“Grouse doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” This was one of the most thought-provoking sentences from my life at school. Perhaps because it was about me and my ego enjoyed that. It was a sentence in my school report when I was about 14. I was perplexed for a good while afterwards. Big Mama read it out to me like I should be ashamed of myself, “But what’s the problem with that,” I thought (and maybe, being 14, said), “WHO would want to suffer anything, especially stupid people and why would they do so gladly?” The sentence seemed flawed to me. After a few months of pondering, I thought perhaps it was a backhanded compliment, in that I wasn’t a fool.

Basically, I just didn’t get it.

Now I get it. I still don’t really like fools, I don’t suffer them gladly, but, I do make an effort to not show my suffering for too long. Sometimes I’m good at it.

Not so today.

Mr S wanted me to check out the biggest, prettiest, most expensive compound in Cairo to see about joining their sports club so that I could (finally) get to swim. It’s a nice place, if you like a cross between Hollywood and Marbella with some good old MacMansions thrown in between – and all that in Cairo. My protestations about joining in with this lifestyle when so many on our doorstep have so little have lasted three years, but finally I relented. The only thing I had to confirm was that the main pool which is outdoors is heated in winter.

“Is the main pool heated in winter?” I dutifully (well, I am married now) asked.

“Yes.” was the answer. It seemed too easy. Cairo isn’t that easy. Even in super-lux compounds. Or was it?

“When does that start?”

“Oh, Winter? Well you see here in Cairo we have a hot summer…”

“Yes, I know, I’ve lived here for 8 years. Which month does the heating come on in the pool?” (you can get an idea of what my teacher was meaning,  right?).

“Ok, the winter months are October, November..”

I was smiling, this was sounding good.

“..April and May.”

“Pardon? What about December, January, February and March?”

“Oh, then the pool isn’t heated.”

“But that’s winter.”

“Not really. Anyway, nobody goes swimming in those months.”

“Yes,” I said almost snorting, “because the water’s not heated!” (I was rather good and skimmed over the fact that December, January, February, the three coldest months of the year were “not really” winter.).  Then the Sco’ish blood started to boil. “So you mean, we should pay $1750* a year to go swimming, plus $250* introduction fee  and over December, January, February and March, we can’t go swimming?”

“Oh, you can go swimming.”

“Sorry? I thought the pool’s closed.”

“No, not closed, just not heated.”

My mind was boggling. Four four months of the year the pool is open, but not heated, so nobody goes in, but they don’t close it, just so they can say it’s open, even though they know nobody will go in because it’s not heated…

“So then I pay for a year’s membership because I want to go swimming, but for a third of the year I can’t because it’s too cold?”

Yep.

Never mind. I found somewhere else that heats the pool over the winter. Why? Well, according to the sales people, “So people can go swimming over the winter.” Right. That seems rather sensible to me.

*Yes, these fees are steep for a swim. They do also cover fees for golf and tennis membership and as for swimming there are VERY few options nowadays for women where the pool is also clean.

Dr One:  “What you have is a bit of inflammation, don’t worry. You should go and see Dr A when he comes back.”

Me: “When is that?”

Dr One: “He’s overseas on holiday, he’ll be back on 7 October (two weeks).”

Two days later, symtoms are even worse. Another Dr is chosen.

Dr Two: “What you have is an infection. Here’s a prescription for antibiotics. You’ll start to feel better in two days. If you don’t, call me.”

Me: “Ok, thanks. I’m allergic to penicillin.”

Dr Two: “No problem.”

Twenty minutes later, I open the box of antibiotics and read the insert: contradindicated for sensitivities to penicillin. I call Dr Two and get the name of an alternative antibiotic.

Two days later: I feel on top of the world.

Day after that: I feel like Hades would be heaven.

A few days later: I call Dr A on the off chance that he’s back in Egypt and I can see him at a different clinic before his clinic day at my clinic in 6 days’ time. A lady answers. Dr A is male. I ask to speak to him, she says he’s in surgery, and asks what it’s about, so I explain. “What do you expect him to do about that?” is the response. “Um, nothing,” I say, “I just want to talk to him about it.” I’m told to call back in an hour. In the end I send an sms and arrange an appointment with him in two days’ time.

A week and a half since Dr One:

Me: “Did you have a good holiday?

Dr A: “Yes, but never long enough.”

