getting deep

so im leaving cairo in a little over a month and ive started looking at things in a 'soon all of this will be but a distant memory' sort of light. suddenly everything is rosy! well, sort of... i mean, we ARE still talking cairo here. im reminded of my very last time ice skating before my family moved to saudi way the hell back when - i remember putting on my ice skates and very deliberately and with great ceremony stepping out onto the ice with the full knowledge that it would be the last time in a long time. (riyadh has one ice skating rink and its men-only. obviously the site of a woman in ice skates would be too much for your average saudi guy to handle.) i reeeeeally liked ice skating, so my last skate was very dramatic. saying goodbye to the ice and all that. the best metaphore i could come up with at the time - as a 5th grader - was the typical comparison to flying, but i have to say that 10 years later i havent found a metaphore thats much better. of course we're talking flying not in the tiny-bird-frantically-pumping-to-stay-aloft sort of flying but in the im-an-ignorant-land-animal-who-knows-nothing-about-flying sort of flying. ice skating... dude ice skating was FUN. but anyway i feel like everything i do in cairo now is really deliberate. im actually paying attention (unusual for me) so as to be able to describe it to ppl back home. although most of cairo is pretty much indescribable. aaand thats not necessarily a compliment. but dammit im going to MISS cairo. yeah i very much have a love-hate relationship with this crowded, polluted city full of obnoxious men and with the general efficiency of a toaster oven feeding the entire NFL, but it sure as hell has aspects to it i have never found - nor anticipate finding - anywhere else in the world. and trust me, ive looked. so it looks like ill be back here eventually - inshallah for CASA. lets all cross our fingers, shall we?

ok it is now 11:39pm and i am giving up my previous plan of going to the gym and heading home to dance around in my room a bit (thats for you libby) and then crawl into bed and finish my musharraf book. the excitement of my life overwhelms me at times... but hey whatever floats your boat. and my boat is currently floating on the barenaked ladies, a soft pillow and pakistan's war on terror. bite me.