inside the eight booths.

Anyway I spoke to my Gran who was enjoying doing her Don Corleone thang at the family dinner, and then went to pay the cashier, who seems to be Egypt’s most popular man, if the Yahoo Messenger and MSN sounds coming from his computer are anything to go by. His many contacts obviously haven’t seen his moustache. He printed out my bill, which I misread as 9.50 LE. I gave him ten. He was serving someone else simultaneously, and after I gave him the ten pound note, he appeared to be looking around for something. Thinking that perhaps he didn’t have a 50 piastre note to give me in change, I gave him another 50 piastre note so that he could give me a pound back. He accepted the 50 piastre note, and I waited for the change. He looked blankly at me, and I showed him the receipt and what I thought was the total. In fact I had missed out the final total after the telecom company adds an extra sum of money, perhaps for the privilege of using a chair while we talk. He pointed out that the total was ten. “Fair enough”, I said, “and the extra 50 piastres I just gave you by mistake?” He looked at me impassively and smiled the smile of a man who makes you laugh only so that he can reach inside and steal your gold fillings, while the MSN bonged, bonged, bonged beside him.

Needless to say I was not about to create a hoo-hah about 50 piastres. But as always where the material sum at stake is not big enough to fight for, I was left contemplating the principle involved, which is not that a government employee took advantage of my stupidity to earn himself some quick cash, but that both he and I accepted it as entirely normal. Because deceitful, mercenary, self-interest and palm-greasing is the norm in any interaction between officialdom and individuals, between individuals, even within a family, particularly where it involves money.

This obviously is nothing new, but a question to which I would love an answer is this: was it always like this? Did this behaviour develop in response to corruption (when??) as a sort of survival mechanism and spread? Or is corruption simply the manifestation of something more sinister within Egyptian society’s psyche which regards truth as relative and other people’s pain as a stepping block for one’s own advancement? Growing up I was frequently under orders by my mother to “not tell Daddy” about e.g. a sum of money she had spent which she didn’t want him to find out about while my father himself regarded the smallest of untruths as a moral outrage. And on holidays back in Egypt I was constantly aware of secrets in the house, of double-dealing…Needless to say the unedifying spectacle of relatives ripping each other apart over land and money has been a leitmotif throughout the Egyptian part of my childhood and continues today.Which is not to say that the English are somehow more upstanding and that everything is cricket old chap, and fair play. God forbid.

Perhaps the poverty and oppression which has assaulted Egypt for so long has, metaphorically speaking, had the same ravaging effect as Hurricane Katrina had on New Orleans. Cairo feels like a giant Superdome where ‘normal’ human relations in every single area of life have been suspended - seemingly by consensus - and people will eat each other alive if necessary to survive.

Other

After the heady days of the Masters degree, intellectual stimulation these days is largely confined to:

1. Contemplation of what the point of Robin on Dr Phil actually is (can the man not find his way out of the studio unaided?);
2. Contemplation of reasons to get out of bed
3. Seminars

The seminars I have attended so far have on the whole been excellent, informative and fun, with the exception of a meeting on ‘safety on Egypt’ which was mostly bonkers. The flyer promised to provide ladies with tips on defending themselves against pervs, but we ended up listening to tips by an ebullient Texan on which type of fire extinguisher to keep in the kitchen, and the best course of action when stampeded by a crowd of 5,000 furious Somalis, amongst other things.

Yesterday’s seminar dealt with the situation of the Baha’is in Egypt and, in particular, the recent court decision overturning an earlier decision in their favour which forces them to write ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’ on official documents, or forego them altogether. This is tantamount to renouncing their citizenship and effectively paralyses them; attempting to navigate the formidable labyrinth of Egyptian bureaucracy without an ID card or birth certificate is like being lost in the desert with neither stars nor compass to guide you. The Bah’ai without official papers cannot receive inoculations, cannot apply to university, cannot delay military service in order to go to university, cannot receive state benefits, and does not even escape this absurdity once he dies; one speaker described a case where a Bah’ai man was forced to keep the body of a deceased female relative in his house for days because he refused to write ‘Muslim’ on her death certificate and was therefore not allowed to bury her. The authorities were apparently insistent that she convert posthumously.

