Invitation To Ride

So I cycle to work every day. It’s not a long distance really, something like 10-15 minutes by ‎bike or the equivalent of 20-30 minutes by car. Cairo is not at all designed for bicycles but ‎then again neither is it designed for cars or pedestrians or even humans. I used to cycle from ‎place to place when I had my freestyle bike as a child, but all that changed since it broke ‎down and I sort of outgrew the freestyle stuff. Anyway it did take a bit of courage to decide ‎to cycle in Cairo to and from work, especially that I was showered with warnings from ‎everyone who came to know of my plan. ‎

The warnings were concerning many aspects, firstly the pollution in Cairo, instead of actually ‎doing a sport that would benefit my body, I would be augmenting the inhale of pollution to ‎bring about more quickly the ruin of an already deteriorating pair of lungs. Another problem ‎was traffic; driving in Cairo is chaotic enough as it is without the disadvantage of having to ‎deal with it from a vulnerable exposed bike. Being a driver myself I can see how anymore ‎space used up by a bike can cause drivers to go crazy with rage. The pedestrians have left the ‎non existent sidewalk and moved on to the road, but what makes bikers more infuriating is ‎that they move quicker than both cars and pedestrians. They use up little enough road so as ‎to glide through traffic and yet enough to hinder some cars.‎

One more issue that was raised but that is totally absurd is harassment. Yes even guys can ‎get harassed if walking in shorts, or strange clothes or on a bike. Of course I don’t have a ‎poor looking bike like those carrying bread or running errands, so one can expect the same ‎kind of remarks as those I get while going to play football wearing shorts during the winter. ‎Even more, some have warned that I may get some kind of mockery from the not so ‎accustomed workmates. ‎
‎
But of course that last issue is the least of my worries, relative to the normal population, I’m ‎considered eccentric anyway, and I’ve never cared much for what people say, I’ve been ‎down that road so many times and I discovered that if you’re confident enough people get ‎tired of the strange things you do and eventually start accepting you and sometimes even ‎respecting you.‎

Despite all these warnings, I still decided to cycle to work, and it does have its perks apart ‎from dodging pedestrians walking like zombies unaware of their own existence and yours, ‎the bigger task was to avoid cars that continuously ignore you, almost run you over and then ‎simply smile and apologize. The perks of cycling though other than it being a sport I enjoy a ‎lot is that I get home faster in the deadlocked traffic of Cairo. I can run errands on my way ‎home and I can decide to leave during rush hour rather than rot away in the office. I can ‎enjoy the cold air in the evening and rid myself of that usual feeling of lethargy at the end of ‎a working day. I can actually go back home and decide to go out, not dreading driving to ‎places since I haven’t been locked in a traffic jam for over fifteen minutes. I can even park ‎right next to the office and not go around 10 extra minutes looking for a parking space, with ‎the car, the process of parking is horrendous. ‎

With all these perks comes one that was very unexpected. Owning a bike is like being lost. ‎Not in a bad sense I assure you, it’s just that when people are lost, people are very anxious to ‎help them and get them on the right way and talk to them. That’s what it’s like when some ‎people see me with a bike. I’m talking about the doorman and the security guards and the ‎garage keeper. They’re very excited that I have joined their ranks and run my errands on a ‎bike. One of the security guards was so interested that he asked me if my bike was normal or ‎with “3’eyarat” (gears). The ability to make small talk about the bike is excellent. ‎

I’m not sure why people don’t go to their work on bikes here in Egypt, I mean it may be a ‎bit demeaning, but if more people did it then the traffic won’t be as bad (except on the 6th of ‎October bridge) and the whole biking thing will be generally more accepted. If anything it ‎can attempt to bring closer those rich enough to own cars but choose bikes, and those rich ‎enough to merely own a bike.‎

Tag Heur

So I've been tagged by alluring who was tagged by raghd-triple-o-da who was tagged by Mak who apparently wasn't tagged by anyone, and might have just made this whole tag thing up out of boredom or to get to know things about raghdoooda or to see how far a tag can travel.

