Startalk: start talking

Pretty sure I never wrote about Auntie Josie's Startalk banquet. And I'm pretty sure she's dying to get these pictures—I'm actually a little surprised she hasn't nagged me about it yet. It was almost a month ago, on August 9th, so the banquet was, once again, smack dab in the middle of Ramadan this year. It's a nice excuse to eat some delicious, homemade Middle Eastern food. They had a cook from Syria this year and she did a great job. 

She's got red hair and freckles, but is most definitely Syrian. I remember when I saw my first red-haired, be-freckled Jordanian taxi driver and I thought to myself, "Why is he wearing a gallabia? He should be wearing a kilt or something!" Little did I know then that not all Arabs have dark skin, hair, and eyes. 

Uncle Patrick has been helping cast "ethnic-looking" people for a New Testament movie and he actually got cast for a role as well. He's been growing his beard out and his beard happens to be red, probably due to our mysterious Irish background. He told me that they are going to make him dye it black for the filming and I was like, "Why? It's not completely unusual for people in that region to have red hair?"

Apparently the audience needs to recognize characters as quintessentially ethnic within just a few seconds which means that they play up a lot of stereotypes. If this sounds like stereotyping that's probably because it is.

Anyway, here's the beautiful Josie with her "graduation" certificate.

StarTalk Banquet/Happy Ramadan

Ramadan began yesterday at sundown. As happenstance allowed it was the closing banquet for Josie’s Arabic StarTalk program at BYU. Though the food was not quite Middle-Eastern we still enjoyed ourselves and it was fun to go support Josie.

Rachel wore her outfit from Morocco. She looked very cute and everyone was jealous of it. She was only sad because we had to go home which meant that bedtime was eminent. Naanii is wearing her shirt from Egypt.

Miriam wore an Egyptian shirt, too, though it was far too large for her since Grandma bought if for Rachel when she was about 15 months old. Unlike Rachel, Miriam was anxious to get home. My mom sat in the backseat between them and on one side a child was howling about not wanting to go to bed, while on the other side a child kept dozing off.

I wore an outfit I picked up in Jordan and Andrew just wore (boring) Western clothes. I tried to convince him to wear his gallabia, but he wouldn’t.

Kirk had us stand up so everyone could look at us—one of those “this could be you” moments for the students while he explained that we just got back from spending two years in Egypt.

All the kids went up to get their certificates and after one girl responded shukran when Kirk said mabrouk, he went on a tangent about God-wishes and how the correct response was Allah ya barak fik and made all the kids say that instead, though I have known real Arabic speakers to answer mabrouk with shukran. Still, I suppose it is a good phrase for the kids to know.

Josie was sad to say goodbye to all her friends. She stayed an extra night even though the camp is technically over because her roommate didn’t fly out until this morning and didn’t want to stay in the dorms alone.

We were worried when we didn’t see any native Arabic speakers that we recognized because that meant we were getting too old, but then Laila walked in (*phew*) so we still had a connection. We also ran into our friend Ibrahim—we knew his family in Jordan, though not him personally because he was in Ghana while we were in Jordan, but we later met him when he came down for a YSA conference in Cairo that we helped out with. It’s always fun to see old friends!

We enjoyed speaking a little bit of Arabic, a whole spread of food including pita bread and hummus, with baklava for dessert.

It was a great way to ring in the Ramadan Season.

كل سنة وانتو طيبين! رمضان كريم

There’s a storm coming

Taxes and thesis due on April 15!?

It’s the perfect storm.

I feel more stressed out right now than I did right before Miriam was born, probably. I can’t even imagine how Andrew feels since, you know, it’s his thesis that’s due…not mine.

Our path room got plumped

For the longest time we’ve only had one functioning bathroom. Technically our apartment has two and so technically they both should work since technically rent is higher for apartments with two bathrooms rather than just one.

When we first moved in we naively made a list of everything “wrong” with the apartment so that our landlord could either fix it or at least not charge us for it when we move out.

We told him about the leaky toilet and sink in the spare bathroom—and not leaky in the annoying, but common, drip-drip-drip way. No, our toilet and sink leaked onto the floor and when you flushed the toilet water literally sprayed across the room. So we turned off the water to the toilet because we were tired of having our floors be wet all the time…and we asked our landlord to fix it.

His solution: You are only two people. You don’t need two bathrooms; one will do.

