Misssy M has been writing of the trials and tribulations of being a superstar (one that shines on the air waves) film reviewer. It sent me catapulting down memory lane.

Way back when, in my student days in Cairo, going to the cinema was a bit of a treat. A dodgy television that only seemed to receive BBC World was our window on the world outside of the internet cafe. Entertainment was limited to charades, G&T, dancing, G&T, eating, G&T, card games, G&T and G&T. Occasionally there would be a movie playing at the Ramsis (Ramzeeez) Hilton Mall, which is really not as grand as it sounds. Up endless escalators to the top of the mall we’d go, riding sideways, bums against the railings, torsos twisted forever up, denying the band of merry men and teenagers following us our glutei maximi to gawp at.

There were always plenty of banners advertising the films. “Oooh, look, that should be good!” we’d cry trying not to convey the mourning of Edinburgh’s Filmhouse or Cameo we knew we all felt. Off we went to get tickets. Next we’d find that despite having twenty different movie banners advertising twenty different Hollywood ‘greats’ the cinema with two screens was playing two Arabic-language movies.

Back to bums against elevator railings.

On the odd occasion where our bums ended up on seats rather than against railings, we would get our popcorn, relax and sink into chairs and get ready for 90 mins of ‘The West’.

For about a minute. Not longer.

Eyes would start watering, the tickle in the back of the throat would induce coughing and we’d realise that the reason we cou’ldn’t see anything wasn’t because the lights were off, it was that we were in an insufficiently ventilated room with 200 faces sucking cigarettes.

Made of strong stuff, and deep-pockets-short-arms student syndrome, we would stay and tough it out.

It would take roughly thirty seconds after the music stopped, the screen lit up and the curtains opened: dah de dah dah, dah de dah dah, dah de dah dah DAH (Nokia ringtone). Nobody answers. Dah de dah dah, dah de dah dah, dah de dah dah DAH.

“ALLO! ALLO! IZZAYEK INTA? ANA FI SINEMA. FFFIIII SSIIIINNNEEEMMMAA!” (in case you haven’t worked it out: Hello! Hello! How are you? I’m in the cinema. I’m in the cinema!). Dom Jolie and his over sized brick phone and parodied shouting would have been outclassed. “YES, YES, GOOD IDEA. I’LL COME OVER AFTER THE MOVIE AND THEN WE CAN GO FOR DINNER/JUICE/HAVE A CHAT/MEET X. THE MOVIE? OH I CAN’T REMEMBER THE NAME, OH YES, IT’S MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II. WHAT’S THAT? OH YES, IT’S JUST STARTING. TOM CRUISE IS SO GOOD THOUGH. OK THEN, I’LL SEE YOU LATER.”

The ever-so-British “tut’s” and exaggerated sighs were but a mere mouse breathing in a hurricane. The storm being about 15% of the other cinema-goers who were by this time smoking their way through a loud mobile phone conversation and the other 15% with ringing phones that they were looking at and thinking about answering (you can’t answer too quickly, it means you’re not busy…).

Yes, my dear astute readers, that left 70% who were not phone engaged at this time.

Like a well conducted choir, the canon continued all the way to intermission, making sure that most of the 70% got their turn. For some reason, it’s no fun to have a phone call at intermission. Well, I mean, come on, that’s the time to get more popcorn, more drinks and nip to the loo.

Lights down, curtains open and the next 45 mins of second hand smoking commences. This was the part where excersice was brought in. Squats: jumping up and down every two minutes as people meandered back in after getting a second jumbo popcorn, part of which would inevitably end up on whoever they squeezed past. Neck stretches: craning to see past the jack-in-the-boxes/mexian wave in front of you as other late comers squeezed back to their seats.

Dah de dah dah, dah de dah dah, dah de dah dah DAH.

“HELLO AHMAD. YEAH, I’M IN THE MOVIE. YEAH, YEAH, IT’S MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II. WELL SO FAR….[full story]…YOU WANT TO COME AND SEEI IT? YES YOU SHOULD IT’S REALLY GOOD. YOUR MUM’S OK NOW AFTER THE OPERATION? OH GOOD. THAT’S GOOD. YES, WE’LL BE OUT IN AN HOUR. OK MEET YOU THERE.”

The few from the 70% who hadn’t received a call or finished a packet of cigarettes before the intermission, made up for lost time afterwards. Complete with rustling sweet packets, opening cans of coke and searching for lighters.