Me: “That’s true. Were you somewhere nice?”

Dr A: “I just stayed in Egypt.”

Me: “Oh, Dr One told me you were abroad.”

Dr A: “Abroad? No, I was most definitely here!”

Then we get down to business.

Dr A: “Firstly, it’s not an infection. Secondly, why didn’t you just come to my clinic in Dr One’s office last week? You could have saved yourself all this trouble.”

Me: “Um, because you were on holiday.”

Dr A: “No I wasn’t, I had a big clinic in Dr One’s office last week.”

Me: “Um, well, a week and a half ago Dr One told me you weren’t back until 7 October.”

Dr One is supposed to be our trusted Dr.

I think I’m going to start eating apples by the kilo….

Apple from http://dnn.mandeeps.com

Admittedly I’m in a grumpy mood today: I always am after a bad night’s sleep.

But, but BUT, I wasn’t last week when I went shopping and I was superbly pissed off then too.

I walked into La Senza at our local hypermarket/shopping centre. It was about 9.30am and there were seven guys in their twenties, two of whom were clearly behind the tills, the rest were just hanging out, chatting with the two female floor assistants. Of the guys there, four were clearly watching me as I perused the lingerie. One of the girls came to follow me around and smooth out anything I even breathed on.

I hate that. I don’t care if they do it when I’ve left the shop, but following me and straightening every, single hanger while I’m there, like I’m ruining their display of hanging garments, which is there so that people like me come and look and then, presumably, buy, drives me nuts. Team it with some sexually repressed spectators and, La Senza, there’s not a hope in hell of me getting out my credit card.

So, I left the shop last week without buying. Not before quick glance at the two guys who were still watching me, then the two cashiers, then the guys sitting around the changing rooms with the other floor assistant and saying, in Arabic, loud enough for them to hear, “So, this is where all the guys come to hang out?” and walking out.

Today I went in just to see if it was different. Instead of seven, there were five guys.

I just don’t get it. It’s lingerie. It’s a conservative society. Women are covered up to protect their modesty, and so as not to titillate men, but lingerie stores have men working the tills? I know that there are bra stalls in markets and women pick their bras in full view of everybody, not just the male stall holder, but this is (for Egypt) an upmarket, expensive store.

It’s not just La Senza. A few shops away is Women’s Secret. They have a female floor assistant with a man on the till. The same with Nike Woman. Is it that Egyptian women cannot count and so cannot be trusted with tills? Nope. Perhaps it’s the patriarchial society. I don’t know. I don’t CARE! I don’t want some guy folding my bras, checking out if I might need another size (what the hell does he know about how bras fit?!) by asking and taking a quick ‘glance’.

Egyptian women are smart. They are also really nice and friendly. I would have probably bought something in all three stores today had there not been men checking out what I was going to be wearing for Mr S (and him alone). Egyptian men are also smart, but there are plenty of other retail ‘experiences’ that talented men can work at, there is no reason for them to be pawing my panties!

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.

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.

There is an unwritten law that water cuts only occur at the worst moments. In Jordan it would happen without fail every time I returned from the desert, covered in a pale orange dust. Sometimes it would just not be on when I returned and other times it would let me get in the shower, half lather up and then just stop.

In Egypt it is usually on the hottest days. Now, that doesn’t just mean the stickiest days of Summer, but the warmest days for that season. And always, always, always, it is when you need it least to happen.

Like yesterday.

And today.

In fairness they haven’t been total stoppages for the most part, but there has not been more than a dribble from the showers.

This morning, I heard a definite gush of water as Mr S turned on the shower with pressure to rival any power shower (we don’t have one) and relaxed happy to know I could get a decent clean today, not just a spit and a lick.

I took my time, ready to enjoy the feeling of getting clean that incrementally increases the dirtier you are. I prepared my clothes, got my favourite creams and brushed, brushed, brushed away, at my hair turning the curls bushier-looking than ever before and stepped into the shower.

Tsssssssssss.

A mere dribble from the shower and definitely not enough to penetrate the hedge on my head.

And so it is that today, my modest crop of hair has turned into a beehive to beat Amy’s any day (or night) of the week.

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!

My quietness has been induced by the sort of cold that turns your brain to the colour and texture of mushy peas.