Anyway, he got more than he bargained for and now I'm about to relay some truths about myself, which people (except maybe alluring,bless her, who tagged me) are not interested in reading about. In any case that shouldn't be such a difficult task because this blog doesn't give away any personal information, so to compensate what the blog has failed to do, I'll be tagged.

Things you didn't know about me, and now that you do, don't care that you do:

• I finished high school before I turned 14.
• Since that sounds geeky enough, it was natural for me to be a woman repeller up to the age of 20.
• I taught myself how to do a shoulder spring.
• I cycle to work every day.
• I'm obsessed with Dostoevsky.
• Leonardo Di Caprio sucked in Titanic and I despised him but I've changed my opinion about him as an actor and I've started give him some respect since Catch Me If You Can.
• Pretty much every other thing I can include in this list will be something you didn't know about me and won't care to.

Okay that should be enough for this tag, and now comes time to tag, at the risk of embarrassing myself I will tag some bloggers who may or may not see this one of these days: Amnesiac, Mechanical Crowds and Everything's Eventual.
Insomniac who I was about to mention tagged herself out of her own accord.
N who I wanted to tag seems to have been tagged already.
And just for the record, one more thing you didn't know about me, is that whenever I visit blogs whose posts include a tag post such as this one, it really annoys me.. Something about answering a specific question and bulleted points.. I don't know..

42 ½

My shoe size is 42 and a half. That’s exactly what it feels like in most shoes I try on. 42 is slightly tight, 43 is slightly loose. At first I thought I was imagining it, that I was either thinking that my shoes were too tight when they were a good fit, or thinking they were too loose when they were just comfortable. But try as I might, there was just no way around it, my shoe size was 42 and a half.

I once tried buying a size 42, hoping that by time the material would expand and I would be able to rid myself of the absurd notion that my feet did not conform to normal standards. But when I wore those shoes for a while, they caused me so much pain that I could never walk in them again. I vowed never to walk in those sorts of shoes ever again.

On another occasion I bought a size 43 shoe to play football with, but that also turned into a complete mess. There was no accuracy in my shots and I had trouble sprinting and all in all I felt my feet surrounded by too much empty space.

So after all these experiments, I’m neither a 42 nor a 43, I’m somewhere in between. I must have missed out on some really good shoes because of that. I’ve often wondered why I couldn’t have just been one size or the other, fitting well with the designs that should be available to everyone. Why must it be so difficult and why must I stand out? I’ve never had a real answer to this, and I’ve come to accept that this is just the way it is.

I’ve come to appreciate the shoes that do fit though I hang on to them very dearly. Even though they’re a mishap, they fit a mishap like myself pretty well. I don’t need to fit in all possible shoes; I just need to seek out those that fit. Those that do fit tend to endure. Perhaps they might make some other normal people slightly uncomfortable, but they suit me best.

I’m always lost about where to shop for them though…

Inflexible People Annoy Me

Inflexible people annoy me. It’s not that they’re inflexible that annoys me really, it’s just that the only way to deal with inflexible people is to be inflexible yourself. That’s what really annoys me… that they force me to be something I dislike. Inflexible people want it their way or no way at all. I think that sometimes there can be changes to how things are done, but my stubborn nature in the face of inflexibility forces me to be inflexible even though I don’t believe in what I’m being rigid about. The problem is that inflexibility works and it’s the passive people who help make it work. It’s by others making compromises that inflexible people get their way. Perhaps it makes me inflexible when I stand up to people who are inflexible. Where’s the line between being adaptive and not being a pushover? I’m sure it exists in the minds of people, but one adaptive person is another’s pushover.

Passive people annoy me as well, but then again I’ve become irritable lately. I think my rigidity is causing me to be chronically inflexible, this is the disease that is passed on really. However there’s just no way to stop it. If you let inflexible people do what they want then their rigidity triumphed. If you stand up to them and hold on to your guns too obstinately then the disease has been passed on to you.