“Not bad, not bad.” We’d force out of our gritted teeth as our bums were back against the railings on the way out and strands of smoky hair fell in our faces, “Think I want to wash my hair though.”

No, this isn’t some cheap attempt at temporarily upping my viewer stats.

Summer is whacking Cairo now. Usually we wait until mid June, early July for days in the 40C range, but this year the onslaught began early May. One Summer ritual which remains constant though is the influx of Gulfies (Saudis and Emeraties) from their baking countries. Imagine, coming to Cairo mid Summer to escape the heat!

To satisfy the invasion of walking Dinars and Riyals, advertising and entertainment lucratively turns due East. Tastes are a little different to what Egyptian’s deem attractive and are immediately identifiable. Even belly dancing has its own style in the Gulf (lots of Heavy- Metal-type-long-hair circular-head-banging — sans greasy hair!).

I’ll keep sharing as long as I can. (Ooooh, don’t say I don’t spoil you!).

PS Cherry Tart - cos I’m making another as I type.

Graves: [Miranda point her gun at Graves] So… Ms. Frost is not all she seems.
James Bond: Looks can be deceptive.
(Die Another Day)

I visited my favourite fruit and veg shop yesterday. Ahmed, the shopkeeper was serving someone else, so I waited at the side for him to finish darting between trays of oranges and courgettes. The customer was a 50-60yr old shortish man with an old touristy baseball cap on. He turned to me and asked me where I was from.

I don’t mind chatting to people, but have to admit to not enjoying chatting to men like this because they a) never stop talking, b) see no problems in asking rather personal questions (How old are you? Are you married?) and c) absolutely never take the hint oozing from my monosyllabic flat-toned responses and failure to look at them when I respond.

Such was he. He also had teeth that looked like they hadn’t been brushed in about a year, which led to the assumption that he was Egyptian because there is a special stick (miswaak) that some use to scrape their teeth clean. If you’re not a conscientious scraper, your teeth end up looking like his.

“Aah, Scotland. Cold! Very cold.”

“Hmm.”

“Aah yes, and James Bond. Sean Connery.”

“Yes.”

“Aah yes, 1965 that vas the first time I saw James Bond. He’s the only person alloved to kill, isn’t he? 007, he’s been given the right by the Queen.”

“Yes.” (not quite sure about that, but easier to agree!)

“You know, in all this time he has never been to my country.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t invited.” I said flat-toned.

“Yes, he hasn’t been to my country. The Middle East, he hasn’t been here..” At this point my interest changed. It is extremely unusual to hear an Egyptian refer to where they live as the Middle East, rather than Egypt, to the point that if you say they live in the Middle East, often there will be a correction that really, they live in Egypt and Egyptians are descendants of the Pharaohs, not the Arabs. “..He hasn’t been to my country, Israel.”

At this point my interest was definitely grabbed, unfortunately, my desire to end the conversation ramped up about 100 notches. Although there is a peace treaty, although there is foreign trade between the two countries and although there are some Israelis living in Egypt, the fact that when you drive near the Israeli embassy, not only do you have a blocked off road and mountains of gun-wielding policemen, but your mobile phone reception is cut, is an indication as to how the ‘man on the street’ really views Israel (as opposed to Russia or France, both embassies nearby with no such measures).

It was then too that the strange ‘v’ sound when he was talking clicked. It does not exist in Arabic and Egyptians find difficult to pronounce, so would never use a ‘v’ instead of a ‘w’.

“Have you been to Israel? Have you been to my country?”

“No.”

“It’s only 4 hours from Scotland, he should come. I don’t know vhy he vouldn’t come.”

Ahmed came to give the man his bill, saving me from having to answer on behalf of Mr Connery. He paid it and conversed briefly in what seemed to me like perfect Egyptian Arabic.

“Do you know that man?” my store keeper friend asked after the man had disappeared.

“No.”

A few moments of silence.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“No, it was his first time here.”

A few more moments silence.

“Do you know where he’s from?” I asked.

“Egypt.” I raised my eyebrows. “He’s Egyptian.” Ahmed repeated.

“How can you tell?”

“He speaks like an Egyptian.”

“Yes,” I concurred, “In Arabic he does”.

Someone I know is having an affair. It’s serious. It’s with a colleague. He wanted my opinion, so bearing in mind cultural differences, and what I knew of the situation, I gave it.

In response to a point he had made about the “other woman” liking his wife and that she would have liked to be friends with his wife, I pointed out that if that were true, she would have done so when she had the opportunity (long before the affair started - and then, perhaps, it might not have begun).