She's using numbers and stuff

Andrew was cleaning up some of Rachel's playthings and she was adamantly asking him not to.

He picked up a little pink broom and she said, "No, not my sweep-it!"

Then he tried picking up her teddy bear, but she stopped him with, "That's my tebby bear!"

The Citadel and Fawanees

Poor Rachel was wandering around like Toodles on Hook all morning long.

“I lost my uncon,” she kept saying, “I lost my Uncon Patwit!”

Uncle Patrick was having a glorious sleep-in. We all kind of slept in, really. Rachel woke up Daddy at 9:00, I slept until 10:30, and finally at 11:40 Rachel could take it no longer and burst into the guest bedroom to find the dear Uncle Patrick she had lost.

Then she remembered that she was scared of him still and came to a screeching halt. I’m sure her original plan involved climbing up onto the bed and jumping on him because that’s her favorite way of waking people up…so hopefully Patrick won’t be too surprised if that happens tomorrow. They made friends today, so it’s possible.

Yesterday Rachel’s assessment of Uncle Patrick was, “He’s a little bit scary.” Today when we asked her what she thought of him she said, “He’s cute!”

We left for the Citadel soon after Patrick woke up. Everything closes early during Ramadan so we had to make sure we had enough time to actually do something.

Patrick had seen the Citadel on our ride home from the Dervishes yesterday and was curious about it, so it seemed like a good place to take him. We headed up to the Mohammed Ali mosque first. I love going into the courtyard and looking out over the city through the little cutouts in the window.

The marble was so hot on our poor bare feet, so we tried to stay in the shady spots. Rachel kept saying, “Oh! Hot shade! Hot shade!” We walked the whole area of the courtyard, in the shade of course. Rachel thought it was a long walk. We were holding hands and walking very slowly, a few paces behind the boys.

Rachel started singing Dory’s song from Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…” and then stopped herself.

“No, I am not swimming!” she said, “I am walking.”

She took a deep breath and started singing the revised version of the song, “Just keep walking, just keep walking, just keep walking, walking, walking…Just keep walking…”

As long as she’s happy, right?

We went inside the mosque and told Patrick a bit about the architecture and about Islam.

“There are 365 lamps in here,” I told him, indicating the chandeliers circling the room.

“Yeah, half of them don’t work,” he scoffed.

Oh, I’m so proud of him. He’s understanding Egypt so well already.

Since Andrew and I had already been to the National Military museum and weren’t very impressed with it, we decided we’d check out the National Police museum. There was a nice, almost empty courtyard that we relaxed in for a few minutes before heading into the museum.It’s high tourist season right now, so it’s nice to get away from the crowds.

Our favorite display was a diorama depicting the Battle of Ismailiyya. They used actual army men toys—I totally recognized all the poses the men were in, their weapons, the tank. I think my parents still have a bucket of these somewhere in their house.

At least they painted them…

We also enjoyed looking at the random Pharonic artifacts (they have so many of them they don’t know what to do with them; why not put them in the National Police Museum?) and the “Illegal drugs recognition kit.” I’ve never actually seen drug paraphernalia, so it was nice to have it displayed so plainly.

I was just noting the difference between a hash pipe and other drug pipes when Rachel announced she had to use the bathroom, so we left the museum. It was free, anyway. And not all that interesting.

We wandered outside to find the WC and were accosted by the “Supreme Matron of the WC” who graciously let us into the stall with a “chair.” Usually she keeps that stall tied closed because we wouldn’t want just anyone using the porcelain throne, right?

I was glad that she opened it for us because Rachel doesn’t quite understand how to use squatters. What I didn’t like was that she insisted we keep the door open. Because of the “chair.”

Rachel wouldn’t go with the lady watching and the lady wouldn’t let me close the door, so we gave up and left. The lady asked me for money. I told her no since we hadn’t actually used the facilities. Besides, she wouldn’t even let us close the door!

Andrew and Patrick had finished with the museum by the time we came out of the WC. We sat in a corner and sneaked in a little Ramadan snack. Technically Rachel and I don’t have to sneak because we’re exempt from fasting, but it’s a little awkward for Andrew and Patrick to eat in public. While sitting there, I realized that I had to use the WC also but I didn’t want to face the Supreme Matron again.

Patrick noted aloud that a group of Egyptian girls had used the WC and the Supreme Matron didn’t follow them inside or ask for money.

