Warding off the evil eye
This is a photo that was always displayed in Garden city, my home in Cairo. Back in the day, they used to dress little boys as girls to protect them against the evil eye. Indeed, the belief was that no one would envy you if you had a girl. A rather sad perspective, but things were the way they were.
Here is a photo of my father in a dress. I love the little chickens embroidered along the chest.
When I was child, he would tell me it was my picture so great was the resemblance. He would say that I travelled in time and was photographed in the 50´s. Gullible as I was, of course, I believed him. The resemblance is no longer that striking and it’s funny to see how my rational father who didn’t hold a single superstition in his life, started out in a dress, out of superstition.
The picture described in the post.
My father with my grandmother in a dress with small flowers
Welcome home ?
Cairo airport. I’m waiting for K. my friend and driver to come pick me up. There are people everywhere, a policeman is shouting at a man trying to casually drive his car into the gate just to get closer to the airport exit.
An airport employee is pushing a cart loaded with about 10 bags all precariously stacked. He isn’t looking in front of him, he is looking to the side, towards a wall, and is smoking a cigarette, looking absolutely zen. He is followed by a rabble of children, some of which are trying to climb the bags he is pushing. He crashes right into me, dropping my bags and nearly breaking my duty free alcohol bottles. I tell him to watch out, to look in where he is going. In all serenity, he turns his attention to me with surprise and says in a singsong voice:
« Calm down madame, rest madame رييحى يا مدام اهدى كدة ارتاحى»
« What do you mean rest ? »
« I mean rest or you will get hurt, your things will break, you will drop your bags رييحى لحسن تكسري حجتك او توقعى الشنطة»
He seemed oblivious to the fact that my bags had already been knocked over by him.
« My things will break because you are driving a cart into them and not looking in front of you! »
«Oh! Maybe you have a point. Mashy, Salam»
Even grief can be mansplained…
TLDR: I meet an American middle aged man this summer in Turkey who obnoxiously mansplains grief to me (this story is 6 months old, I have some material saved up).
After my father passed this summer, we went to Istanbul, aka my favorite place in this whole world. We stayed in this tiny hotel, which was clean, modest and had the nicest staff. I had developed a very strange friendship with Mustapha, jack and master of all trades, notably, concierge, barman and storyteller. The was a huge language barrier which meant that our conversations were limited to him saying “Salmaaaaaa !!!!” and me “Mustaphaaaaaa!!!” And then he would show me photos of his children. He would tell me anecdotes in Turkish which I believe involved getting drunk, dancing and something to do with electronic vehicles.
He took it upon himself to teach me Turkish and his pedagogical methods were interesting: he would line up bottles of Tuborg, Turkish beer, when my husband and I would have a drink on the rooftop. Tuborg beers had caps of different colors so he would teach me different colors in Turkish. Often there would be overlaps with Egyptian Arabic, notably the color pink. I would pronounce it “Bamba” and Mustapha would look at me like an exasperated ottoman pasha and say “Yok bamba ! PEMBA ! PEMBA”, probably appalled by my Egyptian pronunciation.
In the morning we would chat with other guests and it was nice, many people had come for hair transplants and we would discuss their procedure and their stay.
One day we met a middle aged American man. He was awake very early and basically told us how he was extremely rich and had retired at 45 and was traveling the globe ever since. He went on to tell us all he knew about Istanbul, he claimed to know the place very well though he couldn’t even name the neighborhood we were in (he said it was his 7th stay).
Anyways when he found out I’d last my father the previous month, he told me “you know what will happen ? Something will happen in your life and you will want to tell him about it but then you will remember he is dead!” He said that as if he were revealing a little known truth about the universe. As if this were invaluable knowledge, not a common human experience you sort of gather in the 48 hours after your parents die. I mean I wanted to call my father and tell him who came to his funeral and have good gossip about it. I didn’t need that trite observation from a garden variety idiot.
He then said “you will get a big promotion now, life will take a better turn, you’ll make a shit ton of money, that also happens after parents die. You win and you win big”! I decided to have coffee and get up, he followed me. I dropped my spoon and as I was going to pick it up, he kicked it under a table saying: “looks like you need another one”. He snapped his fingers at Mustapha saying “pick it up, sorry buddy”. I was irate of course and picked it up myself.