I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about Egyptian culture, but I do try to remember the pieces of the jigsaw I discover. After all this time, it is unusual for me to hear something about it that I have never come across before. A gem came in response to my observation: the “other woman” colleague could never have become friends with his wife.

Apparently, it is socially unacceptable for a colleague of the same sex as your spouse to become friends with your spouse.

Why?

Because it would ignite suspicions that your colleague has amorous intentions towards you and wants to get closer to you via your spouse.

I have no idea if this is the same in any other country/culture, but it baffles me.

And certainly did not work in this case.

Changing rooms were a nightmare for me as a kid. I could spend 45 minutes looking for my locker after a visit to the pool. Worse still was when at the embarrassingly shy age of about 11, I spent a good ten minutes poking and jabbing my key at various locks before an attendant asked what I was doing. Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes wanted to point out that he was in the wrong place. Then I realised I was surrounded by blurry images of people with dangly bits.

Once safely reunited with my eyewear (and in the correct changing room), it was more than apparent that the writhing mass of unathletic women around me were performing Houdini-esque contortions in order to get dressed without revealing an inch of skin.

At around the same age, I would leaf through one of our home tomes of photographic encyclopaedias to the page about hammams. Images of steamy rooms, archways, patterned tiles, women in various states of undress who were lounging, chatting, being scrubbed and massaged with frangrant oils introduced me to a strange world where women didn’t appear to be shy of their bodies.

Full of these heady images, and quite a few years later, I went to the gym in Egypt for the first time. There was a locker room packed full of women getting changed, and chatting to and over each other after our class. I peeled off my trackie bottoms, picked up my jeans and the room went quiet.

Hear a pin drop silent.

I looked up. A room full of eyes were looking at my flabby, years-of-living-in-Scotland-white behind (which, clad in a g-string they had a good view of). Pairs of eyes then moved up to meet mine to give me the sort of disapproval appropriate had I just stripped and done a private pole dance in front of their husbands.

I have this picture in my head: a cute bob with the edge a little higher at the back and a little longer at the front and lots and lots of layers at the back. I have been to the hair dresser three times in the past year, pointed to the picture of this in his book and each time come out with something different. The first time it was just rescued from being a mullet. Absolutely not what I’ve been dreaming of.

A friend of mine has short hair and it always looks nice. “Aha!” I cunningly thought after I saw her last sporting yet another fab do, “I’ll go to her hairdresser.”

I turned up armed and ready: print outs of exactly what I wanted from the front, side and back. No room for confusion this time. No siree!

Chop, chop, brush, brush, snip, snip. It was going swimmingly. Best still, after asking where I was from and my name, he didn’t try to talk too much to me.

Sitting next to me was a platinum blonde getting something done with her colour. About two thirds of the way through my cut, she started getting antsy: she wasn’t happy.

The simmering turned into a boiling, “My husband only has one day off a week..”

“Oh bloody hell,” I realised, “She’s British.”

“..and I’m wasting it in here!”

Heads remained still, eyes around the room picked out other eyes.

“I wanted a rinse! I’ve been here three hours and you’ve done nothing!”

“Yes, madam,” my hairdresser said, “we gave you a rinsage.”

My hairdresser, Sam, was Lebanese. Lebanese generally speak Arabic first, French second and English third. His English wasn’t fluent, but was comprehensible (and come on, his third language!).

“But I wanted a rinse!” At this point we are now rising up the decibel scale.

“But madam, yes, we gave you a rinsage!”

The other client and I had stopped breathing.

“I just want someone who speaks ENGLISH!” Now topping the decibel range.

Other client and I shifted uncomfortably.

“Nobody’s fucking listening to what I’m saying!” she said under her breath, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I JUST WANT SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH!”

Absolutely dumbfounded, probably with my mouth gaping, eyes certainly popping out of my head, I thought about saying something in her beloved English along the lines of, “We’re in Egypt, nobody has to speak English!” but was in too much shock to say anything.

The Egyptian lady on the other side of her volunteered to translate in a tone, lost on the British woman, that saw stern and utterly disapprovingly.

In the end, Blondie flounced out of the salon without paying.

My hairdresser was by now just as furious as Blondie had been, but he couldn’t flounce out. I, still mortified, sat stock still and didn’t say a word.

This was rather unfortunate.

Hairdresser Sam was taking his pent up frustration out on my hair.

