Am I ever going to blog again?

Doubtful. It's hard for me to even write this blog post...the urge to put things down and share them is totally gone. I write them in my head and they never go anywhere. I can barely write emails. Sorry, folks. I'm told it will come back though.
I'm doing OK by the way.

Rudderless

So I’ve been unemployed for 21 days now. They’ve gone by really quickly, what with a trip to Sinai, a visit from Joy, planning a birthday party complete with treasure hunt, and intensive sitting around and TV watching. Every day I look for a job, and it’s not going well. I feel like I need advice, because a7a neikness is taking place. What I’m basically doing is pursuing three separate tracks:

1) Finding some kind of non-profit, human rights type job here in Egypt. In other words, a vaguely legal non-corporate commercial job. Local NGOs and organizations offer a pittance and I want nothing to do with anything that’s not organized at the highest level of competency. So, not most of those. Also, not being a member of the Egyptian bar has proved unhelpful. But none of the jobs are good enough for me to consider that arduous road. So unless I can find a job with an international organization (I do have an interview with the UNHCR, which I hear is in a state of considerable disarray with employees quitting in droves) I’m going to have to give up on this one.

2) Finding a job abroad. This is obviously huge. I’m seeing lots of great jobs advertised, particularly in the United States. Working in human rights abroad definitely seems to require bar membership, especially in the U.S. Is this a good time, however, to plan what would be a grand scale life move? It would involve taking the NY or Massachusetts bars at considerable expense, sorting out work visas and the like, and basically moving there. Sounds OK actually – I guess I’ve done the expected two years here and now experience the predicted longing to get the hell out. But what kind of job would be so awesome that I would be OK living there without friends (except for the ever delightful Droodle, the best American I’ve ever been friends with)? Alternatively, I could look into short-term fellowships and such. That would be cool, but seem very hard to find.

3) Recognizing that with the western economies in the shitter I might as well stay here, with loved ones and good weather, and take a corporate law job. Hey, the experience is always in demand, the money’s good, it’s easy, and I can revisit abroad-moving in another year or so (or however long it takes for them to put the world back together).

It’s gonna have to be option 3, isn’t it? At any rate I’m going to Kuwait for a couple weeks soon and I’ll be able to think about things (soberly) there and not do a damn thing for myself.

Done

Shortly after I got back from my vacation in Kuwait, I was tipsily sitting around with all my friends and I was happy. I said to them (it must have been apropos of something, I'm not one to burst into unsolicited introspection): "This is exactly how I hoped my life would be at 26."

"Really?" said Spaz in puzzlement.

I thought. "Well, except for the job of course."

So I quit. This is my last magazine issue. The thought is as a sweet morsel I roll under my tongue. I hope never to open another magazine again, although I hope to one day regain my pleasure in writing. Yes, I know it was an act of supreme foolhardiness to quit any job in this economy (as even my gynecologist felt the need to tell me at what I thought was a particularly inappropriate and rather painful point of my check up. No one should hear career advice issuing from their loin region.) I am well aware that I am a spoiled and privileged miss who doesn't have the will power to make the best of her opportunities. But I just couldn't do it anymore, and I'm pretty sure I'll find another job. Something legal. Let me know if you hear of anything.

By the way, don't you believe this post, the column: I'm nowhere near as despondent as all that, and at least three of my friends are actually moving back to Egypt. It was just a gimmick.

25 things you probably know about me because I talk about myself a lot

Sorry to regurgitate facebook content, people.

1. I can't ride a bike or drive a car. I don't believe in two wheeled vehicles and I am terrified of driving.
2. I've never seen a single James Bond or Indiana Jones movie.
3. I don't like Pink Floyd or U2 and I'm not ashamed.
4. I enjoy crocheting. I used to make hats and scarves for myself.
5. I know a surprising amount about Regency society in England from reading romance novels.
6. I hate baldness but love really short buzz cuts. The voluntary nature is key.
7. The amount of unmitigated joy that 30 rock gives me actually makes me worry about the state of my brain.
8. My ideal job would be a criminal defense or tort lawyer in a warm place that has common law. It would be even better to effectively work in women's rights here but I am too lazy to put in the work to learn enough Arabic, enroll in university, become accredited and then struggle with the stagnant legal system.
9. When things are happening, I write blog posts in my head about them a lot.
10. My favourite alcohol is vodka.
11. Ever since my decades long "psychological" constipation ceased, I haven't quite worked out how to poop like a normal human. I can't figure out when it's ready, or when I'm done, and such.
12. I actually remember taking my first step. No one believes me but I do!
13. I don't respect people who like Paulo Coelho.
14. I could never date a vegetarian.
15. Teal is my favourite colour (right now).
16. On my way to work (when that's happening) I always listen to Bob Dylan's "Tambourine Man" and Sam Roberts' "This wreck of a life". I sing along quietly.
17. I've never really liked my name but I guess it's a lot better than others. At least everyone can say it and it's religiously ambiguous.
18. I don't like dogs. I don't understand how people see no problem with doing things for their pets that they wouldn't do for family members.
19. When I'm cutting up onions, I pretend that I'm really crying because a super sad thing has happened and say appropriate lines while sniffling and wiping tears away. "She was so young!"
20. I'd rather have good friends than a good boyfriend, but I still have a hos before bros policy.
21. I am relatively terrified of children but I guess I'll have some just because I can. I'm sure after a while it'll seem like I need to make people, not just poos, with my body.
22. I still use msn messenger, chiefly to chat to my parents.
23. I'm not afraid of reptiles or insects in any special way (i.e. only the vast and poisonous ones).
24. I love doctors and hospitals. They can fix things.
25. I'm pretty level-headed in emergencies.

