Single Again

I saw a man today. A thin, tiny man with thin, tiny hair. His uniform was a navy blue jumpsuit with orange trim that absolutely dwarfed him. He would have looked like he had put on his dad’s clothes but he was easily 65 years old. Here was this man, who was no doubt so small from having eaten meat no more than once a week for likely his entire life, who would never ever use an ATM card or even have a bank account (you need $1000 to open a savings account), whose job it was, among many other things, no doubt, to dust the Cairo street dirt from the face of the ATM. He clearly took great pride in his work. He dusted the screen thoroughly first, then flipped his little wet cloth to gently press the clean side around each of the keys with a single skinny finger.

I hustled along to my air conditioned office with my sausage egg McMuffin and coffee.

Why was I eating breakfast at McDonald’s you ask? Well, no, you’re probably wondering more about the little old man but since I don’t know any more about him and his meticulous attention to his work makes me feel like a jerk for complaining about construction law all day, I will just tell you why I was at McDonald’s.

I was buying a measuring cup. Well, a measuring 4-cup, actually. From a girl who is moving back to the States in a few weeks (McD’s was just a convenient central location). I have been eyeballing my biscotti recipe because everything here is in metric measurements (duh) and I am never sure when I should be converting to grams and when I should be converting to milliliters so my recipes never come out the same way twice. So I bought myself an American measuring cup that measures in yes, CUPS, a unit of measure my British friend finds ridiculous since apparently, unlike other “Standard” units of measure, they never used cups in England. Yeah, like “Stones” are soooo self-evident.

Insert I HEART EGYPT note here: I just had seven bottles of beer delivered to my door. Why 7? Six for me (they don’t come in six packs here, but I am sentimental like that) and one for my landlord who is coming tomorrow from Alexandria to pick up my rent. Marisol and I discovered he is more likely to let us do whatever we want (like crossing Joana, the girl who used to have the apartment and never told the landlord she was moving out for good, off the lease without her being there to say otherwise) if we have a beer with him when he comes. He asks about my family in America and asks after my brother by name since he randomly met Thomas once during an unscheduled visit to my apartment – I usually had Thomas go somewhere else when the landlord came by since he was literally living on my floor for two months without anybody’s knowledge or permission. Instead of being mad there was this unknown guy in the apartment with two girls (usually a big no-no in Egypt), he called me from inside my apartment to ask me to ask my brother (though all of this was done in English) if he needed anything or any help from my landlord while he was in town. I am hoping he is the nice old man he seems.

Speaking of the apartment, today is my first day coming back from the office with no puppy to greet me. I have started picking up her toys and putting them in a pile in the corner of the apartment that was her “room” so that I don’t have to see little reminders of the sweet sweet heart that is no longer here to keep me company. Marisol came to pick her up yesterday afternoon around 4:30. I had called in sick to work, the only time in my life I have ever done that without actually being sick, because I kept crying every ten minutes or so and thought that would probably be disruptive to others in the office (and…um…embarrassing!).

We went for two long walks around the neighborhood on what has become our usual route and the boys downstairs who park cars for rich people, the son of my doorman, the guy who mans the parking lot down the street, the guard outside the Bahraini ambassador’s house, a driver who is always waiting by the apartments across from the supermarket, a man taking a tea break with friends a guy going to the grocery store, and two students all stopped to pet her without knowing it would be the last time. I am dreading the moment when I go out alone and someone asks me where Galleta is, not only because it is difficult to explain in my Arabic that she was never mine and now lives in Mexico, but also because it will be difficult to do so without a meltdown.

I am considering getting a new dog, one that will actually be mine, and technically my first to raise all on my own but I haven’t decided yet if I would be able to be fair to a dog, working over full time at the firm. Thanks to those of you who have pitched in with your advice and told me I would be a good dog mom. Even if it doesn’t come to pass, I like to know that people think of me that way. To dog lovers, there are few higher compliments.