I decided to just go for it. Walk in, and leave…without paying. So I did. The Supreme Matron sent her minion in to let me into the stall with the kursi but I ignored her and used a squatter stall. She asked me for money and I told her I didn’t have any—which was true because I typically don’t carry money. Then I left.

She was miffed and they talked about me behind my back, but I didn’t care. I don’t mind paying to use a toilet in public, but not so much at a place that charges a $10 entrance fee (granted, we only paid $5 because we have student cards) or to Supreme Matrons who are rude and don’t even let me close the bathroom door or offer me any toilet paper, and who are only asking me for money because I’m a “tourist.” I have never been asked for baksheesh to use the bathrooms at the Citadel before; I don’t see why I should start handing it out now.

Using public restrooms in the Middle East is always…interesting…and usually very frustrating.

We walked from the Citadel down to Ibn Tulun, making a few stops along the way to watch a bus being pushed up a hill by a front loader, to buy a bottle of what Rachel calls “icy cold” water for 2 LE (instead of the 12 LE the guy at the Citadel wanted to charge us), and to look at some Ramadan decorations. Rachel sang “just keep walking” the whole time.

We also had to cross the street a few times. This is what Patrick thought of the traffic:

Our favorite fanous was one constructed of a discarded Doritos box.

Our favorite garland was made of empty pasta packages. For as much as Cairenes litter, they sure do know how to reuse things well.

When we got to Ibn Tulun it had already closed for the day. Too bad. Instead we just found a taxi and headed home. Everything else was closed, too.

All of downtown is decked out for Ramadan and we were planning on heading back to walk around and look at all the lamps and things that are set up, but Patrick and I both took too long of naps before dinner and that kind of set us behind schedule.

Instead we went out to see our local “Ramadan Tree,” which is actually several trees on a midan that are swathed in fawanees (which is the plural for fanous, which means lamp…pluralization is one of the many reasons I find Arabic incredibly difficult).

It’s fun to have so many bright lights out; it makes everything seem cheery and festive. Since we can’t go Christmas-light-looking here we go for Ramadan-fanous-shuftis instead.

We also stopped by Road 9 to run some errands and inquire about purchasing our own fanous. They really aren’t all that expensive; the challenge will be finding a sturdy, transportable one. We did end up buying some Ramadan fabric, which I’m excited about. My friend Melissa said they had friends over for dinner and she mentioned needing to go and cover her house in Ramadan fabric. I thought that was a wonderful idea…so we bought some just so we could do that when we get home. Is it weird to buy fabric just so you can use it when you have guests over to eat Arabic food?

If it is, who cares? Ramadan Kareem!

Language Confusion

"To get the door to open," Rachel told us, "You have to say arba!"

That's a common line in Dora, only arba means four in Arabic so that's not going to open many doors. What she means to say, I'm sure, is abre, since that's what they actually say on the show.

Lately she's been purposefully learning more Arabic. She likes being able to talk to people.

We went shopping for some pregnancy dresses at the Dar es-Salam suq a few days ago. After buying that one dress we found in Alex a few weeks ago I told Andrew that I could live in a muumuu forever. Besides being infinitely cooler than pants, I don't have to bend over to put it on.

Unfortunately our search through Dar es-Salam didn't turn up anything workable, but we did talk with a lot of people.

First Rachel would just say shukran before we left, because we always did. Our conversations would go something like this:

Andrew: We're looking for a dress.
Store person: Because you're pregnant?
Me: Yes.

Then they'd show me some dresses and I might try one on, but nothing ever fit--I'm a little too bulbous in certain areas right now, it seems and no one had anything maternity-worthy--so I'd give them my excuse: it's too small, I don't like it, I don't want it.

And then we'd thank them and leave.

Pretty basic, I know, but I don't speak a lot of Arabic and Andrew didn't want to be too involved in the dress-buying process. Towards the end of the trip he coached me on how to say dress so that he wouldn't have to say anything at all.

Eventually Rachel realized that we would also say ma'salama before leaving. So she started to, too.

"Masawama!" she'd call over Andrew's shoulder, waving at the store workers, each time we left a store/stall/hole-in-the-wall, "Shutran!"

Everyone thought she was a crack up.

"Masawama means bye-bye--Arabic," she told us.

She also started saying suq instead of market. It's kind of strange that she knows the word market, anyway. I don't think I knew the word market when I was her age because mostly I think we did our shopping at actual stores. Here, though, we shop at markets frequently.

