Food Network But No Food

On Thursday night, I noticed the fridge was leaking. It could have just been time to defrost, since our freezer ices over every two weeks or so to the point that the door stops sealing and eventually must be held closed with a chair pressed against it, the way sinister villains lock their victims in their bedrooms in old movies. But it didn’t seem iced over enough to be causing that level of leakage. My landlady was over at the time, supervising the repainting of Marisol’s moldy wall and I showed her the fridge leak. Like she believed me to be some coddled idiot who has never lived on her own, she gently pulled out the plug with a Vanna White “Ta-daaaaahhh!” gesture and told me that I should put a towel on the floor and a pot in the fridge to catch the extra water and the next day to plug it back in and all will be well. Duh.

Only all was not well. When I plugged the fridge back in the next morning, the remaining ice in the freezer continued to melt all during the day and turning the cooling level up did nothing to stop the glacial catastrophe. Friday afternoon I asked Marisol if she had anything in the freezer that would go really bad because no repairmen will work on Fridays so we definitely wouldn’t get anything fixed until Saturday at the earliest. She said she had lamb in the freezer and that when it defrosted she would just cook it (which she did by boiling it, which I’ve never heard of) but she forgot about the OPEN BAG of calamari that had been in the freezer for over a month. She had simply slit it down the side and pulled out the calamari fillets she was going to use that night and then popped the bag right back into the bottom of the freezer, where it froze solid into the base layer of ice and was forgotten like the cavemen cadavers occasionally uncovered by avalanches. Of course it didn’t stay frozen.

It rotted as it melted and then the bag filled with the water that had been ice. The freezer filled, then overflowed into the catching tray beneath the freezer, which also overflowed. The oily, fishy foam coated the inside of the fridge, then the floor, and I went from mopping normal water with nothing worse than the scent of old ice off the floor, as in a normal weekend defrosting adventure, to mopping rotten calamari goo. I tried to pull out the overflow tray but there was at least a pound of water in it, much of which sloshed onto the floor, my feet, legs, and my awesome and super essential Chaco flip flops before I got anywhere near the sink. Everything smelled like rotten calamari, which is an oddly industrial smell, like one of the strong bases you use in high school chemistry that you suspect is silently corroding the glass beaker at a rate too slow for human eyes to track. I washed everything in hot bleachy water (ironic because bleach I think is also a corrosive base, right?), which gave the calamari a dunked-in-chlorine aftertaste.

The repairman that was supposed to come last night didn’t show up and even our landlord, who is never particularly dedicated to uniting us with efficient repairman was a little appalled at this guy’s total lack of communication. We’ve rescheduled for tomorrow, which means I am on my third straight day of eating only eggs, which don’t need to be refrigerated here, and warm apple juice. I’m not feeling too hot.

Sadly, neither is Marisol’s puppy. I’m not sure if he, like me, still smells rotten calamari when he exhales because the insides of his lungs and nasal passages are coated in calamari oil, or if he accidentally lapped up some of the lethal brew before I mopped it up, or if it is related to his first rabies shot, which he got on Thursday, but he’s had diarrhea and nausea all day. I swear puppies actually somehow make themselves cuter (see photo) when they are sick or sleeping so our protective instincts are even stronger.

Into our stinky apartment, we welcomed the satellite guy, who gathered all fifteen or so of our English language channels from the several thousand available channels, and moved them into the first row of easy to find channel slots so we don’t have to search far and wide for channels now. We uncovered some buried gems, too. We could not find my beloved Al Jazeera English even after nearly a half hour of effort (though we found Al Jazeera Children in Arabic!) but we found Nickelodeon, BBC English and, pearl of all hidden pearls, THE FOOD NETWORK! It is actually an Arabized version called Fatafeat (which means crumbs), and is like the Food Network for viewers with ADD. It skips from show to show staying with each host and each set for only one recipe, then leaping compulsively onward, from Giada De Laurentiis to an Arabic stew cooked outdoors, to ceviche with Martha Stewart to tomato feta salad with the Barefoot Contessa. It didn’t even follow a theme or ordered progression from appetizers to soup to first course, etc. I was sort of dizzy by the time I turned it off to go to bed but I think I could get used to it, and by get used to it, I mean spend hours watching it every day and never leave my apartment again (as soon as it stops smelling like calamari).

In fact, I am going to try to teach my body to live off a steady diet of Food Network. No more eggs and warm apple juice, just Rachel Ray and Sara Moulton and Mario Batali and that Arab woman who made stew on her patio with an assistant who looked like she was wearing a graduation robe. I might even stop breathing, since the air only further coats my lungs and nose in calamari particles, and pump Food Network goodness straight into my bloodstream. I will have to develop special Fatafeat gills.

I go home to the US in just one week so all of this nonsense has to get fixed ASAP!

Cairo commerce

On a taxi ride to the train station I passed:

1)Three stores all on the same block - none more than eight feet tall, five feet wide, and six feet deep in from the street - that sold NOTHING but bright red fire extinguishers in various sizes, and
2)A clothing shop entitled in ENORMOUS lettering (like 3 feet per letter): GOLDEN MAN STORE

and I thought to myself, "I want one of those" (a golden man, not a fire extinguisher).