Phew. I'll do anything to avoid working, innit.

Things fall apart

I recently borrowed some "Friends" DVDs from a male friend, who was in disbelief for a few seconds that I was actually asking to borrow them and not ridiculing him. I immediately started watching them back to back, as is my wont, and it struck me: now that I'm 25, I realize my life actually appears to echo that on "Friends". My job's a joke (aren't they all in this economy), I'm broke, and my love life's D.O.A. (apparently this means "dead on arrival", which is a bit harsh). This was gladdening to me, as I'd always heard of the impossibility of having a group of such good-looking and supportive friends who seem to have limitless time to hang out in their fortuitously adjacent apartments and coffee shops in the middle of a weekday. I had kind of hoped that by now my life would have been more like Biggie's in "Big Poppa", but "Friends" will have to do.

Of course, neither I or my friends are as insanely thin and good-looking, as they all were when the series began and the actors were all crisp and coked out, but I'm sure that they would be fat too if they got everything, particularly junk food, delivered to them at home. It's true that my hair is currently going through a period of desperate awkwardness, much as theirs often did in the mid 90s, as I unwisely consented to having some pretty stark layers put in, making me look exactly like a Christmas tree. While this is a festive and seasonal look for a conifer, it leaves something to be desired on a girl. Also, I do in fact know some adults who are employed yet mysteriously can be found at home and friends' apartments during the daytime. The boys are messy, the girls are responsible and feed the boys, and everyone ridicules each other all the time.

Of course, neither I nor anyone I care about would choose to habitually go to a mere café – places with neither alcohol nor shisha are, in my firm opinion, only for teenagers or trendy yet religious people. How were the Friends not all bouncing off the walls drinking the vast vessels of coffee they never tired of?

However, my lifestyle of constant sitting around with friends joking and having fun is gradually coming to an end as they all fade away, in the time-honoured fashion of every young Egyptian who can, to jobs or grad schools abroad. Naturally on "Friends" that didn't really happen until they had to wrap the show up, because otherwise who would leave New York? Egypt, though, has seen a rough year of economic hardship, infrastructure failure, and violent crime, and shows no signs of immediate improvement. It hasn't been our day, our week, our month, or even our year, and soon we won't be there for each other either.

Alter Ego, January 2009

Day 7: Sixteen years old

It would be nice to sleep during the night. Ever since I took this job, to which I roll in at 1 pm at the earliest, I have inhabited a different night-time world, chiefly distinguished by its different inhabitants: insomniacs, the unemployed, freelancers. I now have friendships that I pursue exclusively from 1 to 4 am. I am woken by the shouts and clicks of the makwagi under my apartment and his homies, the details of whose lives I am now privy to.
But that’s Cairo…what I meant to say is, it’s continued here. It’s 7:46 am now and I’ve only had an hour of sleep. I spent the night watching tragic episodes of Private Practice, doing the odd spot of work, chatting to people in slightly different time zones, snapping at my parents when they got up to go to work (questions should not be posed before mid-day), and reading John Updike. What a great last name for a lesbian to have.
Yesterday I was woken by a phone call: an American female voice said that my apartment in Cairo had exploded, killing the bawab, of whom she knew I was very fond. I tried to shake myself awake and ask, who, when? when she announced that it was a joke. It was my friend Joy. That is the true extent of my gullibility. I set this at my mother’s door: when I repeated the story to her she looked stressed and asked why someone would play a nasty trick like that.
We met up and had a surreally adolescent evening. My dad drove me to her place and she greeted him in the proper demure Arab girl manner. I met her dad and greeted him the proper demure Arab girl manner. Then we went off into her white-duveted room to giggle and whisper on her bed about boys and look at clothes. Her dad drove us to the mall for a surreptitious shisha. The mall was having a Kuwaiti culture and awareness display, which featured a man dressed as a huge drop of water and another as a red lightning bolt. I thought the lightning bolt was a comma at first and was pleased. A person-sized comma strikes me as a good thing.
Afterwards we went out to dinner with her father, who spoke to us seriously about our career prospects. Four degrees between us and we still felt like frivolous directionless schoolgirls. Back at her house her dad pointed to the TV and said with enthusiasm, “This is a documentary about the history of math. It’s very interesting!” I turned to Joy in panic to find my expression reflected in her face. “30 rock?” she said. We arose with alacrity. I had brought my hard drive anticipating such a situation. We retreated back into her room. Later on her dad drove me home at 10:30 pm.
Mind blowing. Our normal lives are light years removed from any of this, both being partial to various sketchinesses. We didn't even know each other as teenagers. We should thank God, though, that we have these guises to escape into every once in a while.

