The Stupidest Man in the World
Some people are just born stupid; we call them special. Others though, they get dumb on their own. They read things like Karl Marx, or Ayn Rand, or the Bible, take them a bit too seriously, and then decided that they have the answer to all of life’s problems. Even worse, they usually try to tell other people about their “intellectual” or “spiritual” discoveries as if I give a shit how John Galt would feel about Obama’s stimulus package. I met one of these types in the airport on Saturday.
The conversation started innocently enough. I was waiting at the bank to exchange my remaining Lebanese Lira into Egyptian Pounds; there was no employee at the bank, of course, because of the soccer game, and it took about 20 minutes for one to arrive. In the meantime, a pretty average looking white guy, somewhere around my parents’ age, came up and leaned against the counter next to me. Wearing faded khakis, hiking boots, a baseball cap and a Patagonia jacket, he looked to be more of an experienced traveler than most of the American idiots that pass through the Cairo airport en route to an air-conditioned bus, a 4-star hotel, the Pyramids and beyond. Well, why not strike up a conversation?
As it turned out, he was trying to get to the same hotel, the Meramees, where Ben and I stayed for our first week in Cairo before the program (coincidentally, the last time I actually truly enjoyed being in Egypt- thanks Middlebury!). The Meramees is in downtown Cairo, a neighborhood that really qualifies as a “downtown” in name only, as its crumbling Parisian buildings are now mostly empty save for budget hotels. The Meramees, though, was a rather nice place; we met some cool people, and for $10 a night each, we scored a private room, free wifi, and a hearty breakfast of hot dog buns and tea.
The Meramees was nice, but this is still Egypt, so of course they forget to send the airport pick-up guy for my new friend. He now faced the same dilemma as me: stuck in the airport of one of the biggest cities on earth without any taxis or even bank employees to exchange money. Since I live here, I thought I’d give him some advice. “Talk to the Egyptian guy holding the Canadian Hostel sign; it’s on the same block as the Meramees, and you could probably bum a ride for a small price.” Sure enough, I was right and the guy agreed to take him if he waits around for another half-hour for the next passenger.
So we continued to wait for the bank to open and kept talking. He told me his itinerary for his time in Egypt: a few days in Cairo, the Pyramids, Southern Egypt and its ancient temples, the Sahara, and the Sinai. All in all, pretty bush league tourist shit. After Egypt, he was headed to Israel, Jordan, and Syria respectively. I warned him to do Israel last, obviously, to avoid any visa issues in Syria. He asked if he’d have any problems getting into Israel after Syria, and I told him, “Of course not, you’re an American. Israel’s like our 51st state.”
And then thing got interesting. “Well,” he says, “Israel might not let me in if they know about my record, know what I’ve done.” The sense of foreboding in his voice was palpable. “I’ve been arrested… by the American government.” Well shit, son. I’m just standing there in front of this mild-mannered middle-aged traveler, and it turns out he’s been arrested by the government. The tone of his voice was just begging me to ask what he did, but I avoided the inevitable for a few painfully awkward seconds.
I racked my brain. Arrested? Well, plenty of people get arrested. It’s the only way to get street cred, bro, and apparently you have it. By the government? Hmm, I don’t know who else can arrest you. I mean, you can’t get arrested by the movie theater or the Taco Bell, so isn’t mentioning the government is a bit redundant? One of the three characteristics defining any modern nation-state is the government’s monopoly over the use of force (and thus police powers) within its sovereign territory. Duh, anyone who’s ever read Weber knows that.
He must be a sex offender. Every time I hear of someone getting arrested for an undisclosed reason, I automatically assume that it’s a sex offense. Why? Maybe it’s the endless hours I spent in high school watching Dateline NBC’s To Catch A Predator with Chris Hanson. Maybe it’s the fact that the middle school math teacher who ran the ball-handling station at my elementary school basketball camp ended up running his own ball-handling station in the basement of his bachelor pad. Who knows? More likely, it was the fact that this guy was so soft spoken and nice, and everyone knows that mild-mannered men are far more likely to commit egregious sex offenses. And then, when they get caught, everyone is shocked because he “was so nice- a churchgoer and a family man!”
The reality, however, was far less terrifying and far more intriguing: my new “friend” was an anarchist! Whew, I guess he won’t chop me up and wear my head as a hat for the long drive through the desert from Cairo to Sharm al-Sheik!
He digressed: “Yeah man, so the government’s been all over us lately out in Berkeley. We have an anarchist bookstore, the FBI raids it like every other week. It’s cause they’re afraid, man. They know that the people are a-talkin’, that we’re not gonna bow down to their police state anymore. As for me, yeah, I was arrested last-year when they knocked our tree-sit down. We had a tree sit in Berkeley, ya know, to prevent developers from being able to uproot these trees and build on the lot. We’d been sittin’ in the trees for a while, got a ton of support from the counterculture community out here. And then the Feds came in and told us to get out, and we didn’t, so we all got arrested. Now the government has all my information, and I know they’re following me. America’s a police state, most people just don’t realize it, man.”
A tree-sit, I thought, well that’s pretty fucking retarded! That’s almost as dumb as getting arrested at a country music concert for having an open container! I understand when people do tree-sits down in the Amazon, because jungles are awesome. But come on, dude, we’re talking about developing a plot of land in one of the most densely populated urban areas in the United States. They weren’t trying to bulldoze the Giant Seqouias or the Coastal Redwoods. Moreover, don’t you have a job!?!
If I had bigger balls, I probably would have spoken my mind at this point, to the effect of: “Listen here boy. Where I come from, men sit in trees for only one reason: killing. That’s right, boy. Every fall my friend JP spends one day, two days, maybe even three in a tree in the woods, hoping to God that he gets just one shot to rip an exit wound the size of a basketball into Bambi’s papa with a .357 hollow point round. After castrating and gutting the beast, he drags its carcass to his pick-up truck and drives home. If he’s lucky enough to kill a trophy buck, he’ll cut its fucking head off, hang it up in his living room, and drape a Terrible Towel or two from the antlers. Even if the buck ain’t got no impressive rack, he’s earned the right to take the carcass to a fine, family-owned and operated meat processing business where it will be turned into an array of delicious meat products: venison steaks, ground venison patties, jerky, and party sticks. After feasting on this veritable buffet of delicious meat, he’ll return to his job, where he makes daily contributions to America’s GDP.”
He would probably object to this with something about how deer have feelings too, and I’d have to continue: “Oh, you say you’re a vegetarian? Well, consider this: in the words of the beautiful and intelligent Sarah Palin, ‘If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?’ What, you don’t believe in God or Sarah Palin? The GDP is a social construction invented by the corporation who intend to enslave us all?? I’ve had enough of this nonsense, boy, I hope you take a nature hike in Pennsylvania State Game Lands next fall wearing a deer costume. I’ve heard the foliage is especially nice on the Monday after Thanksgiving.”
Alas, I did not say this, as the only thing smaller than my testes satchel is this guy’s brain. Instead, I offered him some sarcastic condolences for his plight with the government (“Sorry maaaaan, that sucks, duuuude”), and we continued our conversation. I told him about how Egypt sucks in general, and then he asked where I was from in America. “Pittsburgh, the greatest city on Earth”, I told him proudly.
“Ohh, Pittsburgh…” he began. “Wasn’t there some big international conference in Pittsburgh recently?”