I breathed deeply decided that I would sit back and think of the UK. Not wanting to give everyone in the salon, who was now watching Sam, further reason to think that British women are cows I resolved to keep my mouth firmly shut.

Perhaps too firmly. When the receptionist looked at me, then up at my hair and asked perplexedly if I liked the cut, I should have broken down and started wailing there and then. With valiant stiff upper lip, I smiled politely instead and said, “Yes. Thank you.”

So, great my country men, in the name of your honour and all that is good about our great nation, I now sport a haircut that looks like a short, curly Worzel Gummidge with an uneven pudding bowl.

And to my one particular fellow country woman: if you wake up and find your hair dyed green, or wake up to find it has all been shaved off, you’ll know I’ve foregone my right to pistols at dawn.

I am now into my second day being gastronomically challenged. The mere whiff of chocolate on Mr S’s breath is enough to leave me clutching my stomach. And being the person who loves Mr S and (in the office days) was brought chocolate by her far senior colleague every time he asked for something awkward to be done because he knew it was her Achilles heel, this is a bad sign.

It started off well: a good friend’s birthday dinner. Let’s call her Noonie. Noonie has a Sudanese mother who doesn’t do things by half, particularly when it comes to food. The menu was pretty much Egyptian and Momat Noonie (Noonie’s mother) was in the kitchen for two full days preparing the food.

This should have been more than a little anecdote about how much food is prepared for special meals in this part of the world. It should have been a big Tsunami-alarm with flashing red lights of a warning. But no. Having lived cocooned in The Hood for 18 months, it was a mere funny story.

Out on display was a profiterole tower a good 25 cm tall on a wide plate. All made by Momat Noonie. Dessert, it turned out was to be twice as much: there was something else in the fridge. That was until Noonie’s boyfriend turned up with a massive birthday cake. Treble the fun.

As dinner came out on the table the adrenaline started pumping. ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought (I think out loud!), ‘How many people are we?’. There were eight of us in total. In fairness there could have been a couple more, but they couldn’t make it. So, say ten people were expected. Here was the spread:

1. Stuffed vine leaves on a very large plate in a tower to about 15cm tall
2. A large bowl of fattoush (salad drenched in oil with croûtons from Lebanese bread)
3. A large plate/tray of cheese sambousak (pastry parcels stuffed with cheese and then deep fried) and
4. Vegetable sambousak (pastry parcels stuffed with veg and then deep fried)
5. A large plate of kobeibah (meatballs with pine nuts, deep fried)
6. A large plate of beef fillet
7. A large plate/tray of chicken cordon bleu
6. A whole stuffed duck resting on
7. A large tray of sorghum (fried)
8. A two bowls of beetroot
9. Yogurt and cucumber salad.

I hadn’t seen so much food since the swanky buffet and it’s pretty clear why it took two whole days to make! Hats off to Momat Noonie - everything was absolutely delicious. Having not attended a feast like that for almost two years, it had totally escaped me that taking what I wanted to eat, finishing it and putting my knife and fork together, did not convey that I had ‘had sufficient’ (as my Grandmother says). No sooner had the cutlery clicked than I found a large piece of duck on my plate with some chicken following in quick succession. Instead of finishing, I had pretty much indicated that I had not had enough! This plate I left pretty unfinished. Not a signal that I didn’t like the food, but that I was satisfied (read here: stuffed like a Christmas turkey).

After we’d all finished (part finished) our seconds or thirds, the table still looked like it had barely been touched, and everybody waddled over to the sitting room to drink tea, hold our stomachs, joke about how full we were and glance nervously at the now foreboding profiterole tower.

Strong eaters that we were (or pretended to be in my case), it wasn’t too long before the dessert hiding in the fridge made its way out. Beside the towering profiteroles and the huge cake, we also now had a ginormous (8cm tall by about 30 diametre) chocolate cheesecake covered in Oreo cookies. One bite into my sliver of Momat Noonie’s cheesecake and it became apparent that the topping was, wait for it, melted snickers bars!!

And so it came to be that I was forced onto a diet of chamomile tea, yogurt and not much physical activity due to my burning belly.

First the stomach starts clenching. Next a rats nest of blazing fireball shoots up to my chest and sits, a burning cocktail of indignation and humiliation.

There are many things that caused this when I first moved here: taxi drivers’ roaming hands as they ‘opened’ the passenger door for me, getting ripped off, taxi drivers taking the ’short cut’ which always involved an extra 45 mins journey time (and therefore increased fare), sleazy comments made as I passed a group of men and being told something will take five minutes and then being made to wait an hour. And that is just for starters.

