You Can't Make Mistakes

Don’t worry, I promise I’ll call too

Last night I heard a load of people almost griping about how they had to get up early and go see their mothers today. You have to? Really?

I would like to go see my mom today (Hi, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day, by the way), but it ain’t in the cards. I will see Mom soon, and I just saw her last week—we took our mandatory Mother’s-Day-picture. It used to be that Arnold (brother) and I would all take a picture with our mom and grandmother, but it is getting increasingly difficult to get us all in one place, so we take small group pictures instead now. This year it was just me and mom and Jeff, and then a hilarious second-take with my mom wearing the scarf I bought her in Cairo as a hijaab—which was its original intended purpose, I suppose. It was cute anyway.

Back to my point, if you feel that you have to begrudgingly go and see Mom on Mother’s Day: don’t. Go see her on a different day when you feel happy about seeing her. Send a card or call on Mother’s Day, but don’t make a big deal out of it, just enjoy your time when you can.

See, it’s about quality time, after all. I have very few life-long regrets, but one is that I grieved over my grandmother’s death before she died, and in the process, I forgot that she was still alive. In the two years that she had cancer I saw her very little, and when I did, our interactions were perfunctory—as though they had been rehearsed. It wasn’t until the week before she died—the very last time that I saw her—that I felt like she and I were the same people we used to be I wrote the experience here.

Again, to redirect, I wish not to be a downer, only to remind everyone—myself included, to go see the people you love when you want to, not when you have to. Remember that even if you don’t get along with your family—genetic or chosen—that they are doing the best they can with the resources that they have at their disposal. And, don’t forget to thank them for the things that they did which made you who you are, whether they meant to or not.

So, on that note, I wish to thank my mom for the following things:

1. Reading to me every night when I was a kid, so that now I would enjoy reading and writing more than almost any other activity
2. Teaching me, by example, about patience
3. Becoming a vegetarian when I did and remaining one even to this day, even though I no longer am
4. Teaching me the importance of spelling and proofreading, and for the book about the joy of diagramming a sentence—it is among my favorites.
5. Never, ever asking when I was going to quit going to school and get a job, and for telling me that she thinks of me as a scholar anyway
6. Innumerable other little things that I never once took for granted, even though it may have appeared that way

I love you, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

Nightmare night

Since you last heard from me, I have been lost in the bellies of various airplanes and then was delivered into the hungry maw of homeland security.extra It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Our flight out of Heathrow was delayed, which I somehow knew instinctively. Something always has to go wrong at Heathrow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Heathrow. What I wasn’t banking on, though, was “scheduled maintenance” which would delay us for 3 and a half hours.

Now, I would think that if you were going to schedule maintenance on a plane, you would schedule it for a time when said plane wasn’t about to taxi. This is not how it is done, however. Once we all boarded the flight, it was really quite pleasant. There was really no one on the plane: it was mostly empty, which meant that each passenger got at least two seats and loads of leg-room. Sweet. The crew was funny too. They didn’t give a shit since there were so few of us, so it was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep finally.

When we arrived at Dulles, however, it was a different story entirely.

We were first ushered onto the weird Dulles airport shuttle thing. It’s like a really uncomfortable waiting room, with tightly packed seats, except that the whole thing moves and changes levels depending on where it is and where it needs to go. It is a creepy prelude to the nightmare that Homeland Security/Customs and Border Patrol will then inflict.

You can imagine that I was really looking forward to the body cavity searches that I would be receiving, having just lived in North Africa for 8 months. I have to say, they took it easy on me. I think that the guy who questioned me was a rookie though, he didn’t really know what to ask and just seemed kind of nervous.

I did get extra-special service though—not the ultra-special, wait in a room for hours and hours and then be body-cavity searched version though. They just wrote in huge letters all over my form and then sent me off to a special line with all of the Latinos, Arabs, and anyone else who was brown. I was the only white guy. It was nice. Made me feel at home again, like in Cairo.

So I get to the front of the line finally and the guy that got stuck with me was alright. He was a little green, but friendly—and thorough. He aksed me question after question about my program, my teachers, how I met my tutors. My favorite was when he caught a glance of the load of Quranic studies books and asked me if any of my studies were of a religious. He was, of course, hoping that I would slip up and admit to having been drafted into the ranks of some extremist group.

I haven’t, by the way.

I said “Yes, I’m a religionist by training, so I study the religious texts as well.”

Then finally, after having decided that I was not going to be a threat to our great nation. I was allowed through, back onto American soil.