"I saw two donkeys at the suq! Two white donkeys! At the suq!" she told us on the metro ride home, and then, feeling the need to translate, added, "Suq means market--Arabic."

She also learned the word for owie when we ran into our friend Hasan. She has a scab on her knee where she banged it up a bit and Hasan noticed this when we stopped to talk to him (because we can't walk by his guardhouse without talking to him; it's impossible). Rachel still pretends to be shy of him, even though she looks forward to seeing him and secretly thinks he's hilarious. I know this because she talks about him all the time.

Naturally, Rachel wouldn't talk to him the whole time he was buzzing around her, asking her questions, kissing her hands, and handing her flowers. The minute we were past him, however, she started recapping the whole conversation for us.

"Hasan said this," she pointed to her owie, "Wawa. Wawa means owie--Arabic. I has a wawa on my knee!"

I think it's funny that she translates everything; she's like a walking dictionary.

Bacteria al-Halq

It's been so hot lately and I was sick of my hair. I couldn't leave it down and putting it up didn't seem to do much good, either. No matter what I did, I was a hot, sticky mess. So in a sudden Pedro-like stupor, I asked Andrew to cut my hair on Wednesday night.

Well, when I came home from school my head started to get really hot. So I drank some cold water, but it didn't do nothing. So I laid in the bathtub for a while, but then I realized that it was my hair that was making my head hot. So I went into my kitchen and I shaved it all off.
-- Pedro, from Napoleon Dynamite

Luckily, we stopped short of shaving my head bald. I asked Andrew to cut it just below chin length and showed him some pictures of how long I wanted it to be. I told him how to cut it--basically, don't cut to where you think I want it cut, cut several inches below that and slowly work your way up.

"I'll cut half way to start," he said.

"Sounds good," I said.

"Ooops," he said.

I looked at the chunk of hair on the floor. "That's more than half way."

"Yeah," he said, "How about I cut your hair this short?"

"There's no going back now," I agreed.

And that's how my hair ended up as short as it ended up.

In other hair cutting news, Rachel also got her first hair cut on Wednesday night. Hers was more of a trim because I couldn't bring myself to cut off anything more than the little feathery wisps at the end. Also, I cut Andrew's hair and did the top using scissors instead of the clippers. I got it pretty even, too, and only snipped my knuckle two or three times. This is a serious breakthrough. It opens up so many other hair-styling possibilities for Andrew.

The haircut is growing on me, literally. I guess it’s alright and everyone seems to like it, or at least to say they like it, but it’s just shorter than I wanted it to be. I figure this is a good time to cut my hair too short, though, since I’m taking prenatal vitamins and my hair growth is off the charts recently. Soon it should be the length that I wanted it to be when Andrew originally cut it. He did a good job (but was a little over zealous in his hacking off).

With my hair problems solved I still haven’t been feeling very well, especially since coming home from Alexandria. It’s been a weird not-feeling-well because I actually almost feel fine, except for that I feel rather cruddy.

Usually when I get sick I get laryngitis and headachey, so I can’t talk and I want to lie down to relieve the pressure from my skull. While I definitely feel sick, I’ve been trying to convince myself that I’m not sick because I don’t feel like my ordinary sicky-self. Mostly my throat hurts, but I kept trying to convince myself that I was making it up because I don’t have laryngitis, and I always get laryngitis.

Last night when we were out I picked up some throat lozenges to suck on, even though I don’t have even a hint of a cough. No matter how much water I drank or how many cough drops I sucked on, my throat kept hurting. Sadly, I’m not sure how much I actually managed to drink or suck on anything because swallowing was getting too painful.

This morning when I woke up, it was even worse. I felt like I was swallowing cotton balls...mixed with thumb tacks.

I actually did a google search to see if you could have a sore throat without getting laryngitis. I didn’t think you could, but that’s only because I never have. Turns out your pharynx can get infected, too, without infecting any other part of your throat, which explains my pain and lack of laryngitis. For once my larynx stayed healthy!

After reading some more about pharyngeal infections, I stumbled upon the topic of Streptococcal pharyngitis. Naturally.

I’ve only had strep throat once in my life. It was at the end of the Fall 2003 semester. I had been sick all semester long, running a high fever and feeling absolutely awful, but never coming out of the doctor’s office with any sort of diagnosis. It was the most frustrating semester of my life. Then, on the morning of the oral section of my Russian final, I woke up feeling, well, even more absolutely awful.