Similarly Orwellian machinations underlie the origins of the ID card case; until 2004 the Bah’ais were allowed to write ‘other’ in the religious field in ID cards, leave it blank, or write a dash. This changed after a mysterious internal decree was passed within the Interior Ministry banning this, just as ID cards were being computerised. Note that none of the Bah’ais at the seminar yesterday nor the legal group representing them, have succeeded in obtaining a copy of the decree, or even seeing it. The result was that when 3rd or 4th generation Bah’ais attempted to procure official documentation for themselves and their children, they were informed that the computer no longer accepted ‘other’ and that they would have to record themselves as Muslims. And yes Mr Boutros Fanous Girgis Milaad, that includes you, despite the fact that neither you nor your ancestors were ever Muslim

And the tragedy is that despite the extensive press coverage generated by the issue (some 400 articles according to one of the speakers), the general public seem unaware of what Bah’aism actually is. There seems to be a widespread misperception that Bah’aism is some heretical branch of Islam, specifically Shia Islam, and that it has a sinister Zionist agenda. In fact the Bah’ais at the seminar last night were some of the most chill people I’ve ever met, given their circumstances. Upbeat and positive, they explained that they are Egyptian citizens whose beliefs forbid them from opposing the government (except where the government interferes in their relationship with God), that they are not seeking recognition of the validity or otherwise of Bah’aism (which the speaker explained can only be judged by God), and that all they want is the right to official papers without being forced to lie about their beliefs. That this right (to freedom of belief) is recognised in the Egyptian Constitution, Islamic Sharia, international human rights treaties ratified by Egypt, and previous court decisions seems to have escaped the State Council whose decision will force thousands of citizens to lie in their official papers or face bureaucratical paralysis.

But hey-hum...God forbid that the giant fist of religious and cultural homogeniety should release its grip even fractionally to accommodate the basic rights and welfare of Egypt's citizens.

Surrealist harassment

Scene:

Amnesiac is waiting for a taxi in the cold outside Toot Express, in midan Fini, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt.

Man in car: "Welcome. Welcome to Miami!"

Mystery:

* Had this man somehow discerned that only ten minutes earlier I had been watching the Miami based genius of Nip/Tuck? Did he want to keep the magic alive for me? Was I supposed to pretend that he was in fact Dr Christian Troy (he resembled Saddam Hussein) and jump in the car with him for a quick bottom lift?

A recipe

Egyptian cinema souffle

Ingredients
- 150 people
- 140 mobiles, all turned on with ringing volume on ‘loud’
- 140 Moustafa Qamar ringtones (if it is not the season for Moustafa Qamar, this ingredient may be substituted with Amr Diab at any time, and Hisham Abbas’ el asmaa el 7osina ringtone during the Eid)
- 1 six year old, preferably one with the capability to concentrate on the film but unable to comprehend anything without constantly questioning baba what is going on in the loudest voice possible
- 1 newborn with colic
- 2 toddlers (for added piquancy the toddlers should just have drank drunk [correction by Abu Amnesiac] three bottles of Cola each)
- 6 teenage boys going through puberty
- 6 teenage girls going through puberty. Important note: because these last two ingredients do not mix well together, they should be seated as far apart as possible. You will find however that they will still try to communicate either through giggles, or ringing each other.
- 3 ushers, ushers should have the stamina to be able to hover next to customers who have been shown their seats and whisper ‘ay 7’edma tanya ya bey?’ until they have extracted at least pound. This should go on until the end of the film if necessary.
- 1 pair of women ‘whispering’ about how Nancy Agram is ‘3assal’
- 1 pair of men ‘whispering’ about how Nancy Agram is a ‘mozza’
- 10 people who arrive twenty minutes into the film, and force an entire row to stand up as they pass
- 1 woman forced to stand for the 10 people trying to get past her, who loses her mobile in the process, and after noisily looking for it makes her husband ring her in order to locate it.
- 1 argument between this husband and wife
- 1 film projector, preferably mounted at a 40 degree angle
- Subtitles. Note that any subtitles will do, they do not necessarily have to bear any relation to the film itself. For a special flourish, why not try adding French subtitles? This will ensure that both Arabic and French subtitles combined take over half the screen and completely obscure the film.
- 1 intermission, preferably at the most crucial moment in the film.