Thankfully it was really late, so my plans were shot, and I decided to just wait for my flight to come up in wee hours—now swiftly approaching.

I tried to find someone to take my bags off me again, but no one was at any of the desks for Northwest Airlines, so I had to schlep around the airport with 60 kg of luggage, desperate for a coffee.

I thought that was bad, until the time came when I could check in for the connecting flight to Detroit and woman decided to charge me for my bags. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently,even though I had just come 10,000 miles with these heavy bags, now I had to pay $50 to get them another 500 miles home. She said she couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t been charged in the first place as she had never heard of an airline with a 30 kg weight limit before (both Virgin and British Airways have a 30 kg weight limit, FYI). Bastards. It’s just an example of a sinking American carrier scheme to get a few more nickels and dimes.

It’s amazing how I didn’t have any troubles with airline employees until I landed in the United States. Surprise, surprise.

But I’m better now, I just found Vitamin Water in the airport while waiting for the flight. It went well with the rest of my Xanax. I’ll have a nice relaxing nap on the plane.

1 down, 2 to go

I am sitting here at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to the States. There is no free internet in airports anymore, and since I figured that it would be nice to have access while I was in the airports today, I purchased some time on some hotspot service that will work Stateside as well.

And so, we have our first ever blog post from the airport. Nice.

Cairo was great this morning. It was nice to drive through the city just after dawn. There was no traffic and the city is really pretty at that time in the morning. I was also in a pretty decent mood because, for the first time in my life, I packed several days in advance—rather than several hours. That was a great idea. Usually I wait until about five minutes before I am supposed to leave to panic and jam stuff into cases. I have loads of books, though, that I am returning to the States with and I wanted to ensure in advance that they would all fit. They did, perfectly. I had two bags that were exactly the max weight limit. Sweet.

The flight this morning was alright. I got some sleep: a blessing since I didn’t sleep at all last night because I had to leave so early.

I had the misfortune of being seated in front of the two loudest and most boring wankers on the plane, though. They were a young Brit and a middle-aged American attempting to trump each other’s traveling stories. Boring. They were both the types who have sort-of been everywhere, but they have never drank local water anywhere. These are people who refuse to use squat toilets—unless there isn’t another one for a 100 miles; never eat vegetables or fruit—because they may have been washed in local water; make even their tea and coffee with bottled water—idiots; and generally follow all of the information they find in guide-books as gospel. I call them: misguided tourists, on account of the fact that they are perfect fodder for (mis)guided tour companies.

Oh yah, and the American was a proper racist, which is always nice. There was an Egyptian woman sitting next to who displayed the same wincing patterns as I did when this dude excreted such gems as: “Well, Arabs are generally easily excitable, sort of infantile, really” and “The best experience I had in London was riding the regular train early in the morning and seeing all of the street kids. It gave me a real sense of London and the culture.” I’m sure it did, buddy.

Thankfully after about an hour of saying these loud things for an hour or two, they both shut their mouths and slept, until the end, when it was right back into the swing. Unpleasant bastards. Thankfully they exist all over the world. I just don’t like being captive at 10,000m with them.

I was a little sad leaving Cairo this morning. It’s dirty, polluted, crazed, busy, sometimes scary—but fun. Everyone talks to everyone as well. I don’t get that at home so much. It was weird leaving the flat as well. It is like I am just going to be back there next week, a temporary thing. Which, really, is the case, since we are going back in the fall. It is starting to feel homey.

I woke up the other night from a nightmare that this has all be a weird dream. I was panicked to realize—in the dream—that I had fallen asleep while taxiing down the runway in Washington, DC and it was still last September. I am not sure it the panic came more from realizing that I had to do all of this over again and not wanting to, or that it would have meant that I wouldn’t be able to parse what was real and what was not about my experiences.

Thankfully, I then realized that I was dreaming, and woke myself up. Still, though, scary.

So, now here I am. Not a dream-me, not a hologram—at least I don’t think so: the jury is out on this theory still—real-John, John of the real-world, sitting in an airport, blogging.

And now real-John is a bit hungry, and would perhaps like a beer with his lunch. Ciao for now. See you tonight, America.

[Update: I just finished a vegetarian English breakfast—complete with FAKEN—and a Guinness. I have consumed neither meat-replacement technologies or Guinness for nearly 9 months. They tasted like ambrosia.]