Back to passive people. They annoy me lots because they let people get away with whatever they can. They’re very short sighted and think that by letting things slide they’re doing the world some good. They feel that by being quiet they should be commended since they’ve saved a ten second scene or something of that nature. Passive people may have good intention, or may have cowardice, but one thing is for sure, they don’t have hindsight. How can they? And I’m not talking about difficult to reach hindsight, they just don’t understand the future or consequences of what they’re doing today, or maybe they just don’t care.

I’m annoyed by passive people because they give up their rights very often, but even though it’s their rights, it’s not their right to forfeit them. I’m not annoyed by them giving up a right, but I’m annoyed by the consequences of this sort of behavior. They make it a norm for people to give up their rights. They make those who abuse rights think that it’s okay to do so. They make people behave in such a way such that they’re sure that others will let it slide so as not to cause immediate trouble. I’m certainly most annoyed by the fact that my rights go down the drain a lot easier.

There’s a certain kind of wisdom called patience that can look like passiveness, but there’s one difference; patience is waiting for a moment to take a proper action while passiveness is letting the moments pass you by. Silence is better if it doesn’t help to speak, but sometimes it’s just plain laziness. It’s easy to give up your right, but if you look at it from a different perspective, it’s not only your right but also the right of those who will follow. How then can you just give it up? It would sense to give it up because you don’t care about all those who follow, that I can accept, but that contradicts giving it up in the first place because you would have to care about the people who violated them so as to give them up.

But like I said, I’m generally irritable these days. The world is full of very irritating things and irritating people but all that should not get to me. After all, life is not about what happens around you, but about how you feel about it. If I can stop these things from annoying me, then I can be the winner. If I can feel indifferent about passiveness and inflexibility, then I can win, but if I feel indifferent about them doesn’t that imply that I can become passive? I think it can make me not want to make a change since I don’t feel strongly about it. What then is the point of standing up for something if you’re dispassionate about it?
Is there a way to feel strongly about something and not let it get to me? I’m certain there must be.

Enemy Drums

I woke up to the sound of drums,
But they were not music, they were bombs,
Yet with precision was the rhythm of their sound,
Every two seconds, three would hit the ground.

Four of my neighbor’s five children died,
And amidst the bombs the one that survived,
Buried his siblings all day long,
Wondering what it is they did wrong.

The sound of bombs muted our own,
And this was no longer for us a home,
But there’s no escape from where we are,
The helping hands and hearts are far.

But it wasn’t that which choked our souls,
Hearing the news was like eating burning coals,
Five were wounded from the enemy’s side,
While one hundred of my neighbors died.

Yet the story of those five was written in one large page,
Condemnation was bitter and it was told with such rage,
And the hundred were mentioned in half a line,
Any tears for us just had to be dried.

We’re dying but terrorists is what we’re called,
They play their drums, but with us the world's appalled.
The voices of hundreds who died, unheard,
The pleading of wailing mothers deferred.

The news, it burns, it tells the enemy's story,
And it seems as though they suffer with glory.
But in our land we’re slaughtered and killed,
And their lust for murder is never fulfilled.

So hear my voice or let me die,
Listen to my truth and decide if it’s a lie,
But don’t keep me waiting for too long,
I’m dead very soon, but I’ll take others along.

I’m a rat in a cage, tortured without end,
The torturer kills and for help he will send,
He will cry like a victim and torture me again,
Strong are his allies and feeble are my friends.

Not a word of those four children was said,
They’re sleeping in their graves, their killer in his bed.
Those innocent dead are criminals in the world’s eyes,
And still the drums keep beating with lyrics made of lies.

My Cat Is Deaf

My cat is deaf and it can’t hear anything. He has a name, ‘junior’ but it’s not of much use since I can’t call on him to come or anything. But it’s still comforting to give him a name that he doesn’t understand to refer to him, after all, I do talk about him and I do talk to him even though he doesn’t hear. There’s some hidden benefit to him having a name that’s not directly visible.

But the thing is that sound does not exist for him. I used to feel sorry for him, but a friend of mine said, “Why should I feel sorry for him? God created him that way.” He’s a white beautiful cat and sometimes those white beautiful cats are born that way. I don’t feel sorry for him because he doesn’t feel he’s missing out on sounds. His world exists using one less sensory perception, or one less dimension.

