Hey sweet annie, dont take it so bad

you know that summers coming soon
though {CAIRO} is choking under salt and dirty sand
and it seems the sun is hiding from the moon
your daddy told you when you were a girl the kind of things that come to those who wait
so give it a rest girl, take a deep breath girl...

not too deep though. less than a month to go! ok ive passed the nostalgic phase and i have entered the GET ME OUT OF HERE phase. not that im not planning on attending that rooftop shisha partay tonight. sweeeeeeeeeeet.

so i live on this island in the nile called zamalek. its one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in cairo so, i mean, it tries at least. at life. and other things. it sort of failed last week though when someone managed to cut off electricity to the ENTIRE ISLAND. and guess where i was at the time. i was in an elevator. between floors. with 2 egyptian guys. there i am just minding my own business - ive got my headphones in, listening to the kinks or something and doing my best to ignore the two other ppl im crammed into this 2 foot wide elevator with when suddenly: total darkness. and the elevator stops moving. and that lovely cairo summer heat hits us. now elevators in egypt dont have doors so we knew by the concrete wall where the door to a floor should have been that we were between floors. and i understood from a conversation one of the egyptian dudes had via cell phone that the electricity was out on the entire island, and that it could last for 2 and a half - 3 hrs. i am briefly hysterical at the thought of spending that much quality time with the other elevator occupants. one of the egyptian guys informed us authoritatively that we would run out of air shortly (which was total bull - i doubt even the places in egypt that are SUPPOSED to be airtight actually are) but it was enough to get the other dude panicking. after listening to him hyperventilating for about 3 minutes, i put my headphones back in and tried not to make comparisons to coffins, or think about whether egyptian elevators required electricity to stay up. it took us about an hour to get in contact with the building management - they dont have emergency elevator phones in egypt. and the bowabs hadnt bothered to check the elevators when the electricity went out, instead deciding to congregate on the bottom floor and have lunch. but we did eventually manage to get out when i got a friend to inform them of our predicament and they manually lowered the elevator enough for us to squeeze out onto the 17th floor. definately a bad day to wear a skirt. in my quest to find someone to let building management know that there were ppl suffocating in an elevator 18 floors up i called about 10 of my friends.

me: hey hey how are you doing
friend/potential rescuer: good good whatsup
me: well... im ok. you arent, by any chance, near my building are you?
friend: ummm no im at school/work/the zoo/another country
me: riiiiiiiiight...so you arent going to be near the building anytime soon, are you?
friend: no... why? ...is that someone crying in the background?
me: yeah well im sort of trapped. in an elevator. with 2 strange egyptian men. its dark and about 100 degrees... and no one knows we're here. you know, bc zamalek has lost electricity. i dont suppose there's a coup going on or anything, is there?
friend: i dont know... i could check i guess.

unfortunately no coup... no explanation either. ah well such is cairo. i suppose im lucky they could figure out how to move the elevator sans electricity instead of just saying "ma'alesh" and leaving us in there. this was followed, of course, with me having to walk down 17 flights of stairs. bitches.