I have (I think) learned a great amount of patience on a number of different levels. I didn’t enjoy the process much, but it’s probably not a bad thing to have learned, especially as I held the double title of Miss Super Efficient and Miss Goody Two Shoes for all the years of my life pre-Egypt.

There are, however, two things that still get my goat and I cannot get over them. First up is the lack of respect for customers by supermarket staff. They have yet to realise that their behaviour towards customers impacts where the customer will shop in future. They have no qualms about pushing you aside to get past and under no circumstances if you meet where one needs to give way, like the entrance to a narrow aisle, will they give way to the customer. Ever.

The second fireball-inducing happening involves groups of pre-pubescent and teenage boys. For some reason, probably because they’ve seen their fathers/uncles/cousins doing it and want to be macho like them, they make sexually degrading comments (and depending on where you are, actions). Unlike the supermarket, where I show restraint, I am not usually so calm around these guys (and hey, better out than in, right?).

Today I passed six of them mincing towards me. The mutterings under their breath while simultaneously not taking their eyes off me was a pretty clear indication of what was coming. I knew they wouldn’t touch me, but the stomach clenching had begun. I let the first comment directly to me go unnoticed because sometimes they just leave it at that. This guy, incidentally the smallest of the group by a good half metre, obviously had to make up for his inadequacy by a second comment.

I have a bit of a frog in my throat (not from French classes) at the moment, which makes me sound like a 40 a day 60 year old fisherman’s wife, which happens to be a bit like an Egyptian Momma. “You think you’re so big? Huh?! You’re,” (hand gesture indicating 1 cm tall), “THIS small!” I growled loudly.

Of course, they cracked up repeating it and laughing. That’s normal (and hey, I have no idea how what I said actually translates socially/culturally in Arabic, it was just the first thing I could think of).

Part of the reason this enrages me so much is that, as is typical, when this incident happened, there were four fully grown men on the street, before and after the group of boys. Not one said or did anything, and they’d blatantly heard the comments.

Allied to this is the fact that it forces me to stop ignoring the fact that I am viewed by many, by virtue of my heritage and clothes (which were today, by the way, baggy, long sleeved and high necked), little more than a common hoar [ed. whore].

Not a good feeling to be left with.

The only thing I have found to make it better is to treat the next Egyptian male I meet with the respect I didn’t receive from the previous. Not always easy and not always reciprocated, but it makes Miss Goody Two Shoes feel at least she has the moral high ground.

So, you’re in Egypt on a one or two week holiday. You’ve been to the Great Pyramids, perhaps even Saqqara, you’ve looked around the museum, had sheesha in Fishawy’s, haggled in Khan el Khalili, taken a Nile Cruise and seen more sights in your short time than you ever thought possible. It’s your last day, you’re quite tired, but remembering people back home, you go to buy some postcards.

And this is what you find:

Umm, Love on the Nile?

Interesting that the female is blond and the male darker (although by Egyptian standards, he would be classed as blond). There is been a general assumption that desirable woman are blond (and blond women are desirable). Note that desirable and wife-material are not the same.

Uhhh, sorry, what’s that you say? A spot of Orientalism? No thanks, I’ll go for the just downright racist.

Can you imagine that last postcard with a black man/woman fanning a white man/woman? Heavens above!

It must be said that when I went to pay for these cards the very nice, very helpful, extremely respectable, older generation Egyptian shop keeper gave them to me for free. And there were more typical photo-type cards on sale.

But these do exist and they are out there.

And that means that someone must be buying them!

‘Can you take me to Square Y on X Street?’
‘OK’
I hop in the taxi and set off to my destination.

Only half, the long, very roundabout way, there I am told, ‘Ok, you can get out here.’
‘But,’ I say looking around, ‘We’re not near X Street.’
‘No, but you can take another taxi from here.’
‘But I’m in this taxi and you said you would take me and that was five minutes ago.’
‘Yes, but I’m going to collect my children from school.’
‘You knew that when I got in the taxi and you told me you would take me to X Street.’
‘Yes, but I have to get my children from school. I’m not going in your direction.’ He shrugs his shoulders as if to say, ‘What can I do?’

I did at this point say something not very nice, that I’m not proud of and I won’t repeat here.

Then out I got and walked to another place to get a taxi from, cursing the fact that after all this time I still think I can dodge the situation of extreme self-consciousness that is getting caught out wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes in non-foreign parts of town.