Mini-Job

Well, I’ve managed to get a mini-job… sort of. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t looking for one. I’ve overly content being the unemployed Dip Wife, but one was presented to me. My Arabic teacher, Suheir, asked me if I’d like to work with her cousin who was interested in honing her English skills. This had come up earlier as the head of the language lab at the embassy, Ahmad, asked me one day if I’d be interested in working with a local Saudi Arabian family on their English (they were friends of someone in HR). They were interested in meeting with someone for a few hours on the weekend, but with my schedule being so erratic, and me wanting to see Ron whenever possible on weekends, I didn’t feel I could be consistent (not to mention having no idea what I’d be doing). So I regretfully declined.

But then Suheir asked me the same thing, and said her cousin would be fine with an erratic schedule and would prefer to meet during the week. Since I adore Suheir, I agreed to meet with her cousin Hala. We arranged a meeting for today and she texted me her address.

Thirty minutes before our meeting, I hopped in a cab and told him approximately where to go. I had found the street on the map, but of course didn’t know exactly where the building was. The address was 238 Sudan Street, and before I left the house I purposefully looked up how to say 238, as my number-knowledge is weak. But when we got to Sudan, I just opted to get out of the taxi and wander. Of course, this is rarely a good idea as numbered buildings are few and far between. I ended up calling her and she directed me to go right… but she meant left. So she called a little while later when I didn’t show up and told me to turn around and she’d send someone to meet me in front of the pharmacy. She asked what I was wearing and I told her a blue shirt and I had blonde hair – there was no way she’d miss me in this neighborhood (if I knew how to say “neon sore thumb” in Arabic I would have). So a woman came and got me and I followed her the opposite way down the street. Honestly, I wouldn’t have found it had I headed in that direction anyway. I do wonder if we westerners are just childlike and need to be spoon-fed directions, or do Egyptians also wander around aimlessly trying to find an address?

So I met with Hala and her business partner, Gilan. They met in college, 20 years ago, and now run their own graphic design and printing house, with 15 employees and they own several apartments in the same building. Hala speaks excellent English, but she wants to get more comfortable with it, and Gilan’s English is like my Arabic, so we puttered along with Hala’s help. They’ve offered to pay me for the time, and will help with my Arabic as well, so it’s a win-win situation. I enjoyed chatting with them, though I have found that some questions Egyptians ask tend to feel a little too personal to westerners (like, “Why don’t you go out and find a job?”) and they were very interested to learn that I was 38 and had only been married a year. They are both in their early 40s and I don’t believe either are married. But they seem to have this idea that American women marry much younger than I did – which I guess could be true. But I think it’s closer to just being a misconception of American women, much as we have misconceptions about Egyptian and Islamic women. They wanted to know what I thought about Egypt and what I thought about living in an Islamic country, and I tempered my answers as I definitely don’t want to offend anyone and admittedly am quite ignorant on Islam. But one interesting comment Hala made was that she didn’t like Bangkok at all when she visited it. She said it was just too dirty and filthy. Having to circumvent piles and piles of trash to get to her building, I guess it just goes to show that one man’s trash, truly is another man’s treasure. I’m slated to meet with them again next Monday, so we’ll see how this goes. (For all of my concerted attempts to avoid ever being a teacher, despite a professorial lineage, here I go.)

May I Introduce: Sir Albert Gezira

Well, it’s happened. I’ve picked up my first, and hopefully last, Cairo street kitten. But don’t worry!! We’re not keeping him. A friend from work, who came here with a kitty (ironically one she grabbed at the Khan a few years ago) had expressed interest in getting another one, so after determining that Albert was healthy (despite being 4-5 weeks, alone, hungry and extremely filthy) I sought out to see if she was interested. Even without meeting him, she apparently came in to work the next day and told Ron that Albert better enjoy feathers as she just bought him a new toy. She won’t be in permanent housing until February, so we’ll keep him until then. And we’ll get some proper veterinary tests run to verify his overall health before we attempt to introduce him to the Big Boys, as he’s currently living in our third bathroom, with periodic exploratory visits to our spare bedroom for playtime.

