hmmmm

must move here once we find jobs and a place to live.

inshAllah.

City By The Sea

Mr MM, who travels almost daily to far-flung areas of Egypt for his work will be doing some work in Alexandria where he will stay for a few days. Loath to leave me behind I’m tagging along with him to wander the beaches and haunt the coffee shops of the city on the sea. Some few days out of Cairo might do me some good, and man do I love Alex. (Amie I know you’re uber jealous right now.)

I spent last night cruising on the Nile with Brooke, her fiance, and his family. They are absolutely wonderful people and it was a breath of fresh air to get out the house and away from my worries for awhile. I also sliced my finger open yesterday washing dishes (I TOLD you cleaning is bad for my health) so I’m typing even more gimpy than I already do since the one I sliced is one of the three to four fingers I usually type with.

We’ll be back, inshAllah, Sunday or Monday which is just in time for Eid which we will be spending with his family in his old neighborhood. I will try to update as much as I can but it may not be until after the holiday.

I wish everyone a Happy Eid again! Enjoy it while I lounge around on the beach.

Along a Ramadan

Warning: long post ahead, you might want to break it up into chapters or something.

Baby’s First Middle-Eastern Ramadan

I was very excited to be in Egypt for Ramadan, I thought that being in a predominately Muslim country would make Ramadan somehow better and more meaningful. A ’sea of difference’ one might say. And while in many ways Ramadan here is so much more than Ramadan in the west in some cases it is actually less.

I find that Ramadan here has become in many ways a cultural tradition rather than a sincere test of religious endurance; it is not culturally acceptable to not fast so I find that I see people fasting out of peer pressure and societal expectation. To me thats not Ramadan.

I’m used to Ramadans where I am the only person in my family/office/classroom fasting and that if I drink water or eat anything no one would even notice except God. To me this makes it a much more personal expression of faith, and of course much tougher. I have found, to my chagrin, that Ramadan here has become commercialized not so much unlike Christmas or Lent. It makes the experience empty for me: who am I really fasting for? God? Or society?

Christians and foreigners (most of whom also happen to be Christian) complain about being judged for not fasting, for attempting to order food in the middle of the day, and for not miraculously becoming more modest during this holy month. So, how many people here are fasting because the rest of their family is and to not fast would mean ridicule and ostracism?

This is indicative of Islam as a whole here as well: how many women wear the scarf only because their dad wouldn’t let them out of the house otherwise? When Islam is chosen and embraced outside of and maybe even against societal norms it becomes something more than just the status quo.

So, despite the lights, the canons, the festive nature of breaking the fast, I feel this Ramadan is hollow. Yes, I’ve missed close to no days of fasting (compared to the past Ramadans where I would have missed at least five days before the last ten of the month) and yes, its so much more fun when you are in a group of people or when I celebrate another day of fasting with my husband. But it feels rote, routine, expected not exceptional. In this way less than my lonely Ramadans of the past.

On the first day of Ramadan my true love gave to me…*

* you know you’re going to be singing that song for a least one day *cackle glee snort cackle*

The first day of Ramadan was exciting. In spite of knowing it was coming, the night before it quite literally surprised me when I found that Ramadan would begin the next day. Then again as I get older I find dates kind of sneak up on me anyways. Dear God, is it seriously my birthday? It was just December a minute ago…

Hubby and I did some last minute Ramadan shopping in grocery stores that were almost completely wiped out. Goodness people, do you grow four stomachs in Ramadan? I couldn’t find salt for a week! Lesson learned: stockpile necessities prior to all Ramadans.

When we returned to the building we stopped by Downstairs Uncle to wish him and his three girls (whom I will call Star, Breeze, and Brooke after very rough translations of the meaning of their names) a happy Ramadan. I may or may not have mentioned before that DU is very rich (may God bless him by even more because he deserves every dime) and his three girls are very high society. In Egypt, well ok in pretty much all the world, high society people marry other high society people so Brooke, the middle daughter, is engaged to marry the son of the owner of one of the biggest restaurant chains in Egypt. DU and the girls had been invited to take the first suhoor in the original restaurant location and so we were invited along as well.