I remember checking out my throat in the bathroom mirror and seeing that it had broken out in cottage cheese. My mom took me to the doctor for the umpteenth time and I was finally diagnosed with strep throat. My doctor said I was probably sick all semester long because the strep bacteria was working its way through my body, infecting this and that along the way, and finally showed itself in my throat, and that I was lucky it hadn’t chosen to break out fully in my lungs or heart.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be so sick. I finally knew what was wrong and after a few days of antibiotics I was feeling healthy for the first time in months. I hardly managed to squeak out a word for my Russian final, since I had laryngitis as well, but at least I had a solid diagnosis.

So this morning I went to look in the mirror, just to see, and there was my cottage cheese, which fully explained why swallowing was so hard this morning. Granted, this time around it wasn’t full-on cottage cheese mouth, but I did have several white flecks growing on my tonsils. More like cottage cheese reside than actual cottage cheese.

I totally blame this on Bridget. I don’t know if you can spread bacteria through a blog post, but it’s too ironic that we both got it in the same week. So, readers, beware, this disease is highly contagious and can spread through your computer screen.

Luckily we already have our insurance set up here, so I called to make an appointment with the doctor, but it’s hard to get an appointment right away here. So instead we just wandered down to the pharmacy and talked to the pharmacist. He agreed that it was strep and gave me some penicillin tablets. 35 LE for a full treatment of strep throat, without doctor’s fees. That’s a pretty good deal.

So now I’m at home, not getting ready for my mom’s arrival tomorrow. Instead I’m resting up so that I can hopefully be healthy enough to have fun.

And I’m sure you’re all wondering what hair cuts and strep throat have in common. Well, I’ll tell you.

We looked up how to say strep throat in Arabic before going to the pharmacy, just to be on the safe side. Who wants to pantomime strep symptoms? Not me. Here they call it بكتيريا الحلق/bacteria al-halq.* Andrew looked up halq in the dictionary (since it generally has to do with hair, not strep, per se) and found that it means: barber, to shave, and pharynx (or throat).

First our family went through a series of haircuts and now I have strep. How very appropriate. Although we all suffered through hair cuts, I hope that I’m the only one who has to suffer through strep!

*We were talking about it at lunch and I said بكتيريا الحلق, which involves a qaf (the q-sound at the end of halq). Oh, my goodness! It was the most painful sound I have ever produced in my whole life.

"Yikes!" I said, "Is qaf a pharyngeal?"

Andrew made the qaf sound before answering, just to make sure, "Yes."

"Good, then I'm saying it right because that hurt sooo bad."

It's actually a pharyngealized velar, so more velar than pharyngeal, but pharyngeal nonetheless. Definitely it's my pharynx that's sore. Definitely. Actually, that's a pretty good test to see if you have bacteria al-halq.

Doctor: "Can you say the name of this disease?"

Patient: "Bacteria al-halq...¡Ay, caramba! What in the world did you have me say that for?"

Doctor: "To make sure it was your pharynx that was the problem. Don't worry. It is."

Rather than stand like flamingos…

I finally found a book that is keeping my interest piqued, which means that I don’t fall asleep every time I open it. It means that I only fall asleep while reading it occasionally, and only when I get to a good stopping point. My body is just craving sleep like nothing else and it figures that if I have time to lounge around and read I have time to take a nap. It’s the hardest feeling to fight off.

Mommy Wars, The Israel Lobby, The Audacity of Hope, and Vanity Fair have all failed to maintain my interest and I was finding myself doze off every few words, which is unfortunate. That means I haven’t finished a book in ages.

Then AUC had a book sale and Andrew brought home a bunch of highly discounted books. While we were on vacation at Ain Sokhna, I picked up Cairo: The City Victorious and read a whole chapter and a half before I conked out. Miraculous, I know.

So the whole reading process is still a little slow going, but the book is so beautifully written and fully encapsulates the love-hate relationship I have with Cairo.

I always knew that the city was crowded, but I’m pretty spoiled and we live in a green neighbourhood with quite a lot of space for its residences, relatively speaking…so when I read what Rodenbeck had to say about overcrowding, I was quite shocked.

