Written Friday evening, June 26; posted Saturday mid-day.
So it’s been 36 hours or so since I’ve had ‘net access, and I’m jonesin’ for a fix. Maybe tonight I’ll be able to use the land line of the house where I’m staying. A friend of my father’s who lives just outside Cairo invited me to stay with his family, so I’ll stay here at least one night, perhaps until I leave Tuesday morning.
The bus ride from Taba was uneventful – six hours of time to sort pics, write posts, and read from the several books I’ve been lugging around. Then after I arrived in Cairo I had about four hours to hang out before Aladdin (that’s the guy’s name) could pick me up – I didn’t do too much exploring because I had both bags of luggage with me and I wasn’t exactly sure when he’d be arriving, so I just hung out on the street and soaked up the ambience. Cairo’s got a buttload of ambience. Dusty, albeit, but ambience nonetheless. And I finally made a bit of headway speaking Arabic. Evidence of what a simpleton I am is that is I can’t learn two languages at once – that semester in college when I took both Spanish and German was a total wash.
So it was nice to stop working on Hebrew (in fact I threw away my Israel guidebook to free my bags of the weight) and just focus on Arabic. A couple of street urchins decided to hang out with me, even though I wouldn’t given them money, and they helped with my pronunciation. They were persistent buggers when it came to the begging. Every minute or so they’d ask again for money. At one point, when they asked why I wouldn’t give them any, I said, “Because I’m mean.” (-: Heh. But we stayed friends and they were pleased as punch when I snapped a couple photos of us.
Then Aladdin picked me up, and, lo and behold, the one-new-language-at-a-time scenario died a quick death when he introduced me to Jenny and Carmen, two women who are also staying with his family. They are from Columbia, in their mid-twenties, and – get this – here to work on their belly-dancing. Yup, buddy boys, I must have some good karma, ‘cause I’m hanging out with a couple of exotic and attractive Latina belly-dancers. <smiles>
If I had more time, I’d explain last night’s horrible mistake, but, um, I think it’s time for me to go socialize. Adios!