It being one in the morning already we just stayed up until it was time to leave and we were all driven to Nasr City. The restaurant was packed to the gills with people of all walks of life. There was an exciting moment of speculation when pretty much all the men in the restaurant, servers and cooks included, all rushed to one corner where, I was told later, a famous player from the biggest soccer team in Egypt, Ahly, was taking his pre-fast meal. The poor guy, he was just trying to get his grub on. Anyways, I felt halfway famous sitting and eating with the family that owned the famous restaurant where famous people ate, six degrees of separation and all that jazz, and the food is really good. We rolled ourselves back towards the car, took our leave of Brooke’s betrothed, who is a very sweet young man, and headed home. With our expanded waist-lines we almost didn’t all fit but we made it eventually just as the call to prayer, and the breaking moment of Ramadan, rang out.

We slept off our food comas, poor Mr MM went to work after a scant three hours of sleep, and afterwards I set about getting ready for the first iftar. Traditionally the first iftar is always taken as a large family group so we packed up and headed out to Warraq to take dinner with Mr MM’s brother.

One of my absolute favorite things about Ramadan is that, especially for the first week, the roads in Cairo right after the maghrib call to prayer and signal to break your fast become eerily empty. Everyone is at home stuffing their faces and much too busy to be wreaking havoc with Cairo traffic. Mr MM and I, having left late that first day, sailed through the streets like ghosts, marveling at the beauty of the roads when no one else was on them. It was probably one of my more favorite moments in Egypt, when the city is at peace.

We ate dinner with his brother’s family and my niece and nephews introduced me to their new baby chickens who were heartbreakingly adorable. As we were getting ready to leave we were told about a party at one of Mr MM’s aunt’s house for the Seventh Day celebrations of their new baby granddaughter. So off went went back to Nasr City again to join in the festivities.

If one has never been to a Seventh Day celebration, its a trip. Its kind of like a baby shower/baptism/riotous party all rolled into one. It was also my first time to meet a lot of Mr MM’s (large) extended family and I was the center of a lot of attention. At one point I was surrounded by fifteen people with at least three if not four of them loudly speaking to me in Arabic all at the same time alternately trying to convince me to not listen to what the other person is saying and to answer random questions. Considering I only understood maybe two out of every twenty words I had absolutely no idea what was going on. My mother in law, God bless her, did her best to brow-beat my admirers into submission, but it really just added to the noise. One aunt convinced me that the flat was hers and took me on a tour with another group of four people in tow along with us, still trying to convince me of mostly untrue information. It turned out later that the flat wasn’t even hers (she was tricking me) and most of the people who claimed rooms as being their own didn’t even live there. It was all done in laughter and fun of course, but I didn’t particularly care what house belonged to who and actually even who was who because I’m terrible with names and to this day still can’t tell most of them apart. Deposited breathlessly back onto the couch from off of which I had been lifted for the tour, I spent a lot of the evening trying to find my husband in the crowd and being chased by random cousins who wanted to tell me some funny story about some one I didn’t really know. It was great fun, and definitely a crash course in the Arabic language.

But the real celebration started when they brought out the baby girl. Everyone was handed ribbon-festooned candles to light and hold onto, even very young children (safety not being on the top of the list in Egypt) and the lights were turned out. The grandmother (I think) of the baby came first with a metal pestle and mortar which she banged on and rang in cacophonous melody while the women zaghrouted and the newborn was carried out in a delightfully overly-decorated monstrosity of a bassinet (sold specifically for Seventh Day celebrations). Everyone stood in circle while the grandmother alternately banged on the mortar with the pestle, right next to the baby’s head, and setting that down picked up the bassinet and shook, rattled, and rolled the baby inside to that she would stay awake. It was a testament to the sleeping ability of newborns that even through the extremely loud racket of the mortar being pounded on right next to her head the baby would actually go back to sleep in between periods of being violently jostled. Once she was shaken to satisfaction she was set on the floor and the new mom was invited to jump over the bassinet a set number of times. A few other over-zealous members of the family also took the leap and then the mom picked up the baby and, lead by the pestle-banging grandmother, we all followed her out of the apartment, down the stairs to the main entryway and then circled the mom and baby, with our candles, singing some sort of traditional song. I mumbled because I had absolutely no idea what was going on let along the words to the song. Once that was over everyone trooped back up the stairs, children young (too young) and old were given fireworks to go play with unsupervised and everyone sat around talking.

