Aero Folklore

Tuesday started weird and ended weirder.

Like every day, my taxi was sitting in traffic in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, an enormous traffic circle in front of the Egyptian Museum that houses King Tut's tomb and the Mogamma, the huge government building where I went to renew my visa. A white-uniformed traffic cop armed with a walkie-talkie had just waved on oncoming traffic. There are traffic lights in the square but since everyone ignores them, the traffic police are needed to literally stand in the street and direct traffic. After starting the flow of oncoming vehicles passing in front of us, the officer wandered off to a distant part of the square to chat with friends. Usually this only happens after the officer charged with directing traffic at a certain intersection has been replaced by another officer in a shift change.

Not yesterday.

I guess the guy just lost interest and gave up on manning his spot, leaving my taxi and the other hundreds of cars backed up behind us to sit and groan as car after car continued to pass in front of us blocking our way forward. Finally, after several minutes, the cars in front of us just nosed out into traffic until the oncoming cars were forced to stop to avoid collisions, then zoomed ahead, permission be damned.

This wasn't really the weird part. Things like this happen all the time. The cops are extremely lazy and unreliable. It is a job that men take when they can't pass any tests to get other jobs. And traffic is notoriously arbitrary in Cairo. People just drive where they want when they want, people get angry, then distracted from their anger by something else, then get angry at someone new. Whatever. The weird part was my taxi driver's reaction. "That guy!" he shouted to me, vaguely glancing at the road as he steering the car in a wobbly circle toward our street. He pointed in indignant surprise out the window at the officer who had wandered away from his post. "That guy just left, did you see? He waved them on, then walked away!" He was actually surprised, I realized. He could not believe someone would do that. "Really?" I thought to myself, "This is a shocker?" "You drive a cab in a country with no traffic laws or enforcement and a cop forgetting to change traffic directions still gets your blood pressure up?" But he was absolutely aghast, shaking his head, eyes wide. "Egypt!" He shouted. "Egypt," I agreed wholeheartedly.


The second weirdness of my day came in the evening. I went to join a gym near my apartment. I already knew the exact plan I wanted, how much it would cost, and that the gym takes MasterCard so it shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes to fill out the paperwork, pay, and get my photo taken for my ID card. I had also been warned ahead of time by two different people that although I get 3 free weeks with a personal trainer as part of my membership, I should decline.

Apparently the "head coach," or trainer, told each of these young women, both quite thin, that they really needed to lose a lot of weight, that this would require many hours in the gym, and then wrote workouts that would demand two and a half hours in the gym every night. My friend insisted she could only do an hour a few times a week and he said that that would never be enough to lose ALL THE WEIGHT she needed to lose (she's about 5'4" and maybe 120 lbs.). She asked him to write her a workout that would only take an hour. He agreed, then wrote another 2.5 hour workout. She told him she didn't want to take advantage of any more free personal training, but he'd still come hang out at her elliptical and criticize like an uninvited drill sergeant. Sure enough, our conversation went like this:

Him: (with a totally straight face) Have you ever done any exercise? Ever, in your life?
Me: You're asking me if I've ever exercised before? In my entire life?
Him: (nods)
Me: Um…yeah, I was a pretty serious athlete when I was younger and I've always been a swimmer. I do yoga and was running pretty regularly this summer.
Him: Hmmm. Do you have any goals (looking meaningfully at my belly…or maybe at my boobs, not sure)?
Me: I want to run on the treadmill for an hour a day.
Him: You don't have a fitness goal? Maybe you want to (pausing to look at my belly again) become in good shape? Or (really staring at belly now, but pretending not to) lose some pounds?
Me: My goal is to run on the treadmill for an hour a day.
Him: For my training to really work it is better to have a goal.
Me: I just want to run on the treadmill for an hour a day. I've decided not to take advantage of the free personal training sessions. Thank you.
Him: Well, that is your choice. It is free, but you can choose to do whatever you like. (in a tone that suggested I'd just chosen to die with dignity).
Me: Thank you.

He looked at my belly again, sighed, and left. My friend reports that he used to stare at her belly all the time too. She does not have a belly to stare at. I can't imagine the hours of fascination mine will offer.

By now I was wondering what on EARTH was taking the receptionist dude so long to run my credit card. Left alone in the office, I leaned out to see what he was doing. He was holding the little handheld visa machine, talking on his cell phone and the landline at the same time. Not good. Apparently, he had run the credit card but the machine only had enough paper to print the receipt without the signature line. He couldn't find new paper (hence the cell to call his boss) and didn't know how to reprint the transaction for me to sign the receipt without double charging me (hence the landline to call Visa). Then the handheld ran out of power and another boy had to go find what looked like a computer cord to plug the device into the wall so both boys had to crouch beside it as they frantically pushed buttons as instructed by the Visa rep and their boss. The receptionist would periodically notice me and say "so sorry, one moment, no problem" which is the Egyptian way of saying "I don't really know what is happening, this could take hours, you are totally screwed." He was so frazzled he was sweating, even in the severe air conditioning of the gym and he did seem sincerely sorry and embarrassed, so I left him alone, gave myself a little tour of the gym, read some signs on the walls, listened to my audiobook, texted my friend and examined the list of aerobics classes.

Which is where I encountered my favorite line of English text so far in Egypt. Apparently there is an instructor named HAPPY (in all caps, despite the fact that the other instructors named things like Dina and Ahmed were in lower case). Even weirder, whereas Dina, Ahmed and the others teach recognizable classes like Yoga, Pilates, and Spinning, HAPPY teaches an aerobic class on Wednesdays and Sundays called "Aero Folklore." Let me say that again: AERO FOLKLORE. I am absolutely DESPERATE to know what ON EARTH that is.

Slightly less weird but still worthy of note is a class called mysteriously "Fight Club" (I thought the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club?! Can you put it on a laminated list of aerobics classes?) and another one called "Go Boyin' " Huh?

After nearly an hour, they came up with the solution of having me sign the bottom of the receipt he'd printed when I first arrived in the empty space at the bottom rather than on an actual signature line. Really? I waited an hour for THIS? Whatever. I am now a proud (okay, not yet) member of the very same gym where the contestants on the Arabic version of the Biggest Loser work out. I guess the head coach I met is the patronizing, steroidal, uber-masculine version of Jillian Michaels. So basically the Jillian Michaels version of Jillian Michaels. And tonight I will meet my complex fitness goal of running on the treadmill for an hour. I hope Jillian isn't there to keep a disapproving eye on my belly as I run. Urg.

Good bye, self-esteem…fitness, here I come!