Another reason I don’t feel sorry for my cat is that as humans we may be living happily with a similar lack. There may be some things that exist out there that we just can’t perceive, can’t pick up, can’t sense. We may have some clue to it, but it doesn’t seem to exist in our world. When I whisper in junior’s ears he can feel the air out of my mouth but not the sound. When I snap my fingers he can sense the movement or even see it, but not hear it. He has clues to its existence but he would not know what it means to hear. He can only see my lips moving and my hands yelling, but he can’t hear me.

I don’t feel sorry for my cat because humans are deaf too, and some of them claim that no such thing as sound exists. This narrow thinking, based only on what we can capture, reminds me of creatures who lack certain senses but cannot compensate. My cat might be deaf, but it’s no fool. Wish I could say the same about all other humans.

Like a very young child whose arms were raised and holding on to the hand of a loving adult in a crowd, safe and not alone but then forsaken. Disconnected from that loving hand, and left wanting of a loving embrace was she, as she saw the crowd shifting away from her so that in fact she felt so alone despite the proximity of the crowd. This is exactly how she felt, alone in a crowd reaching out her arm to find emptiness in place of a loving hand to guide her and hold her, without a loving heart to love her or a warm embrace to hug her. She felt all that with one small variation, she felt all this without the recollection that there ever was a hand to hold hers or an embrace to hug her or a crowd that ever once surrounded her.

I’m Stupid

Driving through the crowded streets of Cairo, a friend of mine and I got stuck in a small deadlock while trying to go through a one and a half car two-way street. One guy could have just backed off completely and solved it all, but instead, he just held up traffic and kept trying to go forward until, inevitably, he had to reverse into an empty space so that others including himself can move.

This jam was responsible for us running a bit late and so I maneuvered my way through the streets till the main street was at hand. Now as I was approaching the main street, towards the end of my one way street another car came in. Seeing that it was my way and that he had some space to back off (and that the main street was not crowded so he wouldn’t be clipped) I just paused and checked if he would go into reverse. After a little gesticulation and shouts muted by his own windows, he finally backed off enough for me to pass.

As our windows got nearer, he said very calmly, “By the way, you’re stupid.” As I was telling him that he was stupid as well, my friend was said, “It’s true”. He was telling me that I’m stupid because he’d just made a turn and that I had more space behind me, my friend agreed that I was stupid because that man had to back off a bit into the main street and I was saying that he was stupider because he went down a one way street in the wrong direction.

I’ve always thought that the person making the mistake was supposed to provide the solution, but he and my friend seemed to agree that I’m stupid because I didn’t put in an extra effort to correct his mistake. They think I’m stupid because I obstinately and idiotically thought that the road rules were on my side. They think I’m stupid because it would have cost me less effort than him to fix his mistake.

I thought that my friend didn’t know it was a one way street and that it wasn’t stupidity but rather a principle, so I made it clear and this is how my friend replied, “So what? Everybody does it.” Well then that makes it okay I suppose. I must be stupid indeed. It’s alright that people aren’t accountable as long as someone else can fix their mistakes. It’s alright that people break the rules as long as everyone accepts it. It’s alright to accept things as they are because that’s life… I remember in Alexandria before the roads were fixed, people would cross over to the other side speeding and flash their lights at people going in the correct lane so that they move out of the way. I always thought it was only courtesy to get back in the correct lane if you weren’t able to make it… but I guess I was wrong.

I think I am stupid really for thinking that courtesy ever plays a real part in life apart from its existence in books and literature, it’s not deal with your consequences, it’s have people deal with your consequences. Accept things cause everybody does it… well, I guess I really am stupid and that I stand alone in thinking that it means something to stand for something. I stand alone because at the end even though my friend said, “Sorry for the offense,” she added as she left the car, “but you do know that it's two against one.”