Crossroads

I got the job with the international commercial arbitration firm. I got the offer yesterday while I was in Alexandria for a conference on the Human Right to Peace (keep your eyes peeled, fans of utopic, toothless international law, for the Alexandria Declaration on the Human Right to Peace due out this week…I was there when it was drafted!). I have accepted so I will start January 10th, right after my cousin and some friends head home from their visit earlier in the month.

I am nervous because I do not know anything about international commercial arbitration and now have to do a ton of reading in the next month to start filling in the gaping holes in my knowledge of all things legal and practical. I am also nervous because, although it is physically located in Egypt, this firm promises to be just as grueling and competitive as any American law firm and I just don't know if I am cut out for the pace and emotional stress of that kind of environment. I am a kind and easy going person and I worry that in my first weeks there I will watch my sensitive soul slowly crushed like a ticklish muppet under a steam roller.

In other news, in a moment that totally made my day, a coworker came into my office this morning to clarify something with the English speakers. She had expressed some concerns about something to a representative from the US government who replied "its on our radar screen." She knew it was an idiom but thought it sounded vaguely military and wanted to make sure it actually meant something good, like they were taking her comments seriously, rather than that they were about to attack us. I never paused to consider how disturbing that expression could be when sent to a perfectly innocent Arab NGO!!!

Deal or no deal?

For a three day week, this one has been strangely exhausting.

I went to Dahab, on the Red Sea for the Feast of the Sacrifice weekend, a five-day vacation in which Egyptian extended families gather at the biggest house in the family, sacrifice an animal, usually a lamb, sheep, or goat, and then eat and socialize all weekend. It is to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac on God's command, though I'm told in the Islamic faith the Isaac character in the story is Ishmael instead, Abraham's firstborn son by his wife's servant Hagar. Anyway, while the Egyptians were doing this in Cairo and elsewhere, the foreigners were relaxing on the beaches of the Sinai and SCUBA diving in the Red Sea, or at least this one was.

Diving in the Red Sea is incredible. Underwater cameras cost a fortune here so unfortunately I have no pictures for you all but the landscape is very three dimensional, with huge bulges and chunks of coral looming out from coral cliffs and up from the white sand and coral-covered ocean floor. Schools of BRIGHT orange, electric blue, and neon yellow fish no bigger than my thumb cost in the current just near the surface so when you look up these long blue coral walls to the sky you really do see perfect rays of sun, tropical fish, and blue blue blue blue everything.

I can't wear a wetsuit because I'm allergic to neoprene and since most dives are between 40-60 feet and can last more than an hour, I would get pretty cold by the end. My lips would be blue by the time I got out of the water and I'd be shivering in the wind while trying to take my gear apart and one of the other divers would always make a comment about how they can't believe I dive without a suit. Dahab is one of the few places I've gone diving (Vietnam was another) where I was sure I would find a way to dive, and it would be worth it, even if I were allergic to water.

My friend Myriam was the perfect travel buddy for this kind of trip. As you know, I'm not much of an out-all-night partier roaming the abandoned streets at 2am in search of liquor and karaoke. I'm more of a put-on-PJs-pass-out-at-ten kind of girl. On this trip, partly because her antibiotics were making her a little nauseous, so was Myriam. We'd roll out of bed around nine at eat the huge breakfast platter included with our hotel. Then we'd read until 12:30, dive at 1, shower around 3:30 or 4, read or nap until 6, eat dinner, then watch a movie in our hotel room, read some more, then fall asleep around 11. We did this for four days and then watched the Amy Poehler sitcom Parks and Recreation for like four of the nine hours we spent on the busride back (the rest of the time was spent…you guessed it…reading).

I had one free day in Cairo to catch up on laundry and get acquainted with the DOG that my roommate purchased while I was away (a black and white Pekinese/Griffon mix named Galleta, which means Cookie in Spanish). And then I went back to work. But in addition to work, Marisol and I are looking for apartments so we saw two crappy places on Monday night that for some reason we couldn't get in to see until nearly 11pm (soooo far past my bedtime). This gave me a jet lagged feeling for most of Tuesday that no amount of Nescafe could cure but there was no rest for the weary and we had two more apartment viewings lines up for Tuesday night when the WEIRDEST thing happened.

Myriam's boyfriend had just gotten an offer from a Cairo law firm specializing in international commercial arbitration. She had said they were looking for people who were members of a bar, so on a lark I sent in a resume and cover letter around four in the afternoon. At four TEN I got a call from the office asking if I could come in for an interview at 7:30 THAT NIGHT. Apparently they were in the middle of recruitment decisions and wanted to give me the opportunity of at least a face to face meeting. So I sprinted back to Zamalek (my neighborhood, which is no longer under full siege by the riot police following the Egypt Algeria World Cup qualifier, but still has a haunting police and armored car presence on my street), met Marisol to look at an apartment, which we both like and agreed to take (more on this in a minute), then ran home, put on my ONLY suit jacket in Cairo and shoes that didn't match, then jumped in a cab for the law firm's offices.

