An Egyptian countdown

The last three days or so have been an ongoing countdown in my head. The last day of class in Egypt. Our exams, and the last day in the language school. My last shower in the hotel. My last nap in that tiny bed.

Nine of us wait in the hotel lobby for our last half-hour of interneting. We load up the bus around 11 p.m. local time to go to Cairo. From there, we fly to Frankfurt, then to D.C. And then we disperse in a spider's web of flights that covers the country, delivering us to Boston, New York, Atlanta, Austin, Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle and San Francisco. And half a dozen of the group have already dispersed for reasons of their own.

I'm going to most miss seeing Arabic every day. It has forced me to struggle through the different shapes these letters can take, to overcome my classroom clumsiness and scan the storefronts as they whiz by outside the bus/taxi/tram.



I'm going to second-most miss hearing Arabic every day. Silly little phrases, "b't'kelimni 3arabee kwayyis!" ("you speak Arabic well," meaning "I want to flirt/sell you something/inquire into your origins and then flirt or sell you something"); the classic "al-hamdu lileh," which thanks god and can be invoked to mean "thank goodness," "it's ten o'clock," and "my, you're pretty."

I'm going to miss my favorite Egyptian dish, kosharee. It looks a little bit like what's left in the drain catch of your sink after you've finished washing the dinner dishes, but it's utterly, thoroughly delicious and satisfying and CHEAP.

I'm most NOT going to miss the ever-present taxis, and their incessant honking. To quote a classmate: "They come up right behind you and honk to scare you out of your mental world, just to inform you 'I'M A TAXI.'" -Basha.

I'm second most not-going to miss the under-the-breath statements I hear on the streets, and the unwanted attention. From the minibus driver who makes kissing noises as me flies by me on the Corniche, to the man walking with his 2-year-old-daughter who mutters "very nice" as he passes me, and more recently, to the woman about my age who carries a small child and comes up to me, bubbling in broken English while she paws at my purse. I was sad to experience that, although I can only imagine what situation must drive her to stalk foreigners.

Absolutely, I will miss most of all the fabulous people I spent this trip with. The 25 of us were in this together through comfort and through heat stroke, through hunger and through lavish buffets, through test preparation and hotel celebrations. We have all shown to each other our best and worst sides, and I'm pretty impressed with how everyone's fared. I will miss these precious people dearly as we scatter around the world. You remind me daily of why I'm studying this language.

Though there are other days when I remember why I'm taking Arabic. This photo was reprinted in the local newspaper Al-Misri al-youm:



In case you need a reminder of the actual geographic placement of Egypt, here's a map.

Ya3ni, Iraq, Egypt, same thing to Fox News.