“Yeah, the G20. Obama was there,” I answered.
“Yeah, I read about that conference. The security was outrageous, the National Guard and everything. They clamped down on the protests before the meetings even began. They wouldn’t even let people within miles of the convention center. Ya know, that’s really outrageous. Thousands of people descended on Pittsburgh that weekend, anarchists from all over. They we’re planning something big, ya know, really show these world leaders that the people are serious of revolution. And then the National Guard came in and just arrested a bunch of them, preemptively. The Pennsylvania State National Guard and the Feds, working together. Same thing happened at the political conventions last year. The anarchists, they don’t want to hear our voice. And more importantly, they don’t want other people to hear our voice.”
Awkward silence. I explained how the layout of the city of Pittsburgh necessitated the tight security situation. The convention center is located near the tip of a peninsula, effectively bordered on two of its three sides by river. A bit vulnerable if something serious was to actually happen.
“Ya know, I was reading this article on Democracy Now! that laid down some history about Pittsburgh. You know Democracy Now!?
I nodded stupidly, flexing my knowledge of leftist media outlets.
“So yeah, in Democracy Now! they were talking about this one time, in history, when the government’s Army tried to come into Pittsburgh to exert its authority. And back then, the people of Pittsburgh resisted it. They demonstrated in the streets, they revolted against the agents of the government. The PA National Guard actually took up arms against the Army. Yeah, back then people had principles. I don’t know what’s happened, man. Now we have the PA National Guard working alongside the Army, suppressing revolution.”
His examples were so non-specific, his reasoning so nonsensical; I had no clue what he was talking about. I racked my brain again. Big demonstrations in Pittsburgh… Hmm, well we just won the Super Bowl. Oh yeah, and the Stanley Cup. Oh yeah and that other Super Bowl back in 2005. Shit, and like four more Super Bowls and two more Stanley Cups and five World Series titles and shit, Pittsburgh is awesome! I bet there were huge demonstrations for those. But requiring military intervention. Hmm… there was the Homestead Strike in the late 19th century, but I’m pretty sure that was put down by the PA National Guard. The Civil War? Nope, we were with the government on that one. And then I had it… the Whiskey Rebellion! 1794!
This idiot was actually citing the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794! For those of us unfamiliar with this important historical event, in 1794, George Washington decided to place a tax upon whiskey to help pay off the debts incurred in the Revolutionary War. Back then, just like today, Pittsburghers liked their booze, and they were none too pleased about this tax. Backed by the PA National Guard, they refused to pay; the government sent in a squad of tax collectors, all of whom were promptly tarred and feathered. The government responded in kind by raising an army and sending it to Western PA, where it met no resistance. The whole ordeal was a big pain in the ass for President Washington, though, and in the end he decided to repeal the tax. Pittsburgh- 1, Federal Government- 0.
In short, the premise of the anarchist’s argument was that Pittsburghers betrayed a 215 year-old historical legacy of resistance by hosting the G-20 conference and its accompanying security attaché. He wasn’t kidding either; I heard him utter “no principles,” or “legacy of betrayal” at least three times.
At this point, I decided I was done. I was clearly dealing with stupidest man in the world. He continued to talk, but all I heard was a series of words: prison state, war on drugs, Israel, tear-gas, revolution, Israeli-made tear gas canister, tree-sit, protesting, Noam Chomsky, Israel, fresh ideas, the media, corporations, the corporate media, Israel, the system, Noam Chomsky, capitalism, the FBI, Noam Chomskyyyyy…
I told him I had to find my friend, and wished him luck in his travels. I left him with some more advice. I told him, take three or four days out of your touristy activities. Check into a cheap hotel in an Egyptian neighborhood. Go to an ‘ahwa, go to a local bar. Find some patrons who speak English, even though it might be hard. Talk to them. Ask them how they feel about the police. The government. Ask them the last time they voted. Ask them how they feel about Mubarak. They’ll be open with you, you’re a Westerner, you’re immune. Read a wikipedia article and find out how often they have democratic elections in Egypt. Talk to your cab drivers. You’ll be shocked how many have college degrees. Visit the country, and check out all the women in ninja suit niqabs. And then get back to me about how bad it sucks to live in a police state. While you’re at it, you can also shove your masters degree up your ass and find a real job.
Okay, so I didn’t say that last part. He offered a weak protest to the effect of, well, police states come in all shapes and sizes, and America is still a police state. He told me, “you wait, the police state will fall, and we will see a revolution.” In Egypt, maybe, insha’allah. I walked away, into the chilly Cairo evening. Ben was still waiting for me, and the car hadn’t arrived.
If I had bigger balls, I probably would’ve told him to skip the Israel-Jordan-Syria leg of his trip, and head down south to Somalia to check out the anarchist paradise that has been created there. “They have pirates, bro. Pirates, how fucking sweet is that? Ya know, when you don’t have a police state infringing on your freedom all the time, you can exercise your God-given right to become a pirate!”
Egypt Wins; I Lose
After spending 10 awesome days in Beirut, getting off the plane on November 14 was a pretty depressing moment. I’d forgot how much I missed the smell of Egypt; dry air, pollution, rotting trash, and in this case, jet fuel. I texted Ian, and told him to get excited for all the goodies that we were bringing home. Because nothing screams “I just spent 2 weeks in Beirut” quite like some bottles of wine, a ridiculous array of Hezbollah merch, and an imported, $8 copy of The New Yorker.
Customs and passport control went easily enough. Carrying a hundred or so dollars worth of gifts and other stuff I bought in Lebanon, I walked straight for the “nothing to declare” gate and walked right through without question. At passport control, the woman actually just glanced at my residency permit and stamped me. This was mildly disappointing, considering the reactions that various other kids in my program have faced when they show their residency permits upon re-entering the country. Wait, you live here? I don’t understand. Are you sure you have residency, this looks like the stamp but that just doesn’t make any sense? Hold on, you actually chose to reside here? Did America kick you out or something? I’m sorry, go buy another tourist visa and then let’s try this process over again.
Ben and I grabbed our checked bag and headed for the airport exit. I turned to Ben: “get ready to get harassed.” My fourth favorite thing in Egypt, after the trash, food (can I group trash and food together, as they are basically indistinguishable here?), and stray cats is definitely being harassed. The first time I came though the Cairo airport, I got rushed by a few dozen cab drivers within seconds of exiting. They all promised me the same “Egyptian price” since I spoke some Arabic with them, but the price was only Egyptian in the sense that it would’ve fed an Egyptian family for a few years.
And then something very strange happened; I walked into the airport arrival hall to find it nearly empty. No screaming cabbies. No screaming children. No cats. No ninjas. Actually, there were no cabbies at all. What the fuck, I thought? This isn’t Cairo. And then I remembered:
Before leaving Lebanon, we had received an email from the U.S. State Department warning Americans in Egypt of an upcoming soccer match between the Egyptian and Algerian national teams in Cairo on November 14. Not just any match, but the last World Cup qualifying match. Egypt generally has decent soccer teams (they won the last African Cup of Nations), but this year they’ve managed to shit the bed in World Cup qualifying. Coming into this game, Egypt found itself one spot removed from the last African seed that makes the cup. They had to beat Algeria by 3 to secure the spot. If they won by 2, they’d force a playoff next week; a one-point win or a loss would send them home.
