Actually, there are two words on the Street right now.

First is that we are not going to change the clocks this year. This has yet to be proven as we normally do it three weeks to a month later than the UK, however, the theory I’ve heard is that it is because of Ramadan. This year Ramadan is due to fall on or around 1 September, when the weather is still pretty hot. Last year, Ramadan started a week before the clocks normally change, so they were changed early (a week or two) - hence the ‘word’. We’ll see.

The second word is that tomorrow there is going to be a national strike. There has been no official approval for this strike, so we’ll see if people decide to stay indoors. The strike would be about (as I understand it) the rising cost of living. I’m not sure what the would-be strikers hope to achieve though, as with food, the government has been sheltering a sizable part of the population from what is happening on the global markets by way of subsidisation. With petrol, this is so for the entire population. Saying that, prices are rising far faster than salaries, and times are extremely tough for many. Again, we’ll see.

~~

Our bowab (doorman) works hard for the building. He is up every morning washing the cars, he cleans the stairs, which has been no small job with the number of workmen in the building for the past 18 months and generally keeps it looking good.

He also does a lot of running around town for The Lady Downstairs (TLD) who has a business and seems incapable of going to the bank or offices on the other side of town herself. The business has employees and sizable funds, given where it advertises, for marketing. Her mode of transport is a BMW, his, because she won’t give him a taxi fare (which is nothing here) is the microbus - Cairo’s most dangerous and crowded form of transport. His pay for all this is minimal. On top of that, she treats him as a verbal whipping boy. Living above her, I am treated to her daily (on average) screaming fits. The bowab isn’t the only recipient, however, being close at hand, he is yelled at daily for absolutely nothing.

The day before yesterday, I was waiting for the elevator and heard him downstairs ringing her doorbell. Someone came to the door (not TLD, probably her maid) and he told her he had the electricity bill. Next hurried footsteps came to the door, followed by TLD’s raspy screaming, “You’ve got the electricity bill for me? Give it here!”.

Nice, huh?

So, Mr Bowab told me last month that he would be leaving for his home in the South for a few weeks at the end of March/beginning of April because his wife is going to give birth. This would be the second time he’s seen her in the past 12 months as the job of doorman does not come with holiday time.

Yesterday I realised that it was well into April and he was still here. Why? Apparently TLD won’t let him go because she has too much running around town for him to do.

And she has him by the short and curlies, because everybody knows that jobs are scarce and people on his his salary have few savings. What he does have though, is a savings account of hatred towards here growing with compound interest.

Nile FM is Egypt’s premier English language station (www.nilefmonline.com). On Sunday evening there was a drive-time show with a DJ asking the following question: “If you could import anything from the West, what would it be?”

I wasn’t in the car for very long. Despite repeated,and increasing in desperation, requests from the DJ to submit answers of things that could be imported, the responses were: education, education, education, self-respect, education, a good public transport system, cleanliness, a good public health system, education, dignity, plus some that were obviously too political for him to read them out (the station has NO political reporting or comments of any form).

Dying for a burger, I called McDonald’s yesterday (yep, home delivery in Egypt!). First time I didn’t get through. Second time I didn’t get through. Third time… At one point I was lucky enough to be answered and then I was hung up on. Undeterred, due to this craving for nasty fast food from the deepest pits of my belly, I called a few more times and finally placed my order. Within half an hour I would have my burger.

An hour later I called up and asked where my burger was.

“On the way” came the answer. Nothing to argue with really because it could mean it’s just come out of the freezer or it’s just downstairs.

As fortune had it, this time it was just downstairs. The delivery man handed me the bag and I could feel the cold fries and minimal warmth coming from the burger.

After speaking to the manager I sent it back, refusing to ‘wait ten minutes’ for a hot one to be delivered after a similar event last year that took 3 hours. I did mention that I was going to call Hardees instead though.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. “Yum, yum” I thought, although now, I was kind of wishing I’d just had some bread and cheese an hour and a half earlier, as not only would I not be hungry, but the guilt of eating a juicy processed burger was beginning to settle somewhere in my stomach.

I opened the door and there stood the McDonald’s man with my original order piping hot AND free.

Apart from my shock, because this isn’t a standard policy in Egypt, I faced a dilemma: with my Hardee’s now on the way, I definitely couldn’t tuck into a MaccyDo’s. I asked the cleaner if she’d like it. She looked at me in a state of bewildered wonder, like she’d just won a competition she hadn’t entered, and said yes. I told her to go take a plate if she wanted and she paused a bit. By now she’d looked into the bag and was beaming. “I think I’ll take it home with me, if that’s ok” she said shyly.

I suddenly realised that this junky burger that I ordered partially because I couldn’t be bothered slicing a bit of cheese was gem enough to her that she couldn’t imagine eating it alone: she was taking the bounty to share with someone.