24

24 is a brilliant TV show. I’ve always wondered, ever since watching a movie by the name of ‘Nick of Time’ why they don’t shoot some movies in real time where events can be seen as they happen. Well almost a decade later they did it with 24. The best thing about 24 is that it’s (almost) in real time. Each episode is just one hour and we can see what happens in that hour. It’s a real thriller too; you get entangled in its mesh provided you watch something like 3 episodes in a row.

Anyway the other night it was showing, Jack Bauer was hot on the terrorist’s trail and CTU (counter terrorist unit) had arrested someone who was their only lead to reach a terrorist who was trying to acquire a nuclear missile. Apart from the fact that it seems so easy now for individuals to acquire weapons of mass destruction, there was something else I found intriguing.

The man they arrested was a retired US marine who they suspected to have been a mercenary. He had no priors. So in order to hinder his interrogation, the terrorist (whose name is Marwan.. surprise surprise) calls ‘Amesty Global’ and asks for a lawyer so that CTU don’t torture that man into divulging the information that can lead to the capture of Marwan. That got me thinking of how far advanced Human Rights are to be able to have one lawyer easily obtain a court order so as not to violate this citizen’s rights. Are human rights organizations so powerful everywhere in the world? In Egypt it would take a phone call from the president to stop an act of torture, not just a simple phone call to any Amnesty. Human rights mean nothing in Egypt unless stated otherwise, totally unlike other places in the world. I’m not saying that this is the way it is in America, but I’m saying that it’s highly plausible that an American with no priors is saved from torture just by a phone call no matter how important he is to a case and how unimportant he is as a human being.

So anyway, after the lawyer had been sent, they call up the president since it is a matter of National Security asking him to intervene and let them do their job. The president fears to sanction such torture (yeah right!!) and asks them not to. At this point, with this only lead and their conviction that this man can provide them with information to save lives they had to reluctantly let him go, but good old Jack resigns and takes him on as a citizen.

Now the question here is: Can we sanctify torture if we’re sure that we can get positive results from those being tortured? There is no question that our rights (constantly violated over here) are important and that no man should be subjected to torture, but the situation described puts us in a dilemma nevertheless. In cases like these there seems to be a reason for torture, extracting answers that will save lives. After all, it’s not fair that terrorist should use these means on people and that when caught they get a five star treatment. Where’s the justice in that?

The trouble is that sometimes we should not be too rigid about our standards. I mean it’s great that we accept the right not to be tortured for everybody, but if breaking that rule meant saving thousands of lives, I would suppose that it should be acceptable. In any case it’s very hypothetical really, since we can never know what people actually know and what they don’t. In general it’s better to let the guilty walk free than torture the innocent and that’s why laws of human rights are there in general, so that we do not risk hurting the innocent. It’s just a very hypothetical question and I suppose it remains a matter of opinion if it is really worth it…

What makes a lie?

What makes a lie? Is a lie the opposite of the truth or are both terms a gray shade in the black and white spectrum. Assuming that a lie is a piece of information contrary to fact or truth, in that case truth or fact must be identified. I don’t want to get into the whole definition of truth and what have you, I will assume that we know exactly what a lie is about. My real concern here is when does a lie become a lie.

The trouble is that the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that it can be very subjective. If someone were to speak a fact that wasn’t true, then we would assume it to be a lie, but what if that person believed it to be true, is it still a lie? It’s not a lie to him, so can the piece of information take two forms according to the viewpoint from which you are looking at it? On the other extreme suppose someone spoke a fact that he believed to be false and yet he was mistaken about it and it turned out to be true, is it a lie then?

How much of our intention has to do with words being lies or truths?

Let’s say someone wrote a note describing something he will do as a past. A suicide note saying, “I’ve killed myself, for I could not bear the pains of this world any longer.” It seems to me like it would be a lie at the time of writing, yet transformed into the truth if it is done. It remains a lie if it is preempted. So what makes a lie a lie?? There’s an intricate link between lies and time and intention.

If one were to say I was in the street just a while back, would it be a lie if he was there a minute ago, an hour ago, a week ago? When does it start becoming a lie. If never then lies themselves are not what I thought them to be.