The State Department warned us that if Egypt wins, expect crazy traffic and joyous rioting. If Egypt loses, expect crazy traffic and destructive rioting. In a few paragraphs, they basically advised any Americans in Cairo to grab a few Stellas from Drinkies and download a decent movie, because they ain’t gonna be doing anything or going anywhere the night of the 14th.
As far as the Egyptians were concerned though, this game might as well be the Super Bowl. In reality, it was more like a must-win game in Week 16 that ensures that the team can go on to play for a playoff spot in Week 17. Hardly worth rioting over, win or lose, unless of course you’re from Cleveland and remaining competitive in Week 16 is rarer than a democratic election in the Middle East. And since Egypt is basically the Cleveland of the international community, I guess they can justify rioting over this game.
Well shit, I thought, that’s a win-lose situation for Egypt, but a lose-lose situation for me. On any other night of the year, I’d gladly join my Egyptian brethren in lighting some couches and stray cats on fire after a big soccer victory, but tonight, I was already facing a 3-hour trip back to Alexandria in the middle of the night and riots and traffic weren’t going to make that journey and more fun. My plane was set to touch down around 9:30, about half an hour after the end of the soccer match. In the terminal of the Beirut airport, we caught the first half hour of the game. Egypt scores, 1-0; shit.
We board the plane for a quick, easy, and for the following reason, rather enjoyable flight. In a moment of identity crisis, caught between its desire to be a functioning, western company and its obligations as primary air carrier for most of the Muslim world, EgyptAir accidentally served ham on this flight. HAM. And not just one type of ham either; it was a delicious ham medley consisting of both chunks and slices, topped off with a moist and chewy brownie. It was as if EgyptAir knew that Ben and I would be flying that day and decided to ceremoniously sacrifice the last pig in Egypt on our behalf. I could tell from the terse, whispered conversations taking place in the adjacent rows after the food was served that Ben and I were probably going to be the only passengers that ate the ham. I guess you know the food in a given country sucks when the best meal that you eat there is airplane food.
The plane touches down and it’s our captain speaking: Egypt wins, 2-0. The plane erupts with cheers and high-fives. I talk to the friendly Egyptian sitting next to me, and learn that the tiebreaker will be later in the week, but for now, only celebrations. I think, well, at least now I’ll get to read some entertaining half-English, half what-the-fuck-Egyptian-colloquial-is-not-even-a-language facebook status updates from my Egyptian friends in the dorm.
So back to the arrival hall of the Cairo airport. Puzzled by the lack of screaming cabbies near the exit, Ben and I head outside. It’s a pleasant evening; I thought maybe the clamoring hordes decided to hang out on the sidewalk instead. Nothing. Some men in gallabiyyas taking part in Egypt’s national pastime- wandering around aimlessly. Ben and I find a uniformed airport employee and ask him where we might find a cab; “in the parking lot,” he answers. We cross the street and walk to the parking lot. Nothing. Well, this blows.
Ben and I had planned on leaving Cairo at 10 PM in a taxi and arriving smoothly back to Alexandria 3 hours later. Sure a car would be a bit expensive, but it was a small price to pay to avoid the expensive airport taxi to train station to other train station to cheap taxi to bait al-tulaab shitshow with all of our bags that would have ensued otherwise. The only problem was, there wasn’t a single car for hire in the entire Cairo airport because of the soccer match. At 10:30, I decide to go talk to an airport employee. He directs me to the limousine/bus service office, which is also closed because of the soccer match. Lacking anything better to do, I go to the bank to exchange my last Lebanese Lira (tear) for some Egyptian guinea. Big surprise, there is no employee at the bank. (As I waited, however, I did meet another American traveler who I have now confirmed to be the dumbest man alive. Like Ayn Rand st00pid. I had a long conversation with him that was so inane it merits an entire future blog post to itself.) Then I peed; apparently the bathrooms in Egypt don’t close for soccer.
Back on the sidewalk, its nearly 11:30 and still no taxis. A Mongol horde of Asian tourists donning flu-masks and taking peace-sign pictures outside the airport walks by and leaves in huge tour buses. I hate to reinforce stereotypes, but Jesus, sometimes its just too easy. We call Ian again and get the number of a guy that drove him from Cairo to Alexandria one time a few months ago. Sensing that this may be our last chance to avoid sleeping on the pavement, we dial him, and wa’allahi begat, he answers: “wait twenty minutes, and I’ll pick you up. I know a guy who you can ride on him to Alexandria.” (Mastering prepositions is the hardest part of learning a language; this goes for Arabic and English).
So we wait, and exactly 20 minutes later he calls us back: “lots of traffic, wait 15 more minutes.” Exactly 15 minutes later, he calls again: “more traffic, wait another 6 minutes.” Exactly 45 minutes later, he calls again and asks where we’re waiting in the airport. Terminal 3. So at exactly 1:00 AM, over three hours after our flight landed, we get into what literally might be first cab to have passed through Cairo airport that evening.
Our luck was such that the soccer stadium just happened to be on the same road that led from the airport to the Cairo-Alex highway. A few miles in, traffic just stopped. Egyptians were running through the streets screaming, waving flags, standing on cars, and banging drums. It was actually pretty awesome. Shockingly enough, the riot was made up of both girls and boys; apparently we were in a more liberal, upper-middle class suburb of Cairo. We stopped to get gas at a convenience store and I walked in to buy water. The place was full of Egyptians around my age, smoking cigarettes, crushing bottles of Amstel Zero, and shouting obscenities. Prominently situated next to the cash register was a Trojan display with both condoms and a veritable buffet of lubes. Haraam 3layk, a liberal suburb indeed!
The traffic cleared in about an hour, and we quickly made our way to the Cairo-Alex desert highway. By 4:30 AM, nearly four hours later than expected, I was home. Facing a test in my 9 AM class I thought, well, Egypt wins, I lose, welcome back. And then I promptly decided to skip class and sleep til 2 the next day; I guess Egypt and I both won.
Lame Egyptian Holidays: October 6th
For Ben and I, escaping quarantine was somewhat of a mixed bag; sure, we could eat Mohammad Ahmed and get drunk at the Spitfire, but then again, we were still effectively quarantined in Egypt itself, a safe distance away from exotic first-world diseases like happiness, bacon, and bare skin above the ankles. Plus we had to start class again a mere day after reentering the real world. Instead of sleeping until 4 PM on Sunday, I had to wake up, go to class, learn absolutely nothing, and have my religious views inappropriately questioned by my Modern Standard Arabic teacher. The religious question comes up frequently in Egypt. I have to tell people here that I’m a Christian. Pshh.
For the record, my MSA teacher was clad in faded denim from head to toe that day. She is clad in faded denim from head to toe every day. Everything she owns is denim; denim shoes, denim skirts, jeans (made of denim, duh), and a denim jacket. Most of her denim is faded. She is like the awkward love child of Levi Strauss’ wettest dream and that drunk guy in the Canadian tuxedo at the ten-year Central High School reunion that I DJ’d a few years back. She hasn’t broken the denim hijab out of her closet yet, but I’m suspecting that she is waiting for colder weather as denim headgear would have serious breathability issues in the hot Fall weather here. Seriously the only time I’ve even not seen her wearing denim was at the beach when she donned a jet-black Burkina for snorkeling. Burkinas are so scandalous that they are actually banned in France, a shocking move from a country so liberal that it grants women the rights to both vote and drive cars.