Cairo is, according to the United Nations, the most densely populated large urban area in the world. Overall, this city packs 70,000 people into each of its 200 square miles, confining its citizens more tightly than does the bristly little island of Manhattan. In central districts like Muski and Bab al-Sha’riyya the density is 300,000 per square mile, a figure that soars in some back streets to a crushing 700,000. By and large these numbers throng not tower blocks but alleyfuls of low-rise tenements…with three and sometimes five people to a tiny room, families take turns to eat and sleep….

…There are precious few green spaces. Until a recent crash programme the city had only five square inches of parkland per inhabitant, which is to say less than the area covered by the sole of one adult foot. Rather than standing like flamingos, Cairenes take to the streets. They turn sidewalks and roadways into zones of commerce and entertainment….The street is were some 40,000 homeless children sleep, and where all the people of Cairo engage in combat with the city’s million motor vehicles and 5,000 donkey carts.

--Max Rodenbeck in Cairo: The City Victorious, pg. 16-17*

Today we headed out to Al-Azhar Park, which plays a very big role in that “crash program” to increase park space in Cairo. I don’t think it’s possible to fully realize how important greenery is until you uproot and move to the middle of a huge city in a sweltering desert. You should see Rachel’s face when she sees the “grass” here. She just lights up, and then demands to be let loose so she can run free.

My friend just put a picture up on Facebook of her recently-returned missionary brother face down on their front lawn. He missed grass that much. I think we might, too, so don’t be surprised if, when we come home next year, you see us all face down in the grass. We’re a little repressed here.

The grass that they do have here isn’t really grassy. The church yard is covered in some clover-like substance that Rachel calls “flowers.” Al-Azhar is covered with that short, waxy, deserty grass that, while nice, isn’t exactly what we’re used to.

But we take what we can get and since we’d sometimes rather not stand like flamingos or combat speeding cars for space (also because Andrew’s been banned from going to school until next week due to swine flu and his trip to the embassy this morning was much shorter than expected) we decided to visit the park this afternoon.

Our taxi driver took the wrong way to Al-Azhar Park and tried to drop us on the opposite side of the street, which would have been fine except that we were on Salah Salem, a divided “highway” of sorts that has anywhere from 8 to 12 lanes of traffic to cross (there are no “lanes” here, just directions, so it’s hard to know how many lanes you’re actually confronting at any given moment). And Rodenbeck had it right when he said that people on the streets “engage in combat” with the millions of cars whizzing by. I was in no mood to play Frogger across such a busy street so I scoffed audibly and Andrew had wits enough to notice my thoughts on the matter and asked the driver to keep going until he could turn around and drop us off at the gate.

I’ve never been very good at Frogger.

So we got to the park, paid the entrance fee, which has recently been reduced to 3 LE per adult, and went inside. The place was crawling with people. There wasn’t an available bench in a shady spot as far as the eye could see. We trekked off to the playground, which Rachel usually loves…but which she didn’t love today.

Today everything was “staiwsy.” Scary boy. Scary sand. Scary slide. Scary girl. Scary this. Scary that. Scary everything.

She finally stopped freaking out for a minute and asked to ride on a little Noah’s Ark bouncy toy. She wouldn’t ride on the horse because it was scary. When I asked why she said it was because it would be hot. Boats, on the other hand, are cold. She was perfectly content and bouncing away when she was swarmed with children again.

When we had sufficiently calmed her down from that she decided she wanted to try out the swings. She had noticed some older children on them and thought they looked like fun.

We sat in the shade and waited patiently for her turn. Not that turns actually exist here, but since Rachel’s a blond-girl she didn’t have to wait long. Children were clamoring to give up their swings for her in exchange for a boosa (kiss). She didn’t kiss anyone but she still got a swing and bravely sat on it. We kind of forgot that she hasn’t really been on a swing since we moved away from the States back in August last year and the whole experience kind of shocked her.

She insisted it was “Mommy’s turn” so I hopped on the swing and pulled her onto my lap. Daddy had to push us because the swing was so close to the ground that I couldn’t bend my legs. He pushed us so high that I thought I was going to throw up the baby, but Rachel enjoyed herself. She likes going fast…when she’s securely seated on Mommy’s lap.

Wherever we went, though, we were being followed around by hordes of children (and grownups alike) and they were making Rachel really nervous. Besides which, the playground is trashed. There are missing parts and so many broken things that it’s hardly fun. The sand is covered in cigarette butts and sunflower seed shells. It’s unfortunate because it used to be a beautiful playground.