How gluttonous, wasteful and downright over-priviliged and spoilt I felt when my Hardees arrived.

So much was my guilt, that each mouthful was difficult to chew. I wolfed it down, trying to get rid of the evidence, because as much as I wasn’t enjoying it, after seeing the look on her face, I couldn’t possibly throw any away.

Yesterday I had successfully lined up three potential new cleaners for interview. All had agreed on the working hours and pay, so it was just a matter of us meeting and them having a look at the apartment.

Candidate number two was from the Philippines. She was lovely and had a fantastic reference from someone who is still employing her part time, so I could even check it out (unlike the others). She told me that her daughter was coming over in September.
“Oh that’s nice. How old is your daughter?”
“She’s fourteen.”
“So is she coming to visit or to stay with you?” I asked thinking that fourteen was a difficult age to be changing schools, and wondering which school she would go to here as I don’t imagine that any school here, other than the outrageously expensive, is better than those in the Philippines.
“She’s coming here,” candidate number two said giggling, “I’ll give her to you!”
“Ha ha!” I laughed back.
I showed her the rest of the apartment and then we sat down to chat.
“So,” I said, reiterating what I’d said on the phone, “The hours and pay are acceptable to you?”
“Yes, Madame,” candidate number two replied, “I work for the other lady on Saturdays and have another part time job during the week.”
“Oh, that’s a lot of work. Are you sure you will be able to manage it all?”
“Oh yes, it’s not a problem, Madame, my daughter will come in September.”
“Hmm? Your daughter will come here with you?”
“Yes, she needs a job, so she can work here.”
“I’m to be involved in child labour?” I thought. Luckily she continued, “She’s not got experience yet, so she needs to get some cleaning. I think this would be good.”
“I’m sorry,” I said apologetically, thankful that I hadn’t interrupted earlier, “but I’ve had problems with inexperienced people before, so right now I’m specifically looking for someone with a lot of experience. I don’t think that your daughter will be good for me.”
“Ah. Ok Madame. That’s a shame.”
“Yes, but I think it’s good that we both know where we stand from the beginning. It’s better that we are clear about what we want so we both don’t run into problems later.”
“Very true Madame. Ok. Thank you for seeing me.”
She amicably left.

I have no working experience with the Philippines, but Filipino maids are famous. All the Filipino women I interviewed for cleaning had a lot of family back in the Philippines that they were supporting, most of whom they were supporting through university. The reason that this fourteen year old was coming to Egypt was because she was going to be supporting her siblings too. A future sacrificed for siblings: such a common tale in developing countries. Somewhat shocking for us in the West, who get free education or repayment mechanisms that at least allow us the option of going to university, the thought of sacrificing our education so a younger brother or sister can have one instead.

Then I started feeling doubly bad. By not employing this girl, I was possibly denying someone the opportunity of going to university.

But child labour is child labour and by employing her, perhaps her neighbour’s daughter, or one or her friends would be sent away somewhere to clean so her sibling(s) could have an education too.

It’s not fair, but I can’t make it worse.

We had an earthquake yesterday. Not a huge one, but a little bigger than the normal. Sometimes in the past I’ve not been sure if they were earthquakes or just the builders downstairs doing something that shook the building a lot. Other people felt yesterday’s too, so it wasn’t in fact our almost-resident-by-now builders.

I am utterly fed up of all the dust downstairs and the undressing stares every time I venture outside. As much as the builders irritate me though, I also feel equally awful about their conditions. Yesterday we came home to find the pathway totally blocked by a man cutting stone (of course moving a metre to the side would have been unthinkable, it’s workmen who have right of way, not residents). Mr S (here read Supernegotiator) tried to point out to the foreman (here read man who sits on a chair and watches the men work) that they could cut the remaining stack of stone tiles to the side, to no real avail.

The poor man cutting the stone was holding the cutter with bare hands, the stone in place with his sandaled foot with the effluent dust flaring up into his eyes and lungs, as he had no protective facial gear on. This is absolutely normal and indeed it may be argued that this man is lucky: he has a job and as stone cutter is probably paid more than the others.

Whether he’s lucky or not, it’s an uncomfortable argument.

All these issues are fairly obvious once you start thinking. What is really worrying, however, is something I didn’t properly realise until a few weeks ago. I had asked her to clean the fridge. She took out the shelves in the door, cleaned them and put them back. In the top shelf, there are trays for eggs that sit neatly inside the shelf. When she put the shelf back, the egg trays had to go in diagonally because they would not fit. I am pretty convinced that she was not being lazy, she just doesn’t have the reasoning to think that perhaps another shelf that looks the same might actually be a slightly different size and might fit. If I showed her, she would remember, she is not stupid, the problem is that she has never been taught how to think.

The simple exercises we did in our first years at junior school, or even before, with building blocks as a toddler, have an impact that is so basic for us, we don’t even notice.