But it wasn’t all bad last week, as we had one thing to look forward too: Armed Forces Day, commonly referred to as October 6th, or, as I prefer, That One War That We Actually Didn’t Lose to Israel Day. For this special day, we got the day off of school, and I hoped, at least a fun state-sponsored celebration.
I guess this post necessitates a brief history of the events surrounding We Didn’t Lose to Israel Day. Over the course of six days in the summer of 1967, Israel destroyed or captured pretty much everything in the Middle East, including Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The last time the Jews had visited the Sinai, a few millennia earlier, they wandered around for 40 years until Moses/Charlton Heston was summoned by God to receive the Ten Commandments (which, coincidentally, reflected basic moral tenets and social norms that had existed in human societies since the beginnings of civilization). Ever since Moses received the Ten Commandments, no one thought that something so awesome could happen again in the desert wasteland that is the Sinai; that is, until the world witnessed the epic ass-pwning that Israel laid down on Egypt in 1967.
After 1967, Egypt was shattered, humiliated, and left with 10% less desert wasteland than they had previously possessed. They also lost the Gaza Strip, an urban desert wasteland that I imagine they didn’t want anyway. Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to resign from the presidency out of shame, but the people still loved him so he hung around until he died in 1970. Then came President Anwar Sadat, who had an idea that was at the very least politically shrewd and actually kind of brilliant! Egypt’s economy was being crushed under the weight of its military spending, which was necessitated by the Israeli threat. Having been shat upon only a few years earlier, Egypt was in no position to negotiate with Israel as an equal. Sadat connected these dots, and realized that Egypt would have to at least hold its own against Israel in a brief war in order to gain the leverage necessary for it to engage in peace negotiations.
So after some secret planning, Egypt launched a surprise assault against Israel on Oct. 6. They used water cannons to destroy the Israel’s earthen defenses along the Suez Canal and then built bridges to send troops across. War with water cannons sounds like fun. Water cannons are to real warfare what waterboarding is to torture- a less intense, more participant-friendly version. Anyway, after two days, Egypt managed to retake the entire Suez Canal zone. Of course they couldn’t sustain a competent military effort for more than two days, however, and they forgot to feed and resupply their troops. The Israelis killed, captured, and drove most of them back across the canal before the UN decided to impose a cease-fire a few weeks later. The important part of the outcome, however, was that Egypt still managed to hold on to a 6 km stretch of the Sinai when the ceasefire took effect, so technically they were better off than at the beginning of the world. Celebrations abounded throughout the Arab world. Egypt “defeated” Israel! (In the terms of the political and psychological effects it actually was a significant victory and a huge achievement for Egypt and it’s military, but I’ll conveniently overlook that here). Like any good third-world autocracy, Egypt commemorated its “victory” by hiring some North Korean artists to paint a mural, imprisoning its victorious general years later for writing a book about the conflict, and declaring a state-sponsered, patriotic holiday.
Generally speaking, I love holidays, but I especially love patriotic, state-sponsored holidays. It’s not that I have anything against religious holidays, its just that I’m tired of explaining to people how I can still celebrate them despite not being a Christian. What is so wrong about celebrating Christmas because I like presents, St. Patrick’s Day because I like drinking, and Easter because I like candy and baby animals and candy shaped like baby animals? Nothing, but patriotic holidays are better, because they ask nothing of me besides my undying love for the greatest country on Earth, and they give so much in return. In my youth, I loved patriotic holidays because they got me out of school; now I love these holidays because they get me out of school and provide a socially acceptable excuse to drink during the day.
If I were to rank my favorite patriotic and/or state-sponsored holidays, I think I’d have to start with Memorial Day, if only because a certain ball-pact ensures that this weekend will kick ass for me and my high school friends for the rest of eternity. The past Memorial Day, nine of my high school friends and I loaded up a pick-up truck with a keg of PBR, a log of Cope straight, sleeveless t-shirts, and enough meat products to make a certain BBW high school teacher of mine fall off her stool, and we drove up to my lake house in upstate New York. A mere 24 hours later, I woke up on a raft several miles from my house with a severe headache and low-grade hypothermia. In the interim, we caught and tortured sunfish and listened to Toby Keith single-handedly defeat the Taliban through song. If you think there’s anything more American than Toby Keith, torture, and PBR, you’re wrong.
As of this past year, the 4th of July is my second-favorite patriotic holiday, albeit for different and tamer reasons. I spent my favorite 4th of July in recent memory at a minor league baseball game in Central Pennsylvania, the most American place in America. I’ve been to a decent amount of minor league baseball games, but this one was special, because my friends and I got to sit in BVB’s luxury box. (BVB is a close high school friend of mine whose family has made a fortune running a local company that quarries stone and builds roads all across PA. BVB votes Republican because he hates government spending and doesn’t want to pay any taxes, despite the fact that the same government that takes his taxes also pays to build the roads upon which his fortune rests. The irony of this is lost on BVB, a functionally illiterate math and carpentry savant.). The weather was beautiful on this particular evening, and the uninspiring Altoona Curve loss was followed by an epic fireworks show. As colorful shit exploded in the sky, Toby Keith once again defeated the Taliban through song over the loudspeakers. Majestic eagles soared across the recently-installed HD scoreboard, bearing their talons, ready to kill terrorists and illegal immigrants. With tears welling in my eyes, I fought back the simultaneous urges to buy a gun, ban gay marriage, and throw my support behind Mike Huckabee in the as-of-then ongoing Republican primary. If you think there’s anything more American than soaring eagles, minor league baseball, and eschewing social responsibilities to elect Republicans and lessen your tax burden, then you’re fucking out.
So yeah, I love patriotic holidays, and I had high hopes for October 6th as it quickly approached last week. In my head, I envisioned battalions worth of outdated military equipment parading through downtown Alexandria along the redundantly-named Suez Canal Road Street. After a few beers at the Spitfire, we would wave our Egyptian flags and cheer for our adopted county’s epic military triumph. Alas, it was not to be. The day before October 6th (October 5th!), a few of my professors told me to watch out for some classic propaganda films on TV. Not satisfied, I asked one of the Egyptians if there would be a parade. He told me, “probably on television.” I thought, well this means at least a parade must be happening somewhere so they can film it, but then again they probably just held a parade a few years ago and now just reuse the footage to cut costs. And then I realized, everything in Egypt happens on television. If this place ever has a revolution, it will most certainly be televised. Fuck, people probably won’t even bother taking to the streets because they’ll be too enthralled with the television coverage. I had to interview some of my Egyptian friends for my Arabic Media class the other day and one of the questions asked how many hours of television they watch per day; a few shamelessly answered “between 7 or 8.” So yeah, Egypt’s patriotic holidays only happen on TV. I can’t believe I missed Labor Day to study here.
Why don’t they just leave us alone?!
Let’s be serious now. No one ever wants to travel with a nagger.
Day 6: Freedom
For better or for worse, Ben and I never had to execute my brilliant escape plan. On Thursday evening, soon after I drew up my map and readied my supplies, one of the Egyptian students came to our room bearing great news: we were allowed out of the dorm for an hour! This made absolutely no sense, so I asked a few more Egyptians, and then I asked in English, they language that I actually understand, and they confirmed it. We got one hour of sweet, sweet American-style freedom to go buy “necessary supplies.”