Not easily

My mood tends to reflect that of the people around me. If those around me are having a good time, then I will likely be having a good time. If those around me are upset, then I will be more likely to be upset. I realize the failure in this mode of being, but some things are built into us, and this is one of mine.

I recently underwent a type of hypnotherapy to make it easier to deal with above-mentioned situations. It was easy. Apparently, what it did was remove the buildup of negative emotions related to specific events which trigger the emotions of fear, anger, sadness, hurt and guilt, in that order. These buildups of emotion are called “gestalt” and have a significant effect on the way that we react to new situations which trigger these five emotions.

I have noted the effects of this therapy in two distinct and significant ways.

First, I didn’t know before that I was afraid of the dark. But, I was.

Now, for all of you naysayers, it is not like regression therapy where you dredge your past mental states to drag stuff up that may have happened in reality or may have happened in your mind, but had the same cognitive weight. No.

What I noticed, after having time-line therapy, was that I would walk down the hallway, or down the stairs, in relatively total darkness without turning on a light. In the past, I would have always turned on a light at some point, which doesn’t make any sense. In the situations that I am referring to, I have lived in a place for some long amount of time; I know the landscape; I will not trip over the ottoman; and yet I still would always turn on the light when I walked through a darkened room, if possible.

Now, in the same situation, I will just walk through and get and do what I need to do and then continue on: light or no light. If I know the terrain, it doesn’t make a difference.

It felt odd when I realized what I was doing, and what it meant.

The second way that this has affected the way that I move through the world is that I no longer immediately engage during a situation motivated by fear, anger, hurt, sadness or guilt.

It used to be the case that if someone pissed me off, they were in for a rough ride. I would escalate and escalate, always trying to outdo the the emotional level of my opponent. Now, I don’t. If someone starts down a road with me where I would have formerly escalated, I will generally remove myself from the situation. This is the case, unless, I feel that it is something worth fighting for. The problem that I have found, of late, is that there are about 6 things that I can figure are worth fighting for, and most of them are a far shot uglier than anything that the chumps that I hang out with can muster. So, as a result, I generally will just walk away from situations motivated by fear, anger, sadness, hurt or guilt, and wait until everyone has calmed down—or sobered up, as the case may be—to deal with whatever the problem was. Most of the time, there is actually no problem.

Regardless, I was just thinking that there are two types of people—HA!—in the world: the people whom I care about a great deal, and those whom are not really of any great consequence.

Now, of course this is a false dichotomy. But, come on, we can all relate to it.

The reason that I realized that there are people that I care about so significantly and people who don’t hold any bearing on my emotional state is that I recently have been able to catalog a difference in the ways that I react in given situations. It turns out that with the people who I care the most about, or believe—mistakenly or not—care about me, I become upset when I am confronted with unreasonable or illogical emotionally-based responses.

Now, I realize that I sound like a robot right now, but I am serious. The folks that I love the most have the most emotional sway in my emotional inner-life. Those who don’t, well, don’t factor. In those cases, I step aside, out of the picture, or disregard the things that would have pissed me off had they come from someone who mattered more significantly to me.

Regardless, it works out in the end. I am not attributing any of this to some sort of weird therapy, but I think that it might have helped me get there. I can’t deny that.

Now: the point.

I left a situation this evening in which someone feared that they may have offended someone else. Did they? Likely. Did I react defensively and try to right the injustice of my offense? No. Why? Honestly, because it was easier to leave, not worry about it so much, and go and write a blog post about it. It is better to remind myself that we are all just doing the best we can with the resources that we have at our disposal than get worked up about why someone or other hasn’t sorted themselves out.

Is this healthy? Well, I didn’t get into an argument or a fight with anyone over something that before would have incited that particular response or another equally emotionally escalated situation.

I would have to say: Yes. It’s fine by me. I’m happy with no black eyes or hurt feelings. Not to mention: a smile on my face.

Think about these things the next time someone pisses you off. Is it worth it? Why are you pissed off? Is the person whom you are angry at doing anything other than their best, considering their current situation and resources?

If the answers are anything other than: “No,” “I don’t know,” and “No,” then you may have a case. Otherwise, think about it again.

Well, look at the sign, for starters.

I am often asked for directions. I am told that this is because “[I] look like [I] know where I am going”—I did an impromptu survey last week when asked where something was.