I avoided breakfast for my last day at the hotel and continued to try to learn Turkish from beer bottles, wondering what would my father think of the idiot I met on the roof.
Don’t put salad dressing on your hair!
In my early 20’s , I used to put Henna on my hair to strengthen it and warm up my coloring. Now seeing that I’m starting to have grey hairs, I thought it would be a good idea to revert to that habit. However, my delicate and capricious Parisian plumbing would never survive the gloopy, grainy and botanical consistency of Henna.
I decided to go to a hairdresser in my neighborhood who happens to be Lebanese, thinking they might be used to working with more traditional products. Of course, I was wrong. I enter the shop and find two young gentleman of the «cool » variety, dressed in stylish sweatpants, one had a Batman tattoo on his neck, the other had his eyebrows shaved off.
-Henna ?
- Yes Henna, I’ll mix it myself, you just have to put it on and rinse it off.
-How will you make this Henna?
-You mix it with vinegar, water and olive oil, some people add other things, you leave it over night for the color to develop and then apply it.
The cool gentlemen look at me in silent shock and then said:
- Madame, I work with Schwarzkopf, I work with l’oréal, I work with Kerastase and you want me to put vinegar, oil and leaves on your head ? You know in Lebanon my neighbor played with Henna because she listened to her aunt and all her hair fell off.
- I’ve done it before, I assure you it’s fine.
Seeing me getting annoyed, the cool gentlemen reverted to the renowned Lebanese courteous customer service.
-Look Madame, come back tomorrow when the owner of the store comes, he can do whatever it is you want. As for me, I have a store in the 8ème arrondissement, I’ll give you a great haircut and an unbeatable price and I won’t even touch the length (a major selling point for me which the cool gentleman brilliantly guessed). However, I won’t put salad dressing on your hair, not when I have such great products. I have Kerastase I tell you! Do you know how expensive Kerastase is in Lebanon ?
Egyptian watercress and national pride
Uber driver:
-so you’ve lived abroad and you’ve lived in Egypt, surely you can name one thing in Egypt that’s better than abroad. Maybe the Egyptian sense of humor, maybe our kindness?
-….
-I’m sure you can think of something!
-The watercress, Egypt has the best watercress. European watercress is harvested early, Egyptian watercress is left to mature and tastes nice and sharp.
-Ok, madam, so you basically just want to make me depressed. The only good thing about life is now watercress.
A cucumber seller from the 1930’s in Cairo. I couldn’t find any compelling watercress photos.
Kidnapping is too expensive
I needed to take an Uber for a long trip and the driver didn’t want to be paid by credit card because he didn’t have gas money. However, I couldn’t change the payment method so he proposed that we turn off the app and complete the trip outside of Uber. We were going to a destination on the Cairo desert road, so I told him «ok sir, we can do that but don’t kidnap me ok? » so he answered «Kidnap you ? I can’t afford to kidnap you. I’d have to feed you and in this economy I can’t even feed my children ». Reassured by this unimpeachable pragmatism, I accepted the transaction and arrived safely at my destination.
Covid vaccine, the mayor of Paris and swinging celebrities
I’m travelling to Cairo for a couple of weeks and the day got off to a catastrophic start. This all started last night, when my annoying brain, instead of going to sleep, kept on acting like a dysfunctional computer full of annoying pop-ups. So I spent all night with my brain singing to me “banana, bandana, no sleep for Salma” and worrying about trivial matters like whether or not I would be successful at staying alive if I were a pigeon. I was bought back to reality the morning, running late and no Uber in sight. I run to the boulevard and hale a taxi who tells me he can’t take me at first and then, sensing my desperation agrees. He asks me why I was running late:
“I couldn’t sleep and then I couldn’t wake up”, so of course he answers “that’s because you weren’t sleeping next to me last night, I wouldn’t have let you close your eyes”. I panic and the best come back I can think of is “no I wouldn’t have because you’re so old I’d be afraid you would die in your sleep”. He answers ”age is just a number, you’re as old as you feel”. I wanted to say: so I guess that makes you 12, but I didn’t. I steered the conversation into safer territories, on topics that keep French taxi drivers happy and talking for long stretches of time such as: the mayor of Paris placing strict speed limits, and of course the COVID vaccine, which he was convinced was a conspiracy. This position seems to be widely held by taxi and Uber drivers in Paris. This kept him busy for about 20 minutes and then he started talking about all the celebrities he allegedly picked up drunk outside of swinger clubs during the pandemic. He was of course convinced of having a unique understanding of the world that distinguished him from the rest of humanity, just like everyone else these days. Luckily I arrived at the airport before he could go any further. I left him a tip nevertheless because he delayed another trip to drive me and thanks to him I didn’t miss my flight.