Optional
A film.

Method of preparation
Combine all the ingredients and leave to stew for 90 minutes if making the soufflé American style, and two and half hours if you prefer the Egyptian version of this dish.

**Note: Regardless of whether you are making the American or Egyptian version of this dish, in no case should you add scenes of a sexual nature, since this risks making the entire soufflé collapse and could possibly bring about the moral ruination of your kitchen. Should you discover something of an adult nature in your raw ingredients, make sure to extract it even if in the process you ruin the film.

Glass houses - Bush & Ahmadinejad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,1970972,00.html

Have lemon will travel

My very touchy feely friend Mauve Bubble (who is in the UK) says that she likes reading my blog ‘because she feels very close to me.’ This inexplicably makes me feel like I have died, and that the blog is in fact fulfilling the same medium function as Whoopi in the supernatural-sexual pottery frenzy which was ‘Ghost.’ Mauve Bubble means well of course: she is perhaps the only person I know who never holds a grudge, never allows the conveyance of news about other people to descend into fishmonger’s wife gossip, and has an innocence whose city limits border dangerously close on Naivety Ville. She has also got a unique left-field way of looking at things with the result that when listening to a story about how so-and-so is a complete bastard and I should never have taken up with him in the first place because he’s insane, she will ask “yes, but does he like tangerines?” without any trace of humour or irony.

Her nom-de-guerre on this blog is inspired by the fact that when she is told of future events of any conceivable risk or danger, she will instruct people to wrap themselves up in an imaginary ‘mauve bubble’ so no harm can come to them. I cannot tell you how I spluttered and guffawed with ridicule when I first heard her say this. Now, as in everything with Mauve, it seems entirely reasonable and in any case has its origins in the lush oasis of kindness and goodness which is her heart.

I remember once in a class we were immersed in some very earnest discussion about the situation in Palestine, or the origins of World War II, and I looked over at Mauve who was clearly formulating a question about the role of polystyrene in war or similar. Waiting for a pause in between the talk of capitalist tyranny and ideological conflict, she asked “yes but why do wars happen?” - and genuinely wanted an answer. That year - which was ostensibly spent learning fos7a Arabic in Alexandria - was largely dominated with Mauve’s bonkers non-sequiturs. One afternoon there was a well-attended and at times violent demonstration on campus about some injustice or other, complete with roaring voices and placards. While discussions about the disgraceful twenty-year state of emergency were held around her, Mauve looked out from the building in which we the expensive foreigners were locked and said “look at all their black hair,” before photographing all the black hair and producing a very fine, dramatic picture.

It is the artist’s eye in her I suppose; she is dotty but highly intelligent in that way that left-handed people sometimes are. Frequently when she and I walk down what I understand to be an entirely nondescript street, she will suddenly stop and spend twenty minutes photographing a bin, while I try to resist throwing myself in it. When we first arrived in Alex she insisted that five baffled people (who didn’t yet know her or each other) stroke the bark of a tree to which she was particularly drawn. She also makes homemade cards, and while I tease her about being too tight to shell out two quid for a proper card, her cards, like her photographs and all her art, are always breathtaking in their creativity.

