Next time I'm taking the camel....

The evening started off promisingly enough with some fun tanning and throwing paper airplanes off the roof, an afternoon nap in the 90 degree sunshine, Nate making a fantastic dinner of curry cream cheese wontons and masaman chicken – things are good in Cairo on a Friday evening. Tony dropped Salma off, staying long enough to have some jugo de guayaba and a chat on the balcony in the cool nighttime breeze. I taught Salma how to waltz in the foyer. Hussein came and called Drinkie’s for delivery. We played never-have-I-ever. Things were going swimmingly.

The goal of the night was a party in 26th of July (the city not the street – look it up, worldwide repercussions mucho mas b/c of that date) which in my limited experience looks like every other suburban area of Cairo – desert. We parked, the thumping bass audible from half a block away as we approached the house. We took the elevator to the 4^th floor patio over looking the desert. They had a DJ spinning and a bartender serving (hurrah!) the elusive and refreshing imported beer/liquor – nothing Egyptian in sight; a rarity if not a near impossibility it seems.

We were having a great time, dancing, meeting new internationals, but alas: Salma had a non-negotiable curfew of 1am and I had to get up at pre-dawn for crew so we left appropriately early at only 2am. It’s about a 30 minute drive back to Zamalek, double that to get to Salma’s house in Heliopolis and just as we get on the bridge to the island, Hussein’s car get’s a flat tire. Thankfully he knew what to do b/c Nate, Salma and I had no idea what do save call a mechanic. But even with all that knowledge, a guitar was the only thing in the trunk when we opened it up.

It was at this point that we realized an insignificant detail of Salma’s curfew that she had previously not divulged – by 1am, she actually meant that she to turn back into a pumpkin by midnight. I hailed a cab to get her home, Nate was going to walk the last half mile and Hussein was going to expeditiously fix the tire (somehow) and meet me in Heliopolis to drive me back home, inshaallah (I know it translates to“God willing,” but I think that it really means, “God willing, but you and I both know that it’s never going to happen.”).

The cab is just about the most broken down jalopy in which I’ve been taxied, it couldn’t have had more than 30 horsepower left in its museum antique of an engine, but Salma and I puttered along, laughingly or frustratedly, depending on which party one examined in the back seat. About 10 minutes into the journey the cabbie told me in his poor English, “Girlfriend speaks Arabic ‘quiys’ (perfect) for foreigner.” As Salma pleaded “Ana masria! (I’m Egyptian!)” and he mockingly laughed at her attempt to “pretend” to be Egyptian, the tire blew.

The conversation with her dad was not pleasant. Apparently he bought her entire story about the four of us going to a play and having to stay late whilst Salma interviewed the director and playwright for one of her classes, but he felt that she could have come up with a better lie than pretending that we incurred two flat tires on the way home.

Hussein finally picked us up from our derelict rattletrap, but our cabbie couldn’t understand why we only wanted to give him 10 pounds, as foreigners we should give him more, forgetting that now foreigners were in the minority and we didn’t get anywhere close to our destination.

Al7amdullilah. We got home eventually……