So apparently the Egyptian Department of Health, in its infinite wisdom, decided that it would be advisable to let us out of the dorm for an hour to infect as many locals as possible in the shortest period of time. Seriously, first you quarantine us, and then decide that it’s too much work to provide clean water and edible food, so now you break this so-called “quarantine” to let us out!? As we left the dorm, the only advice that the “engineer” gave us was to “avoid big crowds,” and one of our more astute Egyptian friends told us not to bother going to a bar, because an hour wasn’t enough time.
At the gate of the bait al-tulaab, Ben and I split off from our more sensible friends on the program, who thought this hour would be best spent buying water and snacks for the next few days. An hour wasn’t enough time to make it to a bar, but it was enough time to make it to both the liquor store and McDonald’s, which conveniently enough happen to be located within three blocks of each other. As badly as I needed and fresh water, and desperately wanted to head downtown and cough on every ninja I saw, I couldn’t resist the temptation of a mediocre beer and a solid p00p later in the evening, insha’allah at the same time.
But just in general, the stupidity behind this whole ordeal has been staggering. First, we all get quarantined because some kid on a different program gets the swine. Quarantine is actually a bad word to use for our situation, because what we did was pretty much the opposite of a normal quarantine. In a normal quarantine, each subject is isolated whereas we just spent four days breathing on each other and sharing the same space. In a normal quarantine, shit gets sanitized, whereas in Egyptian quarantine, the appearance of liquid soap in the bathroom passes for an infinite improvement in the general cleanliness and sanitation of our living quarters.
This situation would have been much worse, however, if it weren’t for our program’s highly competent and understanding directors. About three days into this ordeal, we get an email from our program director. She greets us cheerfully with “Ahlan ya shabab, Hope you are relaxing and enjoying your time with your Egyptian friends!” Thanks! Just switch out ‘relaxing’ with ‘freaking the fuck out,’ and ‘enjoying time with your Egyptian friends’ with ‘masturbating like there’s no tomorrow’ and you’ve pretty much summed up our situation.
She goes on to offer us this priceless advice for avoiding the swine flu, despite being cooped up together in close an unsanitary quarters: “2. AVOID DOOR KNOBS-YES DOOR KNOBS (her caps not mine) -It is the number one source of infection; if you happen to touch a door knob which is inevitable sometimes, wash your hands right away!” Hmm okay sounds great, let’s go through the logistics of this one. I leave my room, and walk to the bathroom. I p00p. I wash my hands with the liquid soap, so generously provided by the Egyptian authorities. I walk back to my room. I need to get into my room, and there is only one way in: the doorknob. Fuck, I just washed my hands, I can’t touch the doorknob. Idea: I open the door, then I walk back to the bathroom again, wash my hands, and get back to my room. Okay great success. Now I need to close the door. Fuck, that doorknob again, okay I guess I’ll just get naked with the door open, insha’allah it will get me kicked out of student housing anyway.
Two of the directors came Thursday night to check on us after our brief foray into the outside world. Without really saying hello, I told them I was starving and that they need to order us pizza. Their response: here’s the number, you can order one and have it delivered and pay for it yourself!” Thanks for caring, guys. Then they asked me why I was starving, and I explained that I didn’t eat lunch that day.
But before I continue this story, I need to introduce another reoccurring character on the sitcom that is Egypt. Believe it or not, there are actually some people on the program that don’t really hate it here, and actually don’t seem to mind that we’ve been quarantined in the dorm for the past five days. One such student is Charizard; I call him Charizard because he brought his Pokémon cards with him to Egypt. This fact alone speaks volumes, so I feel that more description is unnecessary. Charizard is oblivious to most things, and sometimes I wonder as to whether or not Charizard actually knows that he is in Egypt.
Anyway, enter Charizard. He asks me, in Arabic obviously, why I didn’t eat lunch that day. The conversation proceeded as follows:
Me: “Because I didn’t wake up until 2.”
Charizard: “Why?”
Me: “Because I stayed up til 6 AM”
Charizard: “Why?”
Me: “Because I’m miserable.”
Charizard: “Why?”
Me: “Because we’re stuck here.”
Charizard: “Why didn’t you eat lunch today?”
Me: “BECAUSE THE FOOD ISN’T FUCKING EDIBLE AND I DIDN’T WAKE UP TIL 2 WHY THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I DIDN’T EAT LUNCH TODAY??”
Along with their insufferable optimist and crappy advice, however, the directors did bring a piece of fantastic news: we were allowed out of the dorm starting Friday evening- a day earlier than previously thought! Since our friend Mike, the only guy on the program to come down with symptoms, didn’t test positive for the Swine, it was concluded that we were probably safe to leave after having our temperatures taken the next day.
And leave we did, around 7 PM into the beautiful Alexandria evening. If there was anything positive to be taken from quarantine, it was that it kind of shifted our perspective on Egypt: after being stuck in the bait al-tulaab for 5 days, the city of Alexandria all of a sudden didn’t seem half-bad! The air was cleaner, the streets were quieter, and there was less trash all over the place. We went to our favorite restaurant, Mohammad Ahmed, for a filling and delicious meal of Foul (the Middle East’s answer to refried beans) that cost less than $1.50 each. Then we went to the Spitfire Bar, hands down the best place in the entire city, to crush beers with Geoff and Dan. To the tune of 70’s rock and $2 22 oz. Stellas, I was disconcertingly happy, considering I’m still three months removed from America. I’m beginning to think that the quarantine was a diabolical plot by the directors to make us all hate Alexandria less.
In conclusion, I’d like to wish a happy 21st to one of my best friends at home in Central PA, Andrew Patrick McGough. I would give anything to be in America right now celebrating this occasion. Remember Guff, that with age comes girth, but also decreased ability to achieve lasting, rock-hard erections. But then again, given your penchant for dating prepubescent girls in high school, I have doubts as to whether you was ever able to achieve lasting, rock-hard erections. Guff, I have high expectations for this evening. If you don’t wake up naked on the floor of your apartment tomorrow with a huge fuckin’ hoss in your cheek and Kenny Chesney playing on loop on the stereo, you are a failure and not my friend.
God loves Google Translate
(Ed. note: because my blog kicked too much ass and because I felt bad for Ben and his far inferior blog of Egyptian English misspellings and other stupid shit, I have decided to asorb his blog. Much in the same way that the quarterback in high school always had to be nice to the kid that followed his finger around the cafeteria and give him high fives and shit like that.
This space will mostly be used to counter my overwhelming pessimism about everything. And to reaffirm that (American) English is the lingua fuckin franca of the world and laugh at people who can’t spell good. Be nice.)
The real question is: if God is all-powerful and God is all-loving, how does he allow things like this?
Day 3: Planning My Escape
It’s amazing how, every once in a while, a song comes around that really speaks to you, you know, captures your feelings with its poetic verses and its shredding guitar. I had one of those moments yesterday when, skyping with Dupont, I sung a piece of this gem from my childhood:
When dreaming I’m guided to another world, time and time again
At sunrise I fight to stay asleep
‘Cause I don’t want to leave the comfort of this place
‘Cause there’s a hunger, a longing to escape
From the life I live when I’m awake
So let’s go there
LET’S MAKE OUR ESCAPE
Scott Stapp of Creed, one of the most brilliant and talented musicians to ever grace Allah’s green earth, just speaking to me with through his music. Scott Stapp knows. Scott Stapp just fucking knows. Every morning, I do wish I was still asleep instead of facing a day in the (mastur)bait al-tulaab! I am longing to escape! Take me higher, Scott Stapp. Take me fucking higher. Why did you ever leave Creed for AlterBridge? Easily the saddest moment in the history of American music since Hendrix, the second best guitarist ever after you, Scott Stapp, drowned in his own vom back in the 70’s.
