With this, my summer in Cairo comes to an end. Though the tone of this excursion into the land of the Old Testament has been significantly different than last year, I have had a worthwhile experience. I have remained (mostly) healthy, learned a bit, taught a bit, and now it is time to go home. While I have the utmost reverence - that I am capable of - for Cairo and everything therein, I am ready do come home. The old world has many delights to offer but none really compare to Ribs with a good sauce.
I woke up this morning dreaming of a large plate that was half covered in Ribs. The rib sauce had seeped along to the center of the plate into the corn bread and the blue cheese was making its way from the other side. Then I woke up. No corn bread, no wings with blue cheese, no corn on the cob and certainly no chipper girl wearing orange shorts and white tennis shoes serving this fleeting feast.
Since I am exceptionally pressed for time when I get back from Egypt before I go to school, I am planning my meals - a week in advance. All of this planning has illuminated a startling fact: Everything I am looking forward to is Haram i.e. not allowed by the Muslim faith. Topping the list is - as I mentioned - Ribs, Ham Steak, Prosciutto, Pear and Maple sauce Pork Chop, Bangers and Mash, Canadian Bacon, Sweet n' sour pork, Gingered Pork roast, Regular Bacon(with and without maple syrup), Glazed Chipolte Tenderloin, Cider-Brazed Pork Loin, and in the spirit come completeness, those little red pork shards you get at a Chinese restaurant that are so full of sugar and other stuff that they contain barely anything from an actual pig but are still considered pork.
Of course this will require Corn in the cob, some Cinnamon apple sauce and a dark lager to wash everything down with. Oih, the creamy Guinness will be so delightful after I finish the Pork and Green Beans that I will cook for the side dish.
I am estimating that all of these will take me approximately 13 meals which means at four meals a day I will finish at breakfast of my fourth day home. I am also estimating that I will require the use of toilet paper at least once over this four day barn-yard animal eating binge. Though not in my prophetic dream, one of the western commodities that I am looking forward to is double ply toilet paper - a completely unavailable product here.
Since the structural integrity of a single ply paper sheet is considerably less than that of a double ply, the common manufacturing technique to prevent tearing (this accompanies unhealthy dispersion) is to make the material coarse. This (lack of) development in paper products results in undesirable chaffing of the nether regions. Since I remain in near perfect health this summer I could avoid this unfortunate side affect. Not all are as lucky. The unfortunate tourists who's refined digestive tract could not properly deal with the micro-organisms all seem to walk around... slowly. This closest personal experience I can liken it to is having a bad cold and having to blow my nose on a series of overused and threadbare bathroom towels. After a day or two I decided that my nose could take no more of this punishment so I used warm water every time my nose needed clearing. Coincidentally, most Egyptian toilets are equipped with a device which resembles the flexible shower head attached to kitchen sinks.
There are many other things to look forward to. Cold tap water. Rain. Women with bare shoulders. Being able to walk barefoot without wondering if I will contract gangrene. Green grass. Music without "Habebe" and not hearing "Yanni" every third word. "Yanni" is to Egyptians what "so like, totally" is to Valley Girls: Used with complete and utter disregard for grammar, context or bystanders well being.
Second only to Pig byproducts is driving. Even if I had a car here, I would not what to risk car or life in Cairo traffic. This has lead to a feeling of being restrained - something I do not have in the states because my car is reliable and most anywhere worth going is less than an hour away.
For the majority (read all) of my formative years we did not have any air conditioning in my house. This meant during the hot summer months we would go swimming in a neighbors pond. Cool water is nice, goofing off with my brothers on the raft was great, but the best part was the seemingly never ending supply of blueberries that edged half the pond. The fifty or so bushes were close enough to the water that walking around any bush required walking through the oozing mud of the pond bank. Since there shore side of the plants were always picked clean, I wearing my swimming trunks, had access to the virgin quarter of the bush that required slowly sinking ankle deep in the semi-viscous edging. During my squeamish younger years this was quite a trade off. To enjoy the succulent fruit I had to be able to stomach the sensation of the gelling mud forcing its way between my toes. It took me at least three years to realize that I could levitate in the shallow water beneath the bushes and reach up to the overhanging branches. This practice worked but was horribly inefficient. So after another three years I overcame my disgust of my feet being consumed by the pond.
Harvesting aside, there are few corporeal things that can compete with refrigerated blueberries with ice cold milk and Raisin Bran. Each piece of fruit has a distinct pop before the sweet juice flows out to mix with the white milk. Perfection in Breakfast.
With all tactile memories flooding my five senses, it is difficult to imagine that I will be missing all of the things that make Cairo the surreal city that most people only dream of. I am assuming that after I gorge myself, swim in 50 degree water, complete biological instabilities without chaffing, and see a few scantly clad girls walking about, like, how their lives are so hard like they are like, on the OC or something, I will want to come back to this country of repression. In my first few days here many Ex-pats told me this was a city no one could truly leave - if the culture shock didn't kill. Since I am acclimated I fear this place is a mistress that I will always want to come back to, but then always leave.
No comments:
Post a Comment