This all came about this past Tuesday as I walked home from Arabic class. Typically, anywhere you walk in Cairo you pass stray cats and kittens, but they’re usually semi-feral so they either scamper away as you approach or they watch you warily. But as I passed this scrawny little pathetic kitten, just hunched on a dirty piece of tarp on the sidewalk, he didn’t run away, or even move. He just lifted his head and looked at me and I had the strongest urge to just bend over and scoop him up. But I refrained and walked on. But I did keep peeking back over my shoulder to see him just sitting there.

As I walked on, I told myself that I can’t fix the problem here in Egypt. But then I remembered about the starfish* and knew I had to do something. So I came home, grabbed Ron, who was home finishing his research paper that day, a fabric shopping bag, a towel and a ½ can of cat food and we walked back to where I’d seen him.

As I rounded the corner I saw the dirty tarp and thought that I saw something in the spot I’d left him. And I was right. In 20-30 minutes, he hadn’t moved an inch. So I scooped him up, gave him the can of cat food which he ate ravenously as I carried him home in the shopping bag. (I wasn’t being mean, I just figured, correctly, that he’d be riddled with fleas and didn’t want to infest our airline carriers.)

I did attempt to take him directly to the vet next door, but I hadn’t made an appointment, so I made one for the next day and we prepared our third bathroom for him. I spent the next 24 hours feeding him and trying to get some of the Cairo street crud off of him, out of his ears and nose and eyes (he loved these washcloth baths, and would roll and purr constantly). We did some flea-removal and verified that there were no obvious injuries. The vet visit the next day was a little disappointing as I was hoping for a more thorough check, but all he did was take his temp and give him an adult-dose of flea meds despite his age of about 4-5 weeks and weight of less than 1.4 pounds.

But after five days, Albert is thriving and adorable!! He has been gaining confidence daily, branching out from the security of my lap to explore the bedroom; loves a shoelace and ping-pong ball we’ve given him; sleeps with one of Clifford’s stuffed toys (I figured Clifford could give up one of many so Albert could sleep with something soft); enjoys visitors; had his first nail-cutting and survived the “trauma” of it; and loves to nuzzle under your chin purring loudly and kneading constantly. He’s a very happy and grateful kitten.