Scott Stapp confirmed for me last night an idea that I had been tossing around in my head for a while: I need to make my escape. Using my secret inventory of survival items (corn flakes, Ben, cigarettes, Terrible Towels, bleach, gin, and fresh water) I devised a brilliant plan, which I will outline here using this handy map of the bait al-tulaab as a reference.
As you can see, this is an overhead map, taken from Google Earth, of the Soviet prison complex within which I am currently confined. I am the yellow star, located on the southeastern wing of my building (building B, according to the official prison map). A cement wall surrounds the entire complex, about 10 feet in height. If this wall were the Berlin Wall, I would be in East Berlin right now, the shitty part. I bet they still had beer in East Berlin to dull the edge of the mind-numbing political and social oppression, so that place sounds pretty idyllic right about now.
Ben is the blue star, and insha’allah he will be attempting this escape with me. You might have noticed that Ben’s star is smaller than mine. This is because Ben is less important than me, and I’m willing to throw Ben underneath the proverbial third-world minibus if it makes the difference between me escaping or not.
The red lightning bolts are guards. Like most businesses in Egypt, the bait al-tulaab employs an inordinate number of men to just stand around. Some of them are ostensibly ‘engineers,’ (I think engineer is kind-of a catch-all term for anyone with an education in the Arab world, but I actually have no clue) but for the purposes of my escape, they are all guards. Some of the other students (the academic champions and philosopher kings, mostly) in my program could also be counted as guards too if they would happen to oppose Ben and my escape plan. I think my best way for his approach this escape is with the mentality of our most fearless leader ever, President George W. Bush: “You’re either with us, or against us.”
The little brown flecks are feral cats. You will notice on this map that there are far more feral cats in the complex than there are humans; most of them are arranged into primitive hunting/gathering social bands called ‘clowders.’ Since the food here is inedible, 90% of it ends up in the trash at the end of each day, and, combined with the occasional corpse of one of their own, provides more than enough food to sustain multiple clowders within the bait al-tulaab.
After clandestinely reconnoitering the bait al-tulaab and creating this map, I analyzed the hardest obstacles to my escape and devised a coherent plan. The wall, I determined, is nearly impassible, as the circumstances surrounding its scaling would create a classic prisoner’s dilemma between myself and Ben, resulting in a sub-optimal defect-defect outcome. Both of us would be best off if we cooperated and helped each other to scale the wall. However, once the first prisoner has scaled the wall, he will be risking his own safety, as well as his likelihood of making a timely escape, by helping the second prisoner over the wall. Therefore, he has an incentive to fuck the second prisoner over (defect) and just run once he has reached the top of the wall. Each prisoner understands the incentive to be the first to scale the wall, and thus both will demand to go first. In the absence of a credible and legitimate enforcement mechanism, neither I nor Ben will agree to go second over the wall, and thus neither of us will be able to scale it at all. Thus, scaling the wall is not a viable escape option.
Since we can’t scale the wall, it will be necessary for Ben and I to slip out of one of the bait al-tulaab’s two lightly guarded exits. As this path requires us to interact with and defeat both humans and feral cats, it is infinitely more dangerous than the previous option. Fortunately for us, though, it does not present any potentially ruinous social-science dilemmas. In my opinion, the greatest obstacle to our escape is the clowder of feral cats roaming the premises. The clowder tends to concentrate itself around the human populations within the bait al-tulabb. Therefore, the greatest concentrations of cats are at the entrance of my building near the dining hall, and next to the guards at the gate. By my count, three of these cats, or five of the kittens, could bring down a full-sized adult male. Ben, owing to the incredible physical power generated by his man-thighs, might be able to survive an onslaught of four or five cats, but even these numbers allow for more than enough reserves to kill me too. If the dreaded demon cat decides to join the fight, it alone could kill both of us (more on this later).
The cats do have one weakness, however; their appetite for food is even more insatiable than their appetites for killing and sex. I discovered this the other night when I snuck some chicken out of the dining hall and threw it on the ground in front of the clowder. The cats immediately stopped fighting and sexing amongst themselves and ate the chicken. So to defeat the cats, I have a plan. In my 6 liter water jug, I can combine 2 parts corn flakes with 1 part bleach to create a delicious “meal” for the clowder. The gin is also apparently poisonous, so if necessary, I can add it as well to this culinary cocktail of death. Then, when Ben and I leave the dorm we can quickly dump the mixture onto the ground. The cats will eat it, and die.
When we reach the gate, the human guards will present another obstacle. Fortunately, I still have five cigarettes left, easily enough to bribe even the least-corrupt third-world government employee. Multiple and/or honest guards could foil my plan, but I really don’t foresee this being a problem, so I’ll cross this bridge when I get to it.
Outside of the gates, I will run past the homeless guy to the Izbit Saad traffic circle, where I can catch a cab to the hotel where Dan and Geoff are staying. Sweet, sweet freedom. So thank you, Scott Stapp, for inspiring me to escape, even though I still will never forgive you for leaving Creed and forcing them to reconvene as the epically mediocre AlterBridge.
The only problem with this plan is that once I’m out of the bait al-tulaab, I’m still in Egypt.
Days 1 and 2: Miley, Roman, and Emptying my Urinal
I need to escape. The honeymoon period of my quarantine is over, and by honeymoon, I mean that yesterday’s quarantine wasn’t actually that bad! I caught up with all the emails that I haven’t read or responded to yet. I crushed Ben in a bunch of games of backgammon. I’m awesome at backgammon right now. I’ve spent the first 20 years of my life getting my ass kicked in backgammon my grandma every time I go to her house. She has surgically replaced knees and I could totally rock her shit in drinking games, or a footrace, any distance, but when it comes to backgammon, I get owned. Most nights at my grandma’s house end with me losing five games of backgammon, winning one, and then going to bed to preserve my streak and my dignity. Not the case anymore. At the next family reunion, I will challenge her to the game to end all games: winner take all, loser shotguns three beers in a row on the roof of the pool barn.
Okay actually who am I kidding, yesterday blew. The first frantic night of quarantine (Monday), I was so hopped up on cheap Egyptian crystal meth and my own misery that I stayed awake until 6 AM. It is light outside here at 6 AM, cause we’re really close to the equator, so I went to sleep when it was light outside. About five minutes after falling asleep, I was awoken by an Egyptian pounding on my door. I stumbled out of my room shirtless to find the director of my program and a few other veiled Egyptian women in our common room. I’m sure seeing me shirtless made their week, maybe their month, and definitely smashed a few archaic social conventions. They took my temperature. Which brings me to another thing they do here in Egypt every day: taking my temperature! This place makes no sense, the regulations that they choose to enforce and those that they ignore. Like entry visas- $15 and you’re in! I guess they figure you won’t want to stay for very long cause this place suuucks, so illegal immigration isn’t a problem. They also haven’t figured out traffic laws yet, so I’ve been in no less than three fender-benders thus far. But, apparently the government did decide that it was of the utmost importance to record the temperature of every student in the country every day. I wouldn’t mind this regulation if they took my temperature with an anal thermometer, but seriously, why do I have to put this thing in my mouth every morning? Humiliating.