Pickling misadventures or how I accidentally poisonned myself
TLDR: I am my own worst ennemy and biggest victim (this post concerns cooking and not presonnal development).
Guilty of overestimating my culinary talents and capacities, I decide to risk experimenting with preserving honey in ginger. The recipe seemed idiot proof. You wash, peel and thinly slice ginger, you place it a jar and cover it with organic wild honey and you let it ferment for a couple of weeks on your countertop. This method allegedly guarantees perfectly candied pieces of ginger which can be eaten as is or added to teas in order to promote gut health and help combat cold and flu. I boiled a jar in order to sterelize it, and decide to give this a try, already filling my head with images of domestic bliss and dreams of self sufficiency. Indeed, give me a bit more time, I naively thought, and I could survive an apocalypse with my new found expertise.
Once I had set my ginger to ferment, it started to develop little bubbles which apparently was a good sign, and it started to smell like beer, which I thought was a great sign. I added starting a brewery to my daydreams. After a couple of weeks, I decide to try a bit of my ginger slices, feeling a cold coming on. The ginger did help with my sore throat, however in a matter of hours after consuming it, I find myself afflicted with an awful stomach ache and other unpleasant digestive ailments which I will exclude from this narrative.
Reviewing my food and drink intake, I conclude that the ginger is the only likely culprit. I throw it away, vowing to never experiment again. My friend even expressed fears that I would accidently kill myself if I keep on "with [my] weird inventions".
Adapting to French life
You know you have reached the paroxysm of integration in France when you’re the one grumbling on the TGV « Non mais c’est n’importe quoi là, on ne peut pas tous passer en même temps il faut bien que quelqu’un s’écarte et ça ne peut pas toujours être moi! ». Meanwhile, the group of young girls who seem to be going on a bachelorette party and are acting like a compact mass blocking everything say «Elle est vraiment énervée la dame mais c’est bon, elle doit se calmer ». I am left wondering whether they are unfit to live in society or whether in fact, I am.
Stranger danger ?
TLDR: I guilt myself into helping an old man who then tries to recruit me as a sugar baby
In an effort to be more sustainable I bought a second hand sweater on a online retailer called Vinted. Instantly after picking it up I unwrapped the package in order to make sure it was free from any smells or defects that would deter me from taking it home. That’s when I spotted an old man with a very serious limp smiling at me. As I was waiting to cross the street he told me: “-are you lost?
-no not at all I live right nearby
-I just had a heart attack but I’m taking care of myself now and trying to exercise
-Well that’s really good, my father had heart issues and I really wish he would have taken better care of himself, but he died this summer.” He gave me a huge, bewildered smile and said “that’s lovely”, so I concluded that he was probably deaf as a doorknob.
“-I’m going to have café au lait, would you come with me ?” I told him I would walk him to the café, mostly because I thought there was no way he would survive the walk. He beamed and held my hand and as we walked he started telling me that he had a very big and beautiful apartment. It then dawned on me that not only was I taking it upon myself to support an older man when I already had a sprained ankle but that also he seemed to be making a very strange attempt at flirting with me. I answered that all apartments were beautiful in the neighborhood. He then told me he had a Mercedes he couldn’t drive. I told him I couldn’t drive either. Once again he smiled absentmindedly.
I asked him how old he has, and when he finally heard the question correctly he told me he was 61. I thought that he was as likely to be 61 as I was likely to be Elon Musk. He asked me to walk faster and of course not wanting to accidentally murder him, I moved even slower. He took my arm and leaned in smiling and looking absolutely thrilled, I continued asking him about his children and telling him to take care of his health and he continued alluding to his possessions, obviously not hearing and I no longer listening, which is pretty close to a normal conversation anyways. It took us 15 minutes to walk 300 meters and I made sure he sat down in one piece before I left quickly. It’s not easy to grow old.
The best dry cleaner in the world !