Now, as most of you know, I am a foreigner in Egypt. I should not know where I am. The streets are named things like “Mohie el-Din Abou el-Ezz” and Gameat al-Dowal al-Arabia,” and so forth, and they go off every which way, with no rhyme or reason. But, I am armed with a very useful tool: a map. Not just one map, a bunch of maps. I have loads of them. I buy every map I see in hopes that they will afford me a more complete picture of how the city is laid out.

This has caused me several problems.

First, before acquiring the maps, I navigated the city like everyone else: blind. Now, I actually feel obliged to answer when someone else asks me “How do I get to such-and-such place/street?” or the more common shouted demand from cabbies: “Fayn haaga? [Where is something?]” This holds doubly true, because not only do I know where stuff is usually, but I also know how to say where it is as well.

I don’t get to play ignorant that much anymore.

Second, when I am in a cab or driving with someone else, and they take us the terrifically long way, I am inclined to make a suggestion that we could/should/should have/could have gone a different way as well, and possibly saved ourselves some time—in some cases an hour. This is met with either: confusion, denial, indignation, ridicule, or—the worst—offense. It isn’t that I always know where I am or where I am going, either. But, I do almost always know what I am near, and how to get there. I’m just trying to help. Most of the time now, I just keep my mouth shut and see how things unfold.

It’s a neat skill to have in a city like this, but nearly useless unless you want to always want to be telling people where to go or pissing people off.

Other than the endless hours memorizing maps, I also often know where I am because there is a sign. Now, this is not the case everywhere, of course. There are parts of the city that have no signs. There are parts of Boolaq, very near to where I live, where the streets only have impromptu names because they are either too new, or no one has cared to name them yet.

But, in the vast majority of places where I am asked for directions, there tends to be a sign standing somewhere nearby indicating the information requested. The Metro is fantastic for exhibiting this phenomenon.

Inevitably, when you are descending the escalators in the Metro stations, someone will ask which way one or the other of the trains are. There are huge signs with this information in two languages all over the place. No one reads them, they just ask instead. Once on the train it is the same deal. There are line-route maps indicating the name and position of every stop in on that particular line above every door. Instead of looking to these for information, it is more customary to turn to the guy next to you and ask, then he will likely look at the sign, and relate his findings.

I know that much of this phenomenon has to do with relatively rampant illiteracy or partial literacy, but I can’t imagine that this is the only explanation. There must be more involved as well. It seems almost as though no one is sure of themselves to a high enough to degree to be happy with their choices as well. Maybe it is just a social thing—being sociable via feigned ignorance. Lord knows that American kids do that all the time, fearing perception as a nerd, geek, or know-it-all on account of knowing or understanding something. It’s probably all of the above. I don’t really care what behind it. It just cracks me up when someone looks at me and at the sign past me and asks, “Where am I?”

I had some great cabbies this week. Usually they can go one of two ways: 1) mean, and/or trying to get some more cash out of your because you are foreign, 2) really frigging funny. The latter were exemplified this week.

We had one guy completely cracking up. We were coming back pretty late from a pool match in Maadi, so the Metro was closed. We just grabbed a cab, asked Mohandessin, and off we went. Started chatting up the driver, who seemed pretty jocular and good-spirited anyway, and in no time we were cracking jokes with him talking about his kids. It was a blast. We over-paid in the end, but only because we had so much fun.

Today I grabbed a cab because I was running late—nearly a non-issue—and didn’t want to hassle with the Metro. It was a Yellow Cab, which are a bit more expensive, but sometimes cheaper.

I should probably explain that. See, when you get in a regular cab here—a black-and-white—the price is entirely variable. Depending on the traffic, the mood of the cabbie, your status as a noob or an expat in Egypt, whether it is Ramadan or not, etc. the price for the same cab-ride could be 3 LE or 10 LE, 10 LE or 20 LE. Like I said: variable. Completely.

The Yellow Cabs, though, have meters that work and are utilized. I am not sure how this is enforced, but it is. So, if I am going to Medinat Nasr or the airport—both lengthy rides—it is actually less expensive to take a metered cab and tip. This is doubly true to and from the airport.

Generally B&W cabbies want 50 to 75 LE to take you to and from the airport. A Yellow cab will cost approximately 33 LE, and you can leave a tip, and get all the way home if its a round trip for about the same price at the alternative. Much better.

For short journeys, the B&W’s are just fine. You also can’t usually find the Yellow Cabs, since they are a call service as well, but they hang out in packs on certain corners, and I know some of those corners.

