winding down

the days are slowing to a steady routine.

i have obviously misjudged my budget slightly, and what with paying this week for a months rent and my extra, unexpected month at the school, i find myself here, with three and a bit months to go, and with very little money to my name. not at all enough, in fact, and so the fine folks at the visa credit system will be shouting me for a few months, unfortunately.

mostly the nights consist of large kusharis in plastic tubs, arabic homework under the ceiling fan, and long hours in the neighbourhood alleyways with joel and liam, playing too much towla, drinking zabadi and karkadai, being boys, which is something i've probably been unconciously missing. its a week until ramadan and the stores are stocked up with food, the men constructing big facades with coloured banners and lights and lanterns. i have two weeks left here, and just now, the language is starting to click, the classes starting to totally make sense. Arabic is a beautiful, intricate, mysterious puzzle to be solved, with a thousand tricks and red herrings, but finding your way through it, and to all the gorgeous vistas and treasures along the path, is one of the most fulfilling and wonderful things I've ever experienced. It will be mighty sad to say goodbye for now.

So, what would y'all say if i got this tattooed in big black letters all the way up my arm?

ستانصرص لين دلفاري سيستم

It says 'standard line delivery system' but in english using arabic letters, not in arabic. i am totally joking about this, of course, of course. No need for gentle put-downs.

this is our budgeting scheme on the whiteboard at home.

Look now, outside: The children have their noses pressed to the glass and are shouting welcomes. And the internet man chases them away with a broom handle.

saturday night

The night is young but Lisa is tired and getting ready to sleep. It has been a slow day centred around a large, extravagant mezze lunch with stuffed vine leaves and fuul and roasted eggplant. We could sleep as well, but instead Joel and I decide to go out.

We take the towla board under arm and head back behind the house, through the quiet streets, past the gutter heaped with garbage, under the canopy of leaves and past the school, with its high brick wall. Here the roadway is like a constant carnival. We pass the glowing kushari store, its huge silver pots sitting plump in the windows. We pass pistachio sellers, pushing lit-up carts towering with leaning columns of paper cones and streams of smoke pouring from little chimneys. The kids ride bikes and chase cats. A little girl, head and shoulders covered by a clean white khimar runs out of the mosque clutching a one pound note, looking like a trick or treat ghost trawling for booty.

We sit at the qahwa and set up the board. Around us the clatter of dominoes, the chatter of school boys, the babble of voices from an arabic movie. The air is electric. We order shai and karkadai (hybiscus drink), glass after glass, and two shishas with glowing coals. The dice are rolled.

The play four or five games, pay and promise the man we will come back often. We walk back slowly, our heads buzzy from the shisha smoke. On the way we stop to talk to young teenage boys about whether we are Muslim or Christian ("Neither." "Jewish?" "No, not Jewish. No religion" "Muslim? Christian?"), where we are from ("Australia and USA". "Oh, USA, towers, crash, fall") and whether we like thrusting with Egyptian girls ("These ones good! Hey girls!" they say, about some passing young ladies in headscarves, at least 5 years older than these boys).

But we are back home and it is only midnight and we are two young, restless men in a very large city. How Cairo swells and flows into the evening! How its buzz beckons us out! We put on shoes and shirts and take a taxi downtown to Casino Palmyra.
Palmyra is not a casino in the gambling sense of the word, but it is, rather, a belly-dance and show bar. It is also one of the strangest places I have ever visited. We walk down a little alleyway of Sharia 26th of July, which opens up to an undercroft behind the shoe shops and fast food joints on the street. Four men approach us, eyes wide, sparkling: "Palmyra?" they ask, "This way!" ushering us through the doors at the far end of the courtyard.

Inside: we sit, at a small table with a dirty tablecloth. This is an old, cavernous, dilapidated dance hall, its former glory long faded. Red curtains hang over the doorways, bowtied waiters hover around by the stained walls, the lighting is bright and white. And on the round stage, slightly elevated, is the band, five guys playing loud and distorted music on keyboards and percussion, screeching, piercing. And the singer, pacing with his cordless mic, an old guy with sunken cheekbones, singing passionately, almost hauntingly, arabic ballards reverberating and echoing through the speakers.

Weaving around him as he strolls the stage is the dancer. She wears a lime green skirt and top combination, the skirt hiked up to her navel and split to her crotch to reveal a pair of black latex bike shorts. Pockets of flesh spill out at her waist. Her make-up is heavy and thick, her teeth crooked, her peroxided hair bursting like a geyser from the top of her head. She wears no shoes. She is in no way what could be considered remotely attractive by either Joel or myself.

Her waist is jiggling, slightly, throughout the next hour. Her movements range from a stand-still shake to a frantic twist, skip and twirl, like the spasmodic dance of some dionysian devotee.

She is in a moment of reserved movement when the mnan at the table next to us gets up and starts dancing himself, wobbling and shaking his large frame while mouthing the words and using his hands to simulate his heartbeat. He makes his way onstage. He, like most of the men here, has been sitting alone, smoking shisha, drinking beer and eating from a plate of fruit, and now it is close to the end of his night. He is shimmying up to the dancer, and shaking over her, towering above and staring down at the ripples waving through the tops of her pushed up breasts. She looks uncomfortable and tries to slowly move away from him. No one else really blinks.

Later, he is sitting down again, and he begins throwing grapes from his platter at the drummer. He throws about seven before he makes a hit. Joel and I cannot stop laughing.

There are about fifteen customers in the big hall. Two of them are older guys in casual suits, plump in their chairs. They are the special guests tonight, they are getting the special attention. They are removing wads of 5 pound notes and pealing them one by one to shower the dancer and the singer with them. The notes fall off her head and float to the stage, carpeting it for a few moments before being collected by a young man in trainers. Or the guys will tuck the money in her straps, the notes spread like fans, and she will, herself, throw them one by one at the singers crotch. Then she will offer to dance with the men, or she will shake in front of them. They look away, embarrassed. They keep on throwing the money though. They must throw about 1000 pounds (US$200) this way.

We are cradling our first drinks to try and wait it out until the next dancer. We are getting tired and the show is getting monotonous and the talent is underwhelming. We have giggled and laughed for an hour but now we are getting restless. The next dancer comes out and she is a better dancer, slightly, but is even less attractive than the first, her crimped, dyed bangs hanging square across her eyes, her smile snaggletoothed and creepy.

Money is thrown and collected. The singer's wails echo like something out of a David Lynch film. Her arms move like snakes.

The drinks run out. We get up and leave.

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.