I wound up having to wait 40 minutes for the attorney to finish interviewing someone in Arizona via videoconference for a much higher up position (CFO maybe?) but had the privilege of sitting on the ultra modern black leather furniture in the beautiful waiting room. High, white ceilings, interesting architecture-based photography, silver mesh and black lamps winding up from the floor like futuristic plants, and the Bloomberg financial news channel kept me company (shout out to the HUGE fight that is about to ensue over the Comcast purchase of NBC, antitrust lawyers get your laptops!). When I was finally shown into the office, the office assistant (every office of any kind in Egypt has at least four office boys who do the most random things, from ordering food to making personalized teas and coffees for individual workers to photocopying) made us espresso, which by then I REALLY needed.

The attorney that owns and runs the firm did the interview and it was actually quite fun. He is smart in a quick on his feet kind of way but also very honest and direct so there wasn't a whole lot of game playing as is usually the case in interviews. I was really honest about knowing nothing about int'l commercial arbitration, which was obviously not ideal, but was okay with him. His main concern was that the firm didn't spend a lot of time and resources training me only to have me bolt in a year or two. He asked no fewer than three times if I could make a five year commitment and all three times I very honestly answered I haven't done this kind of work before and couldn't make a firm commitment to something I don't know if I'll like. He asked hypothetically if I had a job where I was happy and the work was interesting and the pay was good (he brought this up, not me)… and I agreed that although I wouldn't promise anything, if all those things were true, then I wouldn't have any pressing reason to leave that hypothetical job (duh).

Even after I totally refused to commit, and after I admitted I had no experience at all in international commercial arbitration (or business law of any type), he said that they would consider my resume "sympathetically" at the meeting following my interview. And then he said "and by 'sympathetically,' I mean you'll get an offer." And I about snorted espresso through my nose.

I am supposed to hear back from them with a firm offer, including salary by email this week but this week only has one hour and thirty six minutes left in it before the weekend starts so I am beginning to think I hallucinated the whole thing.

Leaving the office in a confused days, I counted the zeros in my future salary all the way home, only to find that Marisol had seen another apartment after the one we'd seen together (I knew about the appointment but couldn't make it because of my interview so we just agreed that if she thought it was amazing I'd see it later). She said it was the most amazing place ever, that we had to get it, etc. etc. Remember: we'd already told the earlier place we wanted to take it.

So I went to look at this new apartment around 10, after my interview. I was exhausted to be sure, but this is not why I hated it. There were mirrors on every surface, including the doors (where half the mirrored squares covering each door were not only mirrors, but PINK mirrors), there were no fewer than 18 chairs in the living/dining room area, most of them upholstered in pink and tan, two lamps were shaped like DOLPHINS, the bathroom was tiny and plastic and ugly, and the kitchen was exactly the width of one person. Marisol thought it was beautiful and I really didn't and so we turned it down but we turned down the place we'd agreed to earlier as well and went back to square one in an exhausted, contrary funk.

Thankfully our degenerate landlord's father, the one who REALLY owns the building (who we've never met because he works in Saudi Arabia and his son manages the place), came by last night and apologized for the delay getting our phone fixed, promised he had paid the outstanding bill (and showed us the receipt, which his son had refused to do) so it would be working today. He found out we were thinking of leaving and didn't even ask why (he knew, I think, that his wife and son had been totally unresponsive to any of our requests for help with things falling apart in the place since the girl I took over the room from still owed them a little bit of money…but they have her contact info, she's still in town, and the problem has nothing to do with Marisol or me so holding it against us has really not been fair). He just said we shouldn't leave, that we should write down everything that needs to be fixed and he would have it all fixed this week, including adding wireless internet soon. Plus, although he's legally allowed to raise the price by up to ten per cent, he agreed to keep the price the same even though he could get a lot more on the open market right now.

So we get to keep our apartment, which will hopefully no longer be coming down around our ears by the end of next week, we don't have to spend the money to move our stuff and redecorate a new place, and now that we know we're staying in this place longer, we feel comfortable committing a little time and funds to sprucing it up a little more. Plus, we have the daddy landlord's name now and can communicate with several other members of the family (mom, dad, and sister) in order to avoid dealing with the son. It was like the family must have agreed we were worth keeping around (because we are clean, quiet, pay rent on time, and pay for improvements to the place) so they made a policy shift in their dealings with us and are no longer holding us accountable in their minds for what the former tenant owes them. We are nervous this won't pan out in the end but if we don't see improvement by the end of December, we don't have to sign a new contract. It is at least a reprieve from the exhaustion of apartment hunting!

Damn. Now the week is only an hour and 17 minutes from ending and still no offer email! Going back to watching the pot not boil…otherwise known as hitting refresh on my Gmail inbox for an hour and 17…er…16 minutes.