Back in the office after a trip out and about this morning, Mohamed’s friend called early asking could we take his wife and baby son to the hospital so that was the first task, then a look at the BMWs on the way past to Honda to check out a noise which has turned out to be a broken engine mount (to be fixed next Monday at a cost of 900 pounds), collected Mohamed’s new passport and back to the office.
Had news yesterday that Mohamed’s sister in Kuwait’s new baby is in intensive care; apparently he has a congenital problem that means his food doesn’t go into his stomach but rather his lungs. Apparently he still needs a week in ICU and then they will operate to fix this. We are all very worried. His other sister also arrives from Kuwait on Sunday (I think) to be here for around 6 weeks I believe – she will be here for Hagar’s wedding on the 26th and then a little while after that. She and her husband and two children are coming, Mohamed is very excited as he hasn’t seen them for almost 3 years.
Meanwhile for us the lawyer says the final license will come from the govt between Thursday and Sunday - oh I hope so!!!! We are currently speaking to an Australian company to work with and also a man here in Egypt who brings tourists from the US. Hopefully both these deals will come off and give us some immediate business.
Because we are having visitors tomorrow we have 2 cleaning ladies coming – Umm Rami and her younger niece who looks around 13 and has already had a live-in cleaning lady position – so that all the windows etc. can be taken out and washed and all the lights cleaned and all that stuff you don’t do all that often. Started cleaning the curtains last night. Mohamed gets really fussy when anyone is coming – you should see the flurry of activity if one of his friends calls to say they are coming, even when the place is clean (and really it’s clean all the time!). I have to confess it makes me cross, just one of the things we don’t agree about. Why can’t his friends take us as they find us instead of me cleaning toilets and bathrooms that are already clean and washing down kitchen benches and sweeping floors and putting absolutely everything AWAY? By the time they arrive I want a shower and feel sweaty and horrible and cross and I’m rushing to change my clothes as well so that I don’t ever enjoy a visit. I appear all red-faced and dripping saying “no problem, no problem” – they must all think I have some sort of congenital disease that means I look like this all the time! And I struggle to let my crossness go and relax and enjoy the company. I wonder if they leave muttering to each other – “can’t see why he married her!”
I worry a bit about Umm Rami these days, she is almost 6 months pregnant and looks about 8.9 months and I get concerned for her so find myself saying “leave that I’ll do it” quite often. Crazy! Not sure how much longer she will work. She also cleans the office for us. She told Mohamed the other day her husband is thinking of taking a second wife (remember Egyptian Muslim men can have 4 wives). I felt horrified but when Mohamed asked her she said she didn’t mind, maybe the new wife would help her. This is one of the truly unfathomable cultural things to me – I know I couldn’t do it. But maybe with baby no. 4 on the way and a life of work, work, work, she really does see it as an opportunity to get some help (her daughter isn’t old enough yet to do a great deal although I’m sure she does quite a bit in looking after the smaller children etc.) and maybe all the stuff that would matter to us doesn’t matter to her at all. But I wonder if that’s what she truly feels deep down…. But really what choice does she have?
Egyptian women, at least the poorer ones, really do work hard. Again, I struggle not to get agitated when I see the doorman’s wife washing all the cars in the morning or mowing the lawn in the bottom villa as well as looking after the children while the doorman sits under the tree drinking tea. And I know she goes out to clean houses too. And my hackles go up just a tiny bit when the man from the shack over the road arrives home on his motorcycle beeping the horn and one of the women rushes out to untie the load and take everything inside while he parks and sits himself down in the shade. And I know that those women have been up since daylight cooking for the small shop they run and working in the villa over the road.
That’s one thing that I have found out about myself living in Egypt. I am very accepting of other cultures when I visit, I find it much more difficult when I live here, especially in relation to women and children and their rights and treatment. I hate that I see boys who look about 11 or 12 working in the exceptional midday heat, clearing rubbish from the roads or working on a building site. I hate it that the doorman’s little girl doesn’t go to school and that Umm Rami can’t read or write a must ask her young son, who has more knowledge and power and rights than she does. And although I know that women chose to wear the hijab and abeya etc. for themselves and for God, I still find it difficult to watch the women, especially the older women, in the incredible heat fully covered, often with 2 or 3 layers, red-faced and looking like they might expire at any moment.
I know that all this says more about me than about Egypt, but I must confess I love that I can visit home and just be myself and have what is familiar around me. I feel, from my daily levels of irritation, it’s almost time to visit again…
Lotsa love
Lyndall
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