If lies take such a form, does its archenemy, the truth, take a similar form too? If lies contain some truth to them, then mustn’t truth contain some lies in them as well? Let’s forget sincerity for a while because sincerity never changes fact. If truth and lies can contain so much of each other then they can be confused.

But I think that there’s a difference. A piece of truth inside a lie cannot prove that all of it is true, but a small lie inside the truth has a much more illuminating effect.

The trouble is that one man’s lie is another man’s truth. If lies are so subjective, then we can only evaluate them in relation to people.

The man who said a truth thinking it was a lie seems to remain, still, a liar and to the person who heard it, that same lie is a truth.

Lies are in the ears of the beholder, but can we say the same about truth?

Equality

Is there any hope for equality?

Out of the blue a friend of mine remarked: Heba is an ‘old rag’ (Literal translation of an Arabic word that means a promiscuous lady, bitch or prostitute). So I asked why… to which he said, any woman that puts herself in a compromising position such as marrying ‘3orfy’ (common law I think is translation) is an ‘old rag’. So I asked him, how about guys? Why are they not ‘old rags’ too? This of course provoked the mother of all clichéd argument over the equality of men and women in a society.

The conversation went around in its usual (concentric) circles brushing up on human rights and equality in the world along with how different people with different passports are treated differently.. etc.. etc.. we all know the drill.

But one point came up that made me pause later on after a quick recap of the conversation. It’s that rule that men can kill their wives if they saw them cheating and get 1 year in prison while women get life for a similar murder. My friend Solomon very graciously asked that we bypass this point because it’s obvious that here if a woman finds a guy cheating on her it can be his wife but not the other way around. The law itself gives the man that right.

This is where I pause amidst other points that were said because I wonder now if there’s any point to my believing in equality in such a society. Is there any hope for equality inside a society whose very own law is biased towards a man? Is there any point in trying to see equality in society if everything else around doesn’t advocate that equality? ‘Do onto others what you would have done onto you.’ That’s a powerful statement that I believe in and nowhere in others does it say just your same gender. I believe that what rights I have should be given to others, but how would that work with a law that says otherwise, with a mentality that says otherwise and with a logic that says otherwise. Yes ladies and gentlemen, there is a logic that says that in society, men and women should not be treated equally. Constitutional rights have long gone, but does it even make sense to ask for equality within the society?

One topic that came up was the appearance of women on a beach for example. The usual for guys is to have swim wear that covers a part of their body and for women to have swim wear to cover a greater portion of their body. Now where’s the equality there? ( I say let all women dress in the same way that men do) The point that Solomon brought up is that there’s a difference and that this difference causes a different standard to be applied on men and women. I said yes, but the same abstract rule applies, which is to cover the arousing sections of bodies (although I must say that most parts in a woman are arousing). To which he replied, but that just means the implementation is different and should be different in society.

The differences in general are there, but who knows enough about both genders to make this distinction I wonder… The point is that even with a skewed scale, people think that they’re actually implementing a sort of equality in their own way. Women are in a more compromised position and so they are more accountable, women are weaker and therefore equality is to be over protective of them… Now how can you deal with a problem like that if people claim that the problem doesn’t even exist?

So my question is: Is there any real and practical prospect of equality? Is there any hope that a society can provide equality at some point in time? Can this ever stop to be a losing battle?

I present the question to those of you out there with an answer. I don’t really know the answer to it but if I were to guess, I would say that there is no real hope. Try as we might to change people’s outlook on genders, there are things far greater than just outlook that are in play. There’s the law and the notion that difference in gender implies a difference in standards. There are people that are holding on to religious values in a dogmatic way that disables any logical argument to intervene. There are people too set in their ways to heed any voice of reason.

The real question isn’t education, most people are educated enough to know what equality’s about, the real question is what you believe and what you feel. As advanced as we are, we’re still guided by our emotions that our intellect cannot control, we know things to be untrue and yet our emotions are trained to believing them. It’s all about what people choose to believe and what side of the conflict they pick.

What's Worth It..

