We took a taxi from the dorms to a bus station in Alexandria on Thursday afternoon, which was apparently not the brightest idea -- there is a mass exodus of everyone who works or studies in Alex back out to their hometowns on Thursdays, especially in the evenings. The bus station was like a bus barn, only much more enormous and packed full of people trying to hitch rides on the numerous microbuses that make the round trip a few times a day between here and the outlying areas. There was absolutely no room for us on any bus, so my roommate dialed in what I assume to be a favor from someone and got us three assured seats on the next microbus. It came in maybe half an hour -- in that half hour, no other bus to al-Dalingaat showed up, so by the time our ride appeared our part of the station was filled with other hopefuls. As the microbus pulled into the station, slowing down of course, people swarmed it. There was a literal mob surrounding the vehicle, as the sliding door was wrenched open and men crammed themselves into the opening in a desperate attempt to get home. There were a few ladies attempting to join the fray, but for some reason they were at the back of the line -- if I had been there, I would've used the elbows that God gave me and gotten to the head of the line. At any rate, the microbus stopped, the driver got out, screamed "TALAT BINAAT BAS" (three girls only) and threw all the newcomers off the bus. He spotted us, waved us in, and off we went.
We were dropped off more or less right in front of my roommate's house. It is a five story, pretty blue building with expansive apartments, a roof, a duck/miscellaneous fowl house, and an orchard, in addition to some goats and rabbits. The animal pens are disgusting, really -- I hate chickens anyway but those were evil demon chickens and I did not want to get near them. The goat area was full of bones and traces of blood, a generally scary place where I'm sure the goats had some pretty severe PTSD. The orchard was great, though -- there were guava and pomegranate trees, date palms, and some currently-nonproductive grapevines. I ate a bit of everything, excluding the imaginary grapes.
Our first meal there was the most delicious thing I have ever consumed. The ful and fresh bread were absolutely amazing, as was the mahshi (cabbage leaves stuffed with rice) -- screw everything else, I could subsist of those three home-cooked items for years and not get sick of it. My roommate's sister made our dinner and my god it was wonderful. She will forever hold a special place in my heart for her cooking abilities. That, and she reminded me a lot of my eldest sister, so I liked her anyway. All our meals were fabulous that weekend -- I will have wonderous dreams about it in the future, deprived as I am of any food with taste here in the women's dorms.
My roommate has an enormous family. There were at least seven children running around, and she had two brothers at least, in addition to her grandparents, cousins, and all the various spouses. Everyone lives in that one building, each family with their own apartments. We were on the second floor. The ground/first floor is where her grandparents live, I think, but it also doubles as the dining room and area for preparing food, so I guess it's sort of a social room more than anything else.
I slept under a mosquito net for the first time of my life and still came away with a total of fifteen mosquito bites, one of which swelled up into a blister almost immediately and proceeded to make my life miserable when it popped. I was also loaned a towel, which to my not-surprise was just as nonabsorbent as the other towel I bought here, which leads me to the conclusion that "fine Egyptian cotton products" are a myth, at least within in Egypt itself (export the good stuff, give the low-quality items to your own populace, amirite?).
Friday I awoke late, but not later than the rest of her family (nine thirty or so). I went into the bathroom and promptly held my bowels, because that toilet was easily the most frightening thing I've seen here in Egypt. I am of the belief that you can tell a lot about the governance of a country from the state of its bathrooms. Egyptian bathrooms are smelly, dirty, and generally not very efficient, much like the corrupt government. Anyway, I attempted to use my roommate's family's bathroom for the first time the night we arrived, and was scared away by the poo floating in the bowl that refused to flush. The next morning, it was still there, and it still refused to flush. The suction is not strong enough, I suppose, and solid items tend to just stick around, so to speak. Friday afternoon I returned to see if my luck had changed -- it did, sort of. Instead of one manageable poo there was an elephantine turd wedged in the bowl, one that I assume came from her father, and that made me... averse to using the restroom, as you might say. The next morning it was a pile of shit that would not go down. I don't know how they managed it, but dear lord, that was just the most awful thing to not crap for two days because of a terrifying toilet. You might say I'm a bit toilet shy.
Friday morning I met the members of her family who I hadn't met when we arrived. A guy I think is her cousin but could actually be her brother apologized for calling me not-American the night before, because I guess it's weird to see non-whites claiming to be Americans. He was a funny fellow, though, and I find it amusing when people can't figure out my nationality, so everything was all good. We hung around the house for the morning and early afternoon, and I listened to an Egyptian soap opera and the vehement anti-Semitic rhetoric being belted out from the nearby mosque speakers.
A word here, if I may. In Alexandria, and in Cairo, I have never heard any imams preaching anything anti-Semitic. In the countryside, however, it was clear as day. An interesting thing to note.
In the afternoon, we played Playstation with my roommate's cousin/brother, who then made us watch the Dark Knight and then took us out into their agricultural fields. We walked around for a bit, took a tour of the elementary school where my roommate's father teaches and where all the little spawnlings of her family go for routine government indoctrination, then returned to shoot the bull and get dragged around the neighborhood to be shown off to all the family friends. I drank more mango juice then than I ever have in my life (three full glasses) and since my brain was too tired to process any more Arabic I amused myself by marveling at the gaudy decorations and items that Egyptian houses seem to accumulate. I have always liked modern, streamlined, simple things that make a statement, and the trends in Egypt go exactly in the opposite direction. For example, my roommate's fiancee gave her a ring (not the wedding ring) -- it is gold, with a very large, awkward floral attachment covered in what looks like beaten silver. A very strange, flashy thing that looks to me something like I'd receive as a carnival prize.
As we were walking back to my roommate's house that night, she advised us not to walk in front of some men sitting in front of the auto shop next to her building, and instead walk on the road. Then she urged me to walk faster, faster! Not so slow, and no, don't look at the men. This was particularly irritating not only because I find this aspect of Arab culture personally offensive, but because it was so blatantly hypocritical -- my roommate spent the entire first night we arrived talking about how men in the country (especially in her village) were nothing like the rude, salacious men in the city, and how women in the country had none of the harassment issues that women in the city face. A case of the pot calling the kettle black?
Saturday morning I woke up earlier than the day before, way before any other family member. We ate breakfast quickly and left via microbus. From another small, country town we took a real bus back to Alexandria -- I promised in a previous post that I would not take a real bus, but there was no other way back to the city. And yes, for the record, buses are every bit as sketchy as I imagined them to be. My seat had holes in it that looked like a rat chewed through the fabric. What a rat would be doing in a bus, I do not know.
another truckstop on the way another game that I can play another word I learn to say
another blasted customs post another bloody foreign coast another set of scars to boast
WE ARE THE ROAD CREW
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