Days 4-6: A bunch of crap

Went right off daily blogging suddenly, and now I’ve forgotten a lot of notes I made in my head. My short term memory is generally shot. I should start carrying a notebook around like a journalist or something. Let’s see: shopping copiously accompanied by two friendly African American ladies who giggled and said “Hah” and “bah” to me at every store, and “Ah caint believe I have to buy bluejeans in Kuwait!” Before that I forced my dad to try Indian food, perhaps for the first time. His general policy regarding food is: if a dish is not to be found in his mother’s largely se3eedi kitchen, he will not even try it. We had a very serious conversation about how disappointed he is that I like sushi. He liked some of the Indian food though.
Yesterday morning my dad spent at least an hour trying to wake me up in the morning in a manner grossly reminiscent of my days at school. This involves him standing patiently at the foot of the bed and talking endlessly about things he knows I will feel compelled to respond to. When I do he says, “OK, you’re awake now, yalla,” and then usually I am, dammit. He has also been known to tickle my feet despite frequent warnings that one day I will just involuntarily kick him in the face despite his revered parental status.
But not this time. Ten years later, I have cottoned on to the converse-her-awake method and remained resolutely silent. The only thing that finally got me up was the thought that since my dad had taken the day off work to take me to the doctor it would be selfish of me to not go. So off we went to the ophthalmologist’s.
The eye hospital is in Ahmadi. It was stuffed with Bedouins and police officers, who my dad explained had to be treated at this hospital because the police hospital doesn’t have ophthalmology. Can’t explain the Bedouins though. It says everything about how supportive my parents usually are when my dad praised me for being smart enough to go to the lobby and get myself a cup of coffee…all by myself. I apparently have perfect corneas, so I’m going to get laser eye surgery when I get back to Cairo, which terrifies the shit out of me. The idea of having my cornea peeled back and burned off while I’m awake! Anticipating my pussying out of this for a few months, my dad and I went afterwards to buy me some contact lenses (as you can see I am profiting massively from this vacation). After we bought them, the guy at the store told us that we could come by every week and he’d give us a free sample pair if we liked. We smiled and thanked him and my dad asked his name. “Remone,” he said with a sly smile. “Ah!” my dad said. “Kol sana wenta tayeb.” I can’t be quite sure, but I think the dude said something like, “Ah, 3ashan keda.” He definitely said something that established a direct line of Coptic causation for this courteous treatment. My dad wears gold jewellery, you see. I wore glasses and no makeup and have a carefully ambiguous name. It's obvious I guess.
As we walked out I made a little speech to my dad about how I wouldn’t accept freebies offered under such pretexts as a matter of principle. My dad replied that being that way was what caused some people not to like me.

Day 3 Part II: Special K

This vacation is spiralling downhill. Today I spent the evening with my worryingly apathetic and depressed friend the Source, who the financial crisis fucked and who I can’t help. Where the hell are the personal bankruptcy laws of this country? Can someone direct me to them online? Because it sure kills a vacation to worry about a friend in a debtor’s prison.
We met up with a Kuwaiti friend of mine from high school and his two foreign friends. Conversation was strangely stilted. We sat around in one of the foreign friends’ apartments, with me wondering: what do people sit around and do here, without drink or drugs? Well, I only had to wait. Soon enough I realized that at least one of those people was off his face. Ketamine. Nice one, I thought. We took his high ass home and left the other two K heads to their own devices. Well, maybe if I lived here I’d take horse tranquilizer too.
Actually they were all quite pleasant, twitchiness notwithstanding. I finally found someone else who suffers from restless legs syndrome and who gave testimony to support my own, how it keeps us up at night and shit. People – usually men – prefer not to believe that I have that but rather prefer to think that I am nervous around them. They can suck it.
When I got home I had a long and baffling talk (or rather, shout) with my dad based on the mad ideas, not previously indicated as being important, that I should stay in Egypt because it is my country and because the prospect of meeting a husband there is better. Like I care about “my country” anymore. And like there are any Christian guys left in Egypt…the good ones took off long ago. I have only ever fancied guys who did so, anyway. According to him, also, I may not enjoy working abroad. It was all very nonsensical, and so our shouting woke my mom up. When she couldn’t get back to sleep we had another chat about evil spirits - tonight's topic was the spirit of lust, which she believes to have far more application than I do. I talked her out of all that though…it took like an hour. Then we talked about what we could do about my desperately unfortunate haircut and metres of dark brown roots. I considered this to be a good culmination to the day and went back to hide out in my sane room.
Witticism, where art thou? Probably thou art in thy bed. It is 4:40 am.