After being orally humiliated, the directors of our program held a meeting with us to explain what the fuck was going on. They decided to conduct the meeting in Arabic, so I shut my brain off and didn’t listen and ate cookies. From what I did gather, they spent most of the time emphasizing that we would be able to make up all of our classes at a later date. Seriously, who the fuck do they think we are?!? We’re locked in a gulag, we might all contract swine flu, and they think that we’re worried about missing class!? In fact, skipping class is the only thing that makes this quarantine awesome.
They were also pretty condescending just in general about the quarantine: “Time to get out those Arabic language Risk and Monopoly boards that we got for you, maybe we’ll be able to order you pizza once or twice!” Risk in Arabic is bullshit, because English was/is obviously the lingua franca of the colonial powers, and pretending otherwise by translating “Irkutsk” into Arabic is just foolish.
After the end of the meeting, I went back to bed, because the alternative was being awake in the bait al-tulaab. Unfortunately, I woke up at 2 PM. I decided to take a shower, since I hadn’t taken one in several days. Which brings my to something else I do in Egypt: not showering. I only shower here like twice a week, for a few reasons. First, I’m confident that I never smell as bad as Ben, so, therefore by comparison I am always clean and never need a shower. Secondly, hot and cold water are mutually exclusive entities in Egypt, sort of like living here and not wanting to die. At the beginning of our program, there was no hot water in the bathroom. This wasn’t actually a big deal, cause it was hotter than hell outside and anyway I was just using the shower for showering. Some other kids bitched about this, and then the authorities decided to turn the hot water on. Now, only the hot water works and there is no way to mix hot and cold for a comfortable showering experience. So basically, all of my showers in Egypt have consisted of me standing outside the water to soap myself and then rinsing desperately. The only difference is that at the beginning of the semester my balls migrated deep into my abdomen whereas now they hang low, low, low, low when I’m making myself clean.
And that was yesterday. I became delirious sometime around 8 PM when I listened to Miley Cyrus’s ‘Party in the USA’ for the 10th time in a row. I love Miley. Talent of her caliber is such a rare occurrence in the American entertainment industry, and its even more rare that talent of her caliber is spawned by some Nashville half-breed with the greatest mullet in history. Some people hate Miley. One of the guys that I DJ’d with in high school went so far as to say that he thought that Miley looked like she had Down’s Syndrome. I’m sorry, but Miley isn’t chasing her finger around my high school cafeteria or bagging groceries, so to you, I say, if there’s grass in the field, play ball.
After the 20th time that I listened to the same Miley song, I went to bed. It made me feel better about being in Egypt. Probably, when I get back to America, I’ll take a cab back to Georgetown from Dulles, just like Miley did from LAX in the song. Chillin’ in the land of sex and fame, I’ll ask Sumir to turn off his fucking Bluetooth and blast a little Jay-Z song, while I cry.
When I listened to Miley for the 20th time last night, it was, like the previous night, light outside. Again I slept for about 10 minutes before the Arabs came and woke me up to take my temperature. I tried to clean my thermometer in the boiling water of the tea kettle to sterilize it. It shattered. Then I had to use Ben’s, so now I’ll probably smell. For the second day in a row, my temperature was normal because I DON’T HAVE THE FUCKING SWINE FLU.
For the second day in a row, I slept until two. I bet quarantine is a lot like prison. You just do the same thing every day. Speaking of prison, I’m so bored in my quarantine that I’ve been reduced to reading the entertainment news on my NYTimes homepage. Apparently Roman Polanski finally got arrested this week when he tried to enter Switzerland. I’ve never seen any of his movies, but, in the words of Ben (who is like 75% of the way through the AFI top 100), Polanski is one of the “best directors ever.” Anyway, Polanski raped/sodomized a 13 year old in LA back in the 70s’ and then fled from the best country on Earth to France, the worst country on Earth that isn’t in the Middle East, and went on to make some of the best movies ever. But he still raped and sodomized a 13 year old. Why do people not get this? There was actually an editorial in the NYTimes lamenting the fact that this guy got arrested this week. Are you fucking kidding me?! He sodomized a fucking 13 year old. Okay I’m sorry, but if you are brilliant and wait long enough, does this suddenly become acceptable. Shit doesn’t just all of a sudden become okay if you wait long enough. Israel still has agents in South America searching for ex-Nazis, and occasionally they find one, try him, and execute him. This is fucking awesome. Hopefully Roman gets to spend the rest of his life enjoying justice in the shower room of an American prison. Its so crazy how America always does the right thing and France is always wrong.
Unfortunately, very little else happened today besides reading the entertainment news on the NYTimes. At one point, I walked to the bathroom to find that no one was in the common room. This was a moment I had been waiting for for about a week because it meant that I could finally empty my urinal! Among other things that I didn’t want to explain to the Arab students was the six-liter bottle 1/3rd full of yellow liquid in my dorm room.
I’m tired of writing now the rest can wait til tomorrow. Until then, rest assured I will start a new urinal and will probably be miserable.
Survival Kit
And so the sun has set on the first day of my quarantine. I actually got to go outside today. I fed my left over chicken to the clowder, they feasted upon it like the body of one of their own. I can’t go outside now though, because the zombies come out after sunset. So it goes. Before I talk about what I did, and mostly didn’t, do today, I should elaborate upon the contents of my aforementioned quarantine survival kit.
Two boxes of corn flakes: because the provided breakfasts are inedible. My favorite thing about the Egyptian brand of corn flakes, Temmy’s, provides instructions on how to consume this food, as if eating corn flakes wasn’t intuitive: “To enjoy Temmy’s delicious and light meal enriched with Vitamins & Minerals, add the required quantity of (Corn Flakes) to the cold milk whether in Summer’s or Winter’s.”
Six cigarettes: why not? For this one, I followed the lead of my friend Dan on our spring break trip in Costa Rica. In CR cigs were so cheap, basically free, that Dan could not not buy them. He smoked a pack a day for like 5 days and then woke up one day without a voice and then realized it was a bad idea. Cigs in Egypt are also basically free, so I bought some in Cairo. We ripped through most of them at the bowling alley (yes, Egypt has 1 bowling alley, more on this later), and I have six left.
Six liters of fresh water: as of yet, the authorities have not provided us with any bottled water, and since drinking out of the Egyptian tap will give me problems that make swine flu look fun, this is pretty important. The only problem is, I seriously compromised about half of my fresh water supply a few nights ago by urinating in it. The night started with Ben, Ian, and I crushing some fun-sized bottles of Vat (Egyptian tequila, maybe?), Brandy (like your grandmother would drink), and Ouzo (think clear Jagermeister, but for sketchy Egyptians instead of guidos). Then we bought some gorilla masks on the street for $0.40 a piece. A little known fact about Egypt is that the women can choose between wearing a gorilla mask or a hijab, but inevitably most of them choose the hijab for reasons of comfort and breathability. Gorilla masks on, we crushed some more beers, danced a little with mouzas, and then returned to the dorm. Here I was faced with a (prisoners?) dilemma: I had to break the seal really bad, but I didn’t want to walk to the bathroom where it always smells like p00p and anyway I’d have to watch like 5 seconds of soccer when I passed through the common room. I briefly considered peeing in my trashcan, but then noticed something even better in my room: a urinal! Sure, it happened to be a six-liter bottle, but no worries; I peed in it and it spent the next few days in my corner greeting visitors. So now I only have one bottle of fresh water, shit.
