The boabs, doormen, and security guards -- removing their caps and placing them on a bench next to a cooling cup of tea or on the ground beside them -- place their prayer mats on the sidewalk and kneel, all facing the same direction, toward Mecca.
Up on the roofs of tall buildings where the satellite dishes bloom like flowers, they, too, all face the same direction, as though heads tilted, slightly cocked, listening to a soft radiowave whisper passing through the air, source unknown. Unlike the forest of rickety and rusty VHF antennas sprouting at thousands of different odd angles beside them, a field of broken machinery.
Atop the tall buildings, too, are the pigeon towers. Like water tanks on elevated platforms, the towers hold cages filled with pigeons bred as a regional delicacy and for sport. I tried hamam at a restaurant in Khan Al-Khalili on our first visit to Cairo. I remember liking it despite the many small bones and the fact there was more rice stuffed into the small bird than there seemed to be room for.
As I stepped from my ride home from work, a horse-drawn cart passed in front of our building. The horse had blinders on and couldn't see me admiring his passage or determined grit. It just passed by, hooves clopping on the asphalt, the driver waving a whip lazily in the air, more to swat flies away then motivate his beast of burden. Garbage is collected in wagons like this one or in pickup trucks riding low for the weight in their overstuffed beds, driven by children with dirty faces, disheveled hair, and light eyes. Trash is collected and taken to the Garbage City in Mokattem, there the inhabitants, mostly Coptic Christians, sort the garbage for recyclable material.
Peter and Clementine got braces the day before the middle school Halloween social. A crueler act of parenting could not have been planned. Though the new apparatus in his mouth hardly deterred Peter from gorging on chocolate when he got home. Clementine -- in an awful confluence of pure misery -- came down with fever and flu-like symptoms the same day. Pure wretched suffering from head to toe she was sure to share with everyone under the same roof.
Sam and Clementine participated in swim time trials last weekend in order to gain seed times for next weekends meet. Elise and I honed our skills as volunteer timers, affording us front row seats of the action. We had to keep ourselves from snickering everytime the coach called the swimmers to the bullpen because it came out like "poop pen". Sam's positioning himself as a butterflier like his dad. He also got almost all As and Bs on his first report card, a significant accomplishment just arrived at a new school in a new country.
The drive back from the Red Sea a few weeks back, October 7, was long, almost six hours. Our cellphone plan requires monthly renewal and it just expired as we were heading out of town. I didn’t immediately hear of Hamas' attack on Israel and wouldn't fully learn of the extent of the horror until much later.
We now wait with mostly bated breath to see if the other shoe will drop. We were relieved when the kids returned safely to Cairo from the week abroad, despite the bomb threat at the school Clementine's first day back. We've since learned that is a fairly common occurrence during turbulent times, though worrisome nonetheless. It's hard to focus on living our daily lives knowing it is so much more difficult for others so close to us to do the same.
It seems as though the moon might be full for Halloween as we try to distract ourselves putting together costumes from what little we have hanging around the house. Peter went to the middle school social dressed as a "cyclist", wearing my bicycle helmet and cycling gloves, and carrying a water bottle. I bought Clementine fairy wings on Amazon several weeks back but nothing else to make a fairy costume from. Fortunately, she received a black and silver dress in the mail. Some silver boots and a witch's hat bought from a store around the corner might be enough to transform her into a fairy witch. We'll see.
At the end of a particularly long and stressful day, I ordered take out pizza from a neighborhood parlor. I've visited twice now in as many days and have already become a familiar regular to the smiling young man in a Chef Boyardee chef's toque maning the wood-burning oven. As I walked home a film crew had shut down a side street and lit it up under flood lights. Extras, cameramen, and other various hangers-on lounged around on the hoods of dusty cars, waiting for direction.
Though it's hard to focus on living our daily lives, the daily lives of others continue around us, leaving us with no other choice but to do the same while the Israeli army grinds Gaza to dust.