Not that her dreaminess and war rationing philosophy is always easy to live with. Mauve and I twice went away on holiday together in winter, and never again. I am somewhat ‘high- maintenance’ about cleanliness (read OCD) and also have an extreme reptile-like aversion to the cold. In Paris I tried to make her stay in at least a one-star hotel on the pretence that it had a TV and would therefore allow me to improve my French. In reality I was trying to steer Mauve away from the bomb shelter to which I suspected she would lead us given half the chance. Sure enough I shivered for two long days in a youth hostel/dungeon which I believe was once used by the Gestapo to interrogate members of the French Resistance. Never before had I sought shelter in a shopping centre to keep warm, it was like being homeless without the free soup. Mauve simply could not understand how I could resent blankets with the consistency of stubble, and no central heating, when we were afforded such a generous breakfast – what a bargain!

In Syria the film repeated itself, this time with Mauve’s friend Och Aye Yum Kippur, who was our host. Incredibly Syria was colder than Paris, or perhaps my stony heart made it seem so, and I endured three days of Siberian prison cell type youth hostels and crying in the snow, yes snow, while Mauve and Och Aye talked about dabka and looked at old ruins in the middle of nowhere. Just before I caught frostbite I hauled the icicle which was my body to the Egyptair office in Damascus and changed my ticket, flying out the next day and practically kissing the tarmac upon arrival in sunny Cairo.

Trips with Mauve in summer are another story entirely – a real pleasure. Our last was to Mount Sinai and St Catherine's monastery in 2002 and was wonderful apart from the fact that there was no running water at the summit (can’t they attach pipes to the clouds???) and I had inexplicably forgotten the Wet Ones without which I don’t move (yes OCD). I was therefore coaxed into cleaning my fingers with a lemon Mauve had brought (she travels with these sorts of things) upon the promise that it would make my nails nice and white. And it did. But it also made them stink. And sticky.

On the descent from the mountain we were discussing my career plans (ah late lamented youthful optimism) and I made reference to an NGO. Mauve commented that she, too, would like to work in an NGO. After a pause during which I tried to wipe off the sand which had stuck to my fingers and which made me look like I was wearing gloves, Mauve got the Question Look and inquired “what is an NGO?” before I ran screaming to the monks.

30

Things I wish I’d known then:

1. Instincts should be followed.
2. Preparation of Ma7shi koromb should not be attempted without supervision.
3. Nothing is worth worrying about too much.
4. Excessive sharing of problems is like breaking wind; you feel better for it but it makes those around you nauseous eventually.
5. Writing should be saved every 30 seconds in Word. And in comments windows.
6. Tartan and mittens is not a good look.

Parental love/plea to an errant child

Splendid Arabic neologisms no.1

backub verb
To back up files on a computer.

-Lazem tebackubby el hard 3ala el combuter beta3ek ya Amnesiac.

School of Strife Life

30 year report card: Amnesiac

Dear parents/guardians,

As your child is now approaching the halfway mark in the marathon which is her life, we are issuing you with a report card which details her progress and marks so far. We hope you will find it both informative, and an improvement on her last assessment 15 years ago when you were told by Amnesiac’s geography teacher that she was “a pain in the behind.”

Mathematics - D
Since Amnesiac is barely able to count we are pleased that she has made it this far without inadvertently entering into a fiscal agreement reneging on which would result in her house (your house Um Amnesiac), her parents, or herself being seized by the bank in forfeit of such an agreement.

Amnesiac is making no attempt whatsoever to complete the basic numeracy exercises we have set her, and it is this we think which explains her apparent nonchalance about the fact that she has 3 pounds L.E in her Egyptian bank account, and 5 pounds sterling in her UK account. We are beginning to have concerns that she does not understand the concept of money.

Economics - E
We have been using pictures to explain the idea of ‘saving for a rainy day’ to Amnesiac, but the idea remains alien to her. She justifies her habit of buying books with the last ten pounds in her pocket by claims that they are an ‘investment’ and necessary for work. When asked how these books translate into an ability to pay bills, she attempts to dodge the question by pointing out that she never buys shoes or handbags ‘like other women.’