Ben: Ben is my friend and travel partner in Egypt. Ben has the beadiest little eyes, and the biggest legs. Seriously Ben’s legs are so big that they make boot cut jean look like skinny hipster jeans, and when he walks he has to swing them around like a cowboy. Most of the time, Ben is fun to have around, except when he smells bad, which is actually most of the time. Ben smells at Georgetown, but he smells every worse here because of the hot climate and infrequent showers. He is really bad at backgammon, and I beat him consistently. Ben also sports facial hair that makes him look like a child molester, which is good, because I bet it makes all of the girls think that I am the less-creepy half of our Georgetown twosome here.
Bleach: in WWII, spies on both sides carried suicide pills with them just in case they were placed in an untenable situation where death was preferable to getting tortured and divulging state secrets. In Egypt, I bought bleach for times like these. Okay this isn’t actually why I have bleach. The other day, I washed my whites on hot with a pair of colored underwear and all hell broke loose in that laundry machine. But hey, who ever said bleach was only for laundry?
Two Terrible Towels: One of my primary goals for this trip is to take culturally insensitive pictures with my Towel in front of significant historical sites. Why two? (Towelatain, for those of us speaking Arabic). Obviously I needed my limited-release six-time Super Bowl champion’s towel in addition to my traditional Towel.
1/3rd of a Fifth of Gin (or 1/15th of Gin, if you’re into math): obviously the most crucial item in my survival kit, to be saved for the most desperate moment of my quarantine. This isn’t anyone’s gin either- this is $3 Egyptian Bolanchi gin, widely regarded as the finest brand distilled outside of Great Britain. It’s so good that Ben’s guidebook actually goes so far as to warn foreigners not to touch it because “it may actually contain wood alcohol and other poisons.” I don’t actually know what wood alcohol is, but it can’t be any worse than grain alcohol, and plus, where else in the world can you score a $3 fifth?? The problem here is that I don’t have a fifth, I have a fifteenth. That means I have about 5 shots. Do I share with Ben? Or anyone else? Such a dilemma. I mean, 5 shots is enough to get a man of my stature a great buzz under the right conditions. Assuming that tomorrow evening will be the peak of my misery and the right time for this, do I not eat anything tomorrow to maximize the effect? So many questions. This post is long enough as it is, so we’ll leave today’s life update for the next one.
And Just When I Thought Egypt Couldn’t Get Any Worse…
Today began like any other day in Egypt. I woke up. Then I ate a meager breakfast of stale pita and Nutella, because there is no such thing as eggs, pancakes, and bacon here. I can’t even get any fucking oatmeal in Egypt, my fiber-laden, daily shit inducing breakfast of champions. Nor can I drink the normal, delicious black coffee that I love with my breakfast in America. The kind of coffee that, along with the oatmeal, facilitates the perfect p00p at 11:03 AM every day.
Which brings me to the second thing that happens every day in Egypt: diarrhea. Every day the spirit of Gamal Abdul Nasser avenges all of those times that Egypt got crushed by Israel by giving me and the other Westerners the shits. In America, if I want diahrrea, I go to McDonald’s and get a 12-piece mcnugget combo meal with large fry. In Egypt, if I don’t want diahrrea, I go to McDonald’s and get a 12-piece McNugget combo meal with large fry.
Which brings me to the third thing that I do every day in Egypt: go to McDonald’s. Not only is this bastion of freedom and fine American cuisine the only place in Egypt with reliable wireless internets, it is also home to the cleanest bathrooms in all of North Africa. Today I spent three hours in McDonald’s. Over the din of awkward new-age Ramadan music and screaming children, I facebooked stalked pictures from Georgetown homecoming events, read about the Steelers’ loss, and cried.
Which brings me to the fourth thing that I do every fucking day in Egypt: not watch football. It is true that I spend five days of my week in America not watching football, but this is okay, because I get football for the other two days. Something to look forward to, an afternoon with nothing to do except drink Yuengling or Sierra Nevada, touch Haber inappropriately, and watch other men touch each other inappropriately and play with balls. American football is just one of the many reasons that America is the greatest country on Earth. I don’t think anyone can truly appreciate American football until they are forced to watch nothing but soccer for three weeks.
So today began like every other day in Egypt. After my 6 PM class, Ben and I headed back to the dorm (or, in Arabic, the ‘bait al-tulaab’). The bait al-tulaab is the most soul-crushing place on earth. It contains three cement high-rises that look like they were transplanted out of somewhere in the Soviet Union or maybe from a nicer neighborhood in Baltimore or Cleveland. My favorite thing about the bait al-tulaab is the clowder of feral cats that lives here with us. I bet you didn’t know that the technical term for a pack of feral cats is a ‘clowder.’ I bet you also didn’t know that feral cats that live in a clowder tend to have lifespans of 3-5 years, twice those of feral cats that live on their own. Wikipedia, sluts. Anyway, the cats in our clowder here at the bait al-tulaab all look alike, so they are definitely descended from two original feral cats that met and sexed each other, sort of like how all humans are descended from Adam and Eve. The result of this is that all of the cats look alike (orange and white), and some of the babies have really fucked-up genetic disorders (more on this later). The cats just hang out and procreate all day, and then eat our left-overs from the dining hall after the meal that is ostensibly dinner but is actually not edible. Today when I got back, one of the cats was dead. Sometimes if there is not enough food for the clowder, they will eat one of their members, but this did not happen today, because the flies got there first.
But shit like dead cats don’t faze me, cause hey, this is Egypt. But after a few games of backgammon and a trip to the hub later, I made a discovery that did faze me. All of the kids in my program got the same email from our director. The subject: “all classes cancelled Tuesday and Wednesday except for girls one-on-ones.” All classes, and only for the guys!? This is awesome. I guess its time to go drink at one of the only four overpriced bars in this city of 4.5 million people. But then I read on… One of the students in the male dorm has H1N1 (not a problem, I have a drawer full of Tamiflu)… the college has cancelled all classes (I win!)… and then residents of the men’s dorm are SUBJECT TO A QUARENTINE LASTING FROM NOW (MONDAY) UNTIL THURSDAY EVENING… the male students will not be able to leave their building except for meals (at the dining hall, which is connected to the building, but with a different entrance). What!? I quickly ran to Geoff’s room where we ran through our options. We thought first about leaving casually and acting like we never got the email, but then realized the guys at the gate would totally know what was going on. And given that the bait al-tulaab is surrounded by 10 foot high cement walls, another form of escape wasn’t really an option either. So we are stuck here, like prison only with worse food and a clowder.
About an hour later, the Arab students informed us that the university/Egyptian authorities decided to extend the length of the quarantine to seven days. At this point I was already delirious, and the reality of seven days in this building is only beginning to sink in. I’ve decided to blog the experience in all of its soul-crushing misery, so here goes.
I’ve taken an inventory of my possessions relevant to this task: two boxes of corn flakes, six cigarettes, half a jar of peanut butter, bleach, some fresh water, Ben, 1/3rd of a fifth of gin, and two terrible towels. How will I use these in my epic quest to survive? Allah only knows.
