The Wall of Shame

its friday morning(ish), depending on your definition of morning, and its my only day without 8am classes. woot. i only have class in the afternoon. life is good. although im sort of disapointed in myself - i set my alarm for 2:30pm but i woke up on my own around 11:30. wtf dude. that was barely 9 hrs of sleep.

so the first day i walked back to my apt from class i was walking with my roommate mara. just after we had left the university campus we passed this sketchy looking egyptian dude who did the whole mutter-things-under-his-breath act as i walked by. i couldnt hear most of it but it was something about how edible i was. mmmm american girls yummmy. parilee would understand. anyway, i ignored him bc i havent quite gotten up the courage to do anything ese yet, but he took this as an invitation to walk up next to us and say "welcome to egypt". now this is one of those stock phrases that every egyptian in egypt knows how to say. its either this or "you are very beautiful" that i get from virtually all but the absolute most creepy guys out there, who usually have something muuch more interesting to share with you. you have to understand though that despite the fact that this phrase does not look sketch on paper, the tone of voice and the WAY guys say it basically implies that theyre welcoming us into egypt because they expect us to be having sex with them very shortly. at this particular point in time i was tired and irritated so i actually spoke to him, and told him to 'go away'. to my surprise he actually spoke english, and again took me telling him to go away as an invitation to strike up a conversation. obviously my subtlety hadnt survived the culture gap.

creepy egyptian guy: hello? hello! where are you from? (thick thick accent)
me: pennsylvania (i tend to be automatically honest. again, blame it on my mother.)
ceg: where?
me: amreeka
ceg: ooh that very nice very nice! i have many friends from america!

we keep walking, avoiding making eye-contact with the guy. this does not disuade him. probably, he gets this from all americans he approaches and has decided its part of our culture. we eventually establish that mara and i are students at auc and we live in garden city - you might think this was a foolish amount of information to give him, but considering where he found us and what we were walking towards, it was pretty self-evident. but then he asks us what our names are and thats crossing the line a bit (although i dont know why this is so much more personal than knowing where we LIVE. i need to get my priorities straight) before i can come up with a suitable answer though, mara jumps in.

mara: my name is charlotte.
ceg: sharlote?
mara: yeah. and this is brigitta (gesturing towards me)

this was beautifully done, btw. i mean, mara even rolled the 'r'. perfect

ceg: breegeeta? this is spanish name?
mara: no i think her parents just liked it. but everyone calls her birdie.
me: (whisper to mara) birdie??
ceg: yes this is much better name. (looks at me) you look like birdie (nods approvingly)

i look like a birdie? i dont know how i feel about that.

ceg: my name is muhammad. (surprise surprise, right?) muhammad abdul somethingorother. but you can call me jordan.

well thank you muhammad, i appreciate you taking a totally random western name to make it easier for us simple americans. from now on im going to introduce myself as "rachel. but you can call me fatimah"

muhammad, or rather, jordan, then proceded to walk with us. and walk with us. and walk with us. until finally we had reached the street that we live on at which point mara and i turned around and very obviously said, 'well thank you very much for walking with us jordan. nice to meet you.' and started to walk away. this was not what jordan wanted.

jordan: wait you have cellphones?
me: no we havent bought them yet. (blatent lie but honestly what do you want from us)
jordan: you have house phone?
me: yes but we dont know that number yet. sorry.

i think jordan might at this point have picked up on our less-than-eager attitude towards giving him, well, anything. as a result he decided to reassure us.

jordan: i am very respectable man. i have card. (every bloody person in egypt has a card. they love giving out cards) here. have card!

he gives us both a card. we thank him politely.

jordan: will you call me tomorrow?
mara: ...dont get your hopes up.
jordan: will you meet me tomorrow at auc for coffee? 5 o'clock?
mara: probably not. you can always give it a shot though. bye!

mara and i walk off down the street. (you might have noticed i did not contribute much to this conversation. i was almost crying i was laughing so hard. i think the egyptian guy might have thought i was retarded or something)

mara: is he following us?
me: (do a really awkward glance over my shoulder.) yes. yes he is.
mara: awesome
jordan: (having been seen, he gives up his less-than-subtle stalking and runs up to us) i just, i just dont want to miss this chance!
me: ummm
jordan: you do not have cellphones?
me: no
jordan: please to meet tomorrow for coffee!
mara: sure. right. bye

awkward?

so we taped his card to our wall and started our "wall of shame". good times in cairo.