Back to the story: I grabbed a Yellow Cab on the corner near my apartment. It was hot today too and I kind of wanted to sit in an air-conditioned car rather than the non-air-conditioned Metro or a B&W, which typically are free of such luxury. Plus, it is just nice to drive across the city sometimes. It is such a beautiful, strange and crazy place, which is very difficult to take in on the underground. At least, not in the same way, I suppose.

So, anyway, I’m in the cab, start talking to the driver. We’re laughing about the dumb thing that other people were doing—and have been doing—while driving recently. We talked about what has been going on in Egypt recently with the strikes and other madness.

I told him that I am leaving for the United States—that’s “Amreekah,” to you—next week and that I am pretty excited to see my homeland. He offered, no, insisted that I call him to take me to the airport.

My favorite thing today, though, was the conversation about his kids. See, small-talk in cabs goes like this:

1. “Where are you from?”
2. “What do you think of Egypt?”
3. “Here’s what I think of America, what do you think of America?” Politics
4. Religion
5. Family and children
6. Questioning of the politics of each others’ countries now that we’re friends
7. Exchanging of mobile numbers (optional)
8. “Great to meet you. Cheers. Bye.”

His son’s name is Abdel Rahman. But, he referred to him always as, “My little man, Abdel Rahman.” Of course, it didn’t rhyme in Arabic, but it was still really funny. He showed me pictures on his phone. Fantastic. I felt like I could be pretty honest with this guy, so when he asked me if I liked kids: “Not really,” I replied, “I am fearing them”

He laughed boisterously at this. I, in an attempt to defend myself as valid, could only say, “Seriously, they are like the small people. And they are always getting themselves into the danger.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing at my Arabic at this point—because we were really stretching the limits of my vocabulary—or at what I had said. This also led me to wonder if he understood that I was afraid of children or if he took it to mean that I feared midgets and dwarves—also sort of true, sorry Little People, more power to you—and therefore children as well, by extension.

He, after wiping the laughing tears out of his eyes, said that it was alright that children were always getting into trouble, because they were bl-blah-blah. I can only assume that the word I didn’t catch meant “kids bounce back easily” or “children are expendable and easily replaced.” Either would have made sense to me, in the given context. And that was that. He continued chuckling for a minute and the told me he was thrilled to have met me and he would see me on Tuesday and I got out of the cab.

It was great. The only time that I have ever had this much fun in cabs at home was the time that I got a cab in Chicago and the guy sang. I thought that it was just a cool thing that happened on the way to the airport, but apparently the guy is a legend. Finding that out made it less special.

All cab rides in Cairo are special in their own way. For that, I am thankful.

Warning: memoir material ahead

I had one of those creepy, sappy moments last night that I always wince at when I hear from someone else. However, it left me with a warm contentedness—something that usually only a Xanax and two whiskeys will do for me before I get on a flight—so I felt it was worth relating.

I was sitting on the Metro, returning from Heliopolis, staring out the window at the city rolling by and suddenly felt completely at home. This came as a shock to me because I’ve been here for a while and it doesn’t often take me very long to acclimate, but there it was.

I’m not talking about some weird sort of assimilation. I can’t really assimilate here. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know. It involves too much compromise. What I can do is live here, by my groceries at the local places, speak Arabic in an attempt to increase fluency, and learn from everything I see and hear.

I think I just finally, about two weeks before I am set to depart for the States for the summer, realized that I live here now. I think that it may have something to do as well with increasingly solid plans to return and live here for a few more years in the fall.

Back to the feeling, though. It wasn’t like anything suddenly made sense or that I understood something new. It was just the utter normalcy and mundanity of that situation: I was exhausted, and just brain-off gazing out the window at recognizable buildings in familiar parts of the city. I suppose that this is when I should know that I have finally arrived, right?

Just when your marriage, job, academic course, mode of artistic expression, home, etc. becomes a little bit boring, THAT is when you know that it is actually working. When the new-puppy feeling wears off, that is when you have what you really want. Unless, of course, you are the type who wants to always feel like you are experiencing something new and different.

I am not. I prefer the boring train-rides to the helter-skelter variety. They stay on the tracks and you know the stops.

YOU want mint.

I was walking today and saw a kid standing in the street shouting and waving something in one hand. As I approached, warily, I realized that he was yelling—indeed bellowing—the words: “Who wants mint? YOU want mint! Who wants mint? You WANT mint?” I went out on a limb and assumed that he must be waving mint in that hand.