It hasn’t stopped all sorts of strange things going on in the world around me, and unfortunately I wasn’t hallucinating. First there was the all day power cut, somewhat of a pain because I couldn’t snuggle up on the sofa in front of rubbish daytime TV. The next day, there was a water cut. Fantastic really. Then the phone line was cut while I was talking to someone. No idea what happened, but guessing that someone in the Sentraaaal pulled out the wrong plug, or changed the wrong switch – and not for the first time. So, no home internet, but thanks to a local embassy that has a named and unsecured wireless connection, I could hop online and at least listen to Radio 4.

The piece de la resistance came yesterday morning, when (phone line and internet connection working again) the internet service provider (well, service in its loosest form) sent a notification that we owe money for October and for November. Had, in September, we not paid three months in advance, I would have no quibble, but given that we did, that this was the third time we received the message and that after visiting the branch office we were provided with a paper that said the company owed us money, I was quibbling rather strongly.
So, it was with great delight that this morning I found a Customer Experience Survey in my inbox. Rubbing my hands with glee, I opened it. Check out this cracker:

What method of notification would you prefer? (Rate the below methods of notification according to you preference: 1 is highest, 0 is not applicable)

E-mail 0 1 2 3
SMS 0 1 2 3
Notification Page 0 1 2 3
Other: 0 1 2 3

I’m not altogether sure what 2 and 3 are doing. Probably likely that it goes something like this: Email – 0 not applicable, 1 highest, 2 lower, 3 lowest. Alongside stationary, questionnaires are up there with my favourite things. Badly designed questionnaires are like fingernails down an old chalk blackboard.

Given that this company doesn’t have a complaints department, or anybody who can actually deal with complaints in Customer Services (according to a call centre worker when I asked before), I’m not sure if there’s too much point in filling it out. I will, however, tick some boxes in the hope that (as USAID and similar organisations plan) perhaps something as simple as consumer rights might one day lead to democracy.

Not, of course, that there isn’t a democracy here already.

Being in The Hood, I have my finger on a delayed pulse of the hip and happening Egyptian music scene. So, despite buying the year’s hottest CD a few months ago, today was the first time I listened to it all the way through.

Far be it for me to comment on the musical genius that is Amr Diab and his bulging bank account, but he is a giant unparalleled in Western music. An album release by this guy is followed less than a week later by his songs being played in all taxis (that are not playing the Quran) and the entire Middle East knowing the words to the entire album by the end of the same week. Not that the lyrics are particularly complex, but still…

Just in case we were in any doubt as to the arteest’s patrons, the latest album cover has two corporate logos on the front: Pepsi and Rotana (a Saudi owned record label that has six music channels on which it airs its artists – Simon Cowell is nothing compared to Prince Al Waleed bin Talal).

So that you too can keep up to date with the bangin’ Egyptian music scene, I’ve popped in a little video of the first track on his latest album. Before you watch it though, an interesting point: check out him following Natalie Martinez at the beginning. This is exactly what teenage boys frequently do to girls walking down the street here. It seems to be more fun when she’s blonde and they think she doesn’t understand what they are saying. It has a tendency to bring out an anti stalking rage in me unparalleled to most other things!

Did you notice the product placement at the beginning? Oh, yes, he may be the King of Cheese, but never let it be said that he’s an impoverished arteest.

After all, looking 20 when you are in fact 46 doesn’t come cheap, not even in Egypt.

My friend was walking down a road in the Hood yesterday with her 1 year old daughter strapped onto her front. She is not Egyptian. She was wearing a V-neck loose-fitting T-shirt (so, not tight or too revealing). Her daughter was holding the hem of the V. A group of teenage boys was walking towards her. She knows something is going to happen: it always does.

Sure enough, the group approach her to touch the baby. One of them ‘accidentally’ touches her breast as he touches the baby’s hand.

They walk off giggling.

Now, perhaps, he really did touch her breast by mistake.

Perhaps.

Chances are slim though, given that a) he would have probably noticed her breast before the baby (if her husband was carrying the baby, would they have stopped?) and b) had the girl been his friend’s sister, you can bet your life he would have managed to NOT touch her breast.

What’s the difference between my friend and a hypothetical sister of his friend? Nothing, other than he wouldn’t want to disrespect his friend.

Nice, huh?

*Hoda Shaarawi was an Egyptian feminist who lived from 1879-1947.