Dr. Phil was on the other day and it had a very interesting couple who were united after 62 years. Now how they were separated or united is not something I followed on the show, but the idea of them coming together when they’re both over eighty really got me thinking. I’m thinking what does it mean to spend time with someone after all these years, after all the sex drive has gone and all the things you were passionate about have cooled down. What does it mean to have companionship at this age towards the end of an entire lifetime?

The real issue at hand for me is what will I take with me if I ever manage to live to that age, what will I still be passionate about and fight over. I get into quibbles and debates about many things today, but how many of these will I look back at and say, what does it matter? How many of these things will seem futile and insignificant. There are so many things that can change about who I am, what’s important for me today? Important enough so that I carry it with me an entire lifetime.

I don’t know .. I just don’t know what’s worth it..

The Two Sides

The two sides of the same Egyptian coin is the head and the tail. Tail is a politically correct term since the true intention of a coin is having a head and a backside. Egyptians are very distinctly both really, they’re faces, but on most other occasions, they’re asses. It’s not a fifty/fifty chance though of ending up with one side rather than the other, it’s really a matter of which side you invoke.

I’ve talked with many people about the contrast between the downtown events that took place right after Ramadan and the African cup events that took place in February of the year 2006. They are opposites that are so extreme, yet certainly performed by the same people. Just last February the girls were out till midnight celebrating in face paint where other young guys who barely knew them celebrated with them and I’d go so far as to say that they even looked out for them too. The whole incident was phenomenal and the joy around was felt from the heart. The lust that following eid was also felt from the… heart. It was a very powerful lust. One that was enough to break the barriers of self control. Let me just say that those men acted on instinct. If any man is honest enough he’ll admit that when he sees a voluptuous girl on the street the thought of grabbing her crosses his mind, if not, then she’s not sexy enough. It’s just the way we feel, but we don’t act on it because as humans we’re defined by our control. There’s no doubt that both extremes exist within us but it’s a matter of how we stimulate it.

That’s not to say that the isolated incidents themselves did not contain that same contrast, for when we’re thinking of the Eid incidents we quickly overlook the few brave men who sheltered some women despite the mob. And when thinking of the African cup we overlook the sick ones who used it as an opportunity to harass some girls.

Egyptians have a way of acting like tails on normal occasions until their chivalry is challenged. A friend of mine was about to get mugged somewhere in Alexandria, and so instead of just cowering away, he went out and shouted ‘yerdeekoo ye7sal keda fi mante2etko’ ( is this a way to treat someone who came to your area is the translation I suppose assuming someone who doesn’t know Arabic would even bother to read this far). The translation doesn’t do justice cause it’s the attitude of appealing to tradition, generosity and chivalry of sha3by places. So basically some of those people switched to chivalry mode and stood up for those who were trying to mug my friend.

It’s all about which side of people you appeal to. It’s about what part you provoke. People are not ready to confront being low, they’re just ready to be it without anyone pointing it to them. People aren’t ready not to be gallant, they would fight off any such accusations in a second. This is always been a theory of mine, that you have to know which side to invoke in Egyptians. The usual circumstances usually lead to getting tails but if you appeal to them you might get their chivalry.

The theory is of course evident by downtown vs. African cup, but that got me to thinking, what is it that drove people to either of those extremes? The problem is that with the African cup, people felt united and people felt hope and that’s always a dangerous thing in a country like ours.. because not so long after this false sense of hope and pride, people realize how false it is. When confronted with their daily life they see clearly that they’ve been robbed of a right to hope or stand united. The African cup was just a glimpse of what could have been and the happenings of Eid are a glimpse of what really is. It’s hopelessness and despair and a sort of jungle. People’s chivalry is of no use to anyone and so it disappears.

People have been educated in such a manner where everything contradicts itself and so all you end up with are two extremes within them rather than one moderate behavior.

It’s a shame to see all the goodness of people thrown away, their potential crushed and their spirits drained. I’m a skeptic, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Egyptians have proven that when they need to, their motivation takes them a long way. The only problem is that it’s in very short pulses, like an awakening that happens once in a very long while.