He spotted me coming down the street and ran right up to me saying “Mister! You want mint?” He was little, his head was at about the level of my elbow. I told him that I didn’t really need any mint, but he was persistent. He shook the mint and then shoved the whole bunch right up under my nose, instructing me, “Smell it. The smell is very good. You want mint.”

I couldn’t resist. I asked him how much, doubled it, and crossed the street before he could try to give me change. Little things like that make my day. It’s not everyday that you can feel that good after having succumbed to a sales pitch.

Sold.

Where is Grace Kelly when you need her?

The buildings in this part of Cairo are very close together. This goes without saying, of course: it is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Usually I don’t even think about it. I just know that the building next door is right across the narrow alley—or air-shaft, as the case may be—but I don’t give it a second thought.

However, sometimes it can’t be helped.

Recently we were awakened to what seemed like a day-care/pre-school age group of children singing—under the direction of their teacher—at the top of their lungs. They were really belting it out.

After that, I started looking out into the back alley more often. It’s pretty nice, there is a garden down there, a million cats, sometimes a dog. Even birds on occasion.

Then I started noticing the people. There is the woman who cleans continuously. There is the couple who have really loud sex early in the morning. The people who are always doing laundry and hanging it downstairs. The couple who fights most of the time—and when they aren’t fighting with each other, the are fighting with their kids.

Those are just my favorites.

What I soon realized was that my neighbors are often watching me as well. For instance: I woke up the other morning, pretty early. Now, I usually sleep with the curtains open so that when the sun comes out, I have a better chance of waking up naturally, without an alarm.

Well this particular morning, I woke up—chipper and ready to go—got out of bed, and stretched my back and when I opened my eyes and looked out toward the window I realized that the cleaning-all-the-time woman was standing on her balcony was standing there watching me.

A newly awake, stark naked me.

Not really seeing another option, and really having exhausted my capacity to become embarrassed, I just waved. She was entirely unfazed by this, and simply waved back. Apparently I am not the first naked foreigner that she has seen in the window across the air-shaft.

So, maybe this is why she stands on the balcony in the morning.

A little disturbing, but understandable. However, I will be closing my curtains from now on.

“Please stow all lethal weapons in the overhead compartments before take-off…”

Recently, I went to the Cairo International Airport to pick up my roommate upon her return from the States. The affair was run-of-the-mill in most ways. I caught a cab, asked him to wait for us, and so on. While waiting for her in the corrals meant to keep predatory cabbies and others away from the actual exit doors of passport control in the arrivals hall, I noticed a young man pick his little brother up and perch him on one of the rungs of the corral railing. When he did this, the kid lost his balance a little and, in an attempt to correct, put his arms out wide. In his right hand was a convincing toy pistol.

My jaw must have dropped off my head, because the older brother snatched the gun and jammed it into his jacket, giving me a sheepish smile and shrugging laugh. I laughed out loud. I actually had to walk away so as not to raw attention to the situation any further.

This is just a symptom of something that I have noticed with increasing frequency here. People seem to have no fear of guns—even when they are inappropriately located, or being used inappropriately.

When living in Alexandria, I noticed this phenomenon not a few times. There was one afternoon where I hit the dirt on the sidewalk of the busiest street in the city because I saw a youngish kid in the back seat of a car taking aim out of the window with his toy Glock. Where I come from, you duck when something like that happens. Not in Alexandria though! Everyone else on the street looked at me as though I was having a seizure—unconcerned, but mystified by my sudden change in vertical/horizontal orientation—and continued on their path, unfazed. One woman actually stepped on my jacket and called me humar.

This was very disturbing, to say the least.

Another afternoon in Alexandria, I saw a group of three teenagers near my apartment holding up passing cabs with their toy—I assume—rifle. The cabbies would look momentarily startled, and then laugh riotously along with the kids. In the States, you would be arrested and held as an enemy combatant for five years without charges in an unnamed, secret detention facility: or at least you would be snatched up and roughed up a bit by the local cops. No such response here.

As I continued to wait, now on the other side of the corral, for my roommate’s tardy plane, the kid waved at me with his free hand, revolver dangling in the other. No airport authorities swarmed around, no police. Not even a second glance from anyone. Nada.

Meanwhile, poor bastards all over American airports are being cavity searched for tubes of toothpaste and fingernail clippers, as they not only pose a threat to individual airplanes, but to national security as well. I suppose that this is yet another indicator that though globalization is changing everything everywhere, differences are still glaring.

Welcome to the new world. Please check your nail-clippers at the door and be sure to keep your guns concealed from view.