Right then. I’m heading out of the lift, sticky, hot and particularly sweaty after just working out. I would like to say I look good, but well, I don’t. I might even smell, but I don’t especially want to go there. I have a sense that someone is following me. This sense is well-honed from living in Egypt for eight years, but not so well practiced after living in The Hood for the last three. I’m sure I’m mistaken. Paranoid even. I test it out. The real test: I walk on the pavement. Nobody in their right mind walks on the pavement in Cairo. Pavements are a mere concrete border to a dusty, tarmac-ed death run.
Not paranoid: the footsteps follow.
I meander as though I’m not aware of him (oh come on, did YOU think it was a her??) and then move to cross the road. He catches up. He was in the gym. “Hello,” he says like we’ve been friends for ages. “Hi” I say, knowing I’ll see him again in the gym, so will give him the benefit of the doubt: perhaps something fell out of my bag (Right. We know it didn’t, but I don’t want to appear a total b*tch without real cause). “Did you have a good workout?” His voice falters. He’s nervous. He’s not cocky – just as well because then the “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” side would be unleashed.
My brain is shortwiring: I’m married. Isn’t it CLEAR I’m married. Don’t I have an “I’m married” sandwich board swinging off my shoulders? I go to open my mouth and my throat closes. I simply cannot utter the words that my brain was pushing out, “I’m a married woman!” because that makes me o-l-d! I’m no longer the girl who does x & y, I’m a “married-woman” who does x & y. I squeezed out a terse, “Yes.” and set off across the road.
Tailing me come the words “Can I give you a lift anywhere?”.
“Um, yes, that would be splended freaky-stranger-guy-who-has-just-followed-me-down-the-road. It’s dark now, so please, let me get in a metal box that you control and direct you to my home.”
What on earth did he expect me to say to that?!