After the baby-shaking climax of the evening people began trickling out and we eventually followed suit. Getting back into the car and heading home we found that it was pretty much only a matter of two hours before it was time to eat suhoor so we stayed up again and then slept after fajr.

The Arab Way

I have also found that fasting is so much easier if you do it the traditional Arab way: stay up all night, sleep all day. Fasting is easy when you’re asleep. Of course I feel that this isn’t quite as pure as actually being awake while fasting, staying up all night is more of a necessity for me than a choice. Ever since I came here I haven’t gone to bed much before one in the morning most days, so when it comes down to it, staying up an extra two hours is much more logical then barely falling asleep and having to wake up and prepare the suhoor while in a zombie-like state. This could also be the reason that I haven’t missed as many fasts as I usually did during Ramadan. I certainly can’t break my fast in my sleep, and by the time I wake up theres no use for breaking it so close to sunset anyways.

Yes, I agree that this isn’t the “real” way to fast, so please refrain from telling me off in my comments section. I just haven’t figured out how, short of depriving myself of sleep, I could do it. Believe me when I say I was working hard on trying to get Mr MM’s and my sleep schedule to an eleven o’clock bedtime, but I hadn’t succeeded by the beginning of Ramadan.

So, here we are in the vital last ten days of Ramadan. Its been a mixed one, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but most certainly different from any Ramadan I’ve ever been through before.

I also must say that Ramadan rocks so much more when you have a spouse.

I hope everyone’s Ramadan has been a blessed one and Eid Kareem ya’ll!

Excersize in Futility

Futile ( \ˈfyü-t^əl, ˈfyü-ˌtī(-ə)l\) adjective : hanging white clothes to line dry in a country covered in brown dust.

Supahstar!

Yours truly made the Daily News Egypt! I was asked for a comment about converts and Ramadan and the difficulties of fasting which I gladly supplied and there I am!

All famous and stuff!

Check out the article here.

Next stop, writing for them myself inshAllah.

PS- he heavily paraphrased, I’m not sure I’ve ever used the term ’sea of difference’ in my lifetime.

Parlez-vous Francais?

Of all my personal abilities and attributes I have come to find myself hired to translate a document from French into English.

Me, whose last extensive conversation in French occurred nigh on five years ago (the staggering convo I blundered my way through last month with the french-convert staying with downstairs Uncle notwithstanding), expected to make it through a four page document. ASAP, of course.

Ya rab!

But, God being the most Merciful, I have found a secret weapon.

Oh Google Translate, I think I’m falling in love with you.

What awesomeness is this: a instantaneous computer program that is competent enough to translate “le pays du Cèdre” into “Lebanon”?

Google, you are my hero.

XOXO

Molly + Google Translate = Luv 4ever

Like, totally less than 3.

frantic love

sometimes he is so peaceful and quiet when he is sleeping that I have to stay a moment just to make sure he is still breathing.

how can one person fill me so completely that if I ever lost him I might actually cease to exist?

Desperate Housewife

I’ve definitely been in a funk lately and I’m not sure how to get out of it. How do you pull yourself out of a funk caused by your own shortcomings? It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what the reason for the funk was; its not that I’m uncomfortable in Egypt, its that I’m uncomfortable as a housewife.

Its just not who I am.

I had these grand illusions when I was younger that I wanted to have a pack of children and a nice house, I wanted to cook good meals, and have no job.  My job would be my children, and a noble illusion it was.

The problem is that at the time I was in school and my job experience was limited to punt-work that I despised and getting through my shift was torture. Man, I preferred to stay home so when I thought about being a pampered housewife it seemed like a slice of heaven.

Well… here I am.

And well… it ain’t heaven.

I hate housework, I’m just not good at it and I don’t want to be good at it. How do you change a flaw when there is no desire to better that part of yourself? I don’t know if it could be called laziness… probably I am quite thoroughly guilt of being lazy. I want a clean house, of course, but I don’t want to be a part of getting it there. And I feel sick about it. I feel like I’m a horrible person and that I should be better, I should desire to be better, and I should make myself better.

