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Registered: May 2005
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Location: Edge of the gene pool, w/ a bottle of bleach
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Laura's newest book - JUST RELEASED
The Beginning
A cacophony of sounds wrenched me from a sound sleep into that semi coherent state between sleep and wakefulness. The disorientation was brief. It was my first morning in Cairo, Egypt, and although I knew I was embarking on an adventure, I had no clue of the dark twists that my trek would take me on, deep into the bowels of Islamic fundamentalism. I didn’t realize that I had fallen into a rabbit hole reminiscent of that which Alice found herself in. That realization would come about an hour later.
For the moment, I only knew that I was halfway around the world, in an apartment on the 13th floor of a building at the beginning of the long wide thoroughfare that led from downtown Giza to the Pyramids. For a girl raised in the deep south, it was quite a contrast.
I grew up in a town of 8,000 people. From the sounds of things outside my window, it seemed that at least that many cars were on the street below my bedroom, all honking their horns in a discordant melody.
My husband was still sleeping peacefully. How in the heck could he sleep with all this noise? There was no chance of going back to sleep, so I decided to go take a shower.
That was my first adventure of the day! I’ll be gracious when speaking of the bathroom – if I had walked into a bathroom like this in any restroom anywhere in the United States I would have walked out and decided to just “hold it”. Clearly that wasn’t an option here. If my single experience with a bathroom at the Cairo Airport was any indication, this might be the Hilton of Egyptian bathrooms.
I decided to go ahead and jump through the shower, something that would happen several times a day in Egypt with all the dust. I turned on the hot water and there was a poof and a flash of light from some sort of device hanging on the wall. I turned off the water immediately. What the heck had I broken? That thing on the wall was shooting flames at me! I called my sister-in-law, since it was her apartment, and between her very limited English and my very animated hand signals, I managed to communicate to her that the monster on the wall was scaring me. She found it intensely amusing and told me “water hot”.
Well, it may have been the hot water heater, but it was certainly no hot water heater like any I had ever seen before! It was clearly not a beast I was equipped to do battle with. So cold water it would be! (That’s an easy decision to make when it is 90 degrees and there is no air conditioning!)
So after a quick shower, I put on a pair of jeans and a long sleeve shirt as I had been instructed, and pulled my hair up, still wet. After the battle with the water heater dragon, there was no way that I was ready to launch an offensive against the power converters I needed to use my American hair dryer (made in Taiwan, of course!).
A quick check revealed that my husband was still sleeping and had no intention of waking up any time soon, so I took a deep breath and ventured into the living room.
“Good morning Laura” said my sister in law, Siham, coming over and giving me a big hug and a knowing look. “You had nice night I see.”
I was puzzled but had no clue. I would find out later what she meant.
Siham handed me a cup of hot tea in a clear glass. One look at the cup showed that I was going to have to make some adjustments here. The tea was loose in the glass and I could see no way to drink it without getting a mouthful of tea bags. I looked up and said the words that are understood around the world “Coca Cola?”
Siham said “No Coca Cola.”
Oh no. No one told me there was no Coca Cola in Egypt. I thought Cokes were available anywhere in the world. This was going to be a problem.
My brother-in-law wandered into the living room during this exchange. He was in high school and spoke a fairly decent amount of English. Ahmed would prove to be a big help during those early days in Cairo. He thought it was cool to have an American sister-in-law, and really wanted the opportunity to hone his English skills.
He saved my life that morning. He told me they didn’t have Coca Colas at any of the stores nearby but that the little kiosk downstairs had Pepsi. He said he’d go get one for me.
Good enough.
Within 10 minutes, I was drinking an ice cold Pepsi in an old fashioned 10-ounce glass bottle, the kind we had when I was a child.
Somehow I knew instinctively that as long as I could get my Coca Cola’s, or a reasonable facsimile, everything was going to be just fine.
So I thought.
One thing that I quickly learned was that Egyptian hospitality was the rule, not the exception. Everyone in the country that I met went out of their way to treat me like royalty. As far as my in-laws were concerned, I was the ultimate trophy wife – blonde and American.
That first night of my first full day in Cairo, all of the extended family came over to meet me. It was quite surreal; these wonderful, warm people were all here to hug me and welcome me to the family. They greeted me with sincere and warm “welcomes” and then switched into Arabic, speaking in front of me as if I weren’t there. I didn’t understand a word! I assumed from their smiles that I met their approval, and was passing whatever tests that were required.
Then in the middle of the party, a new guest arrived who was different. Haj Mustafa looked like he was in his fifties but was dramatically different from the other people at the party. The other men at the party were dressed in western, American style attire; Haj Mustafa was dressed in a long gray galabaya – a traditional Egyptian peasant robe – and had a long beard. He didn’t mingle with the guests, but stayed off to the side of the room with another man I presumed to be his son.
Up until that moment, the standard protocol for the party had been pretty easy to follow. The women would rush up to me, hug me, kiss me on both cheeks, and touch my hair, since straight blonde hair was a rare commodity in Egypt; the men would shake my hand. But Haj Mustafa didn’t come over to meet me. Instead he stood over at the wall and glared at me.
Hassan noticed the arrival of the new guest, and rushed me off into the kitchen. He handed me a veil and said, “Put this on so you don’t offend Haj Mustafa”.
Huh? No one told me I had to wear a veil. I had asked and been told explicitly that I would NOT have to wear a veil!
“Put it on now or he’ll think you’re a prostitute because your hair is blonde.”
Fortunately my jaw was firmly attached to my head; otherwise I would have had to pick it up off the floor. I’d been called a lot of names in my life, but never a prostitute and certainly not because of my hair color. In the US, I would simply have refused. After all, the worst thing that could happen would be that we’d have a fight and break up. In Cairo that possibility was considerably more daunting. I didn’t know anyone here, I couldn’t speak the language, and he had all the money. I reached a quick decision.
Clearly it was not in my best interests to argue right then and there; I decided that we would settle this later. I let Hassan call Siham into the kitchen to arrange the veil, and once my hair was covered I went back and joined the party.
Once again I was the center of attention. Cries of “Habibti” and “Gamila” rang out – clearly my donning the veil was seen as a sign of extreme respect both to the culture and to Haj Mustafa, and I was the hit of the party.
Little did I know the symbolism that simple act conveyed.
I would soon learn.
More....
http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/inshallah.asp
"The UN is impotent and no amount of viagra is going to change it." ~Dennis Miller
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01-14-2006 08:55 PM