We left and sat by the fountain at the main gate for a while and amazingly enough, people left us alone. That is probably due, in part, to the ill-tempered security guards standing around, enforcing rules arbitrarily.

One security guard, who happened to be hanging from a tree (very against the rules), stopped us from sitting on the grass. Seriously. Andrew told him that everyone else was sitting on the grass and he said that he knew that, and that the problem was out of control, and that he couldn’t do anything about the other people sitting on the grass…but he could keep us from sitting on the grass.

If he didn’t have the power to kick us out of the park at will we probably would have pressed the issue, but since he holds that power we decided to let it go and move on.

We ended up on some vacant benches by the fountain, that people were repeatedly told not to touch by grouchy guards, while Rachel calmed down and got her wiggles out.

Randomly, I wore a pink shirt and black capris today…and Andrew took a picture of another lady wearing almost the exact same outfit. It was kind of creepy when I saw her in the picture, because I know she’s not me…but if you look quick, it kind of looks like me. (She's walking through the metal detector beyond the fountain).

(This next picture is specifically for Uncle Jacob). We eventually made our way down to the lake where we happened to meet up with Hogar’s family again. They gave Rachel chips and cake and played Ring-Around-the-Rosie with her. She was so friendly and happy to be around Hogar and her sisters, it was like she wasn’t the same child we brought to the playground earlier that day. She was running off, far away, and letting them carry her and pass her around. We were just happy that she was happy.

We blew bubbles, went on airplane rides, and in general had a great time until the sun started setting and a breeze came up, which cooled things off nicely and carried a little mist from the fountain on the lake over to us.

Then I sat (on the grass, even) with Rachel on my lap, enjoying the sunset, and talking to Hogar and her sisters while they stuffed Rachel with chips and other treats. And then some more girls joined us. And then some more girls. And then some more girls. Andrew thinks we had at least 10 girls around us, firing off questions in Arabic. I was doing my best to keep up with the conversation and Andrew was just laughing, not so much about my feeble attempt, but because of the huge crowd of girls growing around me like vultures circiling around their deceased prey.

Hogar kept insisting that I spoke Arabic well and discouraged everyone from using English with me. She felt it was important that I learn as much Arabic as I could from our conversation. And she was very patient with me, which was nice. I like talking to children for that reason.

I could have stayed longer than we did, but a security guard came and broke up our “gathering.” Gathering without permission is against the rules of the park. (Balls are also against the rules. Next week maybe they’ll ban fun). All the girls scattered and we were free to leave without being forced to make up some wild excuse. Rachel wouldn’t have wanted to leave, except that we told her we were going to ride in a taxi.

Also, we conceded to all her birthday party whims. She was watching a party develop with verifiable interest (you can see the party starting in the picture of me and Rachel twirling). She knows her birthday is coming up and she already knows a lot about birthday parties thanks to a certain Clifford book we read on a regular basis.**

Watching the party was very hard for her to do, and cued a few tears when I told her she wasn’t allowed to go. For her birthday party, just in case you were wondering, she wants a red cake (it will probably end up being pink because making red icing is too hard), red balloons (they will probably end up being multi-colored because we already have a package and it contains more than just red balloons), clapping (Arabs can’t sing without clapping, apparently, and they clapped all through their rendition of Happy Birthday), party hats (this is from Clifford), and a “special” shirt (her idea, I don’t know what “special” entails but it should be doable). I think we can pull off a party like that.

Of course, earlier this week all she wanted was a birthday cake (she ordered it while we were “talking” on the “phone” with each other), so her list has grown considerably and her birthday is still over a month away. If her wishes keep multiplying at the rate they have been we might just have to break her heart.

But since we didn’t want to drag her kicking and screaming away from the park, we told her she could have everything she told us she wanted. She was happy with that, so we said farewell to the green grass and returned to the chaos of Cairene urbanity. Back to being packed like sardines in the metro, back to dodging traffic, back to heat and smog and noise…everything that Rachel has grown up associating with normalcy.

*Rodenbeck, Max. Cairo: The City Victorious. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1999.

**I think it’s a stupid story, by the way, but Rachel likes it. They get all ready for the party and then no friends show up…instead they all go to the park to play together, without Clifford. Why? Because they didn’t think their presents were good enough. The moral of the book ends up being that family and friends are the best presents of all, but STILL! Does Bridwell want us to think that Clifford’s friends are totally lame-o?