I have been asked to decide if her daughter’s various suitors so far are good men for her daughter to marry. One of them was a man who sells fruit from a donkey cart, smokes a lot of weed and could give her a lot of gold and a fair sized apartment as a dowry. This man does the same job as her son, who does not smoke, comes from the same background and could never afford any of that. It hadn’t crossed her mind that perhaps he does more than just smoke the drugs.

If this inability to think things out through lack of education is applied to a very conservative 25% of the population, it has rather worrying implications. If it is further applied to discussions about the main topics here, politics and religion, well, need I say more?

Although the fridge and the suitor incidents may seem like stupidity, they aren’t. This woman is not an idiot, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s purely lack of education in its widest sense.

What provoked this thought was that I asked her on Wednesday if she would like to learn to iron. Her face beamed.

“Oh! Yes, I would! Step by step. You know? I’m old, I will be 45 next month, but my brain is still young and I want to learn new things.”

I wanted to cry.

Sitting on the pavement peddling handipack tissues. Veiled, dull eyes. Dirty feet outstretched. Everyday I see her. Lots of hers. Battered ship-ship flop off her feet as she shuffles down the street. Body hanging beneath the dusty, dirty gallabeya. Pretty eyes, dirty skin.

It is rumoured that most women living on the street sell more than just tissues. Sometimes not sold, but stolen. It’s not the only place where people steal. The difference is that there are few places where we literally have to step over her to go with our cushioned lives.

As it turned out, when we arrived at the settlement, the jeep’s attraction to us helped because it waited at the roadside for us to enter. The security at the gate were a little suspicious, but by this time we’d sort of befriended the soldiers and they waved to the security man that it was ok for us to go in.

All of a sudden we were in American suburbia. Black asphalt roads, not tarnished with the dust, with clear white lines on. Most outrageously (at this point) to us, was the roundabout with beautiful flowers in it bordered by green green grass. Living in a place where coca cola and pepsi were cheaper than a similar sized bottle of water and we had to ration showers in the summer heat because we didn’t know when the water would next be turned on, we were incensed.

We were on a mission though and on we carried. Totally lost, we asked a young family directions and directions we got, nothing else (perhaps abundance of water makes people less friendly).

After trapsing through a wide path overgrown with tall grass and flanked with fir trees, we arrived at what was indeed a shrine: a pebble covered grave pointing to Jerusalem and books in three separate weatherproof cases open on pages documenting what Hebron’s “hero” did and how Jerusalem will be fully part of Israel. Shocked and unsettled we looked around, didn’t touch anything, took one picture and then retreated.

I don’t think we ever told our Palestinian friends that we went to the settlement to check. So much hurt and humiliation flowed through their veins at that point that they would have seen us a betraying them by stepping foot in a settlement. For us though, it was important. Surrounded by stories that were so huge and quite frankly, so hard to believe and impossible to verify, we had verified one important fact.

I heard that the shrine was demolished within a year after our visit. And that one picture? Well, it was the only picture on the roll that didn’t turn out.

As for my water? I just heard it gurgle in the pipes as it came back on.

We have no water. Global warming? Hose pipe ban? Definitely not the latter and probably not the former (didn’t you know, there is no water shortage in Egypt, as any Egyptian can testify, the Nile never stops flowing…).

It wouldn’t be so bad if I couldn’t hear the tse tse tse of the neighbour’s garden irrigation system as it spurts out water over the expansive lawn that is used a maximum of once a month for three hours on a Thursday evening. Or if I couldn’t see a gardener in another neighbouring garden raking up the succulent green grass he has just cut.

It reminds me a little of when I was in Palestine. After a few weeks in a dusty midsummer village, we went to Hebron. A couple of us decided to visit Kiriet Arbaa (a major settlement on the outskirts of town) to disprove the rumour that the man who committed the Hebron Massacre had a shrine there. The three of us (all girls) had to separate from our Palestinian friends under the flimsy excuse of wanting to explore Hebron alone for a while.

We walked all the way there and it caused quite a commotion. At a checkpoint, Israeli soldiers asked where we were going so we told them. Initially a little suspicious, they let us through and on we went. After about two minutes, a jeep full of soldiers decided that they’d like to talk to us and so alternated between driving beside us for the benefit of the front passenger and driver and in front of us for the four in the back. As driving with us meant driving at walking speed, a long queue of cars formed behind us. Not sure if the soldiers being with us was actually safe or not, especially if they found out what we were doing there in the first place, and then to have about fifty irate motorists behind us, we were a little nervous.

Green eyes flashing out of the uncovered face. Hands gripping neck and pushing, pushing. He was in black. She was pushed. Face red. Black rock centre. Curly girl on edge watching. Saying nothing. Doing nothing. Face blue. Closer to the black, closer to the cube. Face grey.

…or was it?