these streets

the other night lisa and i ordered home delivery from hardies, which is a bad fast-food burger chain, and which is the first time we have done such a thing, but we thought we should try it, because here in Cairo everything is home-deliverable... mcdonalds, beer, felafel sandwiches with baba ganoush... and usually its free to deliver, so we got some beer and some burgers. when our burgers arrived we paid, and the guy left, and we opened our bag and it one of the burgers was wrong, it was a beef burger instead of a chicken burger, but whatever, we said, and we ate our burgers and cold wet fries. about five minutes later the guy came back holding up our order, and said 'i gave you the wrong one, but you ate it! the burger you eat is more expensive, so you must pay more, and i'll take these burgers back to the shop'. we said no, and members of the house were still hungry, so we decided to buy the chicken burger, chips and drink we originally ordered, from him, but only if he went and swapped the pepsi he bought with him for 7-up which is what we'd ordered. So he did, after using our phone to call the shop and explain the mistake, and he came back and wanted us to pay the full amount for the two orders (4 burgers, 4 chips, 4 drinks and 2 delivery charges). i told him, oh no, sir, you see we don't really want this order. we are doing you a favour by buying it when it was your fuck up. we will pay for the one extra burger we ate 'by mistake' and we will pay the tax. you will take your fourth burger, and your 2nd delivery charge, and you will return to your shop, a happy little guy. but he was not a happy little guy. he really wanted us to pay the full amount, even though i was giving him back the shitty food we did not order. in our countries, i told him, you would give us all this food for free. in this country, he replied, you pay me money. we closed the door.

schools over for the term, danielle's left and nimsa is soon to depart. lisa and i are red sea bound, once again, where we will learn to dive, drink banana milkshakes, climb mount sinai at sunrise and study arabic verb conjugations. today we are trying to battle the kafkaesque monument to beurocracy called mogamma to get temporary resident visas for egypt so we can stay on to keep on studying. Process: first through the metal detectors, leave your cameras at the desk, up the stairs, down the hall, round the corner, round the other corner, past the windows for palestinian residence visas, to the tourist visa extensions window. get a form, fill it out, go back down stairs to get a photocopy of your passport and a passport photo made, go back upstairs, give it to the woman at the window, go down the hall to the payment window, pay 11 pounds and 10 piestres for passport stamps, go back to the tourists window, give them the stamps. you are told to wait one hour. wait the time, then go to another window in another hall, to receive your passport. it will not be ready, or even near ready, so the woman kinda avoids your gaze and refuses to answer your question about how long it will take. go to an internet cafe to wait for two more hours. pray ohsomuch that it will be ready when you return....

and, a small list, of great things:
1. learning how to play mahbouza, the way old arabic/israeli men play sheshbesh.
2. schweppes tangerine flavour
3. when a taxi driver is automatically satisfied by the amount you pay him
4. the ceiling of the mosque of mohammad ali at the citadel of salah-al-din
5. text messages from the usa, denmark, australia and turkey.

thankyou.