living in cairo

when i first came to cairo, i thought everything was charming: the old cars, chaotic streets, talkative taxi drivers, women wearing burqas (full-face veils) with glasses perched on top... somewhere along the way, the things i found funny became typical, and things that never bothered me really began to. leaving the country became less of a respite and more of a reminder of what life was like in normal places. it became time to leave egypt. i went home for an extended vacation and to take care of stomach problems, then to france for a few months in order to be able to legitimatize my claim of speaking french and figure out what the next step was. and i did, kind of. france was beautiful, organized, and expensive, and i realized that i wouldn't be able to work there without either a civil union or a career. i sent my resume to companies back in new york and saw for myself how hard it is to score an interview, let alone a job, back in the city. i started to miss my cairo friends and how comfortable life was there on so little. alex's promised transfer grew further away and our long distance relationship grew harder to deal with. so i decided to move back to egypt and pick up my old life there, while getting more editing experience that i can hopefully use in the future.

when i first got back i floundered for a little while. i was intimidated. i thought i had said goodbye to cairo forever and it didn't feel good to be wrong. i was hesitant to pick up my old routines: haggling over taxi fares, joking around with shisha guys, speaking arabic. the magazine i had worked at before was in transition and slow to rehire me, meanwhile my old coworkers had mostly all quit and had horror stories to share. but i was reluctant to apply to other companies because i had already decided on going to live like a hermit in the leafy suburb the office was in. meanwhile, christmas was coming and the fact that i intended to be home for it this year, but wouldn't be, was sad. my friend smiley put together a list of his contacts at publishing companies, and i finally sat down and sent my resume to all of them. and almost immediately received an interesting offer. things started to be charming again. exchanging smiles with a cab driver when we drove past a baby in a cute hat, listening to another talk about how much he loves oprah. a guy at the gym showing me pictures of his infant daughter and lamenting the fact that she resembled him. i was walking around outside of my office this afternoon and i passed two men in the street, one wearing a sweater with embroidered cacti. the other asked me if he should punch his friend, and i suggested that the friend punch him. they giggled and gave me a thumbs up. two kids leaving school yelled welcome, welcome in egypt. of course, as i rounded the block, two other kids shouted fuck you, but it can't all be sunshine, shisha and boreo milkshakes. at least boreo milkshakes make up for a lot.