We are hoping that the concept of saving will become clearer to Amnesiac once she actually finds employment.

Foreign languages- C
Amnesiac puts 100 percent effort into her language lessons, but despite this her performance remains poor, and she is barely comprehensible. She has not been discouraged however, and gamely practises her pidgin Arabic with anyone who does not escape fast enough. She is generally attentive and alert in the classroom, and is not discouraged by her classmates’ sniggers.

Amnesiac finds pronunciation particularly challenging, but when corrected claims that she is not in fact speaking Arabic, but ‘Sarabic’ and that in fact it is we (fellow pupils, teachers and the world generally) who are wrong, rather than her. She also relies on this excuse to justify her frequent lapse into profanities which we discussed with you after her latest detention.

History - Result still outstanding pending resolution of challenge to last result initiated by Amnesiac
Amnesiac’s complete inability to remember dates and events of any sort would not be a problem were it not for the fact that she insists on making reference to past events in support of points she makes during arguments. This has proved particularly problematic with one of her classmates, the Pig, who displays a level of obstinacy equal to that of Amnesiac. We are frequently forced to seat them at opposite ends of the classroom because their bickering has proved to be a disruptive influence. Even when separated however, they continue to argue in a loud stage whisper, and we were forced last week to make Amnesiac stand outside the headmaster’s office after the Pig accused her of fabrication, and she retorted by saying that it wasn’t fabrication, but rather ‘historical revisionism,’ and if George Bush can do it why can’t she? She then punched the Pig.

Physical education - N/A
Amnesiac now refuses to do sport of any kind claiming that it would exacerbate her rugby knee injury – which as we understand it, was comprehensively dealt with two years ago. During P.E she watches the boys play football in their shorts and ranks them in order of best legs, while eating Marmite sandwiches.

Logic and moral reasoning
Amnesiac has yet to pass the entrance examination necessary for acceptance on this course.

Note from headmaster
Amnesiac has at times demonstrated signs of her potential over the past 30 years, but it is still not yet possible to say conclusively that these incidents were not mere blips in an otherwise consistent pattern of mediocrity/disaster.

She is generally a pleasure to teach, but we have noticed that her behaviour becomes erratic, odd and at times quasi-psychopathic during one week of each month. We have discovered that allowing Amnesiac to watch episodes of Nip/Tuck in the school basement with the lights out while ensuring zero contact with human beings of any description relieves these symptoms.

Targets for the next 30 years

1 – Amnesiac should strive to find a job before the age of retirement.
2 – We have suggested that if she didn’t insist on being so obstreperous and insisting that pink is grey when it is in fact pink, she would improve her chances of finding a husband and giving her parents grandchildren, which as Um Amnesiac has made clear to her, is what she was put on this earth to do.
3 – Amnesiac should work towards being a grown-up instead of acting like a teenage boy. We have suggested that she attend class 101 ‘life skills’ which cover such things as; receiving money and taking it to the bank without spending it en route, hosting dinner parties for more than one person, talking to strangers without causing great offence, and removing wine stains from other people’s white sofas without being caught.

If I told you that you've got a lovely bosom, would you hold it against me?

AUC today held its discussion on the Eid downtown sexual harassment, and it was lots of fun. There were four speakers, flanked on one end by a veiled woman, and on another by a decidedly unveiled woman wearing a racy shirt and skirt number. They were the moderators. Why two moderators were needed I don’t know, but the contrast between them made me wonder whether this was an attempt to Represent the Full and Rich Spectrum of Egyptian Womanhood in all her manifestations.