I did have a brief flash at one point that Ron and I were being given remedial parenting classes. Ron had said he’d hang out with Albert in the bedroom, while I went and started getting dinner together (Mrs. Cleaver, watch out!). While cooking, I kept hearing things like, “Oh, no!” and “Albert, don’t!” and “Are you okay?” I finally asked how things were, and Ron said they were fine, Albert just tumbled off the bed after clambering up the quilt. If we fail remedial kitten parenting, does that mean we have to go back and start over with plants (maybe I shouldn’t mention that our basil plant died…)?

~~~~~
*(I was introduced to the following, written by Loren Eiseley, almost twenty years ago and it has stuck with me ever since.):

There was a man who was walking along a sandy beach where thousands of starfish had been washed up on the shore. He noticed a boy picking the starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. The man observed the boy for a few minutes and then asked what he was doing. The boy replied that he was returning the starfish to the sea, otherwise they would die. The man asked how saving a few, when so many were doomed, would make any difference whatsoever? The boy picked up a starfish and threw it back into the ocean and said "It made a difference to that one..."

Cave Churches

Up amongst the hills of Moqattam near the Citadel on the outskirts of Cairo exists a collection of churches known as the Monastery of St. Simon. Despite the lack of monks, they still refer to it as a monastery. There are two primary churches, both have been built since 1970 for the local inhabitants.

Around 1970, the government of Cairo had the Zaballeen, garbage collectors, move out of the city to the edges, and with them, the city dump. The Zaballeen are Christians, so they found the need for a local church and it’s said that they decided to build one inside the limestone that surrounded them. So during 17 days of Ramadan one year, they coordinated the blasting of dynamite with the daily cannon boom announcing the iftar meal, so as not to be noticed. Not surprisingly, it’s not easy to get permits in Cairo to build a Christian church. However, they did build the second church “legally” and it took them 13 years.

The most fascinating aspect about both of these churches is that they have been built literally within the rock and are both immense in scope. As you can see from the pictures of the first one, the one built in 17 days, they merely hollowed out an existing cave and created a second entrance.



The second church is even larger and is said to seat 3,000 people. Both churches hold weekly services and if you look around on the walls of both churches and the whole complex, you will see carvings in the stone depicting St. Simon, Jesus and various Biblical tales. These have all been carved by a Polish expat, Mario. During our tour we were lucky enough to actually meet him, though I’m hoping to get in touch with him again to see if I could do an interview for an article. He said he was called here over 16 years ago and has been working on it ever since. His work is very good and most of the carvings are life-size, and many are located at dizzying heights on the stone walls (you can see the scaffolding around some that he’s currently working on).



Both churches are really phenomenal sights. It really shows what “the power of the people” can accomplish when they set their minds to it.

To get to these churches you have to drive through Garbage City, and following our tour we did a second stop at the recycling center that was established within Garbage City about twenty years ago. I am writing that up for a separate posting.

Day of Rejection

Today has been a day of rejection and I’m just trying to keep my spirits up. Some of us expats have been sharing tales of recent taxi incidents, and they’re not the old fun taxi tales, these all reflect a change in attitude and fares. Ron had an incident the other evening where he grabbed a cab after work and agreed on a fare of 10LE before he even got in (typically I pay about 6-7LE, so you can see that this was already a nicely padded fare). During the ride, Ron was chatting to the driver and the driver admitted that the fares triple when someone is going to or from one of the nice hotels (keep that in mind, travelers). When he got to his drop off point the driver suddenly insisted on 15LE. He even went to far as to get out of the taxi and follow Ron asking for the additional 5LE. Out of pure frustration and annoyance, Ron gave him the 5LE and he went away. The problem is that Ron remained furious for days after (and rightly so).

We have heard rumblings that the Egyptian government is going to require that all of the old black-and-white taxis be taken off the road and replaced by the new yellow, clean, air-conditioned, and metered taxis (when, we don't know, and frankly we'll all be a bit surprised if it actually comes to pass). There are two primary reasons for the drivers to be miffed. First, the meter fares actually turn out to be lower than many agreed-upon fares and they certainly would remove the hotel-tripling option. Second, and this one I can sympathize with, as I’ve mentioned before, the cost of importing a new car is essentially out of reach for most Cairo taxi drivers, hence the “need” to keep these 1950-era Fiats puttering along. So we muse as to whether this is causing a wave of slight panic amongst cabbies throughout Cairo.

Regardless, something’s in the air. I grabbed a cab to the embassy to drop off some more packages today, then walked to Tahrir Square where I intended to grab a yellow cab to the Khan for a bit of shopping. I went to two yellow cabs, sitting in a line, and both refused to take me to the Khan using the meter because there was too much traffic. What?!?! Yes, there was a lot of traffic… it’s Cairo!!!! Essentially they wanted to charge me double what the meter would say. So I walked away and grabbed an ancient rusty black-and-white instead. And yes, it took longer than usual to get there, but so be it. He never asked about fares, so I overpaid him happily. I did my shopping, went back to a glass blower’s shop that I had stopped in last week but didn’t buy anything, and this time bought a pitcher and a vase, and as a thank you for returning, he let me pick two glass ornaments for free (this is very typical of shop keepers, to give a free gift to returning, or high-quantity, customers – it’s a nice treat).

Once I finished my shopping (can’t go into too much detail, gifts and all), I went back out to the main street and tried to get a taxi. I literally got into and out of two taxis because they were quibbling. The first really did himself in as he asked for 20LE to go to Zamalek (I actually had 40LE in my pocket ready to go, knowing that we’d be dealing with a lot of traffic). So I agreed to the 20LE but then suddenly he foisted me off onto another driver. I got in his cab and told him 20LE, as requested by the other driver, but this one refused. So instead of agreeing to pay more because of his fussing, I just got out and walked down a bit to find another taxi. Now, I really had no other options but to take a taxi, as there’s no metro out there and we’re forbidden to ride the buses (and I’m more than happy to comply), and it’s too far to walk home. But the good thing is Cairo is teeming with taxis, especially around the Khan. However, did have to flag down taxi after taxi after taxi with each one saying no when I asked for Zamalek. What I find amazing about all this, is that they’d rather drive on, or sit there, with no fare, than take mine because of the traffic. Silly. Anyway, I finally found one and wedged myself, my bags and my deeply wounded pride into the back seat and had a very long ride home. But I did pay him 40LE, so hopefully it was worth it for him.