We were having a maid come in once a week, it was fabulous. She cleaned the Downstairs Uncle’s house and she was good, she was honest, and I really liked her. Unfortunately her husband happened to be a completely donkey and one too many times of being rude to my cousin and uncle and she paid the price for his attitude. The only one left was their back-up maid who I instantly disliked- despite the fact that she cooks the only macarona we beschamel that I enjoyed eating- and I didn’t particularly care to have her cleaning my house. I distrusted her with good measure, today I found out she was fired for having sticky fingers.

And that there is the reason we haven’t had a maid come clean in like a month: trust. I didn’t trust Umm Stickyfingers so no go, and I don’t feel particularly good about finding someone new that is completely unknown. What to do? I’ve been waiting for Downstairs Uncle to get a new maid and to see how she does, but I don’t know when that will happen.

So here I am, in a flat that is tiled, white tiles may I add, from one end to the other in a dusty country, without a maid and lacking the essential drive of DIY. I don’t know how to be a housewife.

And dammit, I miss working. God, do I miss working. I miss money, I miss independence, I miss having something to do besides looking at my messy flat every day. I’m depressed, and when I’m depressed I feel even less like cleaning, which makes me even more depressed… etc etc. Its a vicious circle.

I want to work to get out, I want to work to get money to pay someone to do what society, especially Egyptian society, expects that I can do on my own. Money makes the world go round and from my viewpoint right now a job and the money that comes along with it would solve a lot of my problems. My husband can’t complain that I’m paying someone to do my housework when its my money thats paying them. Although there was a generally unpublished consensus from a bunch of sheikhs that said its a Muslim man’s duty to provide a maid for his wife if he can. Don’t ask me to get you a link, my husband knows about it from some books and he once disclosed this knowledge to me with the preface of “please don’t use this against me later but..” If you really want to know the scholarship behind it, I will ask him to get me the information.

So please, somebody hire me.

I’m a desperate housewife, a square peg in a round hole, and I’m losing my mind little by little.

Ya Allah, I need a job!

Mmmmmmm, this sure is tasty crow.

I know what Republicans are eating for iftar!

The Sarah Palin Gender Card

Youtube deleted the video, so until I figure out how to upload it myself, link to it here.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Would you be my FOB?

I really want to
eat ta’meyya and fuul
you’ll be my egyptian boy.

ganked from forsoothsayer

created by these guys

Lyrics:
za number one saeedi sound
your boy Safwat about to get down
za hottest city in za world right now
my home, I call it Cairo town
bet zey give me a pound
put a g’neh in my hand right now
most of za women wear bed sheets
we jus stole zis song beat

chorus
I like how u speak, u say zat and zere
and all that greasy gel in your hair
I really want to, eat tameya and fool
u’ll be my egyptian boy, egyptian boy

can we get away this weekend
take me to nile bay
tea n sheesha and backgammon at any cafe
let’s go on the subway, take me to yo hood
Zamalek, Shobra, Giza, Heliopolis is good
Dress in all ur fobby clothes
I love you to death, but you got the nastiest B.O.
tunes on yo cell phone, too much cologne
please be my egyptian boy, egyptian boy

chorus

Smoke sheesha on a felucca
American people call it hookah
unfortunately, ur stuck in traffic with me
there’s cars always broken, down down
it’s gonna clear up, now now
don’t pinch me, ow ow
I have a bruise, now now

I’m Egyptian, stella is what I’m drinkin
a belly dancer, don’t be blinkin
no pants ya, just a galabeya, hike it up a lil, maybe she be peekin

Egypt’s a sauna, water is what I wanna
Our Nile is my hydration
mother of civiization

There’s 81 million folk
and that my friend is no funny joke
Anwar was president before
now Mubarak keeps Egyptians broke
all the cars are triple parked
paying off the cops is my favorite part
the donkeys carry that tra a a ash
live in a pyramid, no where near it
we don’t ride camels asses
that Egyptian status
There’s nothing like it
so cool, u can’t deny it

would u be my FOB my FOBx3
would u be myyyyyyx3
would u be my Egyptian Boy
Egyptian Boy