Needle in a Haystack
I never really understood what that meant until now.
I spent the weekend in Cairo again, this time attempting to sort out some Arabic lessons for next semester, sort out an apartment and see my friends off back to the U-S-of-A. Everything worked out, it seems.
My friends made it off alright, at least as far as I knew. I left a few hours before they were actually off to the airport because I had to catch the last train back to Alexandria. Their flights, complicated by the presence of their two enormous dogs, left at about five o’clock in the morning.
One of the myriad things that had to be accomplished before they left was to repair minor damage to a couch, perpetrated by their giant, ahem, boxer-mix Cha-Cha.
Cha-Cha is a sweetheart but is unaware of her size and power. She will readily bowl over anyone coming through the door in her efforts to greet you. It is no wonder that jumping up onto the couch meant tearing the couch to pieces with her massive feet.
So, Stacey and I set out to find what seemed like easy prey: needles and thread. This was not to be.
We first went to Carrefour, the sort of giant French WalMart, figuring that if anyplace would have a needle, it would be them. At the time this made sense: Carrefour has everything. Rows and rows and stacks and stacks of everything.
We engaged a rather lovely cabbie and set off. It was dark and driving on the Ring Road was a treat. You can see the whole city laid across the Nile at parts. It is a nice relaxing highway drive.
When we got to Carrefour, the cabbie agreed to wait for us, which was very kind of him. The cabbies that hang out around these places are vultures and will readily try to screw you out of cash, even though you know better. So, that sorted out, off we set into the gaping maw of globalization to search for a needle.
In the mean time, we had learned that the word for needle was ibra. Having never had any need for an ibra here, we wouldn’t have known that. This is learning, baby. Vocabulary acquisition in action.
The Carrefour was rammed with people. I couldn’t tell why, exactly, but judging from the mob around the Christmas decorations—oh yes—it appeared that the Copts had come out en masse to stock up for the impending holiday. We asked the first guy looked like he worked there if he knew where we could find an ibra. He directed us to walk all the way across the store, and then ask someone there.
I made a crack to Stacey about redefining the meaning of “finding a needle in a haystack.” She grinned.
A we walked, I thought that I had remembered seeing sewing needles near the shoe-polish in the Carrefour in Alexandria. I suggested that this might be where he was sending us. They were not there, but Stace needed shoe-polish. We asked someone near our new location if she knew where we might find an ibra. She said she didn’t know, but asked three guys nearby.
One guy said that they didn’t have any ibra. “Mafeesh,” he smiled. Another said he didn’t know. The third said that if they did have them, then they would be on the other side of the store.
Right.
So, off we went again. We asked every person we saw where the ibra might be, and receiving various answers of “Mafeesh” and somewhere other than where we were—which we swiftly learned to translate as “either we don’t have what you need or I don’t know where it is, but I will tell you something that I think will make you happy so that you won’t give me that disappointed look that breaks my heart because my only desire in this world is to make a foreigner smile at this moment.” After completely exhausting all possibilities, we decided to leave and look to see if there was an upholstery shop in the mall. I had remembered seeing on in the Carrefour mall in Alex, so it was worth a shot.
As we walked, we saw a pharmacy, and I mused, longingly about how if we were in the States, that would be the place that we would find everything we needed and more. As I said this, Stacey said that she was going to give it a try, what could she lose.
She marched up and asked the clerk if he had any ibra. I was drawn to the gel insoles after having walked back and forth across Carrefour several hundred times, and missed most of the conversation. I did catch: “Blah blah blah blah mustashfa. Blah blah mustashfa blah blah.”
We walked away, and I asked Stacey why the guy was talking about a mustashfa. We needed a seamstress not a doctor. Then it dawned on me:
We had walked into a pharmacy where they sell medical supplies and asked for needles. He thought that we wanted hypodermic needles.
Sigh.
We left the Carrefour and told our Cabbie, Mustafa, about our woes. He indicated that he understood, saying that Carrefour had everything. Everything but ibra. He said that he would take us to the Omar Effendi, a store, in Mohandiseen. They would have ibra there.
On our way back to Mohandiseen, the cabbie stopped suddenly, saying that he would be right back. This was an odd move, but “maybe he had to pee,” I suggested to Stacey. “Like that guy?” she said, pointing out the window of the cab at a guy taking a leak on a wall adjacent to the street.
We shortly figured out that he had gone to find us some ibra. It seemed that he knew a place where one might procure ibra. After he had been away for what seemed like an excessive amount of time, we perhaps thought that he had gone to his mother’s house or something to nick one off her.
Stacey mused at some point that this was very sweet of him, but that if he came back with needles and no thread, she would strangle him to death. I cautioned that this was very likely, as we had only indicated a need for ibra and not thread. We didn’t know the word for thread anyway.
He came back with the needles and no thread. Bless him.
Sigh.
We got back to Mohandiseen, indicating that we still wanted to go to Omar Effendi. Mustafa didn’t seem to know where it was, so at one point we just got out. Stacey asked the first woman with children if she knew where the Omar Effendi was. She gave us directions to a different store and went on her way. We gave up for the evening and had a drink.
Sunday
It was critical that we get needles on Sunday and fix the couch. Their flight left late, late that night and this had to be done before then so that the landlord didn’t freak out. Stacey and I went out in search of needles once again.
This time, we had some information on our side. The dry-cleaning guys downstairs told us that there was a store very near that had all the things needed to sew anything. This and we still had Omar Effendi.
We decided that since no one seemed to know where the Omar Effendi was, we would just get in a cab and have him tell us by taking us there. He told us, after driving away, that Omar Effendi was closed. Permanently. We thanked him and got out, setting off to find the one last store that we had been told about.
Deep breath.
We followed the directions perfectly, but there was no store. We walked up and down the street asking people where we would find an ibra. One man told us two places, both of which turned out, inexplicably, to be lingerie shops. Finally we started hearing the name of a store, Nimroosi. We asked everyone where Nimroosi was and they pointed in various directions.
We went into one shop that had stationary, pens and art supplies just to see if they had ibra. The man at the door pointed us to a counter in the back. We rejoiced until we got to the counter. The girl sitting there begrudgingly looked up from her text-message and asked us what we wanted. We, wild-eyed and gesticulating, explained that we needed ibra. “No,” she said, shaking her finger and clucking her teeth.
Deep breath. Deep breath.
She lead us to the door and pointed at a location down the street and said, “Nimroosi.” We squinted off into the distance and then looked at her. “Nimroosi,” she nodded, smiling.
We had narrowed it down. We had bounced back and forth down the street like errant ping-pong balls. The reward for our perseverance had now come. We walked back the way we had come from and saw nothing. Upon asking someone standing on the street, we were directed across a side street.
I looked and noticed a shop that was closed because there were workers re-tiling the entrance. I paused, looking up. “Nimroosi,” the sign beamed down at me.
The store was closed.
I thought that I was going to have a heart-attack. I thought Stacey was going to lift off. She gently explained to a gaggle of workers that she absolutely had to have a needle and thread. They said it was not possible. I walked away toward the glass and looked in desperately at the stacks of needles and spools of thread lining the display cases.
A fat-cat, gangster looking dude took pity on Stacey and shouted something down the hallway and a bunch of needles were brought out. Frigging hallelujah. I suggested thread colors.
We handed him ten ginay and were on our way. I relished in the opportunity to stitch up the seams of a sofa like I never though I could. It was sheers bliss.
