secret languages

The other night was spent wandering around, and then playing backgammon with the shopkeepers in the thousand year old alley ways of Fatimid Cairo. Each of them with their special tried and tested pick-up lines, "I have what you are looking for!" and "Are you German? Spanish?" La, I reply. Australi. "Israeli?!" They look stunned. La, la, la! Min Australia! I clarify. "Ah! Australia, good! If you Israeli I throw you out of the market!" A laugh, a grin, a backslap.

But later, during a fast game of mahbouza, my opponent rolls and his friend observes his options. Offering his advice in rapid armaya, I am surprised to hear him repeat the dice count - shesh besh - six five, in Hebrew. You speak Hebrew?, I ask them. "Only the numbers," Ahmed explains, "we in the souq use these numbers to communicate to each other when the tourists are bargining. The tourists here might speak Arabic, and they might speak French, or Italian, or Russian or whatever. But people here don't speak Hebrew, so when a tourist offers a price, we can discuss the counter-offer without him understanding anything. It's like our secret language".

I lose every game, of course.

In the streets near my house women lower wooden buckets on ropes from their apartment windows for street sellers to send up bundles of cucumbers. The bread man cycles slowly down the street with his metal pedal cart, yelling "'ersh!" in a voice like a strange croaking birds. On the way here tonight, to the net cafe, I saw two boys filling up a hollow metal rod with sand from a big sand pile on the side of our street and then letting it slowly pour out onto the road while writing words (probably swears) in arabic with the flowing sand. Here, while I am typing, an old man in a grey galibaya steps into the little room, swinging a pot of incense, pacing into the four corners while chanting prayers to rid the establishment of djinns. A twelve year old boy smokes a cigarette and watches music videos with girls dancing under water hoses. A wild haired five year old girl (who I see every day, shes my little friend now) plays Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. She crashes her car a lot. The september winds cool the evening. It's 11 nights until Ramadan.

And this is a picture of my bedroom.