The problem was examined from socio-economic, legal and advocacy perspectives with a view to formulating possible solutions. Galal Amin, professor of Economics and a man who doesn’t like to be interrupted, spoke engagingly about the rampant unemployment strangling Egypt and the concomitant despair, disillusion and alienation which he thinks explains the lack of respect for anyone or anything (including themselves) amongst Cairo’s disaffected youth. He was going to explain how the situation in Egypt mirrored the Latin American pattern of development or lack of it, but was interrupted by not one, but two pieces of paper (from the two moderators) telling him that his time was almost up. I assume that the second piece of paper concerned his time limit, but judging by his indignation and petulant announcement of “THAT’S IT!!” (after which he folded both his notes and his arms and lapsed into a sulk) the missive might have had “you’re rubbish” written on it. He perked up subsequently during questions, with jokes and insightful observations.

After an awkward silence during which the panel regrouped and pretended that Amin’s tantrum wasn’t happening, Mariz Tadros pointed out that the conspicuous absence of a police presence during the events downtown reflects a general policing policy of suppressing individuals and groups perceived as a threat to the regime, rather than a ‘protect and serve’ philosophy. Hence, if one of the women attacked had shouted anti-regime political slogans during her ordeal she would have found herself instantly surrounded by an intense and unremitting security presence. Tadros also pointed to the fact that reporting an assault to the police is not an option for many women given that in entering a police station a woman is exposing herself to a further risk of assault or mistreatment at the hands of the police. Law professor Amr Shalakany also pointed to the difficulties inherent in the complaint process; the need for the victim to identify herself and the low to zero chance that the complaint will be pursued where the victim is unable to identify her assailant. ECWR representative Rebecca Chiao made the plain as the hand on my arse nose on my face observation that sexual harassment is not perceived as a problem by some men, but rather is seen as a demonstration of their machismo, and harmless fun.

Predictably, things became heated when questions were invited from the audience. After a series of questions, an American woman objected to what she perceived as women collapsing into the role of the victim rather than asserting themselves. This provoked Shalakany to suggest that women respond to verbal sexual harassment rather than staying silent, prompting another audience member to explain that nothing works - answering back, not answering back, hitting them – the harassment just keeps on a-coming. She also startled all those with a reasonable command of Arabic by saying the very rude equivalent of the C-word (which translates into ‘private parts of your mother’ and whose very mention makes me reach for the smelling salts). She used this word in the context of charming things addressed to her in the street, rather than directing it at Shalakany, but subsequent comments made by the professor clearly left many audience members wanting to say it to him himself. He put forward a weird ‘sexual harassment as empowerment’ theory, suggesting that women should enjoy the power of their sexuality and bask in the warm glow of compliments they receive in the street, blushing coyly and laughing like playful kittens behind their hands. He suggested to one woman complaining of her experience just to ‘get over it.’ He appears to think that sexual harassment consists of the occasional wolf whistle and well-mannered assessments of the beauty of, for example, the female shoulder. I wish! I wish that all Cairo’s sexual predators looked like the man with the green eyes who pursues Nancy Agram on a moped in the ‘Ah we Nuss’ video, and that their harassment was conducted in a calm and silent manner (while wearing vests) like the fit builder bloke in her 'Yay Sehr Ayono' clip. But I will heed his advice. Next time an overweight man stops picking his nose long enough to grab his crotch and compare me to a foodstuff of some variety (in front of a crowd of people) I will make sure to thank God that He made me a woman.

Relentless day after day comments are exhausting. While it might be the first time the bloke makes a spontaneous random comment that day, chances are the woman has heard it a thousand times before, and at least ten times on that day. These comments are at the relatively harmless end of a spectrum of offensive behaviour which includes at the opposite end violent sexual assault; hence why seemingly innocuous remarks are so threatening - because (apart from being bloody annoying) they are so intimately linked with more threatening and sinister behaviour.

Having said that (and this is where the sisters will disown me) I personally find the occasional imaginative compliment welcome. Note that this does not include mere lascivious humiliation. The best one I have received so far was ‘meen mass2oul 3an el 7alawa deih’ [who’s responsible for this sweetness’] because the context was harmless, the bloke said it with a cheeky glint in his eye, and most importantly it made me laugh. But it is all about context and the way it’s said…most men lack the panache to pull it off without causing offence but, sigh, the buggers will insist on trying.