I fired the dry cleaner my father dealt with for over 20 years. He routinely overcharged him, the clothes he delivered always smelled musty but after my father passed I decided to deal with him a couple of times out of respect for an established customer relationship. When the first thing he did was ask me to give him my father’s old clothes, before offering condolences, I blew up.
This is when I met Madame Dania the competing dry cleaner who is truly a piece of work. The first time I met her she was screaming in the phone in strongly accented English doing what I think was an attempt at an American accent. When she hung up she told me “I’m trying to convince the pharmacy to let me return an expensive box of medicine I bought as a charitable gift to an old man who died. They wouldn’t reimburse me when they thought I was Egyptian, but now they will because they think I’m American and foreigners always get their way in Egypt. I’m a bit of an actress you see.”
This morning as I went in to drop a batch of laundry I saw that she had locked the store door and was inside deeply concentrated. She ushered me in and told me to help her urgently “I’m looking for a song by Julio Iglesias, I have to find it or I can’t open my shop” “but Madame Dania…” “Shhhhhsss listen to Julio! Listen! ” anyways, she wouldn’t let me go until we had listened to Julio but she also at all costs wanted to gift me a crochet dress. I escaped the dress but not Julio.
An account of the awful treatment my father received at Ain Shams Specialized Hospital
Content and trigger warming: death, hospitals, mistreatment
TLDR (even if I wish you would read this if you live in Egypt or if you have followed my father’s journey), MY FATHER’S STAY AT AIN SHAMS SPECIALIZED HOSPITAL
I checked my father into Ain Shams Specialized hospital on the 21st of July 2022. He was preparing to undergo a very important and potentially life saving surgery at that hospital within the week with a surgeon on whom I placed a lot of hope, especially considering his demeanor and respectful attitude when we first met with him. The surgery was never to take place. My father never made it that far.
On the 21st of July 2022, following an episode of already bad diarrhea, his blood pressure dropped dramatically. After he fell a couple of times at home and was disoriented, I decided to take him to hospital, thinking they would get him in shape for the surgery and then I could take him home and move on with the plan I had made to get him back to health with the help of an excellent caretaker I had newly hired.
We arrive at the hospital and are asked immediately for a downpayment of 120,000 EGP. Although it’s normal in Egyptian hospitals to ask for money before admission, what struck me here was the insistence we pay upfront for ALL his long term health problems which we couldn’t resolve in one go anyways as per the doctors orders. He needed two surgeries, one dependent on the success of the other and there was no need to pay everything up front. However, until we paid everything up front he wasn’t going to be admitted, unless the ER doctor changed the prescribed care. I didn’t have that sum readily available nor did I want to pay in advance for procedures without meeting the surgeons who would perform them when clearly he was in no state anyways to undergo anything. During that time we waited in the ER while he got weaker untill finally a doctor understood what happened, told us that my father absolutely had to be admitted and changed the prescribed care needed. They checked him into the ICU C.
During this process I was lucky enough to be advised by very competent doctors, notably my cousin who has extensive experience in ICU care in Egypt. When I told him that my father was checked into the ICU, he immediately told me that I had to everything I could to get him out of there as soon as possible as the risk of secondary infection, depression and psychosis were very high.
Acting on all the good, sound, advice I received and wanting above all to avoid ICU caused infection to my father, on the 22nd of July 2022, I showed up at the hospital gate at 12 pm, which apparently is the time at which rounds usually end. My cousin had, with great care and pedagogy, given me a list of questions to ask the doctor. They refused to let me in. I was able to call the unit from the reception kiosk and the nurse refused to pass me the doctor. I sat on the sidewalk for 15 minutes, called them again and the doctor responded, refused to answer my questions, yelled at me and hung up the phone.
I had a lot of determination at that point. I vowed to fight for my father and get him the best care. Little did I know that the hospital would wear down my will and determination to a thread and crush me completely.
The 22nd July 2022, at 5 pm, I head to the ICU for the normal visitation times. I discover that they treat ICU patients like prisoners and I can only see them through the window. When I ask to see my father briefly after visitation times as other family members did, the young na2eb doctor who had yelled at me in the morning, lied saying my father had requested no visits. I know this is a lie as my father is very anxious in hospitals and tended to call us at least 4 times a day during his previous stays. They let us in finally for 3 minutes and we were constantly supervised by nurses and security breathing down our necks.