There’s a search for a common goal, so that people’s energies are used and so that one person can derive power from the other. In the African cup it was a good cause, a victory for an Egyptian country, and that’s why women were protected, because the cause was being united to face our challengers. In Eid the goal was to chase and harass girls. It was a common goal and that’s why there was so much energy. People are deprived of a real goal, but they’re running towards nothing anyway.

Restaurant Culture

I don’t get it.. or maybe I do.. but I don’t think everyone else does, or maybe they do.. It’s just that I find it very troublesome and pain staking to go to a restaurant really. There’s something wrong with me or with people or with the restaurant business in general. I genuinely think it’s the restaurant business.

Firstly with everything in this country inauspiciously inverted, the whole meaning of the word waiter has been inverted. If the word waiter comes from ‘wait’ then I believe that it’s the customers who have become waiters judging from the amount of time they need to actually find an alleged ‘waiter’. Going to a restaurant has become like fishing, requiring lots of patience and waiting for food to come, on some lucky occasions you can fish out a waiter that actually does the job of getting you some food. There are even some techniques to ensure service which take a little experience, skill and practice.

One of the best techniques is to order things bit by bit, ensuring that a waiter will come with one order and at that time you order another, hence making sure he’ll visit every once in a while or at least be in the neighborhood, the problem with this technique is that at some point in time the waiter gives up and stops getting you that extra tissue you asked for or that salt, or that piece of brownie you requested last. Another problem is that you have to think of these things and that you have to put off some of the things you want till the waiter’s next visit. However, I’ve seen this technique applied masterfully by some of my friends, and I have concluded that females are better at this technique since they’re already very demanding by nature.

The good planner uses another technique, which is to position the place of seating strategically so that the field of vision and gesticulations allows for the attention of any waiter that’s passing by. You can of course forget about ‘your waiter for this evening’ sometimes you just have to use the first man in uniform that you see. This is a good strategy but it’s not so easy to apply since places can be crowded and this position doesn’t necessarily have the best view.

All in all, it’s exhausting for me to go to a restaurant cause it takes a lot of work and I still see that I’m the waiter in this equation. I’m sure at some point in time it was a waiter’s job to wait for people to make their orders or to finish their food or something, but now that culture has changed. And why shouldn’t it? The service doesn’t need to be good at all. All people care about is the setting. If a place invests enough money in some fancy interior design, it can save bundles on service and waiters and not only that, it is guaranteed to make loads of money by virtue of ornaments alone.

The better the design the more the money, never mind food, never mind service, as long as you got good lighting, hip interior you’ll do just fine. All any place has to do is just put an insane minimum charge and collect. Never mind service, people just keep on coming. So why should the service be any good? If you give good service or poor service the result is always the same. Even waiters know that, they count on people’s habit of tipping. People who tip, tip very constantly and consistently, people who don’t just don’t. People who tip are obsessed by the rules of tipping, is it ten percent and when to tip and all that.. Well we’re in Egypt, we have a culture of our own, so I really don’t think that tipping is as calculated as that. People get the worst service and in the end are embarrassed not to leave a tip. It’s these kind of people that cause all this bad service really. Tips are for good service, at least that’s how I perceive it. The consistency by which people repay bad service with money is amazing and I certainly can’t blame places or waiters for trying to test their limits, I would.

I sometimes feel like an outcast when I claim that tips are for good service. I feel like an outcast when I point out something wrong with the service or food to the restaurant. I do it with good intent. If it’s a good place it would want to know and make it better, I’m just doing a service to those who come after me, but that seems to be embarrassing for some, for reasons I don’t know.

So all the tippers out there, they’re responsible for the bad service I get. All those who are too embarrassed to speak up about their salad are responsible for my bad salad. All those who don’t care about value for money are responsible for the loss of my money for no value.

Maybe I just don’t get it.. why is it so much work going to a place that should be offering you service.. To top it all off, you have to search for them to pay them.. one of these days I wish I would just walk off so that they come sooner, but the real problem is that I really think they’d be too lazy to stop me ..