Round and Round...

So it goes. My friend Thalia had her birthday party last night, which was really a lot of fun - she's moved out of the Egyptian family's home in which she as living and is now in Zamalek, in our friend Nick's former room down on Brazil St. 21st birthday, the big one - although ironically, in Egypt the drinking age is 18 if any exists at all. In any event, it was a nice party - we gathered, a bunch of people collaborated under Jon's culinary leadership to make a stir-fry, and there was watermelon, cake, baclava, even a sort of fondue, as well as plenty of beer. Unfortunately, Egyptian beer is really god-awful. But it was a great party nonetheless.

Once in a while, it's nice to get away from the Egyptian-ness of Cairo and just enjoy some company where we are all on more or less the same wavelength, in a setting where we are comfortable with everything. And it's always funny the people you meet - I ran into a kid who I had never met, but who lives probably 3 minutes away from me in Watertown, and knows some of the people I do from WHS. Not quite as strange a coincidence as meeting Thalia on the other side of the world, but still pretty close.

Oddly, Thalia wasn't happy about her birthday - or rather, she was happy and excited for the party but she said that each birthday scares her more and more. I've heard that from people more advanced in age but never from anyone turning 21. In American culture, 21 is kind of the last important birthday until 30 - it signals the beginning of real adulthood, often presages the end of college and generally implies you now have to be responsible for yourself. As for me, I like the idea of getting older - I can only hope I am wiser at the end of each year.

Of People and Places

It occurred to me that nothing particularly interesting happened to me after the events of my last post. We got up, visited a couple more sites, and headed back into Cairo, which was a long, fairly dull drive.

What I find a lot more interesting is the variety of people I've met in Cairo and Egypt. Like any truly cosmopolitan city, you get men and women of every sort, weaving in and out of your lives in the most unexpected way. I've already mentioned Thalia, who I went to Chenery with 8-9 years ago, and our absolutely bizarre meeting while taking an Arabic test. But there are other people who just jump out of nowhere and turn out to be totally fascinating.

For instance, our desert guide Saeed. He was a boy from the Bahariya, the little town we visited, who moved to Cairo to go to al-Azhar University, the educational part of the famous mosque, founded in the 10th century. It's one of the oldest universities in the world. He learned French language and literature, and is an extremely well educated man fluent in at least three languages. But the state of the Egyptian economy is such that he has to work as a desert guide to make ends meet.

I was at a birthday party last night in an apartment with a gorgeous overlooking view of Cairo, where I met some more interesting people. For instance, Josefina,(maybe mis-spelled), and Amir - a Carioca model and her Egyptian boyfriend. Squeezing my way down the hall to get to the bathroom, I heard a Portuguese phrae and couldn't stilfe my curiosity. Turns out this girl was in fact Brasilian, so we spoke for about half an hour. It was tricky, because Arabic kept slipping into my Portuguese. Still, considering she didn't speak any English, our conversation was pretty good. Her boyfriend showed me up by being able to speak Portuguese better than I - but it was a nice opportunity to practice, nonetheless.

Another fellow I met was Roy - a Norwegian ex-Intelligence officer, ex- UN "blue beret" in Croatia with a thick Scottish brogue. You really cannot make this stuff up. He talked about being a peacekeeper in Croatia and Bosnia, and how when he got to Cairo, Norwegian intelligence called him up and tried to re-recruit him. Really crazy, out-of-this world stuff.

There was also an Egyptian Rastafarian called Mahmoud with the longest dreadlocks I've ever seen - down past his belt, easily. It was really a great party, and the Nile river view was absolutely gorgeous. Every day and every night this city surprises me in a new way, whether it's watching the Real Madrid-Bayern Munchen game in an English bar while gorgeous Heineken beer girls take bets or having a discussion on the merits of Kaka and Robinho with the owner of an Egyptian chicken restaurant(the guy kept calling them Santos and Souza, and so it took me 5 or 6 minutes to finally understand what the hell he meant - no one in Brasil uses those names).