The next day, my uncle received a call from an unknown number. My father had convinced someone to lend him a phone and called begging to be let out. The phone was presumably torn from his hands when he said this as the number hung up and never answered us again. It was at this point that I wrote the post complaining about the doctors and hospitals and asked for help which I later removed. It reached the ICU doctors and nurses who stopped being hostile and treated me with strained politeness. I removed the post because my father’s surgeon whom I will not name because he is innocent in all this, expressed concern at my publicly complaining about the hospital and hinted that he was reluctant to perform the surgery. I considered myself blackmailed into silence.
Things go blurry at this point. I no longer remember events day by day. We stayed at ICU C for a few more days but they banned in person visits, and I could only look through the window. I bribed a security guard to give my father notes from me which he answered. He was anxious. One day I arrived at ICU C and looked through the window and found his bed empty, the sheets stripped. I was seized with searing panick until a nonchalant nurse informed me that he was transferred to intermediate care. No one had bothered to tell me that he was getting better.
I went to see him in intermediate care and was happy because the one hour visit was in person. I could hold his hand and ruffle his hair, massage his feet. I noticed that day that he had a cough. I signaled it to the doctor who dismissed my concerns.
The next days he got worse and worse. The cough became a hacking, raging series of fits that turned his whole face blue. The doctors were wishy washy: “we are going to get a sputum culture” said one. “We have sent a sputum culture to the lab” said the other. “The culture takes 5 days to yield results” said a fourth, “The culture takes 7 days to yield results” said a fifth. We never did get the results of that culture.
On his last day at intermediate care, the doctor told me that he believed that my father had covid based on the clinical portrait despite, even if the PCR was still not ready. He used the words “cytokine storm” and said we were before the peak. My father was blue at this point and barely coherent. He didn’t want me to leave him yet I wasn’t allowed more visiting time. I performed a rapid COVID test on him while no one was looking and it came out negative. However I know that this doesn’t prove anything.
They moved him in the night to ICU B, which is where he died. In ICU B, the doctors said he didn’t have COVID, which was ultimately a good thing given that if he did they would move him and quarantined him in another hospital which apparently is absolutely abhorrent with even worse conditions. I was told he caught an unknown infection in the ICU. I discovered that many other families had seen their loved ones suffer the same fate and were in that horrible ICU with my father. They refused to give us his chest X-rays and CT Scans so we could ask for external opinions saying we would get them at discharge. We never did.
My father stayed a few days in ICU B. As I said, things have blurred in my head. I’m tired and worn and hurt, and I can’t remember things day by day. He got worse. Doctors met me behind a window at update time and read of a chart, impatiently, barely deigning to answer my question, and when they did, they did so in vague terms and constantly saying inshalla. One doctor hinted that I lacked the education necessary to understand medical information.
He got slightly better and we had hope. But on the 3rd of August 2022, his heart stopped at visiting time as we looked at him through the window. The doctor didn’t offer condolences. When giving us explanations, my sister asked her to speak louder, she looked my sister straight in the eye and continued on the same tone. They wouldn’t let us see him untill I screamed at shouted and said in a very loud voice that the infection was caused by them. The only person who showed us any sympathy was the janitor who led us in. They said they would leave him on artificial respiration as per protocol for two hours and then move him to the morgue. They moved him without telling us, even if we were waiting at the hospital wanting to walk that final walk with him. They acted as they had all along, without regards for the family, treating my father like an object, a commodity to profit from and discard.
The only place my father was treated with any respect was at the morgue. The مغسل, the man performing the Muslim ritual bathing of the body was extremely kind and respectful. It’s sad to know he was treated better in death than in life.
On one of the last days in intermediate care, he told me he dreamt he was riding his horse. Horseback riding was his favorite activity. I imagine him now, galloping in the desert, riding his Arabian pure bred horse مقصود (max), far away for the hell he endured with such bravery and dignity.
Blood banks and warm juice
TLDR: Salma throws a fit over a juice brick in the blood bank. A comedic interlude.
ICU receptionist: « PATIENT LOTFY : we need four bags of blood go to the blood bank and donate.
Me:-why ? What’s wrong now ?
ICU receptionist: - I don’t know ask the doctor
Me:- I already saw the doctor at 4 pm and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to see him again. He didn’t say anything about a transfusion
ICU receptionist: -well that’s because you insisted on seeing him pre rounds
Me:- that’s because you guys moved my father without telling me and it took me 20 minutes to track him down in the hospital. All this for an infection he likely caught here. Go find out what’s wrong.
ICU receptionist:-they want the blood because he has high blood fluidity levels
I go to the blood bank. The blood bank receptionist says that he needs four people to donate 1 bag of O+ each or else we need to buy it from another hospital. I volunteer to donate and we are working on a solution for the rest. Now the funny part.
The blood bank technician is gruff and grumpy but not an unkind guy and there is a rather weird looking young man donating blood. The technician is finding out my blood type and the weird looking young man says:
-Hey doc, don’t take too long, I fill up the bag very quickly. I’m a very healthy young man if you know what I mean (winks weirdly).
Blood bank technician: -sure ya captain I’ll try to save you before you bleed out.
I do some more complaining to the blood bank technician concerning the lack of patient information.
Blood bank technician:-why are you complaining to me, complain to those in charge
Me:-those in charge are nowhere to be found.
I finish donating and the doctor hands me a tepid brick of low quality apple juice. I’ve been to hell and back and my inner five year old is throwing a tantrum.
Me:-I don’t like apple juice
Blood bank technician: -what do you want ?
Me:-Guava juice
Blood bank technician:-here
Me:-it’s warm
Blood bank technician:-drink it or you’ll pass out
Enemas, jelly and awful neighbors in hospital rooms
Me, trying to whisper out of respect for other patients and hear my father’s feeble voice in intermediate care.
The woman next to me, screaming at the top of her lungs « IF YOU WANT ANYTHING ASK, WE PAID GOOD MONEY YOU BETTER COME OUT OF HERE WELL. YOU WANT JELLY ? I MADE THEM GIVE YOU TWO JELLYS, EVEN IF YOU ARE DIABETIC YOU NEED YOUR STRENGTH. EAT , EAT AND FILL YOUR STOMACH. YOU’RE CONSTIPATED ? ASK FOR AN ENEMA, ASK TWO FOR ENEMAS, THEY CAN DO THAT WITH THE MONEY WE PAID YA HAJ. WAIIIIT THIS TANTE SAFEYA SHE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU. جعان ياحج ؟ كل و عبي بطنك، كل كل ده احنا دافعين و لازم نستفيد ولو عايز حقنا شرجية تطلب، اطلب حقنتين برحتك »
Meanwhile this woman’s poor husband just looked on helplessly and I barely heard one word out of three of what my father was trying to say. Who said hospitals were a place for rest? Clearly for some you get your money’s worth in jelly and enemas.
Good news from the hospital
Finally some good news from ICU C of Ain Shams hospital. It’s not my good news, my news is the same, my father is stable but not better, nor worse. The good news however is that the 15 year old boy is out of his coma and has been transferred to a regular room. I arrived to find the same group of 70 people, all with big smiles on their faces. The men directed me to the neurology floor, which was a rather grim walk. I followed a gurney for corridor after corridor. On the gurney there was a young girl entirely covered by a blanket and I was struck by a little white hand and finger nails dyed red with henna.
Finally I reached my friend’s room, it was bursting with at least 20 people. The young boy was asleep on the bed and there were around 5 children on the bed with him, pulling at his toes and playing with the hospital bed remote. Thankfully he was unaware and resting. A child even tried to tickle him but received a smack on the head from a cousin or an aunt.
The grandmother, a formidable woman who looked anywhere between 70 and 100, pushed me with surprising physical strength to the front so that I could see her grandson and gave me a hug that made my bones rattle. I was astounded at her strength given that she is tiny, no taller than 1m50, and extremely thin. She told me that her strength comes from “سمنة بلدي" (traditional Egyptian clarified butter) and spending time in the sun at 6 am each morning. The young boy’s mother had tears of joy in her eyes. I left them feeling hopeful.
The hospital bed next to my father’s
TLDR: 70 people come daily to visit a 15 year old boy in a coma at the ICU
The visits at the ICU of Ain Shams Specialized Hospital have a rather prison like nature especially due to the structure of the place. ICU ward C is built as like a Soviet block, a square building surrounded by a square wall without a roof. So basically you have a closed square inside an open square. At 5pm every afternoon they open a metal gate and you can look at your loved ones through a grubby window in the narrow corridor between two squares. They can’t hear you and you can’t hear them.
Then you enter building at 6pm and get to meet with a young attending doctor who answers your questions with contempt. If the security guard can be bribed, they let you in to see your relative for a few seconds and whisk you out the moment you ask them any real questions.
Two beds away from my father is a young boy of 15. He got hit by a car while he was crossing the street and is in a coma.
The day I checked my father into the ICU, I saw in the courtyard of the ER about 40 men in traditional clothing sitting on the hospital lawn and about 40 or so women in the shade. I didn’t think much about it that day. It was a hectic day and a fight had broken out in the ER reception with another family trying to beat up the doctors so I avoided the other visitors.
The next day, as I discovered the inhumain visiting protocol, I saw the same group of 70 or so people. The mother of the boy told me that she recognized me from the day before “you are that pale girl who was shouting at people”. She told me that her son had been hit by a car and they had to run from hospital to hospital untill they could find one that would accept their son at a non extortionate or reasonably extortionate rate. Their entire village traveled from upper Egypt, elders, women and children just to look at the boy from the grubby window day after day.
The mother of the 15 year old boy is exactly my age, which amuses us both. She is very supportive and kind to me, offering smiles and holding my hand. They have very different customs and I realized that they take turns in the cramped corridor. The women look first and then the men. As they have to pass by me first to look at their boy it makes the men very uncomfortable and even if it isn’t my way of seeing things I try to respect them because I realize that not brushing past me in the corridor is their way of respecting me. The women have all befriended me and look at my father daily. The children ask to climb on my back in order to “see the uncle who is awake” given that my father is conscious.
The visiting protocol is really horrible when you have conscious relative as they look at you asking to come in and don’t understand why you can’t. I suppose having an unconscious relative is another level of anguish that I can’t fathom.
I’m grateful for having met this group of women. They make the ICU visitation process a lot more human.
A confused emergency
So for a decade I have told you stories about Egyptian taxies but now I have to tell you all about Egyptian ambulances. So first of all, all is ok. Or is under control. I call the ambulance to get my father transferred to hospital because that’s the safer course of action. The ambulance driver seemed very unhappy about our location seemingly wanting it to be somewhere more accessible causing him a slight cognitive dissonance:
- I’m located in garden city right next to St Mary Church
-So if I go to Kasr el Eini street near the Cancer institute I won’t find you ?
- no you would be about a 15 minute drive away.
-OK, so how about near the Co-op gas’s station on Kasr el Eini
-No I promise you I am right near St Mary Church IN THE HEART of garden city neighborhood. »
I decide to post the street policemen and loiterers at either sides of the street to hail in the ambulance. They seemed rather excited to oblige. The ambulance arrives after 30 minutes, with two rather disheveled gentlemen.
« It was very difficult to find you, we went to the other church and you weren’t there.
-Yes well that’s because it wasn’t the St Mary Church
-Yes but it was a church »
Just as I was leading them in with the hope of putting an end to this tautological discussion, a heap of leaves and branches fall on the entrance to the building making quite a racket. The ambulance drives take a step back in shock. When the mess cleared, it revealed our doorman Uncle Megahed, precariously perched on a chair coming down from the mango tree in courtyard holding several worm eaten mangoes. He was smiling from ear to ear «don’t worry I was just getting mangoes, the building isn’t falling, you can go in ».
Uncle Megahed decides to accompany the ambulance people into the house and the rest of the neighborhood gathered to watch. My father saluted them as would a diva taking of on a jet plane. Now we are currently in the ambulance with cars in our way. Thank goodness this isn’t a full blown emergency.
The Qalawoon complex, depression and roasted chicken
We visited the Qalawoon complex which includes a mosque, school, hamam and a morestan which is a sanitarium. The Sanitarium was not open to the public but the ticket clerk let us in. It consisted of a courtyard surrounded by several cells. The cells were open and designed without a door and all interconnected (meaning that they had no third wall) by a corridor so that a doctor could circulate between them. In the middle of the courtyard was a pool which was drained empty. It was a very quiet place which came as a surprise considering the pandemonium going on outside.
The ticket clerk’s commentary was gold: “You can’t cure people while taking away their freedom, that’s why they can come and go as they please. This was the first sanitarium in the Middle East. When this was built, in the Middle Ages in Europe, they would imprison the mentally ill in a glass cube and wait for them to swell and then pop them with a needle. In Egypt we cured them by bathing them in rose scented water, playing music and reciting poetry. Of course that was back then. Now we forgot how to do this and we just give them electric shocks in the Abbaseya hospital. Also let me tell you, we used to know when a patient was cured by testing his appetite. If a patient is depressed, he won’t have much appetite, (at this point I remarked “how I wish this were true”), so we would serve the patient a whole roasted chicken, if he finished it, he was cured, if not, he would he asked to stay longer. ده اسمه اختبار الفراخ المشوية" .
I highly recommend visiting the Qalawoon complex and discussing things with the ticket clerks. They know all the hidden gems and they know which room corresponds to what. So even if this gentleman was a bit creative with his interpretation of history, without him I probably would have taken the sanitarium for a stable.
The Morestan part of the Qalawoon complex, featuring the drained pool.
Feral diabetes
Taxi story with quite a character. Be warned it’s a long one.
It all starts with me trying to get an Uber behind the Maadi grand mall at Fetar time the day before Eid. There are no Ubers in sight and the app is applying a surcharge due to high demand. I stop a taxi, he refuses at first and I tell him ”fine whatever, I’ll get an Uber and save my dignity instead of pleading with you”. I thought he had driven off but no. He parked across the street from me and came back running saying “What Uber? Over my dead body are you taking an Uber. It’s fetar time and no Uber can drive as fast as I can!” I tell him I really don’t want him to drive fast and I prefer getting home alive. He asks me how much I’m willing to pay, I give a fair price. He says ok let’s go. We cross the street heading to his cab when a dazed and miserable looking man also attempting to negotiate a crossing bumps into me. Immediately the taxi driver lunges at him screaming “look in front of you son of a sleepy woman (?), are you looking for any excuse to bump into a respectable woman? بص ادامك يا ابن النعسانة هو انت عايز بس تمشي تخبط في النسوان المحترمة؟". Before I could even understand what was happening a fight was breaking out. The street was empty but all of a sudden a handful of people appeared out of nowhere and separated the two men. We got into the taxi.
He starts telling me “people have lost their manners and they don’t know how to behave. It’s because of all the construction. Their stomachs are full of armored steel and cement. If you beat their stomachs with a hammer your hammer will break".
Immediately he started driving like a madman. I told him again to calm down. He told me that I probably didn’t trust and believe in god because if I did I would be sure that I would make it home safely. Then he told me that his current taxi wasn’t his anyways so he didn’t care if he crashed it: “I owed 15,000 EGP in electricity bills and the electricity company employee came to tell me that he would cut the electricity because I hadn’t paid. I told him there was no way I would let him cut the electricity during Ramadan. He ignored me so I got my gun and told him to leave or I would shoot him. My wife decided to take the gun from me so I shoved him down the stairs. They charged me with assault and theft of electrical current and I had to sell the taxi to pay. I asked to go to prison instead of paying but they said no”.
He then went on to tell me that he had a special kind of diabetes called ”feral diabetes” مرض السكر المتشرد that he cures by eating salad everyday but he still eats his favorite sweets. He told me he has to eat basbousa daily.
Sharks, judgement day and Molokheya
Taxi on the way going:
“ You know these shark attacks in Red Sea on tourists are caused by the current inflation. Just like us the sharks have nothing to eat. This is a sign of judgment day approaching but not many understand this. There are no more fish in the sea so the sharks eat us. If I were a shark I would eat humans too if I couldn’t find fish. السمك ناقص من البحر والقرش جاع خلاص فلازم ياكل البشر امال هيعمل ايه ؟ لو انا قرش كنت اكلت البشر عادي »
Taxi on the way back:
An old skinny man with a toothless smile, absolutely adorable. His car is nice and clean and he has the AC on and is listening to Om Kalthoum. He said he was going home for lunch but wouldn’t embarrass me and he would drop me off beforehand. I asked him what he was having for lunch he said “I asked for chicken baked in the oven with potatoes and tomato and I asked for molokheya soup. My favorite food is bamya but a foreigner like you wouldn’t know it.” Then he put the music higher and sang along to Om Kalthoum and said “because of you my lunch will be cold. You’re really lucky to be in my car, with the AC and Om Kalthoum, it’s the best place on earth. Now let’s listen in peace to Om Kalthoum before I arrive home where it’s noisy”. وبس بقى كفاية كلام عايز اسمع الست بمزاجي قبل دوشة البيت