Day 3: Regression

Day 3 isn't nearly over yet but so far it's started off with a bang: me slamming my bedroom door in anger when my mother asked me who I've been hanging out with in the past year that I've gotten so impatient and aggressive. According to my mother, I used to be gentle. This is patently false: the only person I am ever gentle with is my sister. Probably this is where she got the idea.
There is nothing that drives me crazier than having my actions attributed to my friends. I have had most of my friends for many years and they're all a hell of a lot more patient and gentle than I ever was and I count them all as positive influences on my character. My dad also thought the remark was provoking.
It is worth admitting though that I am a lot more impatient with my parents than I am with everyone else. You know how it is: everything they say is coloured by the memory of years of similar remarks. It’s hard to listen without thinking in your head: well, this is typical of how she always…
I find it difficult to grant them the benefit of the doubt I grant other people, even though they are two of the sweetest and most loving parents alive, who bear with my childish moods with admirable composure. I will strive to do better. It’s hard to though, with my mother, who unfortunately is rather startlingly ignorant. Very smart but wildly uninformed about pretty much anything, having been wrapped up for her entire life in nothing but corrosion and the spiritual realm. I have to quell my irritation though. It’s not right.

OK, good daughtering, let’s go!

Day 2: The buckles

Yeah, I'm sticking with this painstaking transcription, even though clearly hardly any of the 82 permitted people read the last one. Well, it can just be a diary then.
I spent most of the morning with DNA, a man who is so profoundly strange and unusual that I should have felt no surprise when he announced that he has XXY syndrome (although actually he has none of the symptoms, I’m sure he would hasten to add). More Kuwait traditions followed: we went to the Avenues, ate at Johnny Rocket’s (I LOVE IT THERE) and said hello to a million friendly Philipinos. We were there for ages not doing much (also in keeping with the spirit of this fine land).
Some time later my dad and I went to freezing Kuwait city to look for belt buckles in the tailor supplies area. My dad is so infinitely sweet that I had just to mention that a coat buckle broke to set us immediately careering around looking for just the right set of buckles among flocks of raucous Kuwaiti women hustling small children about our knees and shrewd, multilingual Pakistani vendors.
Then we went laptop shopping for me, my dad having previously spent the whole day looking at different stores until he narrowed the search down to the best bargains in the best stores for me to then peruse. My dad is a complete life support system, way more than other dads appear to be, Middle Eastern or not. I mean, I am nearly 26 (you guys will be expected to give much support during that undoubtedly traumatic birthday) and am still not expected to get even the smallest thing done for myself while he is around. In fact, it has recently occurred to me that I have not once ever purchased a shawerma for myself within this jurisdiction. He’s always bringing me them. When I got home from the airport, I found that my dad had stocked the fridge full of all my favourite foods, which regrettably I do not have the appetite to eat. There was a sign on my bedroom door saying “Welcome Home” made with some ancient 90s application that my dad keeps on a CD for this express purpose. Two kinds of high speed internet were in situ. A Kuwaiti sim card with a hilariously easy number was immediately placed within my hands, as was a bunch of money, my protests brushed aside. Best of all, my dad had installed a showerhead the size of a dessert plate. I can walk around the bathtub and still be under its pleasing precipitation. I also like it very much when life echoes Seinfeld episodes. I wanted to take a picture of the showerhead next to my hand for comparison, but my dad took my camera to be fixed (and it took him a bunch of annoying trips too).
A few errands later he dropped me off at home to have dinner with my mother. I usually use this time to try to talk her out of Christianity and I set forth anew. She nodded in agreement at my salient points and went on about her business, pausing only to press upon me a poorly written evangelical book given the terrifying, and terrifyingly banal, title of “Liar, Liar: Pants on Fire”, by Cheryl Bohl. The idea behind the bestowal was to stop me using the words “idiot” and “stupid” to which my mom has long taken exception (if only she knew about my unstoppable flow of profanity which has infected even my boss); the learned author posits that the use of such words is the result of a "lying spirit". After ranting about its stupidity at a nearly comatose mother for a while, I browsed through the book more carefully, finding that pretty much everything nice had been deemed the result of a spirit of something bad. In fact, masturbation is actually having sex with a demon.
I have to agree with her about goatees